Social Distancing Readathon #56 - April 9 - 11

Welcome to another readathon!

We generally run from Friday at 5 p.m. to Sunday at midnight in whatever time zone you choose, but feel free to start earlier on Friday and wrap up overnight Sunday/Monday, if that's what you want to do.

Here are some things to track throughout the weekend, if you choose:

Books read from:
Books finished:
Time reading:
Time posting:
Snacks:
Thoughts:
Non-book activities:

Total books finished:
Total read from:
Total time reading:

Who is participating -

1. SilverWolf (SilverWolf28) -- Tennessee, USA
2. Lynda (Carmenere) -- Cleveland, Ohio, USA
3. Susanna (susanna.fraser) -- Seattle, Washington, USA
4. Benita (benitastrnad) -- Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA
5. Cyrel (torontoc) -- Toronto, Canada
6. Luci (elkiedee) -- London, UK
7. Nancy (nrmay) -- North Carolina, USA
8. Suzanne (Chatterbox) -- Rhode Island, USA
9. Paul (PaulCranswick) -- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I'll be in for this one. Looks like it will be a cool, wet weekend and ideal for reading!

I'm in again.

I'll be in again.

I'm in again although my reading has really slowed down lately- I am reading The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

Planning to join in.

Sunny, 70 F. (21 C.) in Charlotte NC!

Count me in.
Just finished the burninng girls by C.J. Tudor.
Next up - night of miracles by Elizabeth Berg for book club.

I'm back. Recovering from Moderna dose #2. Better than recovering from COVID, but still not fun.

Listening to Death in Delft by Graham Brack and reading End of Spies by Alex Gerlis

First, I am going to finish cross stitching a bib for a good friends new baby Then, get into reading: Anxious People - If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now, both for book clubs and I'd like to make a huge dent in My Name is Red a 75er group read.

Still reading The Emperor's Children

Books read from: 6
J Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers
Rebecca Pawel, Death of a Nationalist
Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
Marianne Wiggins, Bet They'll Miss Us When We're Gone
Claudia Renton, Those Wild Wyndhams
Ciara Geraghty, This is Now

Books finished: 0
Pages read: 27
Snacks: Chicken nuggets, pasta, tea
Thoughts: The news is a bit dominated by one story
Book related activities: LT updates
Non-book activities: Sleeping, WhatsApp, Facebook, Bejeweled Blitz, radio some old repeats of very old music programmes saved on my digital video recording box (which comes as part of my broadband and digital TV package).

Total books finished: 0
Total read from: 6

>11 elkiedee: News here is dominated by Biden's infrastructure plan, thankfully.

It's 7 p.m. in Rhode Island; temperature of 56 degrees F/13 degrees C.

Books read from: 2, End of Spies by Alex Gerlis, and listening to Death in Delft by Graham Brack
Books finished: 1, End of Spies
Time reading: 3 hours
Time posting: 5 minutes?
Snacks: Early dinner; cheese tortellini with marinara sauce.

Thoughts: Too zonked to have thoughts. Side-swiped by the Moderna vaccine side-effects. Should be more on form tomorrow, I hope. Also -- noticed that a hefty chunk of my TBR list has the word Spy or Spies in the title... Hmm.... (New book by Flynn Berry, and an e-galley of an upcoming book).
Non-book activities: Got groceries delivered. Talked to my neighbors outside about veggie gardening plans for this summer. Celebrated (in muted fashion) the fact that we will once again have a community-wide yard sale in late May.

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 2 (see above)
Total time reading: 3 hours

I've got a couple of chunksters -- both ARCs (advance review copies) -- that I have started and want to finish-- The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Steph Dray and Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella. When it comes to non-fiction, I may read A World Beneath the Sands by Toby Wilkinson (about Egyptology) or Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz. Or something else altogether.

On Monday, I have to head down to NYC to see my neurologist -- leaving home at 7 a.m., hopefully back by 9 p.m.??

Friday evening check-in
Books read from: River Horse by William Least-Heat Moon and Route 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet. My recorded book is Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand.

Books finished: 0
Time reading: 1 hour today
Time posting:
lunch: sandwich and ginger cupcake for lunch

Thoughts: I am really liking River Horse. It took a bit for me to get into it, but I am finding it a curious combination of the literary and travelog. On-the-other-hand, I find Summer of '69 to be insipid and predictable. However, it is for a book discussion group so I will finish listening to it.

Non-book activities: It is going to be a rainy night in Alabama so I am going to have plenty of time to read.

Total books finished since the read-a-thon began: 117
Total read from: 124
Total time reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 346 hours since April 2020.

Friday concluding check-in; it's about 9:15 p.m., and the temperature is supposed to hit 70 F tomorrow, or 21 C. I'll take my books and laptop into the garden...

Books read from since last check-in: 1, audiobook of Death in Delft by Graham Brack
Books finished: 1, Death in Delft
Time reading: 1.5 hours
Time posting: 10 mins
Snacks: Nada/nothing

Thoughts: Can't decide what to read next. Irritating.
Non-book activities: Crawled into bed, listening to some classical music on streaming radio. (Right now, it's Vaughan Williams)

Total books finished: 2, Death in Delft by Graham Brack and End of Spies by Alex Gerlis
Total read from: 2 (see above)
Total time reading: 4.5 hours

I'm in Silver and working my way through Life of Pi. Hope to get more books done on Sunday if I can finish that one today.

9 PM Friday in Seattle

Books read from: The Word for Woman is Wilderness
Books finished: none
Time reading: 2 hours
Food: chicken w/ dried fruit over couscous for dinner
Thoughts: I wish this flareup of back/shoulder pain would ease up soon.
Non-book activities: Laundry, mostly

Total books finished: 0
Total read from: 1
Total time reading: 2 hours

>15 PaulCranswick: I hope you're enjoying Life of Pi, Paul. I read a majority of it beside the ocean and it was the perfect setting to imagine Pi's journey.

8:30am - Cleveland, Ohio (Friday's reading)

Books read from: If you lived here, you'd be home by now
Books finished: none
Time reading: 2 1/2 hours
Food: Fried egg on a bagel
Thoughts: Looks like rain's not coming till tonight means I'll be working in the yard instead of reading
Non-book activities: YouTube, cross-stitch

Total books finished: 0
Total read from: 1
Total time reading: 2 1/2 hours

Saturday 3.15 pm

Books read from: 5
Rebecca Pawel, Death of a Nationalist - FINISHED 10.04.21
Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
Claudia Renton, Those Wild Wyndhams
Marianne Wiggins, Bet They'll Miss Us When We're Gone
Ciara Geraghty, This is Now

Books finished: 1
Pages read: 111
Snacks: Yoghurt, pain au chocolat, cheese, chocolate, tea
Thoughts: Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhh surely other things happened yesterday?
And why has my heating gone mad?
Book related activities: LT and GR updates
Non-book activities: Sleeping, WhatsApp, Facebook, Bejeweled Blitz, TV - old episodes of TOTP and an Elvis Costello live recording from the Virgin digibox, fell asleep with an episode of Mad Men on (this may be why I'm still on series 1 - I find it interesting but have a very short attention span for TV. Some normal radio programmes back today, including, now, a dramatisation of Nora Webster.

Total books finished: 1
Total pages read: 138
Total read from: 6

Saturday morning check-in
Books read from: River Horse by William Least-Heat Moon and nothing yet today from Route 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet. My listened and read a good deal from my recorded book Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand.

Books finished: 0
Time reading: .5 hour today while eating breakfast
Time posting:
breakfast: radish and egg sandwich

Thoughts: I am wondering why I am trying so hard to get done reading Summer of '69? I really don't like this book. However, I do feel obligated to read it for that group. Fortunately, I am also about done with it. It has been painful.
Non-book activities: It is a slow Saturday and yet I have lots of cleaning to do. I am getting ready to get a new dining room table and need to clean the dining room throughly first.

Total books finished since the read-a-thon began: 117
Total read from: 124
Total time reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 346 hours since April 2020.

It's almost 11:30 a.m. in Rhode Island. Temperature of 61, or 16 C.

Books read from since last check-in: 2, An Honorable Man by Paul Vidich, which I may abandon, and Look What You Made Me Do by Elaine Murphy
Books finished: none
Time reading: 4 hours
Time posting: 10 mins
Snacks: Cereal, water

Thoughts: This is my second try at the Vidich audiobook, and it's still not working. Argh. The other book is a hilarious dark thriller, narrated by someone who from her late teens has known that her sister is a serial killer. Then the cops discover a SECOND serial killer is at work in their town, and the sisters realize he's targeting the narrator. Darkly funny, but I keep wondering about unreliable narrators.
Non-book activities: Woke up to the big NY Times article about the massive rift in the WSJ editorial ranks. Astonishing and sad. I know or have worked with both of the two top guys mentioned, and respect both of them.

Total books finished this readathon: 2, Death in Delft by Graham Brack and End of Spies by Alex Gerlis
Total read from: 4, the two I have finished at the two books noted above
Total time reading: 8.5 hours

It's 3:30 p.m. in Rhode Island, temperature now up to 69 F!! Or 20 C.

Books read from since last check-in: 3, Look What You Made Me Do by Elaine Murphy, Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters by Andrew Morton, which really isn't that interesting even though it's timely (pub date is next week, I think) and a bit of The Sea Gate by Jane Johnson
Books finished: 1, Look What You Made Me Do
Time reading: 3 hours
Time posting: 2 mins
Snacks: chicken with rice (leftovers), seltzer

Thoughts: The serial killer book didn't go where I thought it would, and it DID end up being unpredictable enough for me to find it engaging, if very darkly, grimly so. Think, Dexter, the TV series, but leaving it up to the reader to imagine some stuff. Picked up the Morton book primarily because it was timely (and the e-galley will vanish on April 18).
Non-book activities: Not much. It's very nice outside, but I still feel zonked by the vaccine. Tomorrow will be a cleanup and work day, methinks.

Total books finished this readathon: 3, Death in Delft by Graham Brack, Look What You Made Me Do by Elaine Murphy and End of Spies by Alex Gerlis
Total read from: 6, the three I have finished, plus Elizabeth & Margaret, An Honorable Man by Paul Vidich and The Sea Gate.
Total time reading: 11.5 hours

Saturday evening

Books:
Listening to Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg for book club. I keep falling asleep and losing my place.
Compact Houses: 50 Creative Floor Plans for Well-Designed Small Homes by Gerald Rowan

Dinner: great Chinese take-out. Hubby brought home tiramisu for dessert later.

Other activity:
My sister is in the process of moving. They finally bought a great house. She and her 2 cats are staying with me for a few days. Also have my niece's dog here while she's at the beach.
We've been watching movies: News of the World with Tom Hanks was good. Last night watched a documentary, "The Booksellers" about the antiquarian book trade and the book collectors of New York.

Thoughts: My sister's cats are cautious, but curious, about the dog. The dog ignores them; he has his own cat at home.
Miss Grumpypants (my cat) doesn't like anybody so she's staying in the bedroom.

weather: raining, 68 F. (20 C.) at 7:30p

Early evening Saturday in Seattle

Books read from: The Word for Woman is Wilderness
Books finished: The Word for Woman is Wilderness
Time reading: 3 hours
Food: McDonald's for lunch
Thoughts: I hope the forecast is correct and we get a whole week of sun.
Non-book activities: Birdwatching, farmers market

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 1
Total time reading: 5 hours

Early Saturday evening in Rhode Island (early by my standards, 8:45 p.m.)

Books read from since last check-in: 3, Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters by Andrew Morton, The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Steph Dray
Books finished: 1, the Andrew Morton book about the Windsor clan.
Time reading: 4 hours
Time posting: 15 mins
Snacks: about to eat turkey sandwiches for dinner.

Thoughts: Meh. Not much.
Non-book activities: Talked to my friend/biz partner down in Virginia. Listening to the weekly Saturday "new standards" jazz & vocals program streaming on WNYC.

Total books finished this readathon: 4, Death in Delft by Graham Brack, Look What You Made Me Do by Elaine Murphy and End of Spies by Alex Gerlis
Total read from: 7, the four I have finished, plus An Honorable Man by Paul Vidich (temporarily abandoned), The Women of Chateau Lafayette and The Sea Gate by Jane Johnson
Total time reading: 15.5 hours

Saturday night check-in
Books read from: River Horse by William Least-Heat Moon and from Route 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet. My listened and read a good deal from my recorded book Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand while I drove around and did my errands today.

Books finished: 0
Time reading: 1.5 hour this evening
Time posting:
breakfast: pasta with pesto

Thoughts: I read a great deal in River Horse and a little bit from Route 66 A.D and I learned, to my surprise, the the Parthenon was built on the crest of a hill in Rome so that it would be visible to everybody. Today it is in a valley because the piled up detritus of the centuries has raised the ground level in Rome by 30 feet.
Non-book activities: Got my bed clothes washed and the bed remade. Got the recycling set out and worked on the last edits for the paper for 1.5 hours this afternoon. I hope we are done with that and that it gets published this next week.

Total books finished since the read-a-thon began: 117
Total read from: 124
Total time reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 347.5 hours since April 2020.

Sunday 8.20 am

Books read from: 6
J Courtney Sullivan, Friends and Strangers
Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
Claudia Renton, Those Wild Wyndhams
Marianne Wiggins, Bet They'll Miss Us When We're Gone
Ciara Geraghty, This is Now
Ambrose Parry, The way of All Flesh

Books finished: 0
Pages read: 78
Book related activities: LT and GR updates
Non-book activities: Social media, Bejeweled Blitz, watched episode 6 of Mad Men before falling asleep with episode 7 on, as normal spoken word radio programming on R4 Extra is still suspended.

Total books finished: 1
Pages read: 216
Total read from: 7

Sunday 8:15am Cleveland - Saturday's reading update

Books read from: If you lived here, you'd be home by now (yay! finished with time to spare for Monday's Zoom book club) & Anxious People
Books finished: 1
Time reading: 2 hours
Food: Bean burritos and a Coors Light
Thoughts: A sunny morning follows yesterday night's rain - everything seems so fresh and clear
Non-book activities: YouTube, Finished watching Hillbilly Elegy on Netflix

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 2
Total time reading: 4 hours

I was reading The Emperor's Children but have started another that was more satisfying- Judy Batalion's The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos

Sunday morning check-in:

It's chiller this morning (9:30 a.m.) and overcast.

>28 torontoc: I started listening to the audiobook of the Batalion book, and it began to annoy me so much that I returned it. It just started to feel like an endless hagiographic recitation of brave women, which does their stories and accomplishments a disservice. Don't know whether it was the narration or the impact of the first few chapters (where the individuals kind of blurred together, because of the similarity of their pre-war experiences and involvement in various Jewish organizations) but I had abandoned the ARC as well. I'll try to go back to the ARC later this spring.

Books read from since last check-in: 3, The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Steph Dray, The Sea Gate by Jane Johnson and The Enlightenment: the Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790 by Ritchie Robertson
Books finished: none since yesterday evening
Time reading: 5 hours
Time posting: 15 mins
Snacks: nothing yet today

Thoughts: Irritability. Headache.
Non-book activities: Need to do some organizational work today for future freelance projects. Had to reapply for UI benefits as it's been a full year since I was a "salaried" employee, and have still not been recalled to work. Which means I'll lose this past week's benefits; I didn't earn any freelance income this week, but the reapplications means there will be a delay. ARGH.

Total books finished this readathon: 4, Death in Delft by Graham Brack, Look What You Made Me Do by Elaine Murphy, End of Spies by Alex Gerlis, Elizabeth & Margaret by Andrew Morton
Total read from: 9, the four I have finished, plus An Honorable Man by Paul Vidich (temporarily abandoned), The Women of Chateau Lafayette, The Sea Gate by Jane Johnson and The Enlightenment: the Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790 by Ritchie Robertson
Total time reading: 20.5 hours

The book about the Enlightenment is going to be absolutely compelling, judged by the introduction/overview. He's going to make a case for the universality of enlightenment thinking, which will be interesting.

Sunday morning check-in
Books read from: River Horse by William Least-Heat Moon and Route 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet. My listened to Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand and am wondering when I will finish this bloated book.

Books finished: 0
Time reading: 1 hour before bed last night and a little this morning before I made my Sunday phone calls
Time posting:
breakfast: Starbucks cappuccino

Thoughts: I am really starting to enjoy River Horse. It took me some time to become accustomed to this travelog because the rhythm seems different from the most recent books I have been reading, but it is taking off and I am enjoying it. I can't wait to finish Summer of '69 and beginning to wonder how I will be able to participate in a discussion of this book without going off on the author and the bloated length of this book. I think a good editor would have told the author to concentrate on the story of one person and turn that into a 200 page novel. This 500 page behemoth should have been a series instead of one book. I am also annoyed with the fact that one of the characters tells their story in second person and that switching to third person narrative really interrupts the storytelling. An editor should have pointed that out to the author.

Non-book activities: My weekly phone calls got made.

Total books finished since the read-a-thon began: 117
Total read from: 124
Total time reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 348.5 hours since April 2020.

Sunday final check in; it's 7:05 p.m. Migraine has gotten worse over the day.

Books read from since last check-in: 3, The Sea Gate by Jane Johnson, Northern Spy by Flynn Berry and audiobook of Untrue Till Death by Graham Brack (sequel to audiobook finished earlier)
Books finished: 1, The Sea Gate. Entertaining, but implausible plot twists
Time reading: 4 hours
Time posting: 15 mins
Snacks: ordered in some eggs benedict because I can't face cooking. May have some pasta later on.

Thoughts: Migraine.
Non-book activities: Miraculously had a PHONE CALL from unemployment people -- on a Sunday -- telling me that the UI is fine & dandy. I'm impressed. Packing to spend tomorrow in NYC -- neurologist appointment.

Total books finished this readathon: 5, Death in Delft by Graham Brack, Look What You Made Me Do by Elaine Murphy, End of Spies by Alex Gerlis, Elizabeth & Margaret by Andrew Morton, The Sea Gate
Total read from: 10, the five I have finished, plus An Honorable Man by Paul Vidich (temporarily abandoned), The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Steph Dray, Untrue Till Death by Graham Barack and The Enlightenment: the Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790 by Ritchie Robertson. I'll take the chunkster by Dray on the train with me tomorrow and finish it then, and listen to a bit more of the history book as well. Probably will finish the sequel to the Brack historical mystery tonight, as I'm done with reading for the day and must instead turn to audiobooks.
Total time reading: 24.5 hours

>31 Chatterbox:
That's a lot of books in one weekend. Almost back to your old reading form!

Sunday night check-in
Books read from: River Horse by William Least-Heat Moon and Route 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet. My recorded book is Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand and is for a book discussion group that meets next week.

Books finished: 0
Time reading: 1.5 Hours
Time posting:
supper: leftover BBQ smothered baked potato.

Thoughts: I am disappointed that I didn't finish a single one of the books I have started. I had thought I would finish at least one of them. I did read about 50 pages in River Horse and so am just about half done with that book.

Non-book activities: Met with my book group on Zoom, got my grocery list together, then went to get groceries. I will need to cook tomorrow evening when I get home from work.

Total books finished since the read-a-thon began: 117
Total read from: 124
Total time reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 350 hours since April 2020.

Monday midday but update is for the rest of Sunday including some post midnight reading

Books read from: 8
Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
Claudia Renton, Those Wild Wyndhams
Marianne Wiggins, Bet They'll Miss Us When We're Gone - FINISHED 12.04.21
Ciara Geraghty, This is Now
Ambrose Parry, The Way of All Flesh
Polly Samson, The Kindness
Barbara Comyns, Sisters by a River
Sydney Taylor, Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family - STARTED 12.04.21

Books finished: 1
Pages read: 228
Book related activities: LT and GR updates
Non-book activities: Social media, Bejeweled Blitz, sleeping, watching programmes about Joe Cocker and Jimi Hendrix - having to find different things to watch/listen to still for a few days. I'm feeling a bit icky yesterday and today.

Total books finished: 2
Pages read: 444
Total read from: 10

Monday 8:15am Cleveland - Sunday's reading update

Books read from: If you lived here, you'd be home by now (yay! finished with time to spare for Monday's Zoom book club) & Anxious People
Books finished: 1
Time reading: 1 1/2 hours
Food: Veggie Stromboli and boneless garlic-parmesan chicken wings
Thoughts: I have the very best neighbors in the world
Non-book activities: YouTube, Watched Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and The Making of Unorthodox on Netflix

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 2
Total time reading: 5 1/2 hours

Belated Monday check-in for Sunday's reading

Books read from: The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
Books finished: none
Time reading: 2 hours
Food: vegetable soup
Thoughts: This book is dense but fascinating
Non-book activities: housework

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 2
Total time reading: 7 hours

Here's the next readathon: https://www.librarything.com/topic/331445