Category: Bout of Books

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 5th and runs through Sunday, January 11th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 12 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

Time Devoted to Reading

My Goals

• finish off whatever books I’m currently reading.
• Read at least one new book off of my TBR shelf.
• I typically read about 2 books a week, so the important thing for me is to read more than that.  I want to be able to finish at least 3 books, but I’m really hoping I’ll be able to finish 4.

Books to Read

I’ll be sticking to ebooks, since I’m participating in COYER, but I’m not sure what books yet.  Chances are the books I read will be whatever eARCs I still have left to read by February.

Updates

I will be updating with one post each day with the number of books I’ve read that day, the titles of the books read, and the total number of books read.  If I wasn’t able to finish a book that day, I’ll put the number of pages read instead.  I will also post whatever challenges, if any, I’ve participated in.

I’ve finished up this Bout of Books with only 81 pages left of The Wastelands (The Dark Tower III).  I would stay up and finish it, but I hurt my back today and I’m very tired.  As far as the the whole Bout of Books 11 goes though, I met my goals, with the exception of finishing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.  I’m fine with that, especially since I was able to read over 1,000 pages this week, and I usually only manage about half that.  I only completed one challenge, but, again, that’s fine considering how much reading I accomplished.  Now, that Bout of Books 11 is over, I’ll be making some announcements and posting a review of N.K. Jemisin’s The Killing Moon before the end of the week.

Total books finished: 2

Pages read today: 183

Total  pages: 1289

I don’t have much to say for today.  I crossed off a lot of items from my to-do list in preparation for going back to school on Monday, while also getting over half of The Wastelands (The Dark Tower III) read.  Since it’s been so long since I read the Dark Tower books, there is quite a bit of the story I had forgotten.  I’m enjoying it, and thinking that I’ll have it finished by tomorrow night.  Either that, or I’ll get so close to the end that I won’t be able to get to sleep until it’s done, even if that means not going to bed until well after midnight.  Luckily, it’s the first day of classes, which means most of each class will be spent going over the syllabus.  I also won’t have to get up until 8am, and I always keep a good supply of caffeine, in the form of tea and coffee, in the kitchen.  Chances are, I’ll have a difficult time getting to sleep anyway, like I always do the night before the first day of class.

Total books finished: 2

Pages read today: 286

Total  pages: 1106

Today, I finished The Stranger’s Woes by Max Frei, which I didn’t think I was going to be able to do.  Before I finished, I ended up getting a late night breakfast-for-dinner at my favorite 24-hour diner.  As with the pastries, the book made me do it.  After I finished the book, I realized I just really don’t want to return to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay right now.  As I’ve said before, it’s not that it’s a bad book.  I’m just not in the mood for it’s depth right now.  I’m technically on vacation, the only most of a week of vacation I’ve had all Summer, and I go back to school starting on Monday.  I’m excited about getting back into a more intellectual routine, but I also want to be very lazy and read “easy” but still wonderfully engaging books until then.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, while definitely engaging, is most certainly not easy.  So, I decided to start reading The Wastelands (The Dark Tower III) by Stephen King.  I’ve already read most of the series when I was much younger, and re-read the first 2 within the past year.

Total books finished: 2

Pages read today: 222

Total  pages: 820

Today, I happily continued with The Stranger’s Woes by Max Frei, but I didn’t read much more than 100 pages because it was Date Night for my boyfriend and I.  We went out to dinner, came home and made chocolate chip cookies, and then ate about half of them while watching Dead Poet’s Society.  I’ve seen it many times; however, he never had, and that needed to be corrected right away.  So, even though I’ll have much more reading time today, it looks like I won’t be finishing The Stranger’s Woes until tomorrow.

Total books finished: 1

Pages read today: 119

Total  pages: 598

Today, I continued with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Micheal Chabon, but then decided I really needed a break from it.  So, I started The Stranger’s Woes by Max Frei, and I’m only stopping because I’m yawning so much I can’t read more than a sentence or two at a time.  I’m not yawning out of boredom; I’m just ridiculously tired for some reason.  I was almost 100% certain I would enjoy The Stranger’s Woes as much as the first book in the series, and I was right.  I’m happy to find out that there are 2 more in the series left for me to read.

Though I read more today than the previous days, I would’ve liked to have read more than that.  I may not have had to work, but I still had things I needed to get done, including an absolutely necessary stop at the store to get pastries because the characters in The Stranger’s Woes are frequently eating them along with a drink called kamra, which seems to be their world’s version of coffee or tea.  I tried to fight the urge to join them in their gluttony, but I was happily defeated.  Luckily for me, I stopped after just one pastry.  I have 3 more left, and that should get me through the rest of the book, which I should be finishing by Friday at the latest.

Total books finished: 1

Pages read today: 201

Total  pages: 479

Time Devoted to Reading

My Goals

• finish off the books I’ve been “currently” reading.
• Read at least one new book off of my TBR shelf.
• I typically read about 1 book a week, so the important thing for me is to read more than that.  I want to be able to finish at least 2 books, but I’m really hoping I’ll be able to finish 3.

Books to Read

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin
• One book off of my TBR shelf – The Stranger’s Woes: The Labyrinths of Echo, Book Two by Max Frei.

Updates

I will be updating with one post each day with the number of books I’ve read that day, the titles of the books read, and the total number of books read.  If I wasn’t able to finish a book that day, I’ll put the number of pages read instead.  I will also post whatever challenges, if any, I’ve participated in.