November 29, 2009 • reading •

Sunday Salon, Post-Thanksgiving edition: Bookkeeping, Bookmarks, and more

The Sunday Salon.com
Does the holiday season take a big chunk out of your reading time? Between weekends spent shopping, decorating, and socializing and the normal daily routine, I find that I have fewer opportunities to settle down with a book, unless I can squeeze in a day off here and there (which I am doing a couple of times before Christmas, and possibly more once I know what my son’s travel plans for the holidays are). My immediate reading agenda is to get through the next couple of reviews I have scheduled, and then I really want to goof off a bit – read for the challenges I’ll be starting, and/or read just whatever I feel like. That would make it something of a reading holiday, I think!
What sort of reading plans do you have between now and the end of the year?
✩✩✩✩ Speaking of plans…the Southern California book-blogger contingent is planning to get together around noon on Saturday, December 5 at Portrait of a Bookstore in Studio City. We’ll have lunch at the adjoining Aroma Cafe, browse (maybe do some Christmas shopping?), and chat about blogging, books and whatever else comes to mind. If you can make it, we’d love to see you there! ✩✩✩✩

BOOKKEEPING: The Reading Status Report

Reviews posted this week:
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Next Reviews Scheduled:
When She Flew, by Jennie Shortridge (for TLC Book Tour December 3)
Lift, by Rebecca K. O’Connor

New to my LibraryThing “To Read” collection (current count – 252):
Thanks to Nicole at Bookreporter.com, an entire series for review, by Laura Pedersen:
New additions to the Wishlist*:
None…and that may be a good thing


Challenge Updates/Conclusions:
Read Your Own Books Challenge (RYOB 2009): Pledged 20; Read 20

Completed as of 11/24/09
I’m glad I signed on for this one, and I think liking it so much may be one reason I’m cutting back on accepting books for review. In the same spirit, but with a slightly different twist, I’ve decided to join the  2010 Reading From My Shelves Project hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea. That challenge has the additional requirement that participants must pass on their books once they’ve read them, and that’s something I normally do anyway. I will pledge to read 25 books for the challenge (which can cross with other challenges), which happens to be the just over the minimum of 20 allowed, but I’m now feeling a little more confident about a slightly bigger commitment.

Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge: Pledged 25% of books read in October and November to qualify; Read 4 out of 9 books that qualified (44%)
Completed as of 11/4/09
I guess I could have closed out this one sooner, but I wasn’t sure how much more I might accomplish in November. I did better than expected, but most of that is directly due to participating in the 24-Hour Readathon last month. I’m also choosing not to count an e-book for this challenge, since it doesn’t actually occupy a shelf.

BOOKMARKS: Reading-related Reading

It’s been a year since we lost one of our leaders…and still, the book-blogging community continues to grow and expand, and to follow her light. We still remember, and we still miss Dewey (and sadly, we can’t even access her blog archives any more…)

Considering the inclusion of “fluff” in the literary diet

A contrarian approach to a school-wide book ban

The kind of behavior that gives book bloggers a bad reputation

Thanks to Lisa at Lit and Life for the “Over the Top” Award! There’s a quiz/meme that goes with the award and I’ll get to that later, but since I’m infamously negligent about acknowledging awards, I wanted to get to this one before I got too distracted :-).

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10 comments

  1. Yes, the holidays does take a chunk out of my reading time. My husband had the week off, my son was home from school and our nephew was here, so I got very little reading done this week. We sure did have a great time, though. Congratulations on your award!

  2. My holiday season is a bit like bulimia – starving and binging. I'll go a week where I'm too busy to read, and then I'll put away three books in a day or two.

  3. Kathy – I worked Friday, and we had company all weekend, so I didn't get much reading done either – but I also have tomorrow off, so hopefully I'll have some time for it then! Glad you had a great Thanksgiving week :-).

    Trisha – I think that's a pretty good analogy for my reading at this time of year, too…but I wish it was more bingeing and less starving!

  5. Tracy (Gentle Reader) – Looking forward to seeing you too – and glad you're familiar with the place where we're meeting up! I've never been :-).

  6. Sounds like you have a good reading plan for the rest of the year, Florinda. 🙂 I haven't given it much thought other than taking it one book at a time. Or two, which is what I'm reading at the moment.

    I look forward to reading your review of When She Flew. I read that one this weekend and hope to post my review this week.

    Congratulations on completing the RYOB and Clear of Your Shelves Challenges!

    I hope you have a great week, Florinda.

  7. Wendy (Literary Feline) – Who knows if the reading will work out as planned :-)? But after this week, I will be done with tour dates for the year, I hope to have my last ARC finished, and I'll owe just one review to LibraryThing. All of the other review books I have on hand don't have date obligations, so that's a break in itself!

    Have a great week, Wendy, and hope you can make it on Saturday!

  10. Gina (Book Dragon) – I added you to the e-mail where we've been planning this, since I'm not sure who'll be coming from that direction. It would be great to meet you!

    Jill (Softdrink) – I e-mailed you, too. Give in to temptation and come on down!