Tag Archives: Winter Mini-Readathon

January 25, 2012 · 9:19 am

Mini-Readathon Winners!

 

Hey guys! So sorry about the change in plans yesterday, but here we are now!

OK, so the winners are listed below. If you’re a winner, I need you to email me at sarahmay227(at)gmail(dot)com so that I can confirm your email address before I send you the $5 Amazon gift card. (For those of you who are international ladies, we’ll chat more in the emails.)

OK so here are the winners!

Start-up challenge: Kristilyn at Reading in Winter

Wordle challenge: Kayleigh at Nylon Admiral

READ challenge: Belle at BookBelle

Jenn’s movie cast challenge: Laura at Devouring Texts

Wrap-up challenge: Shari at Delighted Reader

 

And the winner for Heather’s Bonus Challenge is…

Shari at Delighted Reader

 

So remember, if you’re one of the lucky gals listed above, email me! I’m getting ready to go run some errands right now, but I’ll be home this evening to reply to you guys and start sending the prizes out!

So, major thanks and kudos to Jenn & Heather, for helping out with such awesome challenges. You guys rock :-) And thank you SO SO SO MUCH to everyone who participated! It was so much fun, and I can’t wait until the Summer Mini-Readathon!

~Sarah

 

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January 22, 2012 · 10:16 pm

Winter Mini-Readathon Wrap-Up Post!

I can’t believe it’s over already! I didn’t get QUITE as much reading done as I wanted today, but I was able to read 242 out of 418 pages in Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer. And the great thing about it is that it was QUALITY reading time – no interruptions from work, people, doing laundry, etc. And I’m thinking that I’m going to go to the bookstore and buy the sequel to this book, cause I’m totally into it.

So, this is the last mini-challenge! Remember you have until 10 pm EST on Monday to complete the mini-challenges, and I’ll announce the randomly-chosen winners on Tuesday.

Thank you so so so so so much to Jenn for hosting her mini-challenge, and to Heather for hosting the bonus challenge. You guys are awesome :-)

And thank you to EVERYONE who participated today! I really enjoyed visiting your blogs & chatting with you on Twitter! And I’m going to spend some time tomorrow morning coming around to visit blogs / posts that I didn’t have a chance to visit today.

OK, so let’s do the last mini-challenge! Same as the start-up post – copy, paste, and answer the questions below either in the comments or in a blog post link in the comments.

1. How many books and/or pages were you able to read?

2. About how many hours were you able to read for? (Were there many distractions, breaks, etc?)

3. Do you have any likes/dislikes about the 12-hour readathon, compared to a 24-hour readathon?

4. Favorite and least favorite books that you read today?

5. Do you have any suggestions for things you’d like me to do differently if I host another mini-readathon?

 

And just for funsies, here are my answers…

1. How many books and/or pages were you able to read?

I read 242 pages.

2. About how many hours were you able to read for? (Were there many distractions, breaks, etc?)

Well, if you assume I read at a page her minute, then I read for about 4 hours today, lol. And of course there were distractions: the challenges, re-doing my header with Heather, food, chatting, Twitter, blogs, etc…

3. Do you have any likes/dislikes about the 12-hour readathon, compared to a 24-hour readathon?

Not in particular, I like doing these little 12-hour readathons because they’re less stressful, even with me posting challenges every few hours. I don’t have to worry about struggling to stay awake.

4. Favorite and least favorite books that you read today?

The only one I’ve been reading is Hominids, which is kinda awesome so far.

5. Do you have any suggestions for things you’d like me to do differently if I host another mini-readathon?

Well this is like me asking MYSELF, lol, but yes I do. I’m going to try to think of more exciting prizes for next time, and I’ll try to think of better ways to promote it. Although honestly, I think having a small number of people participating is actually kind of nicer than having hundreds of participants like in the 24-hour ones. I get to know you all a little better, and I feel like you guys are actually participating for the fun of it, not necessarily to win a ton of cool swag like in the big giant readathons. What do you guys think?

 

OK, so that’s it! Thanks again to EVERYONE for joining in, and I hope I see you guys next time around, probably in July! And remember to check back here on Tuesday for the challenge winners! I’m going to go catch up on my reading now :-)

~Sarah

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· 7:22 pm

Winter Mini-Readathon Challenge #4!

Hey ya’ll! So, I got a little bit more reading done - I’m on page 108 of Hominids. I’m really liking it so far, I already think I want to go buy the sequel. Sadly my sis had to go home, and then my honeyman came home and brought a friend for dinner, so we’ve been eating chicken tacos and socializing. These last 3 hours will be my best hours yet, dammit!

So, this next mini-challenge is hosted by the fabulous Jenn at Booksessed. Go there and follow her directions. Jenn’s hosted challenge counts as one of the 5 mini-challenges that you’ll be able to win a $5 Amazon gift card for. I’m going to participate too cause it looks like SO MUCH FUN (not for a prize obviously), but I’m going to do that later, after I get farther in this book that I’m reading.

Have fun!

~Sarah

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· 3:50 pm

Winter Mini-Readathon Mini-Challenge #3!

So, how’s everyone holding up? It’s officially the halfway point!

Sadly, I have no real updates. Somehow I got no reading done during the last 3 hours… I made my sister watch some funny songs on YouTube (I’m On a Boat & I’m Awesome, in cause you were wondering), we did her bonus challenge post, made some cucumber sandwiches, made more coffee, chatted, etc… This is what happens when you have two sisters who don’t get to hang out enough, and throw them together all day with food and drinks.

Anyhoo, on with the next challenge! The challenge is to use random objects around your house to spell out the word “read”, take a picture of it, post it on your blog, and then come back here to leave the link in the comments!

Here is mine…

We’re not alcoholics, I swear. The honeyman doesn’t even drink, lol, but he had all of his friends save bottlecaps for him for some game he wants to play. Lucky for me, they made this challenge easy-peasy :-) But you can use ANY OBJECTS around your house.

See you in 3 hours, when Jenn will be hosting a mini-challenge!

~Sarah

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· 2:51 pm

Winter Mini-Readathon – BONUS CHALLENGE!

Hey ya’ll, so it’s time for the surprise bonus challenge, hosted by my lovely sister Heather over at All You Need Designs!

 

 

You want to win this bookish necklace? You know you do. Head on over to Heather’s blog and follow her directions to win!

Also, you should visit her super-cool and successful Etsy shop.

OK, see ya’ll for the next mini-challenge at 4 pm EST!

 

~Sarah

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· 1:15 pm

Winter Mini-Readathon Challenge #2!

 

Hey guys, how ya doin? I’ve have a good 3 hours so far… Heather and I sat and updated my header (LOVE the V-Day theme), I started my chicken in the crockpot for chicken tacos, made some jalapeno poppers, and read 66 pages of my first book, Hominds by Robert J. Sawyer.

So, the 2nd challenge! The image you see above is a Wordle, and your challenge is to make your own and post it on your blog! Here’s how…

1. Go to http://www.wordle.net/ and click the Create button.

2. Type in a bunch of words related to the mini-readathon! Can be anything bookish, the snacks you’re having, the books in your to-read pile, anything really. A couple notes about using Wordle…

  • To make a word appear in a large font, type it several times. So to get “Mini-Readathon” to look so big up there, I typed it 3 times.
  • To get words to stay together, say for a title of a book, put a ~ between the words. So for “The Warded Man” above, I typed: The~Warded~Man
  • The more words, the better. It’ll look full and pretty.

3. After you type in all your words, be sure that that’s all (I don’t think you can go back to add more), and click the Go button. From there, you can change the layout, colors, font, etc to get it to look how you want.

4. I don’t think you can right click on the image to save it. My laptop has a feature called “Snipping Tool” that I use to take a cropped screenshot and save it to my pictures. Otherwise, you can probably use just a regular screenshot and then save it.

The post your Wordle on your blog, and come back to this post and leave a comment with the link to your Wordle post.

I’ve been very excited to do this mini-challenge, can’t wait to see the Wordles you guys make!!

~Sarah

 

 

 

 

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· 9:55 am

Winter Mini-Readathon Start-Up Post!

 

Good morning everybody! IT’S TIME!

So, let me just remind everyone how the mini-challenges / prizes are working…

There will be 5 mini-challenges today, and the prize for each one will be a $5 Amazon e-gift card (I promise I’m going to think up more exciting prizes for the next summer mini-readathon.) You have until 10 PM tomorrow (that’s US Eastern time) to enter into the challenges. I know I originally said it was until noon tomorrow, but I’m extending it. Winners will be announced on Tuesday.

The mini-challenges will be about 3 hours apart, and the bonus challenge will be just a surprise time. So it’s easiest to keep up if you have my blog bookmarked, in a feed-reader, etc.

I encourage you guys to go visit other blogs and tweet during the mini-readathon. You can see the list of other participants here, just click on the linky widget. The twitter hashtag will be #ssrminiread and if you need to reach me directly, my Twitter handle is @SarahSaysRead.

OK, LET THE FIRST MINI-CHALLENGE BEGIN!

Copy, paste, and answer the questions below, either in the comments or on your blog. If you do a start-up post on your blog to answer, come back here and leave the link to the post in the comments. MUST POST YOUR ANSWERS OR BLOG POST LINK IN THE COMMENTS TO BE ENTERED FOR A PRIZE!

1. Tell everyone three random things about yourself:
-
-
-

2. Is this your first readathon?

3. Do you have any specific goals for today? (# of books or pages to read?)

4. Do you have any specific snacks, drinks, or books planned?

5. What hours do you plan on reading during?

 

Here are my answers, as an example…

1. Tell everyone three random things about yourself:

- I drive a yellow VW Beetle.
- I have 2 tattoos.
- I hate the winter, and want to move to Hawaii.

2. Is this your first readathon?

Nope!

3. Do you have any specific goals for today? (# of books or pages to read?)

No specific goals for me! I’d like to read a few more chapters in Don Quixote, and I want to start a new book, but I haven’t decided on which yet. I’ll let you know later.

4. Do you have any specific snacks, drinks, or books planned?

Ohhhh yes. Coffee, water, juice, alcohol… Cucumber sandwiches, jalapeno poppers, artichoke dip, popcorn, etc, and chicken tacos for dinner. I know this sounds like a lot of food, but my sister Heather is reading / eating with me, so you know, it’s not SO bad, lol.

5. What hours do you plan on reading during?

I am aiming to read from 10 AM to 10 PM Eastern time, with breaks obviously to do the mini-challenge posts and stuff.

 

OK, so if you guys have ANY questions today, you can leave a comment, you can send me an email at sarahmay227(at)gmail(dot)com, or you can tweet me on Twitter @SarahSaysRead.

READY, SET…. GO!!!!

~Sarah

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January 21, 2012 · 10:36 am

Just a reminder… Mini-Readathon is tomorrow!

 

Hey guys, just a reminder that the Sarah Says Read Winter Mini-Readathon is tomorrow! Actually, it’s now 23 & 1/2 hours away, how exciting!

I’m really looking forward to reading and blogging with you guys!

For anybody who hasn’t signed up yet but wants to, click here.

See ya’ll tomorrow!

~Sarah

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January 15, 2012 · 2:55 am

Sarah Sunday!

alllllll the books!

 

Sarah updates: Hey ya’ll! So this week FLEW by. Had a comfy date night on Sunday, making a pizza and watching Terra Nova. Monday I worked at Second Job, and then it time to hang out with Amanda & L! Monday and Tuesday are a blur of family time, in which I cooked and had people over for dinner and chilled with the baby.

Fun story - On Tuesday Amanda and my mom went to get their hair done, and the MINUTE they left me alone with my darling nephew L, he pooped all the way up his back, peed on my bathroom floor, and finally after a bath fell asleep. 5-month old jerk… Yup, that’s right I’ve officially crossed a line and talked about baby poop on this here blog. But it’s important, because this is one of the thousands of reasons that I WILL NEVER HAVE CHILDREN.

Anyways, Amanda & L went home Wednesday afternoon, and I got my apartment back. I worked half days at First Job on Thursday and Friday, and on Friday morning was the annual giant book sale! My local library hosts a huge book sale in the mall once a year, and I took a half day at work just so that I could be there when it started at 10. The picture at the top is the books I came home with (minus two that I gave to the honeyman), all for only $31 in rolled change. Now I don’t feel like typing up all those titles, but the ones I’m most excited about are…

  • Wicked by Gregory Maguire – I already own this, but I got an extra copy to lend out… but it’s different than my copy & had pictures of the actual play inside, so I may hoard this one too.
  • A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire – I want to own all of the trade copies of these books, but I got the mass market copy to read until then. It was only 50 cents, so why not.
  • Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett – I was planning on reading this for the Neil Gaiman Challenge this year anyways.
  • Voyager by Diana Gabaldon – I’m starting to collect the trade copies of the Outlander series… I already own all the mass market copies, and several of the hardcovers…
  • Eon by Alison Goodman
  • A First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
  • The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander – Been wanting to read this since Jenn’s review a while back.
  • The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

And obviously a bunch more… Oh and I bought a crapload of Cliff’s Notes. When I’m reading classics, I tend to go online to Sparknotes if I’m confused about anything, or want to know more about it. So I figured I’d get some of these so that when I’m reading a classic, I don’t have to have internet access if I want to double-check something.

Anyways yes, very exciting stuff. What else… Oh right we finally have snow! And it might not melt in the next few days. I LOVE that we had practically none all the way up until mid-January, that it so rare for NY. I hate driving in snow. Anyways, after the book sale on Friday the honeyman met me at the mall for lunch, and then we did some shopping. I bought a few things at LB, and he bought some work clothes, and then he bought me something VERY exciting – Zumba 2 for the Wii! I have been wanting to try Zumba FOREVER, but the DVD’s are expensive as all hell. The game comes with the a belt to put the controller in, so you don’t have to use the Wii Fit board or anything. I’m really excited to try it this week, it looks like so much fun.

And now I’m at work, the start of an 18-hour day. Ugh. Luckily I have some food, some books (although I just realized that I forgot to bring Norwegian Wood, DAMMIT…), and the first season of Pushing Daisies. Loved that show, and I got the second season for Christmas, so I’m going to start re-watching it from the beginning.

Bookish updates: So, obviously, the book sale. Duh.

I got very little reading done this week, since Amanda & L were here. I’m still going slowly through Don Quixote. I’m still really enjoying it, but it’s super long and I’m mainly reading a couple chapters a day so that I can read other stuff as well. I started Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey, which is the book the honeyman and I are reading together this month. And still reading Norwegian Wood for the readalong, but looks like I’ll be cramming those chapters in tomorrow.

Also, the Mini-Readathon is ONE WEEK AWAY!

And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the winner of the $10 Amazon gift card for blogging about the Mini-Readathon is Belle at Book Belle! Congrats to her, and thank you EVERYBODY who blogged about it. I’m so excited and so glad that it’s almost here!

 

OK that’s it for me today… I’m gonna go start watching Pushing Daisies. Have a great Sunday!

~Sarah

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January 8, 2012 · 2:33 am

Sarah Sunday!

Sarah update: Well ya’ll, it’s been a good first week of the year!
 
First off, we are still having AWESOME weather for NY in January. It was like 50 degrees here the other day, and there’s still pretty much no snow on the ground. Loving it!
 
Anyways, me and the honeyman started 2012 with a date night :-) Last Sunday when I got out of work, we walked around the mall for a bit, then went to Red Lobster for dinner and it was soooooo good. Let’s see… Tuesday my friend Doni came over around noon and we spent the day watching Cougar Town and eating junk food (so glad I finally got someone else into that show, by the way) and then we had a game night in which I drank an entire bottle of wine by myself – making up for my lack of drinking on New Years Eve, I suppose. And I made chicken & clams linguine – basically small cooked pieces of chicken and 2 cans of clams mixed into several cans of cream of mushroom soup, over linguine. My mom used to make clams linguine all the time when we were younger and I never get to have it now, since it sounds disgusting to the honeyman. But I made some and my mom and brother came over for dinner, and it was nice.
 
And now today I’m at work and I’m going to try to read A LOT, because my little sister and L are coming into town to stay for a few days! So I’ll get basically nothing done because I’ll be too busy playing with this cute little man -
 

L & me <3

 
Look at those cheeks! They’re coming into town tonight, but I actually won’t see them until Monday. Tonight me and the honeyman are having another date night – this time we’re making pizza & watching Terra Nova on Hulu. And since I have to work at Second Job Monday morning, Amanda & L are just gonna stay the first night at my mom’s and then come over my house in the afternoon.
 
Oh, and in keeping with one of my other goals for this year, I started a quotes journal! I’ve had the journal below for a few years and now it finally has a purpose! I’ve started it off my adding some random quotes from my favorite books and songs, and I’ll add stuff as it comes up. So exciting!
 
 
 
 
 
Bookish updates:
 
So, I’ve only finished one book so far this year. The second book I started was Don Quixote, which I’m loving but it’s 940 pages with pretty small print and yeah, it’s going to take me a while. I’ve also started reading Norwegian Wood for the readalong this month – I’ve read the first 4 chapters due for this week and can’t wait to see what everyone else thinks about it. And I’ve also started It Takes a Witch by Heather Blake (AKA Heather Webber), basically because it just came out and I was so excited to read it. Plus I really wanted to read in the bath the other day, but I’m not dragging big-ass DQ in there, so yeeah. Problem solved :-) I’m hoping to get lots of reading done today.
 
 
 And if I don’t get quite as much reading done as I want, then who cares cause my Winter Mini-Readathon is just 2 weeks away! And if you post a blog telling others about the readathon, you could with a $10 Amazon gift card, as stated here. I’m really looking forward to the mini-readathon. A whole day off of work, reading & blogging & hanging out with my sis Heather, who is going to ditch her husband and kids for the day to come hang out at my house. And we’re going to drink coffee & eat food & hopefully get some reading done. It’s gonna be awesome. 
 
Oh also in bookish news, this coming Friday is the giant book sale that my local library holds at my local mall, and I’m so excited. I’ve taken a half day off of work, I’ve been exercising (seriously, doing squats and stuff in preparation for squating down to dig through the boxes of books underneath the tables), and I have a whole coffee can of loose change to roll up in coin wrappers and spend on books. I’m going to try to limit myself to spending only about $30… and any change I have left I can spend on coffee or something to top off such a great morning.
 
OK that is my big, giant, rambling post for today. Hope ya’ll have a good week!
 
~Sarah
 
 
 

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