Social Distancing Readathon #312 - March 13 - 15

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

I'm in - currently reading Wistful Ascending by J.C.M. Berne.

I'm in, too. I'll be back to post later today, but I'm currently reading / listening to Black Angels: the Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis and A Caress of Twilight.

I’m here again, reading in
North Carolina.

Current book is
BELLEWETHER by Susanna Kearsley.

If I'm not sleeping (I'm home sick with the same flu symptoms from a couple of weeks ago), I should have some time to read this weekend.

Glad not to have to go out today. Here in SE Wisconsin it's been raining and wicked windy. Raw and ugly.

Currently reading:
* The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura
* Son of Nobody by Yann Martel
* The Bully at Work by Gary & Ruth Namie
* The Bullied Brain by Jennifer Fraser

>3 Dejah_Thoris: I'll be really interested in your thoughts about the Black Angels book!

This'll be my one indulgent reading weekend this month, and I'm also re-painting a bedroom since our eldest vacated it with the last carload last weekend. Today I'm patching and should make good progress on Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons, listening as I begin the painting prep.

I'm also hoping to:
- begin listening to The Netanyahus
- sit and read The Janus Stone and Crammed (The Crammed Series Book 1)
- be distracted and find something else to listen to along the way!

My other activity (and why I'm particularly online at the moment) is to reassign the books my kid abandoned as either donations or indicate their new locations in the house. Not an easy task, but I'm approaching this as a "somebody else can enjoy this as no one else here will (again)" or "I can't believe he left this behind, I couldn't bear to part with it!" Must think minimalist thoughts ....

I am in for this weekend. I hope to have a quiet weekend.

I'm in this weekend! I hope to finish my current audiobook, Travels with Charley in Search of America. I have about an hour left. I'd also like to finish There Is a World Elsewhere and Village Affairs.

Friday night update:

Books read from: Travels with Charley in Search of America, My Venice and Other Essays, There Is a World Elsewhere
Books finished:
Snacks: hummus and chips, ice cream, tea
Thoughts: I'm looking forward to hanging out with Wally this weekend.
Non-book activities: grocery shopping, walking Wally, playing with Wally, genealogy research

Total books finished: 0
Total read from: 3

I have a few errands to run tomorrow and I need to clean and do laundry. If the weather is nice I want to let Wally spend time outdoors. I hope to get in a lot of reading time around that. We'll see how the day goes!

Friday Startup
Books read from: Bending the Law: The Story of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy by Richard B. Sobol. My Venice and Other Essays by Donna Leon. Lucky by Marissa Stapley. My continuous reading book is still Katharine Graham's Washington by Katharine Graham. My computer book is Walking It Off by Doug Peacock. I am listening to Last Chairlift by John Irving. The Rocks by Peter Nichols is now on the backburner.

Books finished: My Venice and Other Essays by Donna Leon

Book Thoughts: I finished reading My Venice and Other Essays for the Mystery series group and there were parts of the book I liked and parts I thought were throw-aways. Some of the essays were good; particularly the ones about Italy and Baroque music. Some of the essays were just a crochety old woman venting. There were some parts of memoir in the book, so I am glad to have read it. There was one essay on writing and I can see that the advice that she gave is the way she tends to write, so it did provide some insight into her Guido Brunetti murder mystery series, that I like.

Activities: Had our public library book club meeting and Dutch House was well received. I had a good time with the four who attended. I got some computer work done today and that makes me feel like progess has been made. I will pay bills in the morning and bake cookies tomorrow. It is spring break and the neighbor boy came over today and asked for his oatmeal raisin cookies. I didn't have any, so it will be baking day tomorrow.

Reading Time Today: 2 hours
Time listening:
Time posting:
Food: fresh winter greens salad and fried potatoes with an egg tonight and it was delicious.

Total books finished since the Read-A-Thon Began: 571
Total Time Reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 1741 hours since I started doing the weekend Read-A-Thon starting in April of 2020.

Saturday morning

Wind has died off. Sun is out. I should go outside and see whether the trash and recycling bins are where they were left. Home sick again, so I might not worry about that today.

I'm 2/3 of the way through The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop after reading about 1/3 yesterday. Should be able to finish it today. Touch wood. Need to get to the other books for the weekend, too.

I'm liking the Asakura book, but since it has a lot to do with loss, memory, and grief, it is not exactly serving as bibliotherapy right now. Any suggestions for a feel good, happy book?

There will also be sleeping involved. Some TV (Murder, She Wrote and Scooby-Doo -- I love my mysteries) & DVDs (currently watching S1 of The Hardy Boys, with a boxset of Cherif in the wings -- ditto).

Breakfast will be corned beef hash and eggs. Plus all my vitamins and supplements, which might help more if I took them all the time and not simply when I feel like crap. First, feeding the cats.

Saturday evening update - Georgia, USA

I had intended to post last night, or this morning before work, but time got away from me.

Books read from: A Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton; Blue Moon Over Thurman Street by Ursula K. Le Guin and Roger Dorband; Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios; Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South; The Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan's Cherry Blossoms by Naoko Abe
Books finished: A Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton; Blue Moon Over Thurman Street by Ursula K. Le Guin and Roger Dorband; Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios

Thoughts: I always have the vague idea that I should read more nonfiction. This year, for whatever reason, I'm readin much more nonfiction than I usually do. I seem to keep finding interesting books, and one keeps leading to another.

Total read from: 5 - A Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton; Blue Moon Over Thurman Street by Ursula K. Le Guin and Roger Dorband; Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios; Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South; The Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan's Cherry Blossoms by Naoko Abe
Total books finished: 3 - A Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton; Blue Moon Over Thurman Street by Ursula K. Le Guin and Roger Dorband; Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios

>6 PocheFamily: I really enjoyed Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis. It was the story of both African American nurses and their struggle to work in their chosen profession (including the Great Migration, and the Afrcan American experince in NYC) as well as the treatment of tuberculosis in the first half of the 20th century, specifically in a City hospital in NYC. That City hospital, Seaview, also happened to be a place human trials of tuberculosis treatments were held.

Carrie (@cbl_tn) also has read Black Angels - I noticed when I was adding my read dates. Carrie didn't like it as much as I did. Do you want to add anything, Carrie?

>13 Dejah_Thoris: The Black Angels was one of our book club reads a couple of years ago. A look at my review reminded me that it seemed to have a lot of pop culture references that didn't have anything to do with the book's topic. I think this was one of the times that I had to rush to finish the book ahead of our book club discussion so I noticed how much of the content didn't contribute to the thesis and I rated it accordingly.

Saturday night update:

Books read from: There Is a World Elsewhere, Travels with Charley in Search of America
Books finished: There Is a World Elsewhere
Snacks: DQ cheeseburger & fries, iced tea
Thoughts: It's been a beautiful day.
Non-book activities: Laundry, took trash to the dump, washed the car, hung out with Wally, watched the Bananas and the Party Animals on YouTube.

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 3

Sunday early afternoon. More rain today. Tomorrow there's supposed to be snow. 91% chance.

Got my groceries delivered. Checked on recycling & trash bins. The former had been empty, which is good since I think it blew all over the place. It was where it belonged next to the trash bin, but now it has mud all over it, so I think someone found it and returned it. Glad the address was on it.

Much sleeping this weekend, though I'm out of bed for the first time since Thursday. My temp has not come down, but I've got to go to work tomorrow anyway. Still feeling fatigued. Besides sleeping, I've been trying to keep my head above water in Duolingo (that's what I do next when done here), and yesterday I spent way too much time on the YouTube channel of an American expat in Norway. And now I understand the weirdness of being taught "tacofredag" in a Norwegian lesson is not so weird. And I want tacos.

Breakfast was toast, plus eggs scrambled with broccoli. Lunch was Ritz crackers topped with chive and onion cream cheese and smoked trout. Yum.

Books read from:
* The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura
* The Bullied Brain by Jennifer Fraser
and
* A Dirty Guide to a Clean Home by Melissa Dilkes Pateras with Carla Sosenko (this one's due back to the library Monday, but I should be able to re-check it out)

Books finished: just The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop, the first half of which I liked better than the last half.

Thoughts: I do not have enough light to read by in my living room, especially on dark weather and short sunlight days.

Thank you both for your thoughts on the book. I'll see if I can squeeze a little of it in before our bookgroup's final meeting on The Magic Mountain next week, as I've kind of been the one in our little group to dive into a bunch of Tuberculosis-related books.

1 Book Finished: I finished Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons, an interesting review of the coastwatchers and their activities in the Solomons as the Japanese swept south towards Australia during the early part of WW2 and then retreated (or were stranded there) with Allied advances later in the war. It's hard to imagine how closely many of them resided to their adversaries without being captured, and the book does a passable job at mentioning those who died - but the stories of survival of course are the ones that get passed along for longer. There are just a lot of remarkable people mentioned in this book. Yes, coastwatchers were uniquely brave, but the sheer number of them (and this book only covered the Allied side) makes it clear that while they were unique individuals they were also a type of person to be found then and there.

3 Other Reads: Today I've just been puttering restlessly between books, The Netanyahus, The Charity Shop Detective Agency, and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.

Snacks: My husband emptied his wallet to a group of enterprising Girl Scouts, so it's been a Thin Mints, Birthday cake, and Orange scones kind of weekend, accompanied by tea/decaf hazelnut coffee. To be clear, when he buys 4 boxes of the scouts' crack I always think, "I'll load up next weekend because surely that's not enough, but don't hurt his feelings by telling him that!" I bought the freezer for a reason, afterall ... not to hide bodies but to store cookies!!

I'm not expecting to finish any more books this weekend. Wish you all enjoyable reads this evening!

Sunday evening update:

Books read from: Travels with Charley in Search of America, Village Affairs
Books finished:
Snacks: supper was salad and a few chips
Thoughts: I am dreading the cold front headed our way. I am used to the warmer temperatures now.
Non-book activities: After church, a couple of ladies came to my house for lunch and we had a lovely visit. Lunch was baked fish, rice, asparagus, fruit salad, and pineapple upside down cake. After my friends left, I watched Banana ball all afternoon.

Total books finished: 1
Total read from: 4

I have time for a couple more chapters before going to a neighbor's house to watch When Calls the Heart.

Sunday report
Books read from: Bending the Law: The Story of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy by Richard B. Sobol. Lucky by Marissa Stapley. I started reading We Look Like the Enemy by Rachel Shabi. My continuous reading book is still Katharine Graham's Washington by Katharine Graham. My computer book is Walking It Off by Doug Peacock. I am listening to Last Chairlift by John Irving.

Books finished: My Venice and Other Essays by Donna Leon. Lucky by Marissa Stapley

Book Thoughts: I finished Lucky for my public library book discussion and did not enjoy it at all. It was the most trope laden novel I have read in years. In my opinion there wasn't much to recommend it - except the fact that it was a Reese's Book Club pick. Why? Not the usual level of good reading that I expect from that group.

Activities: The wind started blowing here on Saturday and it is still going. The worst was this morning and Saturday night. It is probably blowing around 50 MPH and shows no signs of stopping. The western edge of the county had a prairie fire and there are 4 big fires burning in Nebraska. The largest at over 100,000 acres burned and the smallest at 16,000 acres. It is not a big deal at this time of year, unless it destroys farmsteads and livestock, but this part of the country is in a drought and that fire a very dangerous thing at any time of year.

Reading Time Today: 2 hours
Time listening:
Time posting:
Food: fresh winter greens salad and left over Indian food.

Total books finished since the Read-A-Thon Began: 572
Total Time Reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 1743 hours since I started doing the weekend Read-A-Thon starting in April of 2020.

Monday morning, around 8:30 - Georgia, USA

Nasty weather this morning.....

Books read from: Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South by Jon C. Stott; The Man in the Dark by Susan Scarlett; The Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan's Cherry Blossoms by Naoko Abe; All That Glitters by Ashlyn Kane; Beast Business by Ilona Andrews
Books finished: Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South; The Man in the Dark ; All That Glitters

Thoughts: I had a great reading weekend! Several of the books I finished were books I'd already been working on this past week, and others I was able to listen to while handling domestic duties.

Total read from: 8 - A Caress of Twilight; Blue Moon Over Thurman Street; Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis; Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South; The Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan's Cherry Blossoms; The Man in the Dark; All That Glitters; Beast Business
Total books finished: 6 - A Caress of Twilight; Blue Moon Over Thurman Street; Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis; Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South; The Man in the Dark; All That Glitters

Weekend wrapup
Books read from: Bending the Law: The Story of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy by Richard B. Sobol. We Look Like the Enemy by Rachel Shabi. My continuous reading book is still Katharine Graham's Washington by Katharine Graham. My computer book is Walking It Off by Doug Peacock. I am listening to Last Chairlift by John Irving.

Books finished: My Venice and Other Essays by Donna Leon. Lucky by Marissa Stapley

Book Thoughts: I started reading We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands for the Nonfiction Challenge Group. The theme for the month was "off the beaten path religious groups." I choose to read more about the Jews who had settled in off-the-beaten-track places in the Arab world. I have read books, mostly memoirs, about Jews who lived in Kurdish Iraq, India, and Egypt and wanted to learn about the Jews from other places. This book is about the Mizrahi. That is the term that is most used to describe Arabic Jews. Sephardi refers to Jews from Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi refers to Jews from Europe and the Soviet Union. If they are from the Stan parts of the former Soviet Union they are Mizrahi. The first thing I learned is that terminology and was surprised to learn that the Ashkenazi Jews regard the Mizrahi as inferior Jews. The author points out in the first 2 chapters that it is these Jews from places like Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Iraq that kept many of the oldest Jewish artifacts known and that they are very strict and pious in their religious practice. I am about to finish the 3rd chapter in which the author describes how and why they immigrated to Isarael (mostly because of the French and British giving colonies independence and the fall of the Ottoman Empire) and that they now comprise 40% of the Israeli population. So far it has been fascinating reading but full of statistics.

Activities: The wind is still blowing, but now from the southwest. It got cold again with a vengeance. It was down to single digits here last night and that level of cold was surprising. There was a big pileup on I-80 on Saturday due to blizzard conditions at the same time that the state was fighting 4 prairie fires. The largest of these is now over 100,00 acres and the smallest is 16,000 acres. Grass and corn stalks are what is burning and so far no big towns have had to evacuate. In my area of Kansas we had a small prairie fire on the western edge of our county on Saturday. Winds on Saturday were a steady 50 MPH with gusts higher than that. The local fire departments were able to put out the fire but it was a near run thing according to those who lived in the area.

Reading Time Today: 2 hours
Time listening:
Time posting:
Food: salad and a fried egg sandwich. Will be baking cookies today due to spring break. That means that the neighbor boys will be over so it will be oatmeal raisin cookies with no NUTS. They don't like nuts.

Total books finished since the Read-A-Thon Began: 572
Total Time Reading since the Social Distancing read-a-thon began: 1745 hours since I started doing the weekend Read-A-Thon starting in April of 2020.

>21 benitastrnad: Sorry to hear about the worry over fire and wind ... wow, March winds are dramatically affecting so much of the country this year.

Today's not pretty. There was lots of snowing, which is light now but is supposed to continue until high winds replace the snow this afternoon. Feels like temp is 9°.

Tried to go to work this AM, but I'm recovering from being ill and the 1/4 mile walk to the bus stop, wading through snow drifts for most of it, took all the energy I had left. And my first driver was telling me she already got stuck once today, but said at least she wasn't driving the next bus I needed to take...

So when I got to the transit hub I just took the next bus back to my neighborhood. By the time I got home again my black trousers were completely white to the knees. Window isn't showing improvements to my little side street yet.

I'm *not* going to try to get to the library today. Knock on wood the weather's better tomorrow, because I also have a bill to mail. They never pick up outgoing mail, so I've given up trying.

I ended up reading from a 4th library book over the weekend. When I checked, it suddenly had a hold on it: The Polyvagal Solution: Vagus Nerve-Calming Practices to Soothe Stress, Ease Emotional Overwhelm, and Build Resilience by Rebecca Kase. There are a lot of books out right now about the vagus nerve. This may not be the one I ultimately read.

Finished The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura. Also read from The Bullied Brain by Jennifer Fraser and A Dirty Guide to a Clean Home by Melissa Dilkes Pateras.

Here's the next readathon: https://www.librarything.com/topic/379749