Category: 48-Hour Book Challenge

I did it! I completed this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge!

As feared, yesterday was pretty much a wash-out for reading. I’m happy, though, because the family crisis was resolved in a surprisingly wonderful way, with me sort of coordinating and help from others, including my ex-husband. Instead of being resentful of spending my day off not reading, I’m happy I had the day off to help out. On top of that, the musical “Parade” at the Kennedy Center last night was amazing! The performance was astoundingly good. The topic was hard-hitting – antisemitism and racism in Georgia showing a Jewish man wrongly convicted and eventually lynched in 1915. But it was incredibly well-done with wonderful music.

And today? Instead of using some of the time to blog and post reviews (which I didn’t get to yesterday, either) – I wanted to read, doggone it! And I was happy to be reading an incredibly good book – the advance reader copy of Sisters in the Wind, by Angeline Boulley. I haven’t written the review yet, but it was just as good as her first two – wonderful! I ended up with a positive experience of this year’s 48HBC because I got to take the time to devour that book.

My stats for the 48 hours are probably my lowest:

Time spent:
14 hours, 35 minutes total:
8 hours, 35 minutes Reading
30 minutes blogging (Starting line post)
5 hours, 10 minutes Listening to the audiobook James
20 minutes with details (spreadsheets and stuff)

I wrote 603 words and read 505 pages. I only finished one book, but made good headway on several. (The way I read nonfiction is to read one chapter at a time. I also started a graphic novel toward the end and got a lot of pages in.)

Now, I’m not quite sure how I’ll get those Mathical books read, but I did get one more book read that I got at ALA Annual conference, and my kid is having things work out great, so it’s been a good weekend so far.

Now, my plan for Labor Day is to make progress on my new website, prayingwiththepsalmists.com. I’m hoping those plans will go better!

Woo-hoo! It’s time for this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge!

I got the idea from Pam Coughlan when she was posting on her MotherReader blog. Pam was super creative and organized, and she got the whole kidlit blogging community joining in and even got sponsors to donate to charity!

As for me: I simply set aside a 48-hour time period when I will try to do as much reading and blogging as possible. I took Friday off this week, so I’m beginning tonight, Thursday, at 9:30 pm. And will see how much time I can spend on books between now and Saturday at 9:30 pm.

Honestly, I feel like I’m set up for failure this time – and then I remind myself I can’t “fail” at reading. It’s not a competition. Any amount of time I get to spend on this is good.

But first I agreed to go with some friends to a musical at the Kennedy Center tomorrow night. Okay, that will be worth it! And it will break up the reading and get me out and about. It’s a good thing! (And I could have said No if I didn’t believe that.)

Then tonight I learned a family member far away is having a crisis and I will need to work from a distance at helping to solve it. That will take some time. But here’s the bright side to that – 1) It’s good I can help. 2) Reading will help me not obsess and worry about the things I can’t do. I hope. Already tonight I put off dealing with it until tomorrow – but I hope I will be calm and able to be helpful.

Okay, so Reading!

The great thing about the 48-Hour Book Challenge, and why I keep coming back to them – is that they give me permission to read. And SKIP housework for a bit.

This year, I don’t want to get any further behind on posting reviews (I’m down to 56 reviews written but not posted! A couple years ago, there were 270.)- so I’m going to allow writing and posting reviews. In fact, I finished an Audiobook tonight, so one of the first things I need to do is review that book. So that will take more time from actual reading – but it’s all reading related.

Why do I want to get reading time in? Well, Book Award Season has started, and I have books to read for the Mathical Book Prize. On top of that, I promised myself that this year I would read all 24 books I picked up at ALA Annual Conference. I have read 8 of them already, mostly picture books – and I’d love to read the Advance Reader Copies before the books are published, but that will take some doing.

Which reminds me – I’m also going to count time spent reading old reviews as part of #Sonderbooks25, my celebration of my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks. My first plan was to reread all the reviews of Sonderbooks Stand-outs from every year, but I was having so much fun, I’m now reading ALL my old reviews. I believe there are more than 5,000 – and I am still only on 2003 reviews, Sonderbooks #62 – when I was still posting as “issues,” before I’d heard of blogs.

Time blogging also counts! So I just spent a chunk of time writing this post, and I want to get to reading – and listening. (Listening is what I do while eating and doing other basic life tasks.) We’ll see how I do, but any reading time is good. (And I’m afraid I’ve still got Monday off for housework and for working on my new website, prayingwiththepsalmists.com.

Happy Reading!

I did it! This weekend, I successfully finished reading the last 9 books I needed to read for the 2024 Mathical Awards!

As I explained in the Starting Post, this was different from my previous 48-Hour Book Challenges, as I was taking 3 days and I needed to finish specific books. And I did it! Not as much time to spare as I’d hoped, but I did get to take a walk in the snow today, so I’m not complaining!

Here are my stats:

9 books finished, with 7 of those complete books.
1563 pages read.
9 short reviews written for the Mathical committee and 4 reviews written for Sonderbooks (to appear after we announce our winners).
18 hours, 5 minutes reading — so 3 hours less than I estimated, but I made up for that with
4 hours, 40 minutes reviewing and blogging, for a grand total of

22 hours, 45 minutes spent this weekend on Mathical books.

And now I am DONE with award reading until September when, if all goes well, I’ll start reading for the Cybils Awards again. (Though we will be discussing the Mathical books next week.) This is after a year on the Morris committee, so I’m ready to read some adult books. (Though I have an Advance Reader Copy of the new Kimberly Brubaker Bradley book that is definitely going to be next.)

Unfortunately, my house is such a mess right now, having neglected it for reading, that I don’t even quite know where to start. I’ll probably start with putting away the last of my Christmas stuff, but also clear my table so I can do a jigsaw puzzle again. (I can’t do a jigsaw puzzle when in the middle of award committee reading, because I can’t resist a puzzle and spend lots of time on it when I should be reading and stay up way too late, too.) But it’s all good, and not only did I have fun reading some excellent books this weekend, I have a big sense of accomplishment. My 2024 reading year is off to a great start.

Unfortunately

Ah, it always happens when I wind up a 48-Hour Book Challenge. As usual, I learn that 48 hours isn’t all that long.

And because I didn’t set my alarm, I slept late, and in the afternoon, doing lots of reading makes me sleepy, so I took naps, too. But any time is better than no time, right? And I definitely got more reading done than on an ordinary weekend.

Here are my stats:

Total time spent on the 48-Hour Book Challenge from 8:30 pm Thursday to 8:30 pm Saturday: 24 hours, 40 minutes.

First, the non-reading:
Emailing (I decided to allow that, for reasons): 1 hour, 50 minutes
Spreadsheets and housekeeping: 1 hour
Blogging: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Reviewing: 25 minutes
Posting: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Total non-reading time: 6 hours, 15 minutes

Reading time:
Reading Morris-eligible books: 8 hours, 20 minutes
Reading other books: 5 hours, 5 minutes
Listening to a Morris-eligible book: 5 hours
Total Reading time: 18 hours, 25 minutes.

Okay, that’s a good amount of time….

Total pages read was 1255 (not counting the audiobook).
Total words written (blogs and reviews, but not emails) was 1257.

Books finished: 6
Reviews written: 2
Complete books read: 4
Partial books read: 10
(Explanation: I tend to read nonfiction a chapter at a time. I also have a half-dozen books I read in daily for my devotional time.)

Unfortunately, of the 4 books I finished today, I haven’t written any reviews yet, so that still needs to happen.

All in all, it was a lovely use of my time, but makes me want to spend more time at it!

And the good part is that since I started keeping track of time I’m spending on Morris reading, my total for the week is twice as big as any other week. So that makes it time well-spent.

Until next time….

I’m doing it! I took tomorrow off work, and I’m starting a 48-Hour Book Challenge.

These challenges were started many years ago by Pam Coughlan, then blogging as Mother Reader. (And I’m happy to say that although Pam is no longer blogging, she’s finished her Master’s in Library Science and is doing an awesome job working in libraries, still bringing great books to kids.)

Pam was way more organized than me about it. She organized it as a group effort. She got people to donate prizes. She added a little competition. The question to answer: In one 48-Hour period, how much time can you spend reading or blogging?

I am not very motivated about organizing large groups of people. But I really enjoyed the 48-Hour Book Challenges I participated in. They allow me to completely silence that voice inside me telling me I need to be productive and shouldn’t be reading.

Well, now I’m on the Morris Award committee – trying to help choose the best debut young adult book of the year. And it’s much much less that’s eligible than reading for the Newbery — but there’s still more reading than I could possibly do in a year, and I still need to read as much as I possibly can — and I feel like I’m getting behind.

At the same time, I recently made a list of tasks of things I want to polish up on my website. But who has time?

Another contribution is that recently I saw a weekend retreat I was very tempted to attend, but decided I shouldn’t spend that much money until I’ve finished paying for my last vacation. But the idea of taking a long weekend got into my head.

So — I asked for a Friday off, and I’m going to do a 48-Hour Book Challenge.

I make up my own rules. I’m not going to go crazy and set an alarm and cut into my sleep or anything. I plan to go for a walk both mornings and take showers. But I do think I’ll listen to an audiobook while preparing food and doing laundry.

But I’m going to spend as much time as I can with three things:
Reading
Writing Reviews
Working on my Website

And “Working on my website” counts posting reviews and blog posts (like this), but also any of the tasks I listed recently to make the website look better or work better.

So! I started tonight (Thursday) at 8:30 pm. I will continue until Saturday at 8:30 pm and see how many hours I can put in, and if I can get any more Morris-eligible books read.

With these starting line posts, I do like to post this theme song for my declared Reading Time:

And hey, I know I didn’t post this with any notice – but if anyone wants to join me, post in the comments!

24 hours isn’t enough time!

But my final stats are:
9 hours, 10 minutes reading,
3 hours, 15 minutes listening,
1 hour, 25 minutes online with related stuff.
Total: 13 hours, 50 minutes. And I spent more than half the 24 hours actually on books.

I finished 3 books, and read or listened to parts of 16 books. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. I read a page or two of several books as part of my daily quiet time. I read a total of 810 pages.

Like I said, it’s not enough time. I’m in the middle of Sidney Taylor Award Winner and Printz Honor Book, When the Angels Left the Old Country, and it’s amazing! But that means I didn’t get going on Morris Award eligible books. However, I greatly narrowed down the list of award winners I’m going to try to read before I do a program a week from today. I hope to at least start a Morris book this week. And after that — No more excuses! If I don’t read two Morris eligible books in a given week, I’ll finish up on Sunday instead of going to my usual gaming group. That’s the plan, we’ll see if it works!

And meanwhile, how much fun was it to spend a day reading?

It’s time for a 24-Hour Book Blitz!

And yes, I’m using the 48-Hour Book Challenge logo that my friend Pam, who once posted at Mother Reader, created. This is a half-time challenge for President’s Day.

Here’s the thing: I’m on the Morris Committee this year!

The Morris Award is for the best young adult debut book of the year. The eligibility is well-defined — a book for teens published between November 1st and October 31st, and it must be the creator or creators’ first published book.

The number of books eligible is much, much smaller than the number of books that were eligible for the Newbery when I was on it in 2019. But the thing is — it’s still more books than one person can read. But since the task is finite, we’re going to try to have at least two people from the committee read every eligible book. And everybody read the books that are nominated by at least two people.

I already have a list of 95 eligible books, and this is just the beginning of the year.

And — because I was on the Cybils and Mathical committees at the end of last year — so far I have only read 3 books eligible for the Morris! So I am starting out way behind.

To make matters worse, except in a good way, I’m doing a program for other youth services staff in my library system on February 27 about this year’s award winners — and I very much want to read more of the winners before the program.

So during my Book Blitz, the first thing I’m going to do is try to narrow down the books I’m going to read for the Award Winners Program, and try to get started on Morris books.

The committee has agreed that we expect everyone to read two eligible books per week. And I have promised myself that I won’t go to my gaming group on Sundays unless I’ve read two Morris books that week. I’m hoping it will be a well-deserved reward!

But now, I’m starting my Book Blitz. The rules are: I’m going for time spent. For the next 24 hours (starting at 10 pm Sunday night), I’m going to record how much time I spend reading books, listening to books, blogging about books, or posting reviews.

I’m not planning to set my alarm – so staying up late may be counter-productive. But it’s time to get busy, and let’s see how I do. Time to read!

Well, I finished this month’s 48-Hour Book Challenge.

First off, I’m disappointed because my total time is 10 minutes less than last Spring, and I thought that was low. I should somehow avoid those naps! But this time I did less audiobook listening and more reading, so I got more pages read. This time I spent much more time on housekeeping details, but it’s all good.

Here are my totals:

Reading time: 13 hours, 15 minutes
I read 906 pages in that time. Only one was a complete book, but I finished four books, and hope to finish one more book for the Cybils before I go to sleep tonight. Counting the four books I finished, I read from sixteen different books. (This isn’t unusual. I like to read nonfiction a little bit at a time.)

Listening time: 4 hours, 5 minutes
That’s not enough to finish the audiobook I’m working on, but I’m 49% through it.

Reviewing time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
I wrote reviews of three of the books I finished.

Blogging time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
This is the start and end posts, plus two Sonderblessings posts.

Posting two reviews: 1 hour, 30 minutes.
I write the posts on this blog, then set them up for the main website, with links to reviews before and after.

Housekeeping details: 3 hours
This includes setting up the spreadsheet and details like that. The reason it’s so very long this time was first that it turned out the book I started Thursday night was in the wrong category. So I sent emails to the Cybils category chair of Young Adult Fiction and got that straightened out — it’s not Speculative Fiction at all. (My category.) Then last night, I got the list of finalist books for the Mathical Book Prize, and I went through my library catalog with every title to figure out how many I need to order and how many I can read from library books.

You’d think by now I’d know that I’ll never get as much done in 48 hours as I think I can! I suspect what spoiled me is in other years I’ve worked on children’s books, and I can read them in about half the time of a young adult book. I was looking back in my records, and only once did I ever get more than 30 hours in, but usually I do more like 27 hours. Maybe I’m getting old!

But it’s all good, and it’s definitely fun to try! And I read some good books this weekend!

It dawned on me Tuesday, when I had Election Day off, that this coming weekend would be a perfect time to do a 48-Hour Book Challenge — because I’ve also got Veteran’s Day off Friday, giving me a long weekend. So tonight I paid my bills and went through mail and ordered a couple of things I wanted. And now my weekend should be clear for a Book Challenge!

I did my first 48-Hour Book Challenge years ago, the inspiration of Pam Coughlan, who then blogged as Mother Reader and later became my co-worker. The idea is to see how much time you can spend reading and blogging during a fixed space of 48 hours. Wow! It looks like it was 2009 the first time.

The reason this works is it makes reading a priority! You trick yourself into doing what you want to do and need to do because it’s what you’re supposed to do for these next 48 hours.

But since it’s not a group thing this time and I’m setting it up myself, this time I’m going to make it a reading and writing challenge. So I can spend time working on my book as well as blogging. (I have a book written about Psalms and I’ve almost finished the Book Proposal.) Besides that, I might even count email time this time — I’m way behind on emailing my friends these days. The catch, of course, is that means I won’t get as many books read.

And the reason I’m reading? I’m judging the first round of the Cybils in the category of Young Adult Speculative Fiction. We need to come up with seven finalists by Christmas, out of eighty books nominated, so that’s a lot of reading. (I won’t read all eighty, but I’d like to read, say, forty. We do want two of the seven judges to read every book.)

I’m off to a late start. I thought I’d start tonight because that way I’d have some of Saturday night left to do other things — but not so much. Anyway, I’ll see what I can do tonight before I fall asleep, and then it will be a reading day tomorrow! It’s supposed to rain and storm, so I won’t be tempted to break to take a walk. (I *am* going to be tempted to post pictures I’ve taken this month, which I’m also way behind about. But if I do, I will listen to audiobooks as I do it.)

The goal this time? Simply do better than last time, when my total time was 24 hours, 45 minutes, but my time reading was only 8 hours 10 minutes, with time listening 11 hours, 15 minutes. I finished 4 books, but only 2 of them were complete books. And I wrote 2,492 words.

Okay, I started at 11:10 pm (blogging counts). Ready, set, READ!

And I can’t resist: Here’s the youtube Theme Song for my 48-Hour Book Challenge that always makes me laugh: