And so my four weeks of read-a-thons comes to an end with Bout of Books read-a-thon #11.  And so does my vacation, and the reality of life sets in again.

I’m curious to see how many pages I read this week.  I felt I read more than each of the first three weeks, but then again, the one week I thought that I completely bombed, I actually read almost as much as the week before, so who knows?

Total pages read:  655 pages

Wow!  I’m really surprised that I didn’t make at least 700+ pages this week. So let’s calculate my overall vacation reading:

Total pages read:  2,673 pages

Total books finished:  13 books

Oooo, I like the “books finished” number, but I was really hoping to read more pages.  Oh well, between swimming and kayaking and badminton and biking and hiking and socializing, I probably did reasonably well.

How did your reading go this summer?  Do you feel that you’ve had more time to read?  Less?  Are you satisfied with your goals?

While this read-a-thon does run until September 1st, I’m cutting it short because I am going to join the Bout of Book read-a-thon from August 18 to 24th.  This will effectively take me to the end of my holidays.  Honestly I don’t want to do any read-a-thons after that, because I know my reading time will seriously decrease and to keep track of it then, will depress me. 😀

This week was sort of a weird week.  I was fully planning to get tons of reading in but I had an unexpected holiday diversion.  I (by accident) swallowed a plum pit that got lodged in my throat.  Between an ambulance ride to a health centre, water ambulance off the island, another ambulance to the hospital and an emergency gastroscopy, my reading plans were obviously interrupted.

While finding this picture of a Canadian ambulance, I got a very interesting education on ambulances.  Why are so many of them yellow (Europe)?  It seems like an odd colour to choose other than that it would be easy to spot.  

So now that I’ve shared this completely embarrassing incident, let’s get to checking how my reading did go:

Total pages read:  642 pages

Wow!  I’m completely surprised that I was able to read that much!  I must keep plugging along though; I have a couple of “in-progress for a long time” books that I’d like to finish this week.  I know my two bombs for the summer are going to be Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, that I’d really hoped to finish, but time is running out and with it, any chance to squeeze out some time to read those books, I think.  In any case, it’s probably better to focus on what I have accomplished instead of what I haven’t.   Bout of Books, here I come!

My Monster Read-a-thon is now complete.  I knew that this week would be a little disjointed as I had a small diversion from my vacation to attend a softball tournament.  So let’s see how I did compared to my personal read-a-thon of last week:

Total pages read:  657 pages

The read-a-thon was a little under my page count compared to my first week’s Personal Read-a-thon, but considering the distractions, it’s not half bad.  We’ll have guests for a couple of days this coming week, but I’m planning to ignore them to read  ………….. ha, ha, I’m kidding (I hope you all knew that!).  I’ll have to really concentrate on my reading on the days that I’m free.  For the next read-a-thon, which is the 2nd Annual Beat-the-Heat Read-a-thon, I’m hoping to complete a few more pages and a few more books.  We’ll see how it goes ………..

Well, I’ve come to the end of my personal read-a-thon and the Monster Read-a-thon starts tomorrow, so it’s time for an update of my accomplishments.

I’ve realized that in addition to the many other reasons why it’s not good to have so many books in your currently-reading pile, the fact that I have read from many of them during this time, makes listing them and calculating the page count quite a time-consuming chore.  But here is what I’ve managed to read:

Books completed:

Total pages read:  719 pages

I’m happy that I’ve completed two books, but I was hoping to get through more.  I’m going to have to be especially diligent this next week because I’ll have an interruption in my vacation plans that will make it more difficult to read.  Yet after that, I’ll be back on track and looking forward to picking up my reading pace.

Isle of Shoals Childe Hassam source Wikiart

I’m finally on holidays, and this, of course, means that I’ll have a large amount of time to devote to reading.  This is a very good thing, because my currently reading pile is embarrassingly large.  I was looking for a read-a-thon starting now and running throughout my holidays, but I couldn’t find anything that quite fit.  So I’ll be doing the following, tailoring each to fit my available reading schedule:

From July 29th to August 3rd, I’ll be doing my own personal read-a-thon.

From August 4th to 10th, I will participate in The Book Monsters, Monster Read-a-thon.

From August 11th to 17th, I’ll be participating in the second annual Beat the Heat Read-a-thon

then, from August 18th to 24th, I’ll participate in the 11th Bout of Book Read-a-thon.

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 18th and runs through Sunday, August 24th 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 11 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

Previously, I’ve only participated in one read-a-thon, and that was only for 24 hours, so I am a little perplexed as to how to tackle these longer read-a-thons.  I am so terrible with lists and focussing on specific books, that I don’t want to go that route.  Should I aim for a set number of pages?  I have no idea the average number of pages I read per day/per week.  Yikes!  So I think I’m going to set my goal at 50 pages a day (this should be easy) and raise the count when I see how I’m progressing.

As for books, as I said, I have a disconcerting number of books to complete, as well as some new ones that I want to read.  Here are some books on my list:

Currently reading:

The Guns of August – Barbara Tuchman

New Books:

I’ll update when I’m able, but the plan is to read, read, read.  So, happy summer reading to everyone!

** Edited to include the Monster Read-a-thon, kindly suggested by Masanobu at All the Pretty Books **