Hello Again! Updates.

Wow it has been awhile. Sorry about that. Hope everyone had a great holiday season and new year!


Last year my main Goodreads reading challenge goal was to read 80 books. However other hobbies like knitting and binge watching tv series (that's a hobby right?) took away from my reading time in the later half of the year. This lead me to only reading 59 books for the year. That in mind my 2015 goal is set for 65 books.


I am also attempting again to complete the Alphabet challenge where you read 26 books, one for each letter of the alphabet (based on the first letter in their title). I have attempted this for the past three years and have yet to complete it. The most I've gotten to is 20 (in 2012 and 2013) books and the least is 17 (in 2014). I am hopeful for 2015.


Current/Upcoming Read-a-thons:


January 5th to 11th, 2015

#ayearathon year 2! This month's theme is Standalones and their group read book is The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.

I started this read-a-thon reading The Book Thief and as of half way through the last day of the RAT I'm at 243/550 (44%). This is based on reading and finishing The Darkest Powers Bonus Pack 1 by Kelley Armstrong (not a standalone) for one day, not reading anything for a couple days and reading The Book Thief for the other 4 days (and working 9.5-10hr days). On my TBR for this read-a-thon was also Still Alice by Lisa Genova but at this point I don't think I'll get to it, though it's still on the list for reading soon (ideally before the movie comes out).


January 12th to 18th, 2015

Random-a-thon by SarusheTheReader

The theme is graphic novels and each day has a different mini challenge to complete. My plan is to get through some of my manga/graphic novels I planned to read for Dec 2014's #ayearathon and didn't get to. TBR to follow? Hopefully this will be a good way to start off the year and boost up my overall book count.


January 19th to 25th, 2015

#underhypedreads - theme: read as many underhyped books (under 5000 ratings of GR) as you can in the week.

TBR to follow. I am thinking I'll read a mixture of local authors and Doctor Who in order to get through more of the unread books on my shelves.



Otherwise this year I plan to read more of the books I own, borrow less from the library, and buy less from stores.

Bout of Books 8.0: DAY SIX

One more day down and one more to go before the end of this read-a-thon. Today I finished reading Left Neglected which I absolutely loved. I then tried to read more of Blood Brothers in Louisbourg and promptly fell asleep. oops. Not sure what is going on with this book. I like the storyline; set in a place I've been, is historical fiction which I generally enjoy, it features a character that plays the cello which I enjoy the music of and once tried to learn to play one, and the main two characters are both very likeable. However the font is very small for such a seeming short book and it seems to be taking me so much longer to read it than anything else that I've picked up. I guess I am also finding it a bit too predictable, but I shall not give up on it (even if I find I must set it aside until the end of the RAT). So instead I started a couple other books that weren't on my TBR. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater as an audiobook to get my reading in while I cooked and ate and Love by Tsugumi Ohba for a fast paced graphic novel to break up the reading of longer books from a series I already know I like in which I read right up until midnight.

So here's how the numbers fell today, bringing my average pages read to 178 per day:

Saturday

Number of pages I've read today:

1. Blood Brother in Louisbourg by Philip Roy: 2 (73 pages left)
2. Left Neglected by Lisa Genova: 104 (completed)
3. The Raven Boys (Raven Cycle #1) by Maggie Stiefvater (audiobook): 12 (397 pages left)
4. Love (Death Note #4) by Tsugumi Ohba: 184 (20 pages left)

Total number of pages read today: 301 pages
Number of books I've read today: 1 book
Total number of pages I've read: 1067 pages
Total number of books I've read: 4 (2 books, 1 graphic novel, 1 novella)

 Books read:

1. Hard Run (Death Note #3) by Tsugumi Ohba (****)
2. Rapture (Fallen #4) by Lauren Kate (****) 
3. Spore (Doctor Who E-Short #8) by Alex Scarrow (**** again)
4. Left Neglected by Lisa Genova (*****)

Unstarted thus far on RAT TBR:

1. Bitten by Kelley Armstrong - 422 pages