Read-a-Thon: 4-Hour Update

So 4 hours have passed and I'm having a blast. I'm sitting outside on our porch swing reading away. Here's my summary:

8-9am - 70 pages on The Adoration of Jenna Fox; completed mini-challenge #1
9-10am - 66 pages total on The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Love Your Body, Love Your Life
10am-11am - talked on phone and with DH, read 39 pages on The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Love Your Body, Love Your Life
11am-12pm - 70 pages on The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Love Your Body, Love Your Life.

Total Pages: 245 pages
Books Read: 0

I'll update again in four hours on the blog and tweet my hourly totals. Off to check out the read-a-thon blog for hour 5 and then a quick lunch!

Read-a-thon Mini-challenge #1

Our first mini-challenge for you is the Hour 1 meme that Darcy wrote up a few read-a-thons ago.

Where are you reading from today? Coastal NC where it's warm and cloudy and I'm heading out to the porch swing in a few minutes.

3 facts about me … I'm 35; I have two boys who love to read; I will read just about anything

How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? Around 20

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)? No not really - just want to read, post, read blogs and have a good time.

If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, Any advice for people doing this for the first time? It's my first time so no advice yet.

Go here to see more answers to this meme!

Read-a-thon starting post

Okay - it's 8am and I'm ready to start. I have a plan and the plan is this:

• 1 chapter of a non-fiction book per hour
• The rest of the hour is devoted to whatever fiction book I'm reading at the moment.
• Tweetdeck is running and I'll keep up with updates there
• I will also spend about 10 minutes per hour blog-surfing
• I'll update on twitter hourly
• I'll blog from time-to-time
  

Other than that I have no rules for myself - just read, snack, blog and enjoy.

I'm starting with The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

Book choices for the Readathon

As a pre-readathon (it's less than 12 hours away) post. I thought I would show my stacks of books I'm choosing from for the read-a-thon. No I don't think I can read all of these, not even near this number but I wanted a lot to choose from. They are all residing on my dining room table and I am sure when DH gets home from hunting in a little while he'll think I got them all in the mail today (I just received one book today and it's not in these piles). So here goes.

First my to-be-reviewed pile - these all have review dates soon, so I need to be working on these:
Next is my to-be-reviewed soon, but not immediately.
Next are books that are due back to the library (Take One - Karen Kingsbury, Maze of Bones - Rick Riordan, The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Hard Eight)
A couple of books for filler - Dairy Queen and The Clique
A few more books for filler - I love booksfree and these are the recent young adult selections from there.

That's it - I won't swear I won't find other books to read, but this is my pile right now. Now to decide what to start with in the morning.

See you at 8am EDT!

ARC Arrival: The Merchant Kings by Stephen R. Bown

The Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World 1600-1900 by Stephen R. Bown

Publisher: D&M Adult
Release Date: September 1, 2009
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 336

I received this from Raz Godelnik of Eco-Libris for their new green lit campaign: "It's Time for a Green Book": 1 Day, 100 bloggers, 100 green books, 100 reviews coming up on November 10th.

About the Book:

An engaging blend of biography and economic/colonial history, "Merchant Kings" tells the story of the trading companies that monopolised vast territories all over the world during the first great period of globalisation. The leaders of these trading companies exercised dictatorial power over millions of people, and devoted their time and resources to the accumulation of wealth through hunting, trapping, trade and exploration. It was a harsh existence on the frontiers of the civilised world, and these kings of commerce were larger-than-life characters; adventurers as well as merchants. They included men like Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of the Dutch West India Company; Cecil Rhodes, founder of the De Beers company (and after whom Rhodesia was named); and George Simpson, the infamous 'Little Emperor' of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was chauffeured around his vast fur domain in a giant canoe, exhorting his oarsmen to paddle harder in order to set canoeing speed records. "Merchant Kings" examines their rise and fall in the centuries before colonialism and empire, analysing the political, social and cultural legacies of this fascinating, cut-throat age.

About the Author
Stephen R. Bown is the author of Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver (2008); Scurvy (2003), published in six territories, and A Most Damnable invention: Dynamite, Nitrates and the Making of the Modern World (2005). He lives in Canmore, Alberta.

ARC Arrival: Kissing Games of the World by Sandi Kahn Shelton

Kissing Games of the World by Sandi Kahn Shelton

Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
Release Date: November 10, 2009
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 336

I received this from Priya Srinivasan at Random House Books and I will be holding a giveaway to go along with the review of the book the second week in November.

About the Book:

If there’s one point that Jamie McClintock and Nate Goddard can agree upon, it’s that love is overrated. Jamie doesn’t have time for it. Nate doesn’t need it. And they certainly don’t want it from each other.

Jamie, a struggling free-spirited artist, is a devoted single mother who hasn’t been in a serious relationship since her boyfriend abandoned her after their son was born. Nate, a charismatic jet-setting salesman, is widowed and estranged from his father and five-year-old son, Christopher. Jamie would rather glue glitter to pinecones than go out on a date. Nate spends most of his nights wooing his clients. Then one afternoon Nate’s father drops dead of a heart attack. In that moment, their highly guarded worlds collide.

When Nate shows up at his childhood home to settle the estate and reclaim his son, he discovers that Jamie has been living in the Connecticut farmhouse as his father’s roommate. Mistrustful of each other’s motives, Nate and Jamie bicker about everything from children’s nicknames to Jamie’s fashion choices to Nate’s home renovation methods. It doesn’t help that Christopher prefers Jamie to his absentee father.

But after the funeral, Nate and Jamie begin to see each other in a more forgiving light. Nate, traveling to sales conferences all over the country with a sullen Christopher in tow, learns he can’t breeze his way through single parenthood. Jamie, who has moved back in with her sister, wonders at the wisdom of her unconventional choices as a woman with a child to support. And both begin to realize they don’t know as much about love as they thought. Still wounded by past heartbreak and sorrow, can they learn to trust each other and open their hearts?

Review: Would I Lie to You by Cecily Von Ziegesar (Gossip Girl)

Would I Lie to You by Cecily von Ziegesar


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another fun Gossip Girl romp.

This one finds most of the crowd out in the Hamptons with Serena and Blair functioning as live-in muses for the talented fashion designer, Bailey Winters. However they weren't expecting to meet their own trashy doubles. Hijinks, Blair and Serena-style, quickly follow and are quite fun.

Nate is still working for his coach trying to earn his diploma and trying to stay away from the coach's very tanned wife.

Vanessa is still chasing around her new charges as a nanny and when she gets a chance to go to the Hamptons and escape life with Dan for a little bit she jumps at it. But the Hamptons aren't really Vanessa, are they.

What follows is a fun book. It was one of the more enjoyable in this series and that is saying something since I enjoy all of them. It's just fun fiction and that's what I take from it. Just mindless entertainment and I love revisiting the characters that make up the Gossip Girl series.

I received this book with my Booksfree.com subscription.

Challenges:
100+ Book Challenge
Fall Into Reading Challenge 2009
Countdown Challenge 2010