Read-a-Thon: I Made It!

The Final Numbers

Pages read: 1,008 - goal met!

Books finished: 4

Crossed by Ally Condie
Dead Inside: Do Not Enter by Lost Zombies
A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant
How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

Other books read: 2

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy #3) - abandoned
Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian (Midnight Breed #2) - started

I'll have mini reviews of the finished books in the coming week.  And now for the traditional end of event questionnaire!

1.  Which hour was most daunting for you?
Hour Seven landed at 3 am my time and I had a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open.

2.  Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?
Dead Inside was a wonderful change of pace.  Being a graphic novel (of sorts) it was easy on the eyes and going through all the personal notes felt a naughty in a wonderful way.  A Lady Awakened seemed to read itself and I recommend it to anyone who likes romance or regency era tales.

3.  Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?
I was bothered that email address are required in comments for many of the mini challenges.  I don't like putting my addy in plain text... I suppose I could get a throwaway account for that sort of thing but it just skeeved me out.

Also, I was put off by all the references to the time in the US - saying that a contest ends at 1 am Eastern makes most people do mental math into their own time zone.  Not so bad for someone in North America, but it adds several mental hoops for people in Europe or over the International Date Line in Asia like me.  It doesn't help that Japan doesn't have daylight savings time... that changes back in October, doesn't it?  Was it before or after Halloween?  Way too easy to mess up by an hour.  Why not just say, "This contest will be open until the end of Hour 18" instead?

4.  What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon?
I liked how the posts on the main blog were often up a few minutes early - if I came to the end of a chapter at x:56 I knew I could refresh and get my blogging out of the way.

5.  How many books did you read?  &  6.What were the names of the books you read?
See above.

7.  Which book did you enjoy most?
Probably A Lady Awakened.

8.  Which did you enjoy least?
How Reading Changed My Life; I ranted about it in Hour Twenty Four.

9.  If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders?
n/a

10.How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?
To be honest I'm not sure.  I learned a lot in the past 24 hours - that I can read 1,000 pages in a day if I want, that I don't miss my usual internet distractions if the books are good enough, and that simply upping the text size one notch lets me read for much longer without eyestrain on my ipad.  If I could have a do over though I would sleep a full six hours after finishing Crossed in the 2 am hour.  That way I wouldn't have lost so much of my morning to drowsiness.

There was another challenge I saw floating around in my blog travels - aiming for 24 hours of reading in a 48 hour period.  This strikes me as much more sane and enticing, and something I would rather try than another read-a-thon.