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Posts tagged ‘readathon’

Oct 22

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Hour 9 Mini Challenge: Cast your Book

Hello fellow readers and welcome to the 9th hour of the Readathon! We are really excited to be hosting our very first mini challenge. For those of you new to our blog, we hope you take the chance to check it out and if you like what you see follow us here, twitter, Facebook, or Instagram!

As book lovers, we know that the book is always better than the movie and we’ve probably all been baffled at some of Hollywood’s choices when it comes to casting our favorite book characters (um, Demi Moore as Hester in the Scarlet letter anyone??). Well now it’s up to you to correct Hollywood’s mistakes. We’re calling all armchair casting directors and asking you to list who you would cast for your book.

The challenge: Tell us (in the comments section of this post) which book you are currently reading and give us your casting choices for the book’s main characters. Tell us who you cast, for what role, and why they fit the role. If you are reading a book that has already been made into a movie, re-cast it with different actors. We will randomly select a winner from among all entries.

Want to step up your game? Post a photo of your casting choice(s) on twitter or instagram with the hashtag #castyourbook.

The prize: Your choice of $15 Amazon or Book Depository gift certificate and a $15 gift card to AMC. Please note that if the winner is an international (outside the US) reader then the prize will be a $30 Amazon gift card since AMC gift cards are only redeemable at movie theaters in the U.S. I’ll contact the winner within a few hours of the close of the mini challenge.

We can’t wait to see what you all come up with for your casting decisions. Thanks for stopping by and happy reading for the rest of the day!

Winner: And the randomly selected winner for this challenge is…Stormi Johnson. Congrats! I will be contacting you over email to arrange your prize. 

Oct 20

17 Comments

Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon

This saturday October 22nd is Dewey’s 24-hour Readathon and I’m are excited! We’ll even be hosting a mini-challenge here on the blog during hour 9 of the readathon. This is my second readathon and I’ve been  spending the last few weeks preparing. Book Worm unfortunately has family plans so won’t be participating this year but hopes to join in next time.

Last time I did a poor job of preparing. I didn’t make any plans to get private reading time and my 5-year old wasn’t too excited about giving me sustained reading time. I also didn’t make any kind of reading list and ended up picking House of Leaves as my first book (a poor choice). This time around I’ve planned ahead. My husband and daughter have plans most of the day outside of the house and I’ve prepped a stack of books with enough variety to keep things interesting. Here’s my current readathon stack…

readathon-stack

What do you think? Any  suggestions for books I should add or books I should remove?

I hope that many of you join me this saturday because it’s a lot of fun to see familiar faces and check in with people. For me the reading is fun but the social interaction with other readers is probably my favorite part. I’ll be posting most of my updates on Twitter and Instagram rather than this blog. As I mentioned above, we’ll also be hosting a mini challenge in hour 9 (4pm EDT) and we hope you stop by for the chance to win a cool prize. I’ll also be co-moderating two hours (4-5pm EDT) over at goodreads and I’d love to hear from you over there too.

There’s still time to sign up and I highly recommend it. There are mini-challenges every hour, prizes, social interaction, book discussions, and so much more. You can sign up and read more about it here.

We want to hear from you! Will you be participating on saturday? Which books do you want to read? What are your readathon goals?

Apr 25

10 Comments

Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon: Results

dewey2-2015This weekend I decided in the spur of the moment to take part in Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon. The readathon took place Saturday from 8am EST to 8am EST on Sunday. 1950 readers participated in the event across various platforms including Facebook, twitter, instagram, book tube, and various blogging platforms sites.

It was my first every readathon and I clearly had no idea what I was doing. I have to admit that my first thought when I heard about it was that it was rather silly. I mean I read a lot already, did I really need to try to set aside a day for reading. I was wrong because it was so much more than just a bunch of people sitting alone in their houses reading. The day was filled with mini challenges and fun activities and conversation via various social media sites.

Of course I did it all wrong since I didn’t prepare at all. I picked the wrong book(s) to read, I didn’t protect my time, and I didn’t plan out food/snacks. Here’s what my day looked like:

8-9am: Started reading. Book selected – House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. Trust me – this was the wrong book to pick.
9am-10: Found out my 5-year old needed cleats for soccer practice. Went to store in a panic to buy cleats. Zero reading
10-11am: Got my daughter ready for soccer. Zero reading
11-12pm: Soccer practice. I took a book with me but ran into other parents and spent the hour talking to them and watching soccer practice. 5 year olds playing soccer is amusing to watch. Zero reading.
12-1pm: Had lunch. Zero reading
1-3pm: Cleaned the house because family were coming over for dinner later. Zero reading
3-4pm: Reading! I actually was able to read for the whole hour while my daughter played downstairs
4-5pm: Set the table, played with my daughter. Zero reading
5-8pm: Dinner. Family came over. Zero reading.
8-3am: Reading! For the first time all day I had time to sit for more than an hour and read. I finished House of Leaves (our joint review to follow later this week). I started Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford.
3-7:30am: Sleeping. I’m past the age where all-nighters are appealing or possible. I normally go to sleep around 10 – 11pm so 3am was an accomplishment.
7:30-8am. Read more of Love in a Cold Climate.
Total tally: I read 1.5 books for a total of 660 pages. House of Leaves was 705 pages but I had already read 100 pages before I started. Some of those last pages were an “index” and images. I managed an extra 55 pages of my second book.

As you can see, I did a terrible job of reserving time to read. I happen to be a very fast reader so I was able to read quite a few pages despite not reading for the majority of the day. House of Leaves was probably the worst book to pick in terms of cleaning up my TBR. I did really enjoy it (Book Worm and I differed on this as you will see this week) but it’s a hard book to breeze through with all the formatting styles — having to get up and look at passages in the mirror and work my way through the crazy maze like sections.

Overall it was really fun because of all the extras. I did check in to social media (twitter, Facebook, goodreads) throughout the day to see how others were doing and to participate in a few of the mini challenges. I saw a few of you, our lovely readers and fellow bloggers, posting answers too!

The hosts of the event did a great job, as did all the volunteers. They have organized a second one for October 22, 2016 and this time around, I’d like to prepare in advance. Maybe some of you will also join us? I’ve debated whether or not we (Book Worm and I) should volunteer to host a mini challenge for the next one.

We want to hear from you. Did you participate in this readathon? How did you do? Would you want to participate in the future?