How to tell if Bob, the office cat, is trying to kill you.

How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You
by Matthew Inman

Mildly amusing. Slightly offensive. It was ok. I smirked a few times.

This was part of my Dewey‘s reading list fron the past weekend. I managed to double-book myself again. Met a friend on Saturday for breakfast and another on Sunday for a small hike. Despite all that I managed to read/listen for 9 hours and 25 minutes. Eye-reading was only 283 pages, the rest was audio.

Just in case you don’t know yet, Dewey‘s is a 24-hour-readathon, usually on a weekend in April and another one in October…? August? Anyway… This time it was 2pm on Saturday to 2pm on Sunday CET. There is also a reverse readathon with different hours, usually starting at 8am CET. Yes, I do sleep at night, there is no way that I can read for 24 hours and then function in the days afterwards.

My reading list for April 2024 Deweys:

Finished:
– The Godbreaker, audible—finished in Hour 21. The review went online yesterday.
– The Walking Dead, Vol. 25: No Turning Back, eComic—finished in Hour 4. The review went online 2 days ago.
– How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You, eComic—finished the last few pages after the readathon.

Also read/listened:
– The Water Outlaws, ebook, read 11%-18%. Struggling to make progress!
– The Heartbeat of the Universe: Poems from Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2012–2022, ebook, read 43%-49%. Another one that is not going easily.
– The Murder of Mr. Ma, started this audio in Hour 21. A re-telling of Arthur Conan Doyle‘s The Sign of the Four with a Chinese twist. So far, so good. Not terribly exciting, but solid.

April 2024 Readathon Schedule

Hour 1 (14:00-15:00): did not start, at breakfast and more with a friend ☕️
Hour 2 (15-16): dito
Hour 3 (16-17): The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3, audio, 51 minutes
Hour 4 (17-18): finished The Walking Dead, Vol. 25: No Turning Back, 98 pages, 48 minutes
Hour 5 (18-19): 42 minutes social media & The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3
Hour 6 (19-20): The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3 + warming up & eating dinner on my balcony. 
Hour 7 (20-21): Watching the news, Duolingo, more audio.
Hour 8 (21-22): The Water Outlaws, 11%-16%
Hour 9 (22-23): Social media & How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You
Hour 10 (23-00): The Water Outlaws | The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3
Hour 11 (00-01): The Water Outlaws | The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3
Hour 12 (01-02): SLEEP! 😴
Hour 13 (02-03): sleeping
Hour 14 (03-04): sleeping
Hour 15 (04-05): sleeping
Hour 16 (05-06): sleeping
Hour 17 (06-07): sleeping
Hour 18 (07-08): The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3
Hour 19 (08-09): The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3
Hour 20 (09-10): The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3
Hour 21 (10-11): The Godbreaker: The God-King Chronicles, Book 3 finished and replaced with The Murder of Mr. Ma
Hour 22 (11-12): Catching up with social media.
Hour 23 (12-13): Continued with The Murder of Mr. Ma and got ready…
Hour 24 (13-14): Gone hiking. 😜
The rest of Sunday: Finished How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You.

Dewey’s Readathon April 2024 & Currently reading…

A date worth adding early to my calendar. Last time I was not strict enough with my planning and met friends. Hopefully this time around I can make this work…

Our next readathon will be April 13, 2024, starting at 8am Eastern Time.

April 2024

But back to December. What am I reading and what have I started reading in the last three days?

Driving the Deep (Finder Chronicles, #2)
by Suzanne Palmer

In the center of the spindle tube between two sections of the Shipyard, tumbling with the casual grace of zero gravity, there was a giant, magenta, inflatable hamster. Fergus Ferguson reached out to a wallbar to slow himself before he collided with it; the last unattended animal he’d run across had been a four-meter-long robotic snake that had chased him through three sections of hab before he managed to lock himself in a closet. The footage—perspective of the snake, naturally—was looping on all Shipyard vid monitors for a week.

First paragraph

This is a carry-over from November. I am 80ish % into the audiobook, about 1.5 hours left. Luckily I have a memory like a fish, because the book blurb is much too spoilerish and I had forgotten it as soon as I had read it. The first book, Finder, was a lot of fun. I hadn‘t planned to pick up the sequel, but then realized that it is partly set underwater, in the ocean under the ice of Enceladus aaaand then it showed up in my libby bookstream, when I was looking for another audiobook.

Not bad, although Palmer lost me a little in the middle. The underwater setting isn‘t as vividly depicted as I would have wished. The beginning was great, just as lively as the first book. The middle was a little slow. Now, towards the end, there is a lot of action again and we are gearing up towards a frantic finale…

House of Open Wounds (The Tyrant Philosophers, #2)
by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hopefully a standalone, because I haven‘t read the first book. Sounds like it, fingers crossed. I‘ve read the first two chapters. The first chapter sounded very epic, slow, literary… luckily the second chapter loosened up quite a bit and we got glimpses of Tchaikovsky‘s humour.

Epic fantasy, a drawn-out war between an invading empire and another nation. Bizarrely it does feel more like the trenches of WWI. We are in the field hospital during triage after a battle. Thrown in is a necromancer who re-animates the hopeless cases to send them into the battle field again. Interesting.

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport
by Samit Basu

…an exuberant new sci-fi adventure with heart that reads like a mash-up of “Aladdin” and Murderbot—with gloriously chaotic results.

I‘ve read the first chapter. A human revolutionary, her monkey robot brother and a huffy AI. I get a light Blade Runner vibe as well. Too soon to tell in what direction this is going.

I‘ll see which of those two books will hook me more…

Reverse Readathon 2023

And it‘s that time of year again for a Reverse Readathon. Meaning that theoretically I would be reading from Saturday 2am to Sunday 2am this weekend. Realistically I will probably skip the first few hours and then start reading Saturday morning, when the sun it up…

We‘ll see what the weekend brings!

Our next readathon event will be our Reverse Readathon, starting this Friday, July 21st at 8pm Eastern Time and ending Saturday, July 22 at 8pm. We …

Reverse Readathon 2023

Hour 24 Reading Sprint and Survey

1. How many books did you read during this readathon? Did you have any favorites?
2. How many books did you finish? 
3. Did you accomplish your goals for this readathon?
4. How did your snacks and meals work out? Are there things you would change about the food and beverages side of your readathon for next time?
5. Did you enjoy this readathon? What was the most successful part of your readathon? What would you change for next time?
6. What Dewey’s social media sites did you visit during this readathon? What activities did you participate in? Do you plan to complete those activities over the remainder of the weekend?

You’ve made it to the last hour-long sprint of our readathon for April 2023. Congratulations. Choose the book you wish to enjoy for your last hour of…

Hour 24 Reading Sprint and Survey

1. I am in the middle of my novel, finished one graphic novel volume (review to come), started another one and made some headway in two non-fiction audiobooks. One of them I will probably DNF, I‘ll make up my mind later. The other one I will only finish with heavy skimming, but I want to at least catch the end.

2. see above

3. I had a good time. I wish that real life hadn‘t intruded, because I think I would have had a lot of fun with the readathon this time around. But I decided at one point in my life that meeting friends and socializing is always more important than sitting on my sofa to read. Still, I will probably skip on that spa day tomorrow (national holiday), I don‘t think I am in the mood. However, I think what the last few days with the reading relays and the actual readathon have shown me: less TV and more reading is more satisfying.

4. I am not a snack-eater during readathons. I normally still take time to cook, switching to an audiobook. Ok, this time we actually went out for dinner. Other than that I really need to loose some weight, so besides some yoghurt for breakfast, I only sipped some fruit juices at various intervals, had some coffee and plenty of water.

5. For me the readathon starts at 2 p.m., so sleeping in the middle is quite natural. However, I did stay up and read till 3 a.m. last night and then really struggled this morning and got distracted. Maybe next time I will try to stick to my normal sleeping rhythm and get up earlier the following morning, so I can make more progress during the second half of the readathon.

6. I took part in some activities in the Dewey‘s goodreads group and I updated here, that was it. If I had taken part in anything else on Instagram or Discord (I don‘t use Twitter or FB anymore), I would have read even less. I will probably look at some updates in the goodreads group. Tomorrow is a holiday in Germany and I will either chill with some friends in their garden or go to a spa with another friend, as mentioned, depending on the weather. I will also definitely read…

As for the final tally, I read 326 pages of ebooks/comics and listened to 8 hours and 44 minutes of audio. I did start a little earlier yesterday, to make up for my outing yesterday afternoon.

Whatever reviews and blog posts piled up in the past two days will follow in the coming days. Plus there will be my monthly wrap-up for April tomorrow.

Hour 12 Reading Sprint & Survey

1. How many books have you been reading? Have you finished any? Are you on track with respect to your readathon goals so far?
2. Have you eaten real food today? (Not just junk food, ACTUAL HEALTHY FOOD) What was your favorite food or beverage so far?
3. Have you been participating in any of the activities on our social media (sprints, photo challenges, discussion questions, BINGO, etc.)
4. Are you growing sleepy? Do you plan to nap, or stop early, or are you extending the readathon hours to include sleep?
5. Have you been outside yet today? Have you had much exercise (besides the heavy lifting required to hold your book)?
6. How is your readathon going, overall?

This hour marks the halfway point in our readathon. We have our 4th scheduled hour-long reading sprint during this hour. Are you joining in this one?…

Hour 12 Reading Sprint & Survey

1. I am reading one SF novel, one graphic novel and two non-fiction audiobooks.I haven‘t finished any of them, but I am pretty sure that I will at least finish the comic. I don‘t have any goals for this readthon, besides having a good time…

2. I had a small yoghurt with various seeds in the morning, various fruit juices during the day and a vegan dish with rice, black beans, mango, avocado, red cabbage and marinated hibiscus in the evening.

3. I took part in two sprints and some of the discussion posts. Alas, I was out with a friend for 6 hours, so I am behind with my reading.

4. Yes, my eyes are burning. It‘s 1 a.m. in my corner of the world. I will probably sleep for a few hours soon.

5. See question #3. I walked 12.118 steps and 9,15 km on Saturday.

6. Not too shabby. Joining that sprint now and returning to my SF novel, after making a nice dent into my comic in the past hour.

Hour 8 Reading Sprint

I spent this Hour 8 reading sprint with the drive home, a quick dash to the supermarket and listening to a non-fiction audiobook about the history of food.

I also just spent 40 minutes (!) catching up with the Goodreads group for this readathon, some other posts, updating my StoryGraph… Now I can finally get back to reading my SF book.

Goodness me, there is a lot of young people with alcohol purchases at the supermarket check-out shortly before 10 pm. I am getting old!

If you have not had real food yet (not junk food, not snacks- actual meal-like food). you may wish to prepare your meal before you dive into this …

Hour 8 Reading Sprint

Oh, btw, dinner was at a tiny Argentinian place. I had a vegan dish with marinated hibiscus flowers instead of chicken. Very interesting…

Hour 1: Opening Survey and Sprint

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Germany

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I am 100 pages into The Last Astronaut, which is fun. I might read some short stories by Aliette de Bodard later, to mix things up.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? I am trying to eat less, so no snacks prepared besides some juices to take me through the day.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself! My hobby is reading… 😝 I also bake sourdough bread with my own starter, when I am not feeling too lazy.

5) What are your goals for this readathon? Have fun.

The readathon starts in 1 hour with a sprint! Are you ready!!??! Devices charged? Books handily near by? Cozy reading spot tidied and prepped? SNACKS…

Hour 1: Opening Survey and Sprint

I will get some juice now and start my reading sprint. I will stop a little early though, as I will need to get dressed in about an hour. Meeting a friend for a stroll through town, followed by dinner at a place with South American food. Haven‘t been to that place before, I am pretty curious.

April 2023 Dewey’s Readathon- Sprints

One of the traditions we have maintained in this readathon is our hour-long scheduled reading sprints. Our scheduled reading sprints occur at Hour 1 …

April 2023 Dewey’s Readathon- Sprints

I always found the idea of reading sprints a puzzling one. I am participating in a readathon, aka I commit to reading a lot. Why do I need sprints on top of that? Maybe it‘s helpful from a organisational (is that a word?) viewpoint, aka eating and social media during the non-sprint hours? That actually makes sense, so I will take a note of those sprint hours and at least stay away from social media during that time. Any other activities I can cover with audiobooks.

Anyway, because I will meet a friend in the afternoon and evening today, I will definitely miss out on several hours of this readathon. The readathon starts at 2pm for me, in about 3 hours. So to make up for that a little, I have been at it since I woke up this morning, shortly before 9am.

Dewey’s — Relay Sprint 2 – April 24-25

For the week leading into our readathon we’ll be doing a series of 2 day ’sprints‘ For each one, pick your TBR and see how many books/pages/hours you…April 2023 Reading Relay

Here is my update for the Relay Sprint 2 – April 24-25:

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher, audio
— listened for 1 hour 36 minutes Monday
— listened for 1 hours 39 minutes Tuesday

I have a little over 3 hours left in this audiobook. I am currently at a spot that feels very much like a HEA. I wonder what will happen in the last 10 chapters? I am still new to T. Kingfisher, but I doubt that something horrible will happen…? 😬

Fables Vol. 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers (Fables, e-comic, ongoing, I like it…
Ocean Grave, ebook, DNF after another 50 pages. I couldn‘t cope with the writing any longer.
Chicks Kick Butt, paper, started + read 27 pages. It‘s an anthology with UF authors. I read one story last night.
— 69 pages on Monday
— 62 pages on Tuesday

Total:
131 pages & 3 hours 15 minutes

Not a lot of pages. Busy at work and tired in the evening. In those cases I tend to watch TV rather than to read. It needs less brainpower… 😏

Dewey’s — Relay Sprint 1 – April 22-23

For the week leading into our readathon we’ll be doing a series of 2 day ’sprints‘ For each one, pick your TBR and see how many books/pages/hours you…April 2023 Reading Relay

Ok, here is my update for the Relay Sprint 1 – April 22-23

Dogs of War, ebook
— I read 79 pages on Saturday and 
— the last 18 pages early on Sunday.

Swordheart, audio
— listened for 1 hour 27 minutes on Saturday.
— listened for 2 hours 10 minutes on Sunday.

Fables Vol. 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers, e-comic 
— read 56 pages of this on Saturday.
— read 42 pages on Sunday.

Ocean Grave, ebook 
— started and read 90 pages on Sunday.

Total: 285 pages & 3 hours 37 minutes. Not bad, considering that I met a friend today for coffee and cake and a 6 km walk.

After reading the first few chapters of Ocean Grave by Matt Serafini this morning, I was pretty sure that I would DNF it at some point today, because, to be frank, the writing is not great. I decided to give it until 20% and then decide it I would toss it or not… here are my comments up to that point… 😝

page 23–7.9% “A long piece of driftwood rocked atop the ocean a few hundred kilometers away. Underneath the blazing sun, Mosi could only see a silhouette lift up onto its forearms and wave a hand around. “Please!” The voice was male. Possibly American. His hand reached out, stretching toward Mosi.“
A few hundred kilometers? Wow, that‘s some eye sight and a really loud voice… *eye roll*

page 30—10.31% ““The leader sat atop the corner desk with the gun in one hand and a drink in the other. His eyes were like fried eggs.“
White and yellow? Seriously, what does that mean?

page 48–16.49% ““She had to give it to Blake. He was right. She would’ve shot this down with the quickness, because who believed in buried treasure anymore?“
With the quickness? Is that weird English or is it me?”

page 51–17.53% ““Zane balanced himself on the rail and dropped toward the water. The moonlight reached down a few kilometers so dark blue became a gradient of deeper blacks. Soon he was paddling through impenetrable onyx.“
Someone needs to explain to the author what a kilometer is and tell him to drop the „kilo“.

page 52–17.87% ““Flippered feet wobbled against the edge and Zane took a deep pull on his valve, swallowing a burst of bottled air before dropping through the gloom like a brick.“
Nope, that is not how it works. More air in the body, more buoyancy. No chance of „dropping like a brick“ that way. I am rolling my eyes so hard every few pages. I don‘t know how much longer I can put up with this.

page 54–18.56% “Ok, that kill by the monster fish was fun and a good scene.”