Tomorrow I will be taking part in Dewey’s 24 Hour read-a-thon, a wonderful community event that, this year, will bring together over 1,000 readers! Like the title suggests, participants have the option of reading for 24 hours. I won’t be reading for that long (you don’t want to see me if I haven’t received my mandated 8 hours of sleep), but plan to read a majority of the time. This year, since we have a wedding to attend tomorrow night, I’ll be making up for lost time by continuing to read through Sunday while everyone else is sleeping!
As I started to write this post, I wanted to find out how many of these read-a-thons I’ve participated in. My first seems to be the Spring/April read-a-thon in 2009. Since then, I’ve participated in every read-a-thon but one, bringing my total to 11 read-a-thons. Looking at that post, I see that I joined roughly 100 readers; this year we are topping 1500! If I had the time and patience I’d calculate the total number of books I’ve read. Instead, since I average about 5 books per read-a-thon, that means I’ve read approximately 55 books. Quite impressive, I must say.
The October read-a-thons are always my favorite. The cool weather, crisp smell of leaves on the wind. Oh, and the fact I have an excuse to curl up with some dark and spooky books is quite appealing!
Below is my initial read-a-thon TBR pile.
In case you can’t see the titles they are:
- Bloody Mary, Book 2 Mary: Unleashed by Hillary Monahan
- Catacomb by Madeleine Roux ( the previous two books in this series were also read during read-a-thons of past!)
- Carry On by by Rainbow Rowell
- The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
Not pictured are a few books I have on my iPad, including Persuasion by Martina Boone and a stack of comics/graphic novels to include: Island (# 1-3), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and more. Though I like to have a stack of books to choose from, I’ve been known to change tactics midway and read something completely different.
Additionally, I have a nice mix of healthy/junk food lined up to sustain me as I read. This includes:
- Appetizers! Potato skins, mozzarella sticks, fried green beans. I want them all!
- Cookies: perfect to fuel that rush of energy around midnight!
- Carrots/celery sticks: just something to munch on.
- Cinnamon rolls! I put these on the oven & set the timer for it to start around 8 am on Sunday. No matter how successful a read-a-thon I have, at least breakfast will be waiting.
This year, I’m once again contributing prizes for participants. This year, I’m contributing five bookmarks from my Etsy store.
I don’t blog much during the read-a-thon. I don’t want people to open their feed readers on Monday and see dozens of posts from me. Instead, I post my updates on Tumblr, then link them back to one generic update post on my blog. Easy peasy.
Are you participating in the read-a-thon? Which books are looking forward to reading most?
