Tag: readathon

Dewey’s April Readathon

~ Cathy ~ Leave a comment

…starts in about 2.5 hours. So far I have no plans for this weekend. I did my grocery shopping yesterday. I am as organized as I can be. It‘s always a possibility that friends pop up spontaneously and we end up going for a walk or something similar, but otherwise, let‘s see how this goes…

Reading lined up for this readathon:

Novels in paper/kindle, aka eye-reading:

Under Fortunate Stars, ebook, Netgalley and buddy read planned for May.

The Queen of the Damned: The Third Book in The Vampire Chronicles, paper, re-read and buddy read planned for May/June.

Hinter den drei Kiefern: Ein Fall für Gamache, paper, Gamache #13. This one is a backup and one of my StoryGraph picks for May. It‘s unlikely that I will pick it up during the readathon.

Audiobooks:

Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold, audible, finally picked this up! The incomparable Stephen Fry. Started already.

Eyes of the Void, Shards of Earth #2 (Final Architecture), audible, buddy read planned for May. Jumping the gun a little! Tchaikovsky has become one of my favourite authors, although I have also read some of his works that I did not like.

Short Stories:

The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six — ongoing buddy read, started already.

Comics / Graphic Novels:

Saga #58, eComic

Yoko Tsuno: TWO-IN-ONE: Unterirdische Begegnung / Die Orgel des Teufels, paper, my other StoryGraph pick for May.

Star Trek: TNG: Mirror Broken #0, eComic, STNG mirrorverse, buddy read planned for May.

So far I am bumming around the apartment in my loungewear. I‘ll see if I go for a walk later with an audiobook. The weather is not great…

Foodwise I have paranuts and cashews as snacks, two bananas and an orange. Then there is some stuffed peppers, babaganough and some garlicy cheese stuff from my favourite Turkish grocery shop around the corner. I baked some weird glutenfree bread baking mix last night. Looks weird, as mentioned. No idea yet, if it tastes good.

Then there are some ramen and soba instant noodles. And for the contact grill I got a salmon steak and there is some halloumi. Plus some mixed leaf salad, some asparagus, a small radicchio, bell peppers, cucumber, some bulgur salad…

No risk of starving this weekend!

Sign-Up for Dewey‘s 24-hour readathon

~ Cathy ~ 1 Comment

Welcome, welcome one and all! The April 30, 2022 Readathon is coming up fast, and we would LOOOOVE for you to join us! Can’t read the whole day? No …

READER Sign-Ups for April 30, 2022 Readathon!

Yep, here it is again, on the 30th of April. Another Dewey‘s. I participate in these very sporadically. I don‘t usually get a lot of reading done. Once I am really tired, that‘s just it. I do like the mini challenges though. I signed up anyway…

Dewey‘s

~ Cathy ~ 2 Comments

So, I went to bed around the halfway point of the event. At which point I had finally finished Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora. Review to come! Here I am, catching up with the various posts from Dewey‘s that I slept through…

Mid Event Survey 

1. What are you reading right now? — the same two books I started with.

2. How many books have you read so far? — see above. At some point I distanced myself from the notion that reading is about how many pages I read and how fast I am. It doesn‘t make me a cooler or worthier reader, when I read 200 books a year or whatever the figure is.

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? — I finally finished Dominion and I am looking forward to listening to more of Rovers by Richard Lange. Not sure yet, what print edition or ebook I will pick up next.

4. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? — I made dinner, received some texts, etc. I will go to bed now and when I wake up, I will be busy with life first. Can‘t be helped. It is unlikely that I will get much reading done in the second half of the readathon.

5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? — no big surprises.

What’s your relationship to the spooky and scary? Not your for (which is perfectly fine)? Your lifeblood (which is perfectly fine)? Somewhere in between (also perfectly fine)?

I often find horror boring. I need a good plot with some suspense and good characters. Or, if I read something really bad, for example Meg by Steve Alten, it needs to at least be funny (even unintentionally) to hold my interest. And if the books sounds really creepy and disturbing, I will simply not read it! Why torture myself?

Ok, off to write that last review for Domninion and then to deal with life.


Starting with that readathon….

~ Cathy ~ Leave a comment

Ok then, here is the Opening Event Survey for October‘s Deweys.

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? — still the South of Germany, small town between Stuttgart and Tübingen.
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? — I want to finish Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora today and whilst making my way though my house work and laundry, I want to get into the audio of Rovers (Audible Audio) by Richard Lange, a horror book with a different take on vampires.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? — I am not much of a snack person. I don‘t actually have any sweet stuff in the house. I have some self-grown cocktail tomatoes left, I guess they will be my snack.
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! — Speculative fiction is my drug.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? — not my first readathon, I don‘t participate in many. I realized at some point that they stress me too much. I like to connect to other readers though, so here I am. No promises that I will read more than usual or post regularly. And I definitely will not read through the night, as I will be travelling tomorrow afternoon and need to be rested. More audiobook time!

Currently Reading…

~ Cathy ~ Leave a comment

I am still working my way through Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora. The current story, Clanfall: Death of Kings by Odida Nyabundi, is good, pretty puzzling, set in a very far away in time Kenya with bionically enhanced, conscious and intelligent animals (I think), where humanity has ceased to exists…

I have about an hour left in the kindle and would like to finish the book today. However, Life! Going on a business trip next week, starting off tomorrows afternoon. Busy doing stuff in preparation, trying to keep myself from procrastinating too much. Failing so far.

Anyhow, I started the morning by looking for an audiobook—something I can listen to whilst folding laundry etc. Ended up (or rather started) with Rovers (Audible Audio) by Richard Lange, a horror book with a different take on vampires. Of Mice and Men with vampires and biker gangs? The audio sounds good so far.

He hasn’t been outside during the day in more than seventy-five years. Seventy-five years since he’s felt the sun on his face, seventy-five years since he’s lain under a tree and run his fingers over leaf shadows flitting across a patch of warm grass, seventy-five years since he’s squinted through his lashes to pin a cawing raven against the noon glare. For the past three-quarters of a century he’s lived by night, in the ebon hours when monsters hunt and good folk keep to their houses. Since he turned, every dawn’s been a death sentence, every sunbeam a white-hot razor. That’s why he’s overjoyed whenever he dreams his only dream, when he finds himself walking that road under the blazing sun, under a few wisps of cloud unraveling across the sky. A bounding jackrabbit kicks up dust. A breeze brings a whiff of sage. He comes upon an empty pop can and gives it a kick. Light and warmth worm their way into the coldest, darkest thickets inside him, and if he never woke again, he’d be fine. This would be enough—the road, the sky, the sun—forever.

From the first page

And just for the heck of it, I just signed up for Dewey‘s October readathon, starting in about 90 minutes. Not that I have the time or intention to read for 24 hours straight, because real life…. Anyway….

Summing up that readathon.

~ Cathy ~ 2 Comments

As expected, I didn‘t get a lot of reading done today. I slept for about seven hours. And spent about eight more hours at a birthday party. One and a half hours at a friend‘s place before the party, some time spent looking after my tomatoes and baking bread…

In the end I only managed to read for 3 hours and 30 minutes.

And now… good night! I am going to sleep in tomorrow morning and hopefully I will make some more serious progress with my current reads.

Dewey‘s Reverse Readathon

~ Cathy ~ 3 Comments

I just signed up for Dewey‘s Reverse Readathon. Spontaneously and rather foolishly. It will start in a little less than 3 hours, at 2 a.m. my time. When I will most likely be in bed, I am really tired already! Well, maybe…. I just started a batch of sourdough bread and need to do another two stretch-and-folds. Anyway… I can read a bit in the morning. In the afternoon I am at a birthday party and I might be there quite a long time. Maybe more reading in the last hours of the readathon. I will definitely not be around a lot for this one. We‘ll see!

More about this readathon here: WHAT IS DEWEY’S 24-HOUR READ-A-THON? | Important Links

I feel a little lost, actually, as I haven‘t done any of the preppy things. Oh well, I will check in when I can. And I will set up my timer to keep at least some kind of track of my reading. There is a bingo card for updates to Instagram…

Current bookstack:

Paper: Tietjen auf Tour: Warum Camping mich glücklich macht by Bettina Tietjen — Yes, we camp! Well, I don‘t actually. But I like the author, a German TV journalist and talk show host.

Audio #1: Babylon’s Ashes (The Expanse, #6) by James S.A. Corey — re-read of the Expanse series.

Audio #2: Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) by Ann Leckie — re-read

eBook #1: Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora (ebook) by Zelda Knight

eBook #2: Widdershins (Whyborne & Griffin #1) by Jordan L. Hawk

Graphic novel: Gideon Falls, Vol. 1: The Black Barn (Kindle Edition) by Jeff Lemire

Dewey‘s Readathon — Wrap-up

~ Cathy ~ Leave a comment

April 2020 Readathon Wrap-Up

And the 24 hours are up! I didn‘t read as long as I wanted, but the total is not bad. Maybe next time I will at least crack the twelve hours.

Total time read: 11h 32m, about 580 pages
 Ebook: 04h 23m, approx. 200 pages of this book— about 2 hours left.
Audio: 07h 09m, approx 380 pages — finished, review to come.

Releasing my inner nerd, that means I read about 50-90 pages per hour (depending on calculating it with or without the time I slept). That page count is pretty much on par for me. The whole calculation is highly subjective of course. Different fonts, page sizes, page layout, etc., skew the result…

Anyway, sorry for being a nerd! I will now catch up with Insta and Goodraeds and the rest of you guys in general…  Until the next Dewey‘s in October!

Dewey‘s — Recap of the last few hours

~ Cathy ~ Leave a comment

I’m up, I’m up!!! I slept through the last few hours. I had to, otherwise I would have been a total zombie today! Drawback: I will not even reach a total of 12 hours reading time. Here is a recap of the last few posts from Dewey‘s website:

Hour 23 – What motivates you to read?

What motivates me to read? I read a lot during work, which means I usually avoid non-fiction like the plague. It feels too much like work. I am trying to get better about that.

So traditionally I read for entertainment. Pure escapism, boldly going to places nobody has gone before. Well, no, I actually prefer to go together with others, therefore I have been very active on Goodreads for many years. There was a slump a few years back, but I rekindled my love of reading SF and found a great group on GR of likeminded people.

Hour 21 – Twenty-two Readathons Ago…

Do I remember my first readathon? Barely. It was a Dewey‘s Readathon as well, quite a few years ago. Back then I still used FB and Twitter and might have been active there. I don‘t remember if I stayed up or how many hours I managed to stay awake…

Hour 20 – why do you show up?

This time around I actually joined up wanting to connect and maybe find other reading enthusiasts with similar reading tastes. In my real life I don‘t really have that. Other readers, yes, but our reading tastes are very different and I have never managed to connect with them about books in a meaningful way. Reading SF and Fantasy is perceived as weird by many. No idea.   

Hour 16 – Do you want to be a kid again?

Nope, thank you. I never wanted to be a kid or a teenager again. I always enjoyed to be a grown-up. I am not a fan of YA and the only children‘s fiction I re-read fairly regularly is The Hobbit.

Hour 15 -Rachel Noel – Reading During Readathon

1. What are you reading right now?

I am still reading Behemoth and Monster 1983, as before. I might not finish them until the end of the readathon, but I plan to do so today.

2. How many books have you read so far?

Well, those two. I picked two chunksters for my readathon, hence a non-existing finishing list.

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon?

I spent most of it sleeping so far. I will try to read as much as possible until the finishing time. 

4. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?

My parents called and I chatted with a friend. I gave up reading time for that, because people are important. The biggest interruption of my reading time was the readathon itself, with its updates, posts and Instagram. But it was fun.

5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?

How much I let myself get distracted, when reading.

My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cathepsut/

My Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/978552-cathy

Dewey‘s 24h Readathon – Hour 6

~ Cathy ~ 1 Comment

I read for about half of the time so far. Looking at what the other participants are up to is fun, but tends to take away quitE some time.

I read Behemoth (Rifters, #3) by Peter Watts for an hour and then started to listen to an audiobook, whilst cooking dinner and then doing the dishes:

Monster 1983: Die komplette 1. Staffel (Monster 1983, #1-10) 
by Ivar Leon Menger

Not sure yet, if I really like this one. Two hours in we have quite a body count. It‘s a dramatization with several actors. It might have a supernatural element, too early to tell.