The Readathon is coming!
This Saturday, April 26 Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, an excuse for book nerds around the world to set aside their responsibilities for a day to spend an entire day reading. I’ve only finished four books this month, so I’m pretty excited for a weekend devoted to good books.
It seems like every Readathon I play around with how to do updates. I like putting things here on the blog, but updating a post throughout the day can get a little cumbersome. Last year I played around with doing updates on my oft-neglected Tumblr, A Little Bit of Dorkiness, and my Twitter feed (@kimthedork), along with a post here that linked to those updates.
This year I’m going to experiment with using Storify to collect my updates from across social media to share here on the blog. I’m not sure how it will go, but ultimately the point of the Readathon is reading, not documenting, and I’m not too stressed about how it’ll work. That’s probably more than you wanted to know anyway!
My Book Pile
What I know you do want to hear about is my stack of books.
I’ve been futzing around with this stack all week (seriously!). If you can’t read the titles, they are (bottom to top):
- An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield (nonfiction/304 pages)
- Hunting Season by Mirta Ojito (nonfiction/264 pages)
- An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCraken (memoir/192 pages)
- Equilateral by Ken Kalfus (fiction/224 pages)
- Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan (fiction/304 pages)
- The Last Girlfriend on Earth by Simon Rich (short stories/240 pages – not pictured because it hasn’t arrived in the mail yet!)
- Going Over by Beth Kephart (YA fiction/264 pages)
- Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham (audio)
I’ve also got a few ebooks lined up:
- Saga Vol. 1, 2, and 3 (comics)
- Cinder by Marissa Meyer (YA fiction/448 pages)
Obviously, this is more books than I can possibly read in a single day. But I think there’s a good chance I can get through three or four of them before I have to call it quits. And I flew through a whole book in a single day last Sunday, so I think I’m warmed up for a reading binge.
My Readathon Essentials
I’ve also been working on getting all of my other Readathon supplies together so I don’t have to go hunting around on Saturday morning. My Readathon essentials include:
- A notebook and pens and pencils to keep track of reading time, number of pages, and things I want to remember
- A stopwatch to track my reading time, usually just the stopwatch on my phone
- My tablet, which functions as an ereader and a way to keep up with social media
- Plenty of tea and my favorite mug
- Snacks! I like to have cut up fruits and veggies to snack on, along with mini cheddar rice cakes and chocolate covered raspberries.
- Totino’s Party Pizza! This is my traditional Readathon dinner.
- Diet Mountain Dew for when black tea just isn’t enough caffeine
- Headphones and my phone charger for listening to audio books and making sure my electronics stay awake along with me.
My Reading Plan
Whew! This post is getting long, so I’ll wrap it up with my general plan of attack for the Readathon. I’ll probably start out with one of my nonfiction selections, then switch to fiction in the afternoon. I’m planning to save both of my YA selections until late in the evening, mixing in the comic books in between for some quick reads. I also have a couple of books in progress – The Humor Code by Joel Warner and Peter McGraw and One More Thing by B.J. Novak that I may pick up if I need to feel like I’m finishing books quickly.
Woohoo! Saturday can’t come fast enough.
Comments on this entry are closed.
You’ve made me want to do the readathon now. I was planning to skip it this time, but now I am tempted. Have a great readathon!
Ooo, I never heard of Storify, but I’m really curious to see how it goes. Updates are always one of the tough things for me, too…if it works for you, I might have to try it for Bout of Books.
So excited to see Equilateral in your pile!!
Every year I try something a little different with updates. I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing it, but I also like to be able to look back through them to see how the event went and to connect with other readers. We’ll see how this way works!
Good luck. I will be following you on twitter. And using Storify is a great idea.
Lots of options is definitely the way to go! I pick out a ton of things to pick from so I know I’ll never be bored.
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth is really fascinating – I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did. I’ve been meaning to get to Equilateral for months, it sounds so original and quirky (with the added benefit of being pretty short!).
That was one of the last books I added to the pile! A friend was commenting on it on Instagram, I think, and it piqued my interest.
I’ve decided to plunge for the first time so your post is a great help! I hadn’t think of all the stuff surrounding the reading: I’ve got work to do until Saturday!
I haven’t heard of any of your book and I wish you a great time on Saturday.
It’s mostly just nice to have all the extra “stuff” in one place so you don’t spend part of the morning hunting down a pencil or cutting up carrots for a snack. The more things that can be done or easily found ahead of time, the better!
I love your idea of using Storify! I was planning to just update a single post (as that’s how I’ve always done it), but being able to automatically(?) grab updates from different websites is very tempting.
Storify isn’t automatic, but it is really easy to just drag and drop different types of updates into a timeline (rather than going and linking to them all individually in a blog post, which is what I did last year). I think it’ll look a little neater and, I hope, keep me from having to go into my blog CMS much during the day.
How fun! Hope you have a great time and get lots of quality reading in. I have high hopes that I’ll be able to join in the Readathon one of these years . . . I may do my own mini version on Saturday, though, when I’m sitting at our home inspection for three hours! Eeep!
Looks awesome! You are setting yourself up for some preeeeeetty intense sadness with the Elizabeth McCracken book, but I suppose you can always take a break from it and read something less sad. And enjoy Saga! Saga, in my opinion, is the perfect readathon book.
This turned out to be the Readathon of Sad Books, so McCraken fit right in. Saga was so great — a perfect post-Readathon read on Sunday morning.
Never heard of the Elizabeth McCraken memoir – will have to look it up! I have The Giant’s House on my Nook and Thunderstruck coming in the mail soon, even though I’m not really a short story reader.
It sounds like you have a great, very though-out day planned!
I’m really curious about Thunderstruck. I’ve been enjoying short stories lately and I think that collection sounds amazing.
Yay! I’ll be looking for your updates! I’m just posting updates to Twitter (and Goodreads when I finish a book). Then a post on Sunday or Monday about the experience.
Good luck with your reading. Hope you will get your goals. Enjoy your SNACKS!!
Yaaaay! I like your plan of attack and general reading preparedness. I’ve been doing this ALL DAY, and my mum keeps following me around going, “But you’re just going to be READING!” She doesn’t appreciate the level of planning that goes into choosing books (plus extras, in case of brain freeze), acquiring enough snacks (for a month, because choice is key), formulating an update strategy, and making sure you have clean comfy spaces to read in. I have, for example, vacuumed thoroughly in the vicinity of my reading chair and bed, to reduce the risk of night-time spider encounters. See? PLANNING. 🙂
Exactly. Planning. It takes a lot to put everything aside to read for an entire day.
I’ll be cutting up a pineapple and making a new spreadsheet tonight to get ready for tomorrow. Have a great readathon!
Have a great readathon! Your prep has inspired me so I am pulling together a few things tonight to better ready me for tomorrow.
This was probably the most prepared I’ve been for a Readathon in awhile. And it was awesome, I got a ton of reading in.
Great stack! An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth sounds like a very interesting read!
It sounds like you are all set for today! I hope you have lots of fun and get a few good books read 🙂 I haven’t had the chance to read any on your list of possibilities but they all look good!
*Team Wordsworth*
One of these days, I’m going to be able to do one of these readathons! Great list of books. Mr. Penumbra’s a fast read. I have read Elizabeth McCracken’s book, too, and it’s really, really good, but yes, very sad.