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 At the beginning of the fourth hour:
| Number of Books |
1 |
| Pages Read |
305 |
| Time Spent Reading |
2:35 |
| Time Spent Blogging |
0:24 |
I think I might start taking hourly breaks. It’s easier to catch up on Google Reader. I have now completed Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I haven’t done either of the mini challenges yet. I guess I’m not really very creative and I didn’t know some of the book covers!
I’m now going to start Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. Thanks for all the comments so far, everyone! I’m trying to return some, but I really want to get back to reading.
How I’m doing so far:
Number of Books: 1
Pages Read: 218
Time Spent Reading: 1:56
Sorry if that’s formatted a little weird, but it’s easier for me to copy from Excel!
And for the intro meme:
Where are you reading from today?
I’m in York, UK, in a teeny little dorm room since I’m an international grad student. It’s lovely outside, but I’m immersed in a book!
3 facts about me …
- I’m a grad student in medieval studies but very much looking forward to the end of my program in September 2009!
- I’m engaged to the best person in the world.
- I’ve been looking forward to the Read-a-Thon ever since I couldn’t participate in the last one in October!
How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours?
Um, maybe 10? I would go count but my mom called. That’s why I’m taking a break! I don’t plan on reading them all.
Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)?
I’d really like to read 4 books. Actually I’d like to read more than that, but I’m not sure if it’s going to happen.
If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, Any advice for people doing this for the first time?
This is my first time! If you have tips, please feel free to leave them in the comments!
I’m going to go comment and tweet for a little while! I hope to finish in the next couple of hours Old Man’s War and move on to something else. I don’t know what yet though! I will let you know.
I’m all set to go! Here are my final book selections for your perusal:
 That one you can’t see is Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris, in case I just love Dead Until Dark. I also threw in two last-minute review selections. Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales is a book of short stories that I’m really looking forward to and I thought it might work for in-between-book reading. I Had To Row Across the Ocean is now titled A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean. I don’t know if it will make for good Read-A-Thon reading but it was released on April 7th and I’ve had it for months so I should probably get cracking.
Saying that, I’m planning on starting with Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I have just waited too long to read this book. I had to resist picking it up all week. The romance novels will probably wait until tonight when I can’t think very well. I really doubt I’m going to make the 24 hours, but if I do fall asleep I hope I will wake up before 1 pm tomorrow so I can sneak in some more reading tomorrow morning. I would like to read at least 4 books in the next 24 hours.
You’ll be able to find me on twitter every few hours throughout the day and night unless I fall asleep. I’m keeping up through Tweet Grid, so if you don’t attach #readathon to your post or @ me, I will probably not be seeing your tweets today. I expect to post after I’ve finished a book or if I need a break, maybe every 2-3 hours, so you can find me here for that as well.
Still not sure what I’m talking about? Dewey’s 24 hour Read-a-Thon is described right here.
 From the back cover:
On a train filled with quietly sleeping passengers, a young man’s life is forever altered when he is miraculously seen by a blind man. In a quiet town, an American teacher who has lost her Japanese lover to death begins to lose her own self. On a remote road amid fallow rice fields, four young friends carefully take their own lives – and in that moment they become almost as one. In a small village, a disaffected American teenager discovers compassion after a strange encounter with an enigmatic red fox, and in Tokyo, a girl named Love learned the deepest lesson about its true meaning from a coma patient lost in dreams of an affair gone wrong.
From the neon colors of Tokyo, with its game centers and karaoke bars, to the bamboo groves and hidden shrines of the countryside, these souls and others mingle, revealing a profound tale of connection – uncovering the love we share without knowing.
Wow. This is exactly the book I was looking for when I picked it up. This really is an unbelievably beautiful tale of the connections between people and how all of our stories intertwine in the most meaningful of ways, while invoking Japanese culture with which I was unfamiliar but which suits these quiet stories perfectly. It’s almost like an interconnected book of short stories in which each builds upon the next, returning to some characters and not others. Each strand of the novel shows us a particular aspect of love and when woven together, form a stunning tapestry and a beautiful book.
At first, I was perplexed when between chapters, the book switched narrators and from 1st to 3rd person. In the next chapter, it switched again. So it took me a little while to realize how this book was structured, and some chapters do have an adjustment period of their own. Often the connections between characters aren’t explicit and are slowly revealed through clues, which I liked a lot; a chapter halfway through the book will mention characters from the first, for example.
This book also contains a little bit of magical realism. Deceased appear as ghosts to those whom they loved. There are Japanese curses and even what seems to be a shape-shifting fox. All of it fits, though, and I found made the novel even richer with culture than it would have been otherwise.
Is this a sad novel, given that a few of the stories focus on suicide and many on death? In some ways, yes. It’s even deeper than that, though, as it shows us how many people from all different walks of life can feel the exact same thing without realizing it. That’s where the title comes in; all these people share love without knowing. I can’t say it made me sad, though. It made me thoughtful and it astonished me with its power.
I loved this book. I’m so grateful to author Christopher Barzak for sending me this copy and I sincerely hope that he gains a wider audience. This may be my favorite book so far this year. It’s one of those quietly stunning books that I fall in love with every single time. As a result, I would recommend it to everyone.
Buy The Love We Share Without Knowing on Amazon.
 Yesterday, April 15th, was Tax Day here in the U.S., which means lots of lucky people will get refunds of over-paid taxes.
Whether you’re one of them or not, what would you spend an unexpected windfall on? Say … $50? How about $500?
(And, this is a reading meme, so by rights the answer should be book-related, but hey, feel free to go wild and splurge on anything you like.)
Oh, I am not one of them. I owed on taxes this year despite the fact that I am in massive amounts of education debt. If I did get that extra bit of money, though, I’d either save it because I’m ridiculously frugal or I would buy some books. It would depend on my employment status.
I might also buy some DVDs. I really wouldn’t protest if someone dropped Season 2 of LOST in my mailbox. =)
Now, if I got a huge windfall, I’d go on holiday. I’m really close to tons of places that I’d love to go. There are many, many sites of interest in Scotland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and parts of eastern Europe that I’d visit, and I’ve always wanted to go to Russia. I’d do the cheap student thing and go around in hostels, but since I’m going to be living here for a while and hopefully making money, Keith and I plan on proper vacations to all my places of interest. It isn’t too expensive from this jumping-off point. Just have to get through all the visas first.
 When her mother died and her father forced her sister to marry a horrible man, Faith Westcott abandoned her trust in God and set about placing trust in herself, becoming a female pirate known as The Red Siren. Dajon Waite, a lieutenant in the King’s Navy and captain of his own ship, is set on catching pirates, especially The Red Siren, who stole his ship five years ago and turned his life into chaos. When Faith’s father asks Dajon to take his daughters as wards while he is gone, something has to snap.
Before I begin this review, I’d like to say that I’m not a Christian, although I was raised Catholic and most of my family is. Had I known this book was Christian romance, I wouldn’t have requested it from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. I didn’t look closely enough at the publisher’s website and know better now. For the perspective of a Christian, Amy’s review is wonderful.
Actually, I’d have found this book vastly enjoyable were it not for what were, in my opinion, a few of those Christian elements. I read plenty of books with Christian characters and which deal with questions of faith, and none of that bothers me, but this one seemed a little preachy and almost suggests that without faith in God, a person cannot succeed or be happy in any way. It’s a fatal flaw of Faith’s that she has lost her trust in God, but I couldn’t figure out what would have happened differently had she kept her trust in God. Would she have not resorted to piracy, never met or interested Dajon, and ended up marrying the creep? I think, maybe, if I were a Christian this wouldn’t bug me at all, so I’m chalking this part up to just my lack of faith. It’s a Christian book, so it’s not catering to the doubting.
What did really get to me were some supernatural phenomena that had me rolling my eyes and knocked me out of the book completely. I’ve always been taught that it’s a matter of trust. God isn’t going to send a lightning bolt down to save anyone because it doesn’t work that way; you have to trust. Even my mom found that part strange and as I said, she’s Catholic.
That said, I really liked the story and I really liked the characters. I liked the role reversal between the lady pirate who doesn’t follow the rules and the law-abiding captain; it’s a definite change from the dangerous man/rake stereotype in romance. The book ends in a little cliffhanger and I really want to know what happens. I just don’t know how much I can take of the preaching in order to get there. I probably shouldn’t be reading this type of book at all and I acknowledge that, so I hope others can enjoy this book more than I did. I do think that if you are religious and enjoy reading about people embracing their faiths, with a great story and romance attached, this would be a book for you.
Buy The Red Siren on Amazon.
 Inspired by Trish’s post earlier today, I thought I would share a few of my recent crochet projects, little amigurumi dolls from the book Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden. I saw this book on Amazon and knew I had to try making these!
I’ve been crocheting for as long as I can remember. It’s pretty much the only crafty talent I have. I actually have no idea when I started; all I know is that my mom and my grandma taught me and I crochet righty even though I’m a lefty. I tried to switch once I realized I was doing it wrong, figuring my stitches might be neater if I was using my dominant hand, with the help of a crochet book my future mother-in-law gave me, but it seemed crazy and difficult, so I’ve continued doing it backwards. Mostly I’ve crocheted blankets, flowers, and pillow covers that adorn my parents’ house, so when I learned about amigurumi, I was really excited. Something different! Yay!
I needed a little help getting these projects started. They use a magic circle rather than what I normally start out with to crochet in the round, but a video tutorial I found here really helped.
My first project was a little ninja for my fiance:
 He was pretty easy to make! He was also one of the beginner projects. Apologies for the crappy flash, but you couldn’t see his sash without it. The next guy I made was a businessman doll for my dad to take to work with him.
 I also made a little trojan warrior and a vampire before I had to actually do schoolwork again.
 I’m really looking forward to making more. I don’t have the book with me anymore, but I have requested a couple from the local library. I’m also thinking about getting back into knitting, which I have actually forgotten how to do. It’s fun to devote time to something and have a tangible result at the end of it, so unlike the feel of all my grad school work these days!
Are you crafty? What do you make?
 Questions: Have you explored the different styles? Have you customized any of the styles? If so, what are your favorite customized items (isbn, Dewey Decimal, Reviews, Book-Swap, etc)?
I use the style B with some modification, but in a strange way that suits probably only me. I chose it because I like to see my book covers. The rest of the style is purely for my own needs. I like to use LT to keep track of recent reads and I normally sort my books by their entry date into LT. This is because I read books that I’ve entered recently more frequently than books that are a couple of years old, so with my massive TBR tag, it’s easier to find what I’m looking for and browse what I probably have with me. So I have columns for the picture, author, title, tags, entry date, read date, and social info. I use my read date column for when I add reviews. It’s easy to sort my latest “read 2009″ tag by date read to add in my latest reviews because usually they’re in some sort of order. It also makes my yearly reading list accessible for when I’m not with my computer.
I modified a few of the other styles, but I almost never switch to them, so this one really suits me best!
 Aged only thirteen, Lady Eleanor de Clare is contracted into marriage by her father to Hugh le Despenser in order to pay a debt. Though nervous, especially on her wedding night, she and Hugh quickly fall in love. When her brother dies, Eleanor comes into a much greater inheritance than she or her comparatively lower status husband ever expected. As the niece of the king, Eleanor places Hugh in a position of great power and as he begins to take advantage of that, Eleanor’s loyalty is tested as she discovers what it’s like to be the wife of a traitor and the beloved niece of a failed king.
This is one big, thick book. I liked that each chapter heading had the months and years covered because otherwise it would have been difficult to keep track of just how much time passes between events and there is a handy guide to all of the historical figures right at the beginning of the book. This is necessary to cover Eleanor’s life and relations. The author keeps to the more interesting parts, so while the book is long, the plot doesn’t bog down even when it moves more slowly and it isn’t too hard to keep track of who is who.
By the end, I grew quite fond of the characters, particularly Eleanor. I found it impossible to like Hugh though. I know way too much about what he did, and I’m sure my opinion of him is colored by a particular professor’s attitude, to ever feel much sympathy for him. I did feel sorry for Eleanor. To me, it seems perfectly logical that Hugh would hide his nefarious doings from his wife, especially given they didn’t see each other all that often once he became powerful.
I was surprised by feeling sorry for Edward II. I always have to some extent but never considered what his personality may have been like, mostly just thought of him as a very poor king. In any case, I could still feel for Eleanor and understand why she loved such men, which I thought was quite impressive considering I formed my opinion of these particular historical figures years ago. I did find one of her acts particularly unlikely and a little off-putting, but given the author says in the end note that there was a rumor about it at the time, I can’t argue with it except to say that if I was Eleanor I would NOT have done that. There was another rumor that I was hoping wouldn’t turn up, but it did. I know this is horribly vague, but I don’t want to give the story away. I can say that from what I know, Susan Higginbotham has done a terrific job with historical accuracy, and even if I squirm away from certain things or wouldn’t include them personally, there is basis for all of them. There is also one of those author’s notes which I love so much at the back of the book explaining what’s real and what’s not.
So, now that I’ve ranted on about history, did I actually like the book? Yes, I did. It’s excellent for a historical saga and if you’re interested in medieval England in fiction, I’d highly recommend this work. Convincing characters, historical accuracy, deep plot with a fair share of scandal and excitement that kept my attention despite being long and familiar; this book is historical fiction worth reading.
Buy The Traitor’s Wife on Amazon.
For more reviews, check out the other blogs on this tour:
To all of you who celebrate, Happy Easter! When I was little, Easter was my favorite holiday. According to my mom, I wouldn’t leave the mall until I’d seen the Easter bunny – every time! I’m used to Easters away from my family, though, because my undergrad university, Brandeis, had vacations mainly for Jewish holidays, so I always had Passover off, but spent Easter weekend at school since we rarely had more than Good Friday off. This year is no different; instead I’m spending the day with my fiance and a library copy of Tournaments in England from 1100-1400 by Juliet Barker. Exciting stuff, isn’t it? =)
Actually, what I’m really excited about is next weekend’s 24 hour Read-a-Thon. I never got involved while Dewey was alive and I regret that, so I’m throwing myself into this one with quite a bit of excitement. I’ve always been good at marathon reading – I used to pride myself on the numbers of books I could read when home sick – and I’m hoping I can both knock a few titles off my TBR pile and have a lot of fun. I’ll have quite a bit of work to do this week to free up those 24 hours, but I bet it will be worth it! My fiance has made me a spreadsheet so I can keep track of my time, books and pages read without much effort and I’ve got a neat little stack of books waiting. I’ll probably only add to it as this week goes on just to give myself more choices, though. At the moment, I have:
- Ender’s Shadow, Orson Scott Card
- It Happened One Autumn, Lisa Kleypas
- Oakleaf Bearers, John Flanagan
- The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever, Julia Quinn
- Old Man’s War, John Scalzi
- Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
- And Only to Deceive, Tasha Alexander
- Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
- The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
So far, I’ve attempted to pick books that aren’t serious and aren’t too deep or that I’m very, very excited about reading, with lots of choices in case one doesn’t grab me. I’d have more YA, but don’t have much with me, so I think a trip to the library may be in order before Saturday. I haven’t included any review copies since I think they require more attention than I’ll be able to give them while sleep-deprived and with several books going around in my brain at once.
Are you taking part in the Read-a-Thon? Any exciting books on your list or advice for a first-timer?
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