Almost time for the readathon!

Saturday is the Dewey Readathon! For one day in April and October each year, if other obligations don’t get in the way, I spend one whole day reading. It’s always so much fun and I get a ton of reading done. Heather and Andi are the incredible ladies who help organize the whole thing and you can get more details at the official site. 

This will be my 10^th time participating in the event. TEN TIMES!!! You can see little Ollie pup above during my very first Dewey readathon in 2011 and then Ollie during my last readathon in October. He's been my cuddle buddy during each one. So for fun I tallied up the number of books and pages I read in previous Dewey Readathons. In the nine I've participated in, I read a total of 10,113 pages and 43 books! 
 

Saturday I will be reading from 8 am until whenever I fall asleep. I have my stack of books ready to go. It will be interesting to see how my first readathon with an infant goes. Sydney is three months old now and I have a feeling she's going to make reading a little trickier. 

If you're thinking about joining the fun I'd highly recommend it!

Here's a few tips that have worked for me: 

1) Pull together a stack of books in advance. I like having a wide variety of young adult novels, plays, graphic novels, mysteries, etc. I don't like diving into heavy classics during a readathon.

2) Have good snacks ready to go and plan your meals in advance. I usually go to Trader Joes and pick out a few treats (chocolate covered pretzels, guacamole, etc). Then I get a slow cooker meal ready to go the night before. Or sometimes just get something out of the freezer to thaw for dinner. I snack throughout the readathon, but not just on junk food.

3) Don't make other plans. It's way more fun to read all day and not worry about how long you have left before you have to get dressed and leave the house.

4) Set a few social media rules for yourself. The readathon community is 2/3 of the fun, but if you're on the computer all day then you definitely aren't reading. I give myself at least the first 10 minutes of each hour to cheer at other blogs, tweet, update my post, and check the new challenges, etc. After that I move away from the screen and back to the books. Figure out what works for you, maybe it's only checking in every third hour or something.

5) Possibly my weirdest tip... don't just pick out your big stack of books in advance, tally the pages and type up the authors and titles too! Instead of wasting time during the readathon, I like to make a list of the books I think I might read in advance. That way I can just pull the page count, author, etc. from that list when I'm updating my post. This is particularly helpful for audiobooks. I like to start a new audiobook (something shorter and fun) the day of the readathon. I try to finish the book during the day and I look up the page count in advance so I can keep track easily. 

Happy reading!

PAST READATHON POSTS:

April and October 2011  /  April and October 2012 / April and October 2013 / April 2014 / April and October 2015.

Photos by me.