The Bout of Books 8.0, a week-long readathon, officially started at 12:01 a.m. today, but since I was sick most of the weekend I definitely didn’t stay up late to sneak in a few super-early-morning hours.
After going back and forth a bit, I decided that my one goal for the week of the Bout of Books is to eliminate all of my solo time in front of the television. I will still watch some tv with the boyfriend (we usually watch during dinner), but otherwise the television is staying turned off this week.
I don’t care how many books I read or even how much time I spend reading. I just want to see what I do with my time when I’m not sitting in front of the tv for a good chunk of my evenings.
Books to Read
I don’t have a specific plan or goals of which books to read, but these are the books grabbing my attention at the moment:
- Night Film by Marisha Pessl — I splurged and pre-ordered a copy of this one. It’s supposed to arrive in the mail on Tuesday (fingers crossed!).
- Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed — I’ve been reading this one very slowly over the last month or so. It’d be nice to finish it sometime this week.
- Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti — I found this one at the library this week and I’m really curious about it.
- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn — I borrowed this book from a friend several months ago but haven’t read it yet. I saw it on Andi’s readathon pile with some enthusiastic endorsements so on to the pile it goes.
- Visiting Tom by Michael Perry — I’m on a book tour for this one at the beginning of September, so I might try to finish it up this week.
Updates
I think the plan will be to do short updates on this post everyday, with a final update and reflections at the end of the week, maybe next Sunday night or Monday morning. I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing readathon updates on the blog, so if you want to see how I’m doing I’ll mostly be on Twitter and Instagram.
Monday
- Pages Read Today: 168
- Total Pages Read: 168
- Books Read/Finished: Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed (in progress)
- Other Notes: I didn’t watch any television yesterday, so it was a good start to the week!
Tuesday
- Pages Read Today: 115
- Total Pages Read: 283
- Books Read/Finished: Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed (in progress) and Night Film by Marisha Pessel (in progress)
- Other Notes: I’m so excited to finally have a copy of Night Film. It’s an absolutely gorgeous book (well constructed, nice paper, lots of visuals) and, so far, a fun read. I also really like the extras you can uncover with the Decoder App — that’s a fun extra.
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I’m shamelessly stealing (actually there’s an attribution, but still… borrowing) your goal for this post and also working on eliminating tv. This morning I read instead of watching tv while I worked out and I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll keep doing or not. I can watch tv while I do exercises, while I can only read between sets, which I consider not ideal. But I feel so much better about myself for starting the day with reading than I do when I watch tv, it might be worth it 🙂
I’ve tried reading while doing cardio on an elliptical — sometimes it works and sometimes I find it really hard to concentrate. I feel better starting my day with reading than tv, so I am going to try to continue it.
Good luck with your goals! I just finished reading Why Have Kids? and it was really enjoyable! I love Jessica Valenti’s other work, too, so I knew I’d have to read it. Also, I’ve heard great things about Night Film and now it’s definitely on my (massive) TBR. I hope you enjoy it 🙂
Bekka @ Pretty Deadly Reviews
I’ve never ready anything by Valenti before, but so far I like her style a lot. She’s very blunt, which I appreciate.
Looking forward to following your Bout of Books progress, and I hope you’re feeling much better! My colleagues always ask how I read so much, and the truth is that I don’t watch TV Monday-Friday. Greyson is with me, and we watch some cartoons in the evening, but that’s usually while I’m straightening after dinner or I’ll read a bit while he watches. It’s done wonders for my book life.
I go through fits and spurts with tv. When I get into a show I like, I watch a ton really fast. I need to learn to pace myself out better.
Glad to see you’re joining in too. I also have Night Film on my possibilities list. I’m worried that I really need to read that one before I hear anything more about it.
Good luck with your goal – I set an amount of time spent reading/listening each day.
Mostly – have fun!
I’ve been trying to avoid too many review of Night Film, but I’ve run across a fair bit of information about it. The first 200 pages are living up to the hype for me!
Oh man, I LOVED Why Have Kids, but I know it’s one that’s pretty polarizing. I read it in a few hours without putting it down. It just made me feel really validated in my kind of wishy washy feelings about waiting to have kids.
Hope you have a great week!
I can see why the book would be polarizing — she’s taking on a bunch of “givens” about parenthood that it’d be hard to let go. It’s super interesting so far though.
I’ve been hearing plenty about Night Film so that’s a book I am excited to read. I hope you have a great readathon!
It’s a cool book — physically, really beautifully put together. I’m impressed with that!
Night Fiiiiiiilm! I hope you enjoy it. I was so delighted to get my greedy paws on it — I love a well-illustrated book. And it’s also completely lunatic in the plotting, the same way Special Topics was. I got such a kick out of it.
I love books with illustrations or other documents… like, so much! So as soon as it opened with the Time photo slideshow, I was hooked. I’m getting a kick out of it too.
Great goals. I want to read Why Have Kids. Best of luck and enjoy. See you around the read-a-thon.
It’s good so far, I like it a lot!
I am EXTREMELY curious to see what you think of Why Have Kids? Being a non-breeder by choice, I’m interested in perspectives about the pros and cons of parenting or choosing not to be a parent.
I’m, at this point, also a non-breeder by choice, but I’m not sure if I’ll change my mind on that eventually. It’s interesting to get a very different perspective on parenting.
Echoing the sentiment of other commenters and definitely want to hear what you have to say about Why Have Kids? It’s been on my list for a while, but a bit worried to pick it up honestly. Not in a bad way, but revolutionizing thinking kind of way.
I’m a few chapters in and while I don’t think I feel radically different yet, I am interested in the way she’s applying feminist principles to ideas of parenting so far.
Good job! Keep it up! It’s only Tuesday 😉
I love that your goal isn’t by amount of books read or time spent reading, it’s very refreshing! 🙂 I hope that you feel better enough to get lots of books read! Happy reading!
I think a page number or time goal would have just made me feel competitive. The no tv goal is a challenge, but I don’t feel pressured by it 🙂
Woo Almost 300 pages in the first 2 days, great progress! 😀
I flew through the first pages of Night Film — it’s great!