denise

#Readathon Opening Survey

2 Comments / 2019, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon /

It’s that time of year again, which is awesome because I don’t think I finished a book in March and this year is shaping up to be another not stellar year for me and reading.

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

I’m reading from my home, my bedroom – probably hiding from the contractors who are destroying/putting my house back together again downstairs.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Honestly, I have no idea. I just randomly picked up books from the library shelf because none of my holds had come in and I don’t really have a solid TBR list at the moment because see intro above.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

I think I’m most looking forward to my leftovers from dinner last night. Amazing lasagna siciliana – soooo good. I hope it’s as good leftover.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I used to read several hundred books a year and now I’ll be lucky if I hit 100. Ugh. We have three dogs who very much like #readathon because we don’t leave them locked in their crates while we run errands and they often find crumbs of unusual foods that they can nibble on.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

I have participated in many readathons, including the last one. Different this year is… I’ve gotten a later start because I was TIRED and that’s related to what I’m going to do… I’m going to just relax and enjoy reading without feeling the urge to read faster and finish all of the books on the stack.

Happy Readathon, to all.

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Property of the Rebel Librarian

2019, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Fiction /

TW read Property of the Rebel Librarian before me and she kept ranting about the horrible things that were happening in the book and how horrible the adults were and on and on and on… she’s right. Horrible things happened and (most) of the adults were horrible.

Censorship is horrible. Banning books is horrible. It was all horrible… but I enjoyed reading it and wanted to sit down and read (or re-read) every book mentioned.

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Everlasting Nora

2019, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction /

I thought Everlasting Nora was a Cybil but it doesn’t seem to be. No idea how I stumbled across it but I’m glad I did. I enjoyed the story quite a bit and the Manila setting and Tagalog sprinkled throughout the story was fantastic. (There’s a glossary in the back but I was pleased I didn’t need it. I think there was only one word I didn’t know – a type of plant I’d never heard of.) Did you know people live (sometimes for generations) in Manila cemeteries?

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Six Children’s Books…

2019, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction, Non-Fiction /

JMP came for a sleepover/Grandma Camp, so we read a bunch of children’s books:

– Pete the Cat: Three Bite Rule because JMP is a picky eater and also sometimes needs to be coaxed to try things that are new to him. This was a fun book and he was willing to try a few “new” foods when we sang, “three bite rule!”

– Because I knew TW was going to talk to him about planning/planting their garden, I grabbed The Rosy, Fat, Magenta Radish and Big Red Barn from our shelves and The Carrot Seed from the library. (TW and Pippin actually planted carrots and radishes yesterday!)

– We read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World and attempted (badly) to make some paper airplanes from The Kids’ Guide to Paper Airplanes.

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Dreams of Falling

2019, Books in Bed, Fiction, Women /

Another Karen White book set in South Carolina. Georgetown, this time. I liked Dreams of Falling, though I did find it just a little bit slow. I also didn’t really love Larkin and was a lot more invested in Bitty, CeeCee, and Margaret – even Ivy was more interesting than Larkin.

More important than this book is that I just realized I missed some of the Tradd Street books and there’s another book co-written by WIllig, Williams, and White. Must reserve, soon!

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Paperback Crush

2019, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Young Adult /

Almost halfway through the month and the first book I’ve finished is Paperback Crush? It’s going to be another one of those years, isn’t it? Whatevs.

I thoroughly enjoyed Paperback Crush (but found the ending a little abrupt. (Couldn’t we have had an epilogue or something?) It wasn’t so much about the books people my age read when we were tweens/teens, it’s closer to the age of my kids, but because I read pretty much everything my kids read and I love nothing better than a good (or trashy) middle grade or YA book, it was fun to look back. It also made me want to read books I (and my kids) never read. They were never hardcore into Sweet Valley or BSC, though they read a few. The Christopher Pike Midnight Club (I wonder if that’s still on our shelves or did it get Kondoed?)… I want to read that. I don’t want to read (or re-read) any Lulene McDaniel books ever again, though.

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Reading in 2018

2018, Books in Bed, Reading /

I knew it was bad but I didn’t know it was THIS bad, hahahahahaha. Ugh.

90

I read 90 books in 2018?

90

WHO AM I????

10 audiobooks (not bad, really.)
10 non-fiction (umm, how can that be??????)
2 were graphic novels or manga
18 were Cybils (and some of those were from LAST year’s Cybils list. Blah)
45 were children/middle grade/YA (No surprise)

17 were written by men or women of color. I’m not displeased by this. Almost 20%. I can do better but considering so many of my books this year were sequels, I’m definitely not complaining.

The biggest disappointment of the year, besides the general lack of reading, was how few Cybils I read. Only 11 from this list. 11. How is that even possible?

At this point, I don’t even know what to shoot for in 2019. 100 for the year? More of EVERYTHING?

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