Sunday, October 25, 2009

24 Hour Readathon: When I Died Off & End of Event Meme

Good morning! I could no more have written this last night as the fatigue set in, than I could have gone out and ran a mile in the rain! Those evening hours, that I originally thought would be pretty productive, turned out to be the worst time to read of all. The distractions piled up all over the place!

Here are my final stats:
  • Hours Read: 11
  • Hours Spent Online: 3-4?
  • Books Read: 3 and change (I had to skim through various chapters in the books I had stacked up to find what I wanted to read next.)
  • Pages Read: 779--Yea, not good. I can't believe how easily distracted I was during those last four hours. ANYTHING could distract me, so that I found that simple things like brushing my teeth took almost thirty minutes! What's up with that?
  • Mini-Challenges: 2 or 3. At this point, I honestly can't remember! How awful is that?!?
Now, for the final meme posted by those running Dewey's Read-a-thon:
1. Which hour was most daunting for you? Hour 21. I literally just kept waking myself up every five minutes until I couldn't take it anymore!

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? Sigh. I just don't know! I really loved what I was reading, War Dances by Sherman Alexie, but I couldn't fight my body. At this point, I think that where you set yourself up to read might be as important as what you read. You might not want to read in bed, as I did! :)

3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Actually, I don't. All those involved did a really great job of keeping things moving. I did appreciate the hourly posts on Twitter to remind me of the hour, so thank you to those organizers who kept posting those.

4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? Pretty much everything. The mini-challenges were really well organized, and although I wasn't on to catch many of them, for those that I did, I was surprised to see how well listed and announced they all were. Thanks!

5. How many books did you read? 3 and 1/2

6. What were the names of the books you read? Prada and Prejudice, Good Luck, and War Dances were the ones I completed. I also read several chapters of Pride and Prejudice, Twenties Girl, Willoughby's Return, and Tumbling Through Time.

7. Which book did you enjoy most? I actually enjoyed reading Good Luck the most, maybe because it was the book that I spent the most time on, and related to the most (It was about an English teacher who gets accused of sexual harrassment by a disgruntled student, when she had done nothing more than give him a well-earned bad grade.)

8. Which did you enjoy least? As listed in some of the books that I skimmed, I couldn't read Pride and Prejudice for any length of time last night. It's not that I didn't like it, it's just that I couldn't handle it as I grew more fatigued.

9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? N/A

10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? VERY likely. Unless I have something really pressing on the day of the next readathon, I definitely plan on being involved!

Okay, so now I'm off to go peak in on some of the other participants to see how in the world they read SO MUCH! Also, I have a lot of work to do to get these books reviewed. :)

8 comments:

  1. I think you did great! Pride and Prejudice was bound to be a hard one. I definitely need more focus to read the classics and I don't think I could manage it if I was aiming to read for 24 hours!

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  2. I second Meghan. You did a fantastic job. Pride & Prejudice is one of my favorite books but I think it wouldve been a bit intense for me if I was doing the readathon.

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  3. I'm glad you enjoyed the read-a-thon. You did a great job.

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  4. Are stats are very similiar... and I'm glad to see that not everyone read more than 1000 pages! :) And your pages counted more than mine too because I was reading major easy books. So... great job! It was fun, wasn't it.

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  5. You're too hard on yourself!! You did a fantastic job!!

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  6. I think that you did great! Good reading choices, too.

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  7. Great job!

    I struggled the most with my British book too. I think I need to stick with more contemporary stuff to read for a long haul!

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  8. Great job -- hope to see you next time!

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