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? 

*all links are affiliate with Indiebound.org. If you purchase through them I will receive a small commission for which I will be very grateful. 

Bout of Books Sign up and Goals

It's Bout of Books time again which makes me the most excited! As was the case back at the beginning of the year, it's running just before the second ReReadathon and they complement each other really nicely. Bout of Books pushes me to finish up all the things I'm currently reading and then I get to immerse myself in rereads for the ReReadathon!

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 17th and runs through Sunday, August 23rd in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 14 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

Basically Bout of Books is just a really really fun week and a great chance to discover new blogs, chat to new people and even do some reading! If you want to join the fun check out the above link to sign up. 

My goals for Bout of Books are thus: 

• Read a bit every day
• Do at least three challenges
• Finish one book
• Visit a new to me blog each day
• Take part in a twitter chat (?? If it works out time and kids wise)

I don't know what my TBR will be yet but it will probably include some bits of the following:

• Fishbowl  by Matthew Glass - I need to finish this one up because I'm really enjoying it and want to write about it 
• Happiness by Matthieu Ricard - because it's gorgeous and very inspiring. 
• The Unwritten vol 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey & Peter Gross
• Fables: Happily Ever After by Bill Willingham & Mark Buckingham
• Sketcher by Roland Watson - Grant - because I started it ages ago, was really enjoying it and then just never finished it. 
• The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw - another one I'm in the middle of, and it's about bookshops and the river. I'll probably try to finish this. 
• Scarlet by Marissa Meyer - for Brittany's readalong. This isn't scheduled til September but I really enjoyed Cinder and can't wait to find out what happens next!

Affiliate links, if you purchase through these links I will get a small commission and be very grateful.

Are you taking part in Bout of Books? What will you be reading this week? 

Bout of Books Challenges

Book to Music Challenge

So firstly I want to say that I love this challenge! It's hosted by Medusa's Library and basically what you have to do is make a playlist to go along with one of your favourite books.  The songs on this playlist that I'm currently making on Spotify for Little Women (pretty much my favourite book of all time) will seem like they have no relation whatsoever to it, but what can I say? They immediately jumped to mind! 

Apologies for the amount of Disney!

1. Sunny Afternoon - The Kinks
2. I'll Make a Man Out of You - Mulan
3. Pack Up - Eliza Doolittle
4. Pencil Full of Lead - Paolo Nutini
5. In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning - Jamie Cullum
6. Whistle While You Work - Snow White
7. Someone Like You - Adele
8. Octopus's Garden - The Beatles
9. Trouble - Ray LaMontagne
10. Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles
11. You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You - Jamie Cullum 
12. Feeling Good - either Muse or Nina Simone depending on your preference!
13. Home - Michael Buble
14. American Tune - Simon & Garfunkel

Bout of Books 5.0 MASTER POST

I did originally have all this info on my Bout of Books sign up and goals post, but decided it was going to get ridiculously long what with mini challenges and my tendency to ramble, so I've moved my running daily updates here instead! My official goals are here, but here's a photo as a quick recap. 

The pile I'll be reading from this week!

Monday

Woke up this morning super excited for the readathon! I plan to do some baking today, but we're nearly half way through and I'm currently still in my pajamas with the biscuit tin so we'll see! So far I've been very distracted by the internet, and by managing to totally screw up my entry to my first mini challenge by trying to split my posts in half, but I have read a little bit of Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel which is great so far. I really didn't intend to read it this week at all but now I'm engrossed and so I have to! Once I finish sorting out this post, I'm going to get dressed and do some reading!! Come on, motivation! 

Mini Challenges

The first mini challenge I'm entering for this readathon is hosted by Reading in Texas and The Space Between. They want to know what I do with my books after I've read them. Up until recently the answer would have been, keep them! But I'm getting better, and so this answer has three parts:

1) If I love the book so much it immediately goes onto my five star books list, I keep it. Write my name in the front and put it on my shelf of favourite books. 

2) If I can immediately think of somebody who would love the book, it gets passed on. A lot of my books circulate through my family and friends this way. 

3) If none of the above applies, the book goes on ReaditSwapit, which is probably my favourite discovery of the past ten years. When my list for that gets too long (over 100 or so) and my shelves look like they're about to break, I pull out some that have been on the list for ages and take them to the charity shop!

So there we go. I used to hoard all of my books forever, regardless, but as I get older I think I have a more mature approach (i.e I've realised that if I keep every book I ever buy I won't have any space for new ones). 

Number of pages read today: 222

Number of books read today: 2

Total Number of Books Read: 1

Books: Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel, Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte (12 pages...)

Other Comments: I had a really good day today, mostly because I got really engrossed in Goodbye for Now, which hopefully I'll manage to review at some point later this week. Just started Agnes Grey, because my plans were foiled by a combination of accidentally napping for an hour and the need to make dinner! 

Tuesday 

Slightly stressful morning so far - hubby's alarm didn't go off so we were in a rush to get him out of the door in time for work. I'm now trying to relax back into my morning routine (or what there is of it!). It's likely yesterday will be my best reading day, as my little sister is arriving this afternoon to keep me company and 'stop me freaking out while I'm on maternity leave' (Mum's words, not mine!), so we'll probably end up talking a lot and I'll be running round the house finding books going 'oh oh oh and you HAVE to read this one!' adding them to the tottering pile which will undoubtedly be in her arms already... Also, today I *will not* get distracted by Twitter. Or not as distracted anyway... :-/

Number of pages read today: 26

Number of books read today: 1

Total Number of Books Read: 1

Books: Goodbye for Now (finished Monday), & Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

Other Comments: I knew today would be worse, but it was worse than I expected. I got distracted by movie watching and then I fell asleep and then after I picked up my sister we spent the rest of the afternoon pretty much playing a Sherlock Holmes board game we found in a charity shop, and watching series 2 of the BBC Sherlock, because she hasn't seen it all and it's awesome.

Wednesday

Not sure how today will go. Rhys is off work as well as the sister being here, and it's folk week in town which means they have an awesome massive tent full of craft stalls, so I'll be getting caught up in that! I'll definitely try to get some reading done, but no idea how much!

Number of pages read today:110

Number of books read today: 1
Total Number of Books Read: 2

Books: Goodbye for Now, Baby Talk: The Secret Diary of a Pregnant Woman by Julie Walters

Other Comments: I got entirely distracted from what I was meant to be reading yesterday and read Baby Talk instead as I was freaking out about baby having and thought I should probably read something that would at least be funny. It was, and also fairly informative, so I'm feeling better! I've really not been getting much time to read with my sister here, because we've been out doing things. We went to see Brave today and it was awesome!

Thursday

Woke up this morning with the MOST annoying One Direction song in my head (seriously seriously hate that band), and a gigantic headache. Doesn't bode well for the rest of the day, but hopefully I'll get something done at least! I'm still fairly proud of myself for the amount of reading I've done this week :-) 

Number of pages read today: approximately five... :-/

Number of books read from today: 1

Total Number of Books Read: 2 finished (Goodbye for Now and Baby Talk), 2 unfinished (Agnes Grey and 1602)

Books: see above

Other Comments: Did a lot of shopping and pointless TV watching today, hardly got any reading done except a few pages of 1602 on the train. I did however manage to buy The Norton Anthology of American Literature vol 1 for £5 in a charity shop, so I was very excited about that. The Norton Anthology of English Literature (both volumes) were pretty much the only text book I couldn't bring myself to part with after finishing my degree, and I've been saying to hubby that I'd love to take a class in American Literature since I know so little about it. However, this part of the country where we live is, in my opinion, where your brain comes to die if you move here and already have a degree, so there are no decent literature courses of any kind anywhere which are shorter than a full on BA (which I already have), so the Norton will be a good starting point I think!

Friday 

I'm going to be honest and say that I probably won't have a much better day today, reading wise. My family are coming to visit, and my sister and I are currently watching The Artist. I will do my best though, and hope to get through a bit more of 1602. And maybe write a bit more of my review of The Taste of Sorrow!

Number of pages read today: 10 of Agnes Grey

Number of books read from today: 1 

Total Number of Books Read: 2 finished, 2 unfinished

Books: Goodbye for Now  & Baby Talk finished. Agnes Grey & 1602 unfinished

Other Comments:

Saturday 

Number of pages read today: 70 of Umbrella Academy: Dallas by Gerard Way & Gabriel Ba

Number of books read from today: 1

Total Number of Books Read: 2 finished, 3 unfinished

Books: Goodbye for Now, Baby Talk (finished), Agnes Grey, 1602, Umbrella Academy: Dallas (unfinished)

Other Comments: An unplanned visit to my family to drop one of my younger sisters home took up some of the day, but I managed to read half of a graphic novel at my parents' in the evening, so it wasn't a totally unproductive day!

Sunday 

Number of pages read today: 220 (122 of Umbrella Academy: Dallas, and 100ish of 1602)

Number of books read from today: 2

Total Number of Books Read: 3 finished, 2 unfinished

Books: Goodbye for Now, Baby Talk, Umbrella Academy: Dallas (finished), Agnes Grey & 1602 (unfinished)

Other Comments: Graphic Novels seemed to suit the end of this week better. I think once my family were here, my reading ability got a bit disjointed anyway, and then unplanned attendance of my parents' housewarming party Saturday night/Sunday put paid to any big weekend plans I had! 

Bout of Books Readathon!

I was first alerted to this readathon by Ellie of Musings of a Bookshop Girl, who is pretty much the queen of several day long readathons. The only readathons that I've ever participated in are Dewey's 24 hour Readathon (twice,both times in a slightly failing manner), and recently I even more spectacularly failed Sarah's Mini Readathon. I've been thinking that a longer one would be less pressured, and indeed Bout of Books claims to be totally low pressure, as all they ask you to do is to read more than you usually would. Currently, what I would usually read in a week is not a lot, so it shouldn't be too difficult to beat that! If you're interested, here is a bit of information from Bout of Books about the readathon:

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 13th and runs through Sunday, August 19th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 5.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. -From the Bout of Books 5.0 team

I don't really have many goals for the week. Currently it's been taking me over a week to read a book, so as far as I've planned is that I want to start (and finish!):

• Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte (I'm on such a Bronte roll at the moment having just finished The Taste of Sorrow which was amazing!)
• I also have Three Men in New Suits by J.B Preistley, which my sister has lent me so I should probably try to get to that as well.
• 1602 by Neil Gaiman, as it's been a while since I read a graphic novel.
• Comment on at least 2 other blogs a day

I will plan to update this post every evening, as it seems the easiest, most consistent way to keep myself motivated! At the moment, I'm also consistently hungry so my snacks will probably also feature heavily this week. First off, I really want to bake these as they look AMAZING!

So... Here goes!!