48-Hour Book Challenge Finish Line 2015

48-Hour Book Challenge 4

48hbcYay! This morning at 7:45 am, I finished this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge just as I finished reading another book.

My grand total was 28 hours and 15 minutes reading and reviewing, my second most for the challenge.

I finished the most books ever during the challenge — 8, and reviewed the most books ever — 5.

Here’s how the time was broken up:

18 hours and 30 minutes spent reading. That includes 1827 books read.

The books I finished and reviewed were:
Gone Crazy in Alabama, by Rita Williams-Garcia
Read Bottom Up, by Neel Shah and Skye Chatham
The Boys Who Challenged Hitler, by Phillip Hoose
Jinx’s Fire, by Sage Blackwood
Maeve’s Times: In Her Own Words, by Maeve Binchy

The book I finished just as I reached the Finish Line and so haven’t had time to review:
Wearing God, by Lauren F. Winner

Books I finished but decided not to review:
The Art of Stillness, by Pico Iyer
Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, edited by Kate Bernheimer
Peanuts Every Sunday, 1956-1960, by Charles M. Schulz

Books I read parts of:
The Bible
Horn Book Magazine
Rilke’s Book of Hours
The Spirit of Saint Francis, by Pope Francis
The Real Thing, by Ellen McCarthy
The New York Times Book of Mathematics
Surfaces and Essences, by Douglas Hofstadter
The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery
The Slow Regard of Silent Things, by Patrick Rothfuss

2 hours, 30 minutes spent listening to The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry. 2 CDs completed.

3 hours, 45 minutes spent writing the reviews and blogging. 2465 words written.

1 hour spent networking.

2 hours, 30 minutes spent posting the reviews.

And I come away wishing I could make all this a priority for the rest of the week! How delightful to spoil myself! Now I’m going to have to take care of some weekend errands I put off and deal with mundane things like getting some sleep. But it was so much fun while it lasted!

48-Hour Book Challenge Starting Line 2015

48-Hour Book Challenge, Events 4

48hbcWoo-hoo! The 48-Hour Book Challenge is here again!

The basic idea: Choose a 48-hour period of the weekend, and see how many hours of that time you can spend reading, reviewing, and bookish connecting.

I don’t know why on earth I didn’t participate last year, but I found my records from participation 2009 through 2013:

2009: 23 hours, 30 minutes; 5 books finished; 1120 pages; 5 books reviewed
2010: 26 hours, 40 minutes; 3 books finished; 995 pages; 4 books reviewed
2011: 30 hours, 30 minutes; 3 books finished; 1606 pages; 4 books reviewed
2012: 27 hours, 30 minutes; 3 books finished; 758 pages; 3 books reviewed; 5778 words written
2013: 20 hours; 3 books finished; 518 pages; 2 books reviewed; 3472 words written; 4 reviews posted

This weekend, alas, I have to work on Saturday. However, today is beautifully clear. (I don’t feel as guilty about cancelling with my Friday night gaming group as I used to feel cancelling my Friday night Home Fellowship group. I used to work around it.) So my goal will be 24 hours — of course if I have extra energy and find it possible to do without sleep (probably not possible; probably not a good idea), it would be fun to try to set a new record and go for 31 hours.

If the totals seem small, I should add that I always read many parts of books. I always have a few dozen nonfiction books going at once! This morning in my first hour of reading, I had an extended devotional time, reading parts of five different books, with a page count of 54 pages. (Page count tends to be lower when reading in pieces.)

I also get less read if I use the time writing reviews and posting reviews, which is why I started keeping track of words written and reviews posted as well. Today I have some reviews written and waiting to be posted, so I may break up my reading by posting them.

The totals are much, much less, of course, than I’d like them to be. Oh the ambitious stacks of books I’ve set aside in the past! But regardless of the totals, it’s so much fun putting everything else aside and taking time to READ!

And I always like to post my theme song for the challenge!

And, oh yes, I officially began at 7:45 am on Friday morning. I will finish at 7:45 am on Sunday morning. How many books will I be able to read and review in that time? How many hours will I spend? Stay tuned….

Official 48-Hour Book Challenge 2013 Edition

48-Hour Book Challenge, Challenge, Events 0

It’s time! Time for the official 48-Hour Book Challenge of 2013!

Last week, I did a practice run. Although I got 20 hours in, I didn’t get nearly as much blogging accomplished as I hoped. For that matter, I never get as much done as I hope. A weekend is simply not that long! However, it’s fun to do what I can!

Tomorrow I have to work, but I do plan to read during my lunch break and listen to an audiobook in the car. And then when I get home, I’m going to immerse myself in reading. I started at 7:00 pm on Friday, so that means after 7:00 pm on Sunday, I can get to my mundane details like grocery shopping and ironing.

Now, I’m hoping to do some good blogging, as well. I currently have a stack of 10 books (one of which I just finished after starting the Challenge) to write reviews for. Now, I also have 48 reviews written but not posted. So I very much want to get several of those posted. And I’m currently especially obsessed with posting the reviews I wrote in 2012. There are 8 of those left. So if the books seem older, that is why! I still have some reviews to post that I wrote when I was on the Cybils panel judging middle grade science fiction and fantasy.

They did ask to post a picture of the books I plan to read. Now, I know full well I won’t make much headway on this stack, especially if I do much blogging. But here is my stack:

On top is Heart’s Blood, by Juliet Marillier, which I’m about half done with.

Does anyone remember my Reading Plan? I’m still following that, sort of — just inserting lots and lots of interruptions. But Heart’s Blood was the “older library book” in the plan.

Next up is rereading a book. I was having trouble deciding what to reread when an Amazon package came today! Hooray! Perfect timing! One of the books in the package was Wednesdays in the Tower, by Jessica Day George. So that means the perfect book to reread is Tuesdays at the Castle. And that takes care of the next book in order, a book I own.

After those three, the rest of the books are books that Capitol Choices is considering, which I would very much like to have read before our meeting next Friday. We’ll see how I do.

Now, if this were all I’m reading, that would be one thing. But I have a system of piles of Nonfiction, which I read a chapter at a time. It is currently completely out of control:

But I just finished a Nonfiction book I’d been working on for months, Surviving Survival, by Laurence Gonzales. So I do, eventually, finish them.

I also intend to spend a little of the time unpacking boxes of books. I know that’s not in the official rules, so I will keep track of exactly how much time I spend (not more than one box per hour, and they only take about five minutes each). I think my recent move makes it a special case. I will only do boxes of books this weekend. These shelves in my bedroom are almost the only ones left to fill:

But that’s enough pictures of clutter and chaos! The fun one to post is the one of where I will spend significant time reading, at least during daylight hours.

There you have it! Happy Reading!

And We’re Off! The 7th Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge Begins!

48-Hour Book Challenge 0

I confess: I really do look forward to this weekend all year. It’s the weekend of Mother Reader‘s 48 Hour Book Challenge.

I began at 11:30 pm tonight, Friday night. My challenge will then run until 11:30 pm Sunday night. I’m going to see how much time I can spend reading.

My stats from last year are definitely going to be hard to beat. If not impossible. Last year, I hit 30 hours and 30 minutes. I finished 8 books, read 1,606 pages, and wrote 9 reviews, but only posted one of them.

This year, I’m going to try very hard to get less behind rather than more behind. With this in mind, I plan to post all reviews I write, as well as several reviews I’ve already written. Since I have about 45 reviews waiting to be posted, any amount will help! And during the 48 Hour Book Challenge, I have a nice amount of traffic from other book challengers, so it’s really a good time to post! Oh, I also want to catch up on writing reviews of books I’ve written. I have 11 books sitting here that I very much want to review, so I will try to review them in the next 48 hours. Mind you, I also want to review every book I read during the challenge, so this writing will cut down on my reading time. But all of it will be fun.

The biggest obstacle to a high number? Well, today is my 22nd day with a low-grade vestibular migraine. I felt somewhat better today, but I find that staying up later does not help. So I’m thinking it would not be a good time to avoid sleep, and that may be my undoing.

Once again, I am lucky in that I am not scheduled to work this weekend. I waited until late so I could go to small group Bible study without it cutting into my time, and then I did the grocery shopping for the week, so I won’t need to do that. Love those late night hours! I brought in my audiobook for in a pinch.

Now, I do need to be my son’s chauffeur for going to Prom tomorrow night, but they are just going to have to bear with me listening to an audiobook! I confess, I’d be tempted to skip church Sunday morning — but they will be showing pictures of the graduating Seniors, and I chose many for my son. Of course the big challenge will be: Can I possibly stay awake on Sunday afternoon and read, or is a Sunday afternoon nap a biological necessity? Time will tell.

I did save Code Name Verity to start tonight, because I have a feeling I won’t be able to stop until I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. Then it would be cool to go through my entire “rotation” of books — a book I own (Code Name Verity), a new library book (The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection), an award winner (Breaking Stalin’s Nose), an Advance Reader Copy of a book not yet published (Keeping the Castle, by Patrice Kindl), an older library book (Silver Phoenix, by Cindy Pon), and rereading a book (Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper — though I might save that for the plane). I also have a lot of Capitol Choices books I’d like to get read and a lot of shorter books still for 5th grade and up that I’d like to slip in there. We shall see.

Now I’m going to go read!