Read-A-Thon Updates and Mini-challenges

Hour 2 & 7 PM: The second minichallenge - Reading in Translation 

I've read a few translated books (Haruki Murakami, Steig Larsson, Paulo Coelho, Flaubert, etc)

For a book that I'd like to read in the original, I pick the Mahabharata. This is a superlong Indian epic, written in Sanskrit, a language that formed the basis of all Indian languages. It's still taught in schools (rather like Latin).
The Mahabharata and the Ramayana have been translated many times but all translations must necessarily be flavored by both the translator and the times he/she lives in.

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8:00 PM/Hour 3: 
Completed the short story Intuition by J.Meyers - I started late and spent the first hour cheerleading other Readathon-ers.
Also, Twitter is pretty distracting!
For my next book, I'm going offline, though still on my laptop. Remember, I'm only reading ebooks this Read-a-thon!

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9:30 PM Hour 4: Turn to Page 32 Minichallenge
For this challenge, you must turn to page 32 of the book you are currently reading (or the nearest page with text on it) and find the most entertaining phrase to complete the following sentence:
"I would rather read than ________ any day!"

"I would rather read than seen you promenading through town all covered with the stuff."
--- Page 32 of Emily and the Dark Angel by Jo Bev.

10:30 PM/Hour 5: I've just finished my first book - the fun historical romance "Emily and the Dark Angel" by Jo Beverly
Pages read = 17+191 
Currently Reading = BattlePug by Mike Norton

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11:20 PM/Hour 6: Minichallenge Bon Appetit
I'm reading Mike Norton's Battlepug, the graphic novel. Our party would include pets! So the food would be Pedigree dog food, kibbles, chewable toys AND oh yes, adult food - dog-shaped biscuits, and chicken kebabs with cucumber dip from turkey (one of the locations)
Pages read = 17+191 
Currently Reading = BattlePug by Mike Norton & The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by DWJ
Both are incredibly funny!

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12:50 PM/Hour 7:
Pages read = 17+191+66
Book Finished = Mike Norton's Battlepug
Thanks to NetGalley for the graphic novel


I'm going to read and then sleep for several hours now, no updates till morning!
Will probably get more done without twitter and other distractions...that is one huge drawback to doing the entire readathon on my laptop only via ebooks and egalleys.

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12:20 AM/Hour 18:

I'm amazed at just how much I read in the 12 offline hours - I finished both The Gathering and The Calling by Kelley Armstrong. These are fantastic YA stories written by an author at the top of her game.

A Full Read-a-thon update: 
Reading:The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diane Wynne Jones
Munching: Watermelon juice
Listening: To the grunts and baby noises my two-month old is making as he stretches 

Books finished: Mike Norton's Battlepugs, Kelley Armstrong's The Gathering & The Calling, J. Meyer's Intuitive (short story), Jo Beverly's Emily and the Dark Angel
 
Total pages read: 17+191+66+326+368
Total reading time: 12hrs approx
Total cheer comments: 25-ish

Check out #readathon and @deepratap on twitter for more updates 

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2 PM/ Hour 21: Acrostic Minichallenge  
BattlePugs = Bizarre Animal Tales Told in exciting Punny Ultra Good Story!

I'm re-reading Kelley Armstrong's Frostbitten while spending most of time visiting other blogs.

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4 PM/Hour 23: MadLib Minichallenge


Taken from Kelley Armstrong's Frostbitten, are a bunch of nouns, verbs etc arranged into the sentence below - 


This ____snow____ is ____icey____! ____Elena____ has never ____paced___ so much. The ____Kelley____ I'm currently ____rumbling____ is ____canine____ and ____freshly___. When this is over, I will ____sniff____ for ____weeks____.

Read-a-thon 2012 - Ebooks only!

Potential reading titles for the Readathon: 

1. Kelley Armstrong's The Gathering 
2. KA's The Calling
3. Jo Beverly's Emily and the Dark Angel
4. Diana Wynne Jones - The Tough guide to Fantasyland
5. Intuition, the short-story prequel to Intangible by J. Meyers (its Free) 
6. Mike Norton's Battlepug Graphic Novel

 I'm trying to mix it up - Short story, a comic, romance, the inimitable DWJ...though they are ALL ebooks! What other genres could I add to provide some light relief? 

Introductory Hour 1 Challenge: 
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? 
Manipal, a small town in India

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? 
Probably the Diana Wynne Jones one, but I'm starting off with Jo Beverly's historical romance

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? 
Just went out for ice-cream to kick-start the Readathon!

4) Tell us a little something about yourself! 
I have a newborn son to look after, so this Readathon might involve a lot of breaks

5) If you participated in the last Read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? 
My last Read-a-Thon back in Oct'10, when I read 4.5 books and 1,553 pages in 10 hours 
 

I'm a cheerleader - Go Team Puck! See you on the read-a-thon

Book Blogger Hop #24: June 24th - It's the weekend!

It's time for another Book Blogger Hop, courtesy of Crazy for Books!

“When did you realize reading was your passion and a truly important part of your life?”
I'll answer this in two parts:

I discovered my love for reading when my mother realized she had a hyperactive child, and made me sit down and read, hoping to keep me occupied for a while. That did it - my summer was just trips to and from the library :) I couldn't understand half the words, but she just told me carry on trying!
A truly important part of my life? It always has been, I can't remember a time when I didn't read. It was like eating and breathing, to me. My small town library had a 2 books checked out at a time policy, so I used to borrow 2 books a day, every day! Some holidays, I'd practically live in the library, until closing time - reading while there, and then take my two books to read at night.
What's your childhood memory of reading?

Recent blogpost on A Quick Ebook-finding TIP:

Inkmesh: The Ebook search engine and FREE Ebook by Ilona 

Check this post out! InkMesh is my new Google for books.

Read-a-Thon: Roundup

Number of books read since you started: 4.5 (In Order: Odd Hours, Sabriel, Thud!, Battle of Britain and half of About Time)

Running total of pages read since you started: 1,553

Running total of time spent reading since you started: Approx. 10 hours of reading. Spent 2 hours cheering and visiting other readathoners.
Mini-challenges completed:

• Hour 1 Meme
• Back in the Day Children's Book Challenge 
• Armchair Travelling
• Title Word Scramble
• Love to Hate (which I won!)
• Nonfiction Readathon  
• Pitch Your Book
• Ban This Book!  
• Character Photo Challenge
• Favorite Sidekicks

Would I take part again? ABSOLUTELY!

I'm also going to sign up for some official Cheerleading next time, in addition to Reading.  I did visit a lot of pages this Readathon, but not officially.

Read-a-Thon: Hourly updates Here #3

We are now in Hour 18 of the Thon

10:30 AM: Reading Thud! now.

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Mini Challenge #17 Ban This Book! 

A nod to Banned Books week: "Ban" a book - find a ridiculous way to get a book challenged! 

Dear Librarian/Custodian-of-our-children's minds, 

I am bringing to your attention a most persuasive book by Neil Gaiman by the name of Sabriel. This book encourages 16 year olds to leave school in order to help their father. (wouldn't they help More by studying like a good girl?) That is just the beginning, dear librarian. The story incites travel, battling demons and then crossing into the land of the dead. A major part of the story is demonology and should be banned from the gentle minds of our children. How dare a book tell them about spirits and crossing over? The kids will be scarred for life!! Also, Whistling is involved and Sabriel uses whistling to escape - do you really want our children to pick up such rascally habits?

Sabriel also proves this by later coming back to her school and causing a revolt amongst the teachers, demanding their help in battling the demon. This results in a lot of dead people. I must insist that you ban this book immediately, and ensure that tales of demons, the dead, self-discovery, young romance and whistling do not despoil the children.

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12:30 PM: Pages done - 132 of Thud! 888+132= 1020 since I began the ReadaThon.
Mini-Challenge Won: The Love Hate Mini-Challenge - I won!

Quick Review: Thud! is absolutely hilarious; My reading has slowed down so I can capture each hidden joke in Pratchett's writing.

'Get a troll in der middle o' a load of dwarfs, he is like a fox in der...dem fings wi' wings, laying dem egg fings...' "Fox in a henhouse?"

Read-a-Thon: Hourly updates Here #2

My 3rd Mini-challenge - Armchair Travelling hosted by Marg at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader

Has a book ever inspired you to want to go somewhere?

My early teens were characterized by digging through my mother's bookshelf. One of the first books I read and re-read was  by James Herriot, the Scottish Vet. Being woken up in the wee hours of the morning, tramping through the dales to some dairy farmer's barn - this is a fairly straightforward framework for most of Jim's stories. 

Being a vet was not something he glossed over, and us readers got to see the gritty, rough side of being a mostly large-animal vet in pre-war Scotland. However, this tough view was mitigated by stories that ended with Jim in his open car, driving without brakes down a steep road, with a big, loving dog in the passenger seat. What an evocative image for an Indian girl with no pets in a small student town!

Read-a-Thon: Hourly updates Here #1!

Instead of having a bunch of posts, hourly updates for the next 12 hours will go here.

5:30 PM India Time: FINALLY, it begins! I have convinced friends, family that I am busy reading, and not going to venture out too much.

Starting off with Dean Koontz and Odd Thomas -> Odd Hours.

7:00 PM: Getting back online, to see what the world is up to. Found a Hour 1 meme, posted that earlier. I am 230 Pages done here.

7:30 PM: Hour 2 Challenge at http://www.misswisabus.com asks about childhood books. My reply is below:

My favorite book as a 6-7 year old kid was probably anything by Enid Blyton - I started off reading her The Adventures of Mister Pinkwhistle, and then read her A Faraway Tree adventures. I used to even enjoy Noddy, which i later discovered was by her :)
I do have some newer favorites, when I was 12 I read the entire Narnia series, and habitually read them every few years even now.
I did actually include one awesome childhood series of mine - but in a different form. Stumbled across a graphic novel of Biggles (who was a hero of my 11 year-old self) and snapped it up earlier today. I must hv been the only girl of my age with a bunch of Biggles novels. I got gifted several well-worn copies by my teacher.

Now, I'm off for a dinner, this could be a long-ish break. Ciao!

!0:30 PM: I'm baaaaack and starting up a new book after I finish Odd Hours. Probably going to pick Sabriel next.

11:30 PM: Reading Sabriel, 147 Pgs through. Will finish these two books before I sleep. Might do the midnight mini challenge if I'm awake and able!

1:00 AM: I'm done with Sabriel, and with Odd Hours! That is a total of 491+397 = 888 Pages (Fact is stranger than fiction, for sure!)
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Hour 8 Mini-Challenge is at Blkosiner’s Book Blog: Name 5 villain-type characters that you "Love to Hate"
My hate-list includes 1) Sauron from LOTR 2) Chthulhu  3) Moriarty from my beloved Sherlock Holmes and 4) Share Khan from my childhood Mowgli 5) Count Dracula

Continuing Readathon updates here: Read a Thon Hourly Updates #3

Read-a-Thon: Hour 1 Meme

Where are you reading from today?

I'm in Bangalore, India! My 24 hours began at 5:30 PM my time.

How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours?

My pile of library books is at 7, I have 2 ebooks lined up on my laptop and 1 on my Kindle.

I've started Odd Hours by Dean Koontz, at Pg 230 now. A couple of the books are re-reads (for a challenge) so those might be next (Sabriel by Garth Nix and Thud! by Terry Pratchett). Both are favorites, but read a couple of years ago.

Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)?

Read for at least 12 hours, Read at least 4 books and 1000 pages. Hopefully, I also take part in at least 2-3 mini-challenges!

Thanks to Nan from http://nanscorner.wordpress.com/ for the meme - I don't know if this is an official one, but I used her idea to kickstart my Read-a-Thon posts

*Update* - Mini-Review of Odd Hours:  While the character of Odd is an old friend of mine, this book finds Odd being pursued by dreams, nightmares and strange prophecies. Perhaps the story has a few too many insights into his head, but the creepiness factor of this book is high and keeps me interested.

24 Hour Read-a-Thon

The 24 Hour Read-a-thon is Oct 9th, 5:30 PM India time.

This is my first read-a-thon, and I'm excited to hear/take part in this global event. 

Unfortunately, I am sadly under-prepared.

Not only do I not have any food at home, I also am running out of books to read. I'm now planning on starting my reading a little earlier, say around 11 AM, take a break for lunch and books, and then let the enthusiasm of the new library finds carry me through most of the night.

 Weekly Geeks asks some questions that have awakened me to my lack of proper preparation for the Read-a-thon.

1. Do I have a strategy?

(Just making up one now) I'm going to read mostly Fantasy and Detective fiction. If I can find a good graphic novel, I'll read that in the middle to keep my interest up. Oh, and great music, coffee, chocolate cookies are part of the grand plan.

 

2. Do you have a stack of books prepared to read from?

I've saved "Alpha" for today (by accident, really) so that could be fun.

I want to read a book or two on my laptop at least, and the rest on paper for some variety.

If not so good, I'm going to jump to Out of the Dark by David Weber, who is a very reliable space fantasy author.

I'm also half-way through Conan Iggulden's Lord of the Silver bow, and I have no idea if half-books count towards this (maybe if I converted it into pages?)

3. I'm going to go for number of books,but also count pages.

4. If you have others living in your household, do you have to work around their schedules too?

I do have people I need to have to work around, but I can't really tell them that I am unavailable  (*cough* in-laws). I have cleared it with my husband, but the poor soul has no idea how serious the read-a-thon gets!

*update*  I am now back from my library, and here is a picture of what I got: