Bout of Books: Day 1 and 2

I was going to do daily wrap ups and page counts and stuff and then I felt stressed just thinking about it so I decided not to. Instead I'm going to post when I want and what I want and only read things I'm feeling really motivated to read regardless of deadlines etc. Just for this week. That's the point of Bout of Books anyway, right?

Day one was difficult. It was the last day of our long weekend off together and so I didn't get a lot of chance for reading. I don't think it helped that my books - I was floating between The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw and Happiness by Matthieu Ricard - while both great, weren't really propelling me to get engrossed in reading. Although I was enjoying it, I eventually decided to return The Bookshop that Floated Away to the library unfinished. There was a middle section that was a little bit odd and just not really keeping me involved so I moved on to Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins in the evening which was a fantastic choice.

I also took part in the Fictional World Travel challenge for the first day. I posted my entry on Instagram, and here are the countries I am fictionally planning to visit:

From top to bottom: France, Tahiti, India, Brazil, Paris (so France again), Russia (Moscow specifically), and Nigeria. 

Day two got off to a better start primarily because I decided to stick with Lola. There still wasn't much chance to read as I have the boys on my own all day Tuesdays and have decided to try to reduce their TV time to less than an hour a day, meaning I don't get much of my own stuff done between 6am and 7pm! That said we had a fantastic day. In the morning we headed to the library for baby bounce and rhyme and spent a while there reading stories and playing with the toys. On the way home Sam slept and I let Ben go at his own pace as it was only lightly raining and he had wellies on, so a fifteen minute walk took fifty minutes. During the afternoon we did loads of crafts and baked an amazing blackberry buttermilk cake with the blackberries we foraged on Monday. I did manage to finish Lola and the Boy Next Door during the afternoon and oh my goodness that book is phenomenal. I had happy tears at the end of it. 

While I was at the library I picked up I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, based on her being on almost everyone's Auto Buy Author posts for Top Ten Tuesday and also a little bit because the book has gorgeous orange pages. I'm feeling good about including it in my reading plans for the week. 

After finishing Lola I've decided to stick with reading exactly what I want to read and picked up The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey & Peter Gross which my sister got from her library and lent to me,along with Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love and Fables: Happily Ever After. 

I wanted to do the challenge for today as well but it doesn't look like it's up as of me writing this post (8pm Tuesday evening) so maybe I'll include it in my post for Wednesday. Hopefully I'll get a few more pages read this evening - I'd like to make a decent dent in The Unwritten, so far I'm still on Bill Willingham's introduction! 

If I were statsing, my stats so far would be thus:

Books finished: 1 (Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins) 

Books abandoned: 1 (The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw)

Freddo frogs consumed: 2

Other snacks: hummus & pitta, a curlywurly, unadmittable amount of blackberry cake. 

Blogs visited: Bingeing on Books, Lit Addicted Brit and about six others I visited in the morning of the first day and don't remember, I'm sorry! 

How's your readathon going so far? 

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