Social Distancing Readathon #108 April 8 - 10

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

Once again it's supposed to turn cold for the weekend, so I am in again. I doubt I'll want to be out of the house for long!

The weather will be perfect for gardening this weekend, but I plan to read in the evenings, anyway.

Count me in again! It's about to turn abruptly cold here--it was in the 70s today and will be in the 40s on Saturday and Sunday--so it's going to be perfect curl up with a book weather.

I have books to read! I'm in

I am in!

I'm also in!

I need to be in. It's already Sat morning here. I've been reading Legend of Brightblade, a fun graphic novel.

Count me in. I need to read Diamond Doris for Monday’s Library group discussion. I may dapple in a few other books too.

I'm in. I have to be sitting in front of the computer this weekend for work, so hope to read and get my taxes done while working.

Friday night posting: Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission by Barry Friedman. Travels In Vermeer: A Memoir by Michael White for the April Nonfiction Challenge. The topic is Travel. I started listening to Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. Liar's Bench by Kim Michele Richardson. This one is also for a book club.

Books finished in this week's Readathon: Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir by Michael White.
Thoughts: I am not liking Lair's Bench at all. Too melodramatic. Too full of teenage angst. And mostly just plain unbelievable. But I am about half done with it so will finish it for the book group discussion.
Time reading: 1 hour at lunch today
Time posting:
Food:
Non-Book Activities: I hope to get some cookies baked and get my taxes done.
Total books finished since the Read-A-Thon Began: 216
Total Time Reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 586 hours since I started participating in the Read-A-Thon that started in April 2020.

Friday night Update:
Books read: 1 - Diamond Doris
Books finished:
Thoughts: Diamond Doris is rather interesting because it partially takes place in Cleveland, Ohio - I've never heard of this story before now.

Food: I picked up a breaded shrimp dinner from my church's fish fry
Non-Book Activities: You Tube
Time reading: About 1 1/2 hours
Time posting:

Friday night update:

Books read from: The Patriarch, All That She Carried
Books finished:
Time reading: ?
Time posting: ?
Snacks: cereal & blackberries, pistachios, tea
Thoughts: The weather is back to this year's usual pattern of warmer days during the work week and cold weekends.
Non-book activities: genealogy, TV

Total books finished: 0
Total read from: 2
Total time reading: ?

Friday evening update:

Books read from: White Mughals by William Dalrymple and Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Books finished: 0
Time reading: 1.25 hours

Total books finished: 0
Total read from: 2
Total time reading: 1.25 hours

MY CFS is kicking in tonight so I am heading to bed early. Hopefully I will get a lot more reading in tomorrow!

Friday night:

Books read from: Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia, A Song of Wraiths and Ruin
Books finished: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin
Time reading: 4 hours
Time posting: 10:00 PM
Food: Chinese takeout for dinner
Thoughts: This book was flawed, but also a hell of a page-turning ride.
Non-book activities: Work, laundry

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

Friday reading

I'm reading this weekend in Burlington, Vermont.

Books read from: The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin, Creatures of Passage - Morowa Yejide, Great Circle - Maggie Shipstead, Waking Up White - Debby Irving
Books finished: none
I can't easily keep track of either pages read or time reading. I read a few chapters in The Songlines which is an ebook that has no page numbers, just locations, a few chapters in Great Circle, an audiobok and I don't know where I started from. I finished the first part of Creatures of Passage and read a few chapters in Waking Up White.

Dinner: went to a wine bar which is one of our favorite spots here. olive bread, small plates of tuna, chorizo, and asparagus, a pasta entree to share, and many glasses of wine.
Thoughts: It's rainy here--we took advantage of a break in the weather to go out for a long afternoon walk. I will have to finish the work I skipped out on over the weekend, but it was worth it.
Non-book activities: long walk along the lakeshore, dinner out, West Side Story film (the new one), Wordle

Total books finished: 0
Total read from: 4
Total time reading: no idea

Saturday morning update:

Books read from: Reflecting the Glory, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, A Familiar Wilderness, All That She Carried
Books finished:
Time reading: ?
Time posting: ?
Snacks: breakfast was toast with peanut butter and jam, tea
Thoughts: It's spring. We really shouldn't have to be dealing with sleet and snow!
Non-book activities: sleep, laundry

Total books finished: 0
Total read from: 5
Total time reading: ?

I have a hair appointment this afternoon and will have more reading time then. I haven't made up my mind whether to see if I can finish All That She Carried while my color processes, or read A Familiar Wilderness, which I'm enjoying more.

I finished State of Terror by Hilary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny. It is a great thriller! I just started The Good Lord Bird.

Update #1 (Saturday 4 pm):

Books read from: Bible (KJV), God Hears Her by Our Daily Bread Ministries, The Patriarch by Martin Walker (not taking time to figure out European title for touchstone), All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
Books finished: none
Time reading: ??
Time posting: ??
Snacks: I'm trying to be good
Thoughts: ##*@*#! (I just finished the taxes and owed for the first time in ages.)
Non-book activities: cross stitching & Floss Tube, loving on the cats, income taxes

Total books finished: 0
Total read from:4
Total time reading: ??

>15 susanna.fraser:
I checked Song of Wraiths and Ruin out from the library last week, but haven't started it yet. I also noticed that the sequel is out, but our library doesn't have it yet.

Saturday afternoon posting update: Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission by Barry Friedman. Liar's Bench by Kim Michele Richardson. I started listening to Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead.

Books finished in this week's Readathon: Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir by Michael White. Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith
Thoughts: This has been a week of disappointing reading (except for Travels in Vermeer - that book was very well done.) I am not liking Liar's Bench at all. This is for a book club and if it wasn't for that I would ditch it. I finished reading Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith this morning. I started this one on December 1, 2021 while flying back from my Thanksgiving trip and got bored with it. It is not Smith's best book. I had purchased the book when I visited White Sands National Monument back in 2012. It was one of the trade books in the gift shop, so I bought it. Because it was purchased as a travel book I took it along in my airport backpack on the Thanksgiving trip as airport reading material. It was almost as boring as watching the arrivals and departures board.
Time reading: 1 hour this morning.
Time posting: 1 hour
Food: 2 delicious apple/raisin/pecan muffins. I have to make this recipe again because it is so good.
Non-Book Activities: I am working on my taxes and will bake cookies this evening.
Total books finished since the Read-A-Thon Began: 217
Total Time Reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 587 hours since I started participating in the Read-A-Thon that started in April 2020.

Saturday evening update:

Books read from: All That She Carried, The Patriarch
Books finished: All That She Carried
Time reading: ?
Time posting: ?
Snacks: supper was a turkey sandwich and orange juice
Thoughts: I can't believe I had to deal with the stress of driving to an afternoon hair appointment in sleet IN APRIL!!
Non-book activities: hair appointment, grocery shopping, writing reviews

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

Update #2 Saturday 9:30 pm

Books read from: Bible (KJV), God Hears Her by Our Daily Bread Ministries, All That She Carried by Tiya Miles, The Fell by Sarah Moss
Books finished: All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
Time reading: ??
Time posting: ??
Snacks: supper was grilled cheese & chips
Thoughts: I need to review All that She Carried.
Non-book activities: cross stitching & Floss Tube, loving on the cats

Total books finished: All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
Total read from: 5
Total time reading: ??

I won't get a lot of reading time in tomorrow. I'll read the devotional stuff and listen to the Martin Walker book going to and from work tomorrow. My book club meets tomorrow evening via Zoom, but since I'm working, I'll probably be too busy with reference to even consider attending.

Saturday night update:

Books read from: A Familiar Wilderness, Hamnet, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die
Books finished:
Time reading: ?
Time posting: ?
Snacks: grapes
Thoughts: I didn't expect to get the OverDrive copy of Hamnet so soon. It has a long waiting list and I won't be able to renew it, so it's just become my top priority.
Non-book activities: laundry

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 6
Total time reading: ?

>20 benitastrnad: It fits many popular YA tropes, but the setting is fresh and distinctive.

Saturday night:

Books read from: The Good Rain, Plagues Upon the Earth
Books finished: none
Time reading: 2 hours
Time posting: 8:30 PM
Food: Polenta with sausage and mushrooms for dinner (a new recipe for me)
Thoughts: That was an OK recipe, but I might tweak it a bit.
Non-book activities: cooking, errands

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 4
Total time reading: 6 hours

Saturday reading

Books read from: The Songlines - Bruce Chatwin, Creatures of Passage - Morowa Yejide, Great Circle - Maggie Shipstead, Waking Up White - Debby Irving
Books finished: Waking Up White
I'm still struggling with tracking my reading because of the multiple formats. I read about 70 pages of Creatures of Passage which got me through section 2; listened to Great Circle a little but not enough to finish a chapter, and a little bit of The Songlines on my kindle (2%).
Dinner: gnocchi with mushrooms and sausage
Thoughts: Driving back to DC in the morning. I'm going to have to read in the car because my book is due at the library tomorrow. Fortunately I can read in the car without a problem.
Non-book activities: brunch, walk in the rain, yoga, out for a movie (Coda--amazing!)

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 4
Total time reading: no idea

Saturday evening update:

Books read from: White Mughals by William Dalrymple, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan, 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron, The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk, Gillespie and I by Jane Harris, Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky, and Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
Books finished: 3, White Mughals, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs, and 84, Charing Cross Road
Time reading: ~7 hours

Total books finished: 3
Total read from: 9
Total time reading: ~8.25 hours

Sunday Update (oh well)

Books read from: Hosea (King James Bible)
Books completed: Hosea (King James Bible)

Other activities: planting vegetables, flowers, digging, mulching, etc. Also baked bran muffins and egg strata Sunday morning.

The weather has been unseasonably cool, perfect for outdoor work. Instead of reading I've been spending most of my time and energy getting plants in the ground before the heat arrives...which will be very soon! Unfortunately by bedtime I'm too tired to contemplate picking up any book. Hopefully tonight I'll get some novel at least partially read!

Sunday afternoon posting update: Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission by Barry Friedman. Liar's Bench by Kim Michele Richardson. I started Gunpowder Gardens: Travels Through India and China in Search of Tea by Jason Goodwin. This book is for the Nonfiction Challenge for April. The theme is armchair travel. I am listening to Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead.

Books finished in this week's Readathon: Travels in Vermeer: A Memoir by Michael White. Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith. Liar's Bench by Kim Michele Richardson
Thoughts: It is now 2 bad books in a row. I skimmed through Liar's Bench as it wasn't worth devoting much time to reading it. It is really a YA book and should have been marketed as such. Even then, it is not very well written and needed much more editing help than it got. This is the author's first book and it shows.
I read Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by this author and it is a much better book. Of course the author has some writing experience by the time Book Woman was published whereas Liar's Bench was her first book, so she is still learning how to write. I think she will be a good author of historical novel in the future but this isn't a good book. I am not going to be recommending it. I started reading Gunpowder Gardens and was almost immediately captivated by it.
Time reading: 1 hour at lunch.
Time posting: 1 hour
Food: Indian food.
Non-Book Activities: Got my cookies baked, but still have to finish my taxes and get them mailed off tomorrow.
Total books finished since the Read-A-Thon Began: 218
Total Time Reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 588 hours since I started participating in the Read-A-Thon that started in April 2020.

Already Monday morning and I never updated.

Books read from: The Captain's Daughter : Arkship Book 2 by Peter F. Hamilton (audio), Victory by Carla Jablonski, Asadora vol. 2 by Naoki Urasawa, Wolf's Lair by Brian Falkner
Books finished: Victory, Asadora vol. 2

Food over weekend: japache, middle eastern meatballs, coriander chilli rice, spanish chorizo soup, latte
Thoughts: Need to find a book I want to read.
Non-book activities: lots of food prep, k dramas,

Total books finished: 2 Victory, Asadora vol. 2
Total read from: 4
Total time reading: not enough

I'm finding it hard to read the books I lined up, they just don't attract my reading sensibilities right now. So working my way through a few graphic novels that I have out from the library.

Sunday night update:

Books read from: 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, A Familiar Wilderness, Hamnet
Books finished:
Time reading: ?
Time posting: ?
Snacks: hot milk
Thoughts: Yesterday it sleeted and snowed. Today I was out without a jacket!
Non-book activities: church, nap, long walk with the dog, Zoom book club

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 6
Total time reading: ?

Update #3 (Final update) - Sunday night update (10 pm)

Books read from: Bible (KJV), God Hears Her by Our Daily Bread Ministries, The Patriarch by Martin Walker
Books finished: None today
Time reading: ??
Time posting: ??
Snacks: dried fruit
Thoughts: I STILL need to review All That She Carried, but it will happen tomorrow.
Non-book activities: church, work, cat petting, cross stitch during supper break at work

Total books finished: All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
Total read from: 5
Total time reading: ??

Sunday evening update:

Books read from: The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron, The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, Gillespie and I by Jane Harris, and Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope by Kirsten Ellis
Books finished: 2, The Fifth Head of Cerberus and The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
Time reading: ~ 4.5 hours

Total books finished: 5
Total read from: 11
Total time reading: ~12.75 hours

My Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has been hounding me all day today, so I am off to bed early tonight. . .Happy reading, everyone!

I had another busy weekend (another visit from brother's family) following a super-busy week at work so have not had any reading time at all for ages.
No plans for Easter weekend, though and with Friday and Monday off, and Thursday being a half-day I'm hoping for a lot of reading time (and some knitting time too, hopefully) so I look forward to the upcoming readathon.

Last night I managed to read about half of another book, The Upstairs Room. So far it's pretty good.

Monday mid day - weekend review
Better late than never!

Books:
The Leavers by Lisa Ko for book club.
Not really grabbing me yet; hope it picks up since I was the one who chose this title and will have to lead discussion. I'll have to finish it which will annoy me if I hate it. Then the guilt of picking a loser . . I'm sure it will improve; I'm only on p.45. normally I love multicultural novels. This is about Chinese-Americans.
A Conspiracy in Belgravia, listened during my 3 mi walk last night.
Started These Is My Words by Nancy E Turner. historical fiction; a pioneer woman's diary. LT BB.

Sunday dinner - chicken, sweet potato, corn on the cob. Husband's been cooking lately, bless him!
breakfast - oatmeal w/ nuts and dried fruit, much coffee.

Other activity:
Spent the weekend up near Roanoke VA for the Sounds of Mountains Storytelling & Music Festival; very therapeutic.
My niece and family moved out of my house and back home after their renovations completed. They were with us all of March. Very quiet here now . .
Catching up on OUTLANDER tv series.

Que Viva Ucrania!

Monday catch-up of Sunday reading:

Books read from: The Good Rain, Plagues Upon the Earth, Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia
Books finished: none
Time reading: 2 hours
Time posting: 5:00 PM
Food: Fried chicken for Sunday dinner
Thoughts: It's weird reading a book about the area I live now, written as a contemporary account (with some history thrown in) from 30 years ago and almost 10 years before I moved here.
Non-book activities: church, reorganized my office space

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 4
Total time reading: 8 hours

>37 susanna.fraser:
I read Good Rain and loved it. I don't think I have read a bad book by Timothy Egan but I like his writing about the West. He was a long time reporter for the New York Times covering the American West and even in these early books the quality of his writing shows. His assessments of many of the situations are even handed and show lots of insight. They are just good essays.

Update on Tuesday for Saturday and Sunday:
Books read: 1 - Diamond Doris
Books finished: 1
Thoughts: Mixed feelings about this book. I think it would be a good beach read, fast and the international travel was fun.
Food: Too numerous to mention
Non-Book Activities: Inventing Anna on Netflix
Time reading: approx 5 hours

Thanks for continuing the readathon, SilverWolf!

Here's the next readathon: https://www.librarything.com/topic/341193