The Dusty Bookshelf discussion

For July, I wanted to do a read-a-thon as the mini-challenge. A read-a-thon is where you try to read as much as you can in a certain amount of time like a day or a weekend. Would anyone want to do a read-a-thon this month? I can host a formal one on my blog with a set date or you can do one at your own pace when you have time this month. Which would you like better? Let me know what you think!

i think it is a great idea and i will join in i ha ve a bunch of great books on my kindle

I was thinking of having the read-a-thon on the weekend of July 20-21. Is that a good time for a lot of people?

Should work for me.

I can always use an excuse to 'have' to read! :) Sounds good!

Maybe everyone participating should log their time/pages read so that we can have a number of what we accomplished as a group.

I won't be able to do it that weekend. :/ I'm doing a fundraiser car wash all day Saturday, so I'll lose all my reading time, hahahah.

Sounds good to me, I read all the time anyway. On lunch break before I go to bed at night. I love to read. And I like Stefan's idea of logging their time and pages. Sally

I like that idea too. We could keep each other updated through the weekend of how much we read. I could make a google doc for people to fill out at the end to make it easy to add everything up. I'm excited for it! I love read-a-thons. :)

i like the idea... just that the challenge doesn't have a termination point... i'm sure everybody reads as much as they can whenever they can.. so it would be more solid if the goal is more defined...

(i am planning to read my Paolo Coelho chunk for the challenge if it suits me ;) )

Sounds like a great idea! I'm definitely in, I hit the second-hand book shops at the weekend and have a lot to get through.

Stefan wrote: "Maybe everyone participating should log their time/pages read so that we can have a number of what we accomplished as a group."

This would be fun! (although, it's always less than I WANT it to be!:)

Lilaboti - the idea is to read more than you normally would for 2 days. Last time I did a read-a-thon I read 10 hours in 2 days. I usually read 10 hours in a week.

I was thinking that it might be fun to do this read-a-thon on twitter. Then we could focus mostly on reading and keep each other updated on what books we're reading and how much we've read. Would you guys want to do that? It might be kind of hard to keep updated with everyone on this thread. We could use the hashtag #dustyreadathon

This would be a lot of fun to do. Right now I'm free that weekend. :)

Jessica wrote: "Lilaboti - the idea is to read more than you normally would for 2 days. Last time I did a read-a-thon I read 10 hours in 2 days. I usually read 10 hours in a week.

I was thinking that it might b..."

ohhh...i see... but 2 days...???? :( it's no fun if you can't finish a book/ a number of books for the challenge..i mean, i had the idea of reading several from the sound of it...

i am still in for it... cheerio...

I wrote this post on my blog today with more details about the Read-a-thon:

For July, I’m so excited to have a Twitter Party Read-a-thon! I wanted the focus to be on reading as much as you can from July 20-21 so I thought a Twitter Party would make it fast and easy to chat with everyone and still give you tons of time to read. During the twitter party you can chat about what books you’re reading, how many pages you’ve read, how long you’ve been reading, or your adorable pet dog who is reading with you when you use the hashtag #dustyreadathon.

For those of you who don’t have twitter, you should totally get one just for this read-a-thon. :) Or you can chat with others in this thread.

If you want to sign up, you can fill out the linky on my blog and link it to your twitter. I’ll make an official twitter list for everyone to follow if they want.

I’m sad to say that I spent all my blogging allowance last month on my blogoversary and Page to Screen giveaways. :( If anyone wants to sponsor a giveaway for this read-a-thon, please email me at booksatruestory@gmail.com.

At the very least, you will all get bragging rights with an exclusive, pretty badge and the best fake Internet prizes I can find. I mean, the BEST. We’re talking UNICORNS.

I hope you can join us, meet some new people and get lots of those dusty books read!

ooo lol jessica... your post is so much fun.. i'm drooling over the prizes you're talking about.. (no, really :P )

so what's everybody planning to read...???

I'm not planning at this point, I'll have to see what I'm currently reading when the challenge comes around (I would suspect that I'll still have a healthy chunk of The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks left when the time rolls around though.)

Yup...I'm with Stefan there. Probably gonna have to finish that up...plus some stuff I'm reading with the kids! (Do Strawberry Shortcake books count too...hahahaah!:) We'll see what the next two weeks brings!

Oh, and Jessica....fyi, YOU ROCK!

i'll probably read or one of the Paolo Coelho's if i'm not finished by then...

I'm going to pick all the shortest books on my shelf for the read-a-thon :)

hey jess... i don't haave twitter..and din't get the hashtag thing eeither..i'm sure you have covered pretty much everyth in the previous posts...but a lil more help on how i can join the twitter party tomorrow..???

I'm going to try my hand! I'm not doing too much on Friday (if you don't count an audition, a movie for my best friend's birthday and babysitting much), and Saturday, although busy, I'll try and find time to read! I don't want to miss out on it! Just hope nobody expects me to accomplish much, hahah. (:

I'll also just be reading whatever it is at the time. It'll either still be The Two Towers, or maybe I'll have moved onto Twilight (which I have to reread to get to my dusty Short Second Life of Bree Tanner!). We'll have to see. (:

I'm excited! I've been wanting to use my twitter more often, since I've been really lazy about using it, hahaha.

EDIT:
Also, I have a prize! I've been looking to get rid of this signed Dearly, Departed audiobook I won. I don't listen to audiobooks, so this one has been getting dusty with nothing to do!

Lilaboti - If you want to do the twitter party, you need a twitter account to talk to others who are also reading this weekend. If you don't want to get a twitter account, you can update us on how you are doing right here in this thread. I'll be checking it every now and then. If you do get a twitter account, I can explain hastags to you :)

Thalia - Are you going to re-read all of the Twilight books for Bree Tanner? Or just the first one?

Thanks for the prize! You can be in charge of giving it away however you want :) Let us know tomorrow. I have a book that I won that I already own that I'm going to give away. It's Cold Kiss.

See you all tomorrow on twitter!

I'm excited even though I don't get off work until 5 tomorrow. I'm not even sure what I'm going to read. I'm probably going to make a pile tonight to pull from or I might just choose a couple series to catch up on. This is going to mean serious blogging catch up for Sunday.

Jessica, yeah, I am! I need to read them for review anyway, so I'll be reading the first three, and THEN Bree Tanner.

I'll create a post on my blog tonight before I go to bed and start the giveaway then! (:

ye thanks jessica... i got twitter..and have shown myself the way around... pretty excited.. :)

but hey...when does it start..?? give me hours from now... it's already july 20th here... 8:40 am... but goodreads showing it's still 19th.. it's no fun if i start ahead and finish ahead.. (i'll be missing most of the fun at twitter..:P )... couldn't we all start together regardless of what region we are at... and fix the time...??

Not sure how much I'll actually be able to log, but I already got a half hour in! Yay me:) Gotta pick up the boys from grandma's today...I miss them...been gone for a week, and get some VBS stuff done:) But, hoping some reading is in my future too! Question: When I use the hashtag #dustyreadathon why can't I see my tweets on the dustyreadathon page/list??? I see there are like 3 out there...am I doing something wrong? Oh well...Happy reading folks!

so my goal is to read 400 pages... Divine by Mistake is a 571 page book... i would love to finish it for the challenge... but i think i would rather complete the goal, more importantly,and so, sticking to a number that i have done before... happy reading guys..!!!

Thalia - tweet me the link for your giveaway and I'll retweet it.

Jessika - Yep, that's the idea. Great goals! I'm going to try and read three books, too.

April - I didn't get you on the official twitter list. What's your handle again?

Lilaboti - I didn't pick an exact time....I probably should have. I'll have to do that next year. I think people are just getting on twitter now. I don't think you missed the party yet! :)

aborn423...but I think you got it already! Thanks Jessica:)

OK...I'm still a bit DUH on the intricacies of twitter...I can see my tweets on my home page...and I can see Stefan, Jessica, Thalia and Lilaboti (and one other person..can't remember) on the #dustyreadathon...but not mine? Am I supposed to see mine, or just everyone else? No biggie..I can post, I just can't see it...can YOU guys see it? :)

Oh well. Are we counting audio...can't remember, if YES, then I've manage to snag bout 80 minutes so far..finished one book, hoping to finish another and get a chunk of Shannara done:) Hoping for some more time this afternoon once the kids are settled for some quite time, and I get some laundry from their "vacation" going! Happy reading all!

April, I'm not seeing your posts and I CAN see my own on there. Wonder why it's not working?

Hmmm...don't know. I can see yours? It shows I'm on the list?? I have no idea..I love technology:)

Hey! Sorry, today was/is mega busy for me, and I don't think I'll have much time to read!

Here's the link to my giveaway!
http://thaliasbooks.tumblr.com/post/2...

April - Only people following you can see your tweets because your account is private.

Got it...I can see mine if I go in a different way, but when I just search the #dustyreadathon...only everyone else's stuff comes up...no worries:) I'm just in it for the fun of it!

I was able to steal away for about 2 hours and 30 minutes total yesterday...but not really sure on the amount of pages..it's hard to tell with the kindle:) Hoping for some more time today...but I've got lots to do..Vacation Bible School starts Monday! :)

I was babysitting some sleeping kids late last night, from about 8:30pm to 11:30pm. I read the whole time, and managed to knock down about a hundred pages of The Two Towers, which was pretty good! Unfortunately, today is still super busy, so I probably won't get much in. :(

Wow you guys are rockin the readathon. I managed 66 pages even though I read for like 3 hours or something :)

I didn't get a lot of reading in last night, about 1 hour and a half, but I got in a little over 100 pages.

Jessika wrote: "Well, I think I'm about done. I'm all read-out. Total time was 4:30 and total pages was 318. Not bad!"

GREAT Job!

Ended up with 6:57 total read time (with more interruptions than usual) and total page count of 202 pages.

I would have liked a higher page count in that amount of reading, but that's ok. (BTW, April 110 of those pages was Shannara!)

Stefan wrote: "Ended up with 6:57 total read time (with more interruptions than usual) and total page count of 202 pages.

I would have liked a higher page count in that amount of reading, but that's ok. (BTW, Ap..."

That's a great number! and I was waiting for it! I knew I was in trouble when a book came in . . . so, while I didn't set any records...or even get in as much time as I would have liked...NONE of them were Shannara pages...(hanging head in shame!:) I do hope to get back to it this week while the kids are at swimming lessons...!!! I have to catch up!!! :) But...great time on your reading:)

This was loads of fun..it was nice to feel like I was in some sort of contest, even though I couldn't read as much as I would have liked! We totally need to do this again in the winter...when there's more 'couch' time :) (at least in my end of the world:)

jessica... i feel like you're the only person who's being totally honest...( no offense guys, it's like, we've got the same amount of reading done)

i am normally a fast reader...and have read 400 pages in two days time before..but i lost interest on the book after p.230...still pushed to 300...which is against my put-down rule (if you don't like a book even when u'r one-third way through, just pit it down)..but it really didn't seem worth of ruining my weekend (specially when i'm reading with others on a challange and i can't share my experiences)..so didn't get much reading on my 2nd day ( to be honest, i was so pissed that i couldn't even pick another up, i just didn't complete my 8 hrs)..and so my numbers would be 5 and a (approaximately) half hours...and 307 pages

Lilaboti wrote: "jessica... i feel like you're the only person who's being totally honest...( no offense guys, it's like, we've got the same amount of reading done)

Not quite sure what you mean by this. I kept track of all of my reading time (including when I was interrupted while reading) and my page counts in a spread sheet. Everything was recorded as it happened and is totally factual.

AND I actually had a lot of fun with it, honest!