Social Distancing Readathon #285 - September 5 - 7

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

Since I am not heading out of town as I expected to be, I am in for this weekend. Thanks again for hosting, Silver!

I’m in! This is the first weekend in weeks that I don’t have people visiting (or travelling myself) so am looking forward to some reading time.

I'm in again.
Friday 11pm update:
Read from: A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson, The Great When by Alan Moore
Books finished: 1 A Guide to the Birds of East Africa
Snacks: Pad Thai
Non-book activities: Food prep
Mostly been reading on the sofa with our three ginger cats curled up alongside me.

Friday morning on the train to D.C. for the Book Festival.

Currently reading THE BOOK CLUB FOR TROUBLESOME WOMEN.
New audio book is THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY that l’m reading before watching the tv series.

I'm in. I'm not entirely certain what the weekend holds, but I'll do what I can!

My "Challenge" bookgroup has restarted and this time round we'll be reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. We meet every two weeks for an hour via Zoom to discuss a chapter (or portion thereof for the really lengthy ones). The schedule has just been sent, so it's time to start! I'll be at this for many months, so I'm going to start sounding like a broken record ...

Will also be reading a small part of Ulysses and my usual weird interest, naval history. All this serious stuff may have me either comatose in front of the TV with something mindless or desperately seeking light & fluffy reading. So not sure how much "volume" of pages or hours I'll contribute this weekend ... autumn is quickly approaching so I may just go outside and stare at the greenery!

I'm in - will probably be a lighter reading weekend, since we're heading out of town for my wife's 50th high school class reunion. There's enough gaps in the schedule, I should manage to do some reading. Currently working on Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo, and The Very Best of the Best by Gardner Dozois.

6pm Saturday afternoon
Read from: The Great When by Alan Moore, The Magicians by Lev Grossman & The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
Total Books finished: 1 A Guide to the Birds of East Africa
Snacks: breakfast smoothie, coffee
Non-book activities: Food shopping, cafe & library visit, internet sleuthing, food prep

Not meant to be reading the Millar book but picked it up and wondered why I hadn't read it till now. I had The English Harem ready to go but didn't.

Saturday Report
Books read from: My continuous reading book is now Mapp & Lucia by E. F. Benson. My computer book is Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe. I am still working on Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano and Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley. I have started A Week At the Airport by Alain De Botton and Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. I listening to Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers.

Books finished:

Book Thoughts: I have lots of reading on my plate and lots of weekend activities. I doubt I will finish any books this weekend.

Non-Book Activities: I am doing a tea for some of the ladies at church this afternoon, so I am off to bake scones. I am not sure how many will show up, but I am sure we will have a good time - if I can only find the tea infusers.

Reading Time Today: 1 hours
Time Reading this weekend: 1 hours
Time listening:
Time posting:
Food: scones

Total books finished since the Read-A-Thon Began: 527
Total Time Reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 1626 hours since I started doing the weekend Read-A-Thon starting in April of 2020.

Friday Night Update:

Books read from: Framed in Death by J. D. Robb (audiobook), The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood, Remember Me to Harlem edited by Emily Bernard, The Book of Old Ships by Henry Culver, This One Sky Day by Leone Ross
Books finished: 1, The Marlow Murder Club
Time reading: 3.1 hours + listening to audiobook

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 6
Total time reading: 3.1 hours + listening to audiobook

Saturday Night Update:

Books read from: Framed in Death by J. D. Robb (audiobook), The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, Remember Me to Harlem edited by Emily Bernard, The Book of Old Ships by Henry Culver, and This One Sky Day by Leone Ross
Books finished: 2, Framed in Death and The Book of Old Ships}
Time reading: 1.95 hours + listening to audiobook

Total books finished: 3
Total read from: 6
Total time reading: 5.05 hours + listening to audiobook

Sunday early afternoon

Waiting for the train home, already delayed an hour. We’ll be driving home in the dark. 😐
Did not read a lot this weekend but I’ll catch up on the long ride home.
I discovered many books & authors to look for from the bk fest!

Book:
THE BOOK CLUB FOR TROUBLESOME WOMEN

Breakfast was a bagel breakfast sandwich; seems like hours ago. I’m feeling peckish but l have a pastry tucked away in my bag.

I saw no National Guardsmen while here. There was a huge ‘FREE DC’ march with thousands of protesters yesterday.

11.30am Monday morning
Read from: The Magicians by Lev Grossman, The Chieftain's Daughter by Sam McBratney, A Dog's Life by Peter Mayle & The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
Total Books finished: 2 A Guide to the Birds of East Africa & The Magicians
Snacks: homemade tomato soup, coffee
Non-book activities: shopping, cafe visit & food prep

I went out early this morning and was offered a free flat white at my usual cafe, was made with a new lactose free UHT milk. Silly me agreed to try it and ended up with a foul tasting bitter coffee. Stopped on the way home to get another coffee to takeaway. At least I read a number of pages of the Sam MCBratney book.

Making a chicken stock now so can make a rice soup later today. Also cooking black beans for a Guatamalan refired beans dinner. Also in the process of making 3 types of baba ganoush so we can decide which recipe works best for us. A good time to run out of lemons.

Finished The Magicians and even though the book didn't really do much for me it also lingered and made it hard to pick up another book, so went with a children's book, The Chieftain's Daughter which is about early Ireland and the introduction of Christianity.

Weekend Summary:

Books read from: Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo, The Very Best of the Best ed. by Gardner Dozios, Memory Man by David Baldacci
Books Finished: Somebody's Fool
Pages read: 450-ish

My wife greatly enjoyed her 50th high school reunion activities. I endured, lol.

Okay, the posts on other activities were pretty funny / interesting this weekend.

@nrmay - I was in DC about 10 days ago and only saw the Guardsmen in metro stations, totally bored out of their young minds underground on perfect weather days. A note on DC tourism: this is the time of year when the locals do it - the tourists are largely absent until January.

@ChrisG1 - good on you, you brave soul!

@avatiakh - I very much want to eat at your house. I made a kale/brussel sprout/orange salad last night (with other things like feta, butternut squash...). Let's just say that while the others were polite there was a lot of carnivore-ish activity around 9pm.

Well, I could go on with my usual chattiness, but instead I'll just "out with it", and confess I was a R-a-Th failure this weekend. I started Huckleberry Finn, but mostly just listened to podcasts. Huck Finn is fun for a few reasons, and because I'm using my eldest's copy from 8th grade/Form 2: time to find out what his little devious mind was thinking about! I've got James on stand-by for as soon as I finish Huck Finn: a bookgroup is meeting on the 25th with a 'read either or both' assignment. It'll be a nice chance to do a little comparative analysis so I'm trying for both.

My big accomplishment was organizing my September reading. It's going to be a doozy of a month reading-wise: 7 of the 8 books I'm active on now have hard deadlines for meetings or returns. Best to stop kvetching about it and get on with it ... (and please keep up the comments - without late trains, scones, and ginger cats!)

EDIT! OMG ... I should've re-read that last ... I was trying to say "with all the late trains, scones, and ginger cats!" I really, really need to pay attention/edit more!!! I love ginger cats, scones and trains, so I was really enjoying everyones' comments. (Smack to my own forehead!)

Sunday Night Update:

Books read from: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, Remember Me to Harlem edited by Emily Bernard, This One Sky Day by Leone Ross, and The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne
Books finished: 1, The Boy at the Top of the Mountain
Time reading: ~3.3 hours

Total books finished: 4
Total read from: 7
Total time reading: 8.35 hours + listening to audiobook

>15 PocheFamily:
Weekend update - l did finally see 3 National Guards in Union Station while we were waiting for our delayed train.

I recently bought HUCK FINN to re-read before JAMES. I need to get cracking on it..

Weekend wrap-up

Didn’t finish anything.
Almost done with JUBILEE
Half-way through with THE BOOK CLUB FOR TROUBLESOME WOMEN
Would like to finish both today.
Ready to read right now … but l feel a nap coming on.

Oops, forgot to update my weekend reading, but I have a good excuse (for once). Went to the summer house for the weekend and ended up in a rainstorm which has wreaked havoc in some parts of the region (two trains derailed, 40-some roads ruined, one person dead, etc.) Our area was mostly spared but the authorities warned again driving in Sunday because of the risk of collapsing roads so we initially didn’t know if we could go home. We did make it, but I had to work from home today because there were no trains running and it’ll possibly be the same tomorrow.

I did finish my last (for now) Maigret novel -La tête d’un homme so at least there’s that.

>19 PawsforThought:
I am curious about the Maigret novels. I haven't started them and now there is going to be the PBS/BBC Masterpiece Mystery series based on the novels. I may have to start getting them read because I dislike watching these series before reading the books.

>20 benitastrnad: Another one? But there was an adaptation just a few years ago!

Monday Wrapup
Books read from: My continuous reading book is now Mapp & Lucia by E. F. Benson. My computer book is Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe. I am still working on Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano and Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley. I have started Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee and Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. I finished A Week At the Airport by Alain De Botton. I am listening to Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and listened to a good junk of Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers.

Books finished: A Week At the Airport by Alain De Botton

Book Thoughts: I did better with my reading than I thought I would. I finished the short essay book A Week At the Airport by Alain de Botton. The author is a well known essayist, mostly for his travel books. He was invited by the CEO of the company that built and manages Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport outside of London, UK. He spent one week staying at the attached Sofitel and had a desk inside the passenger part of the terminal. It was at the desk that he wrote the essays found in this book. The contents are short essays written after interviews with everyone from the CEO who hired him, to room service waiters at the Sofitel, housekeepers at the airport, pilots, hostesses at the British Airways exclusive lounge for business traveler. He interviewed the people who put together the meals served on the airplanes, and those who clean the planes between those speedy turnarounds. I found the book very interesting, but really wanted more depth. However, it was a perfect book to read over a very busy weekend.

Non-Book Activities: I spent the entire day on Saturday cooking and then hosting the Grandparents Tea at the church. We had a great time celebrating grandparents, but I was exhausted when it was over. I took a nap yesterday afternoon and so I feel like the entire weekend was just a blur.

Reading Time Today: 2 hours
Time Reading this weekend: 3 hours
Time listening:
Time posting:
Food: the food for the tea was lovely. We used recipes from the magazine Tea Time and found them to be very practical and rather easy to do in bits and pieces. That left only the assembly to do the day of the tea. I thought it went very well and the 10 of us who were there had a good time. My scones were not the best, but the cucumber knoshes were fantastic as was the cookies and the Lane Cakes.

Total books finished since the Read-A-Thon Began: 528
Total Time Reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 1628 hours since I started doing the weekend Read-A-Thon starting in April of 2020.

Here's the next readathon: https://www.librarything.com/topic/373765