MY PERSONAL READ-A-THON

7:00 a.m. Showered, shampooed, and ready to don my official T-shirt for this perfect Read-A-Thon weather:

A friend at Jack n’ Jill in Alvin made this T-shirt for me.

As for snacks, there’s pumpkin pie left from Thanksgiving.

First three hours:

“Devotional” from

Listened to audiobook Lord Jim

Although the narrator is very good, the subject is so dry that by the second hour, I changed to a book.

This book just gets better as it goes along.

At the end of the third hour, I took a break and read the Sunday edition of The Houston Chronicle. Reading it from cover to cover on Sunday afternoons is a personal tradition.

I fixed a huge chef salad for lunch with fresh pineapple slices for dessert.

Back to Lord Jim, and glad I didn’t eat a heavy lunch, for the story went on and on. Sure Jim had a moral dilemma on his hands, but the author agonizes over it as much as Jim does. Finally put this aside for the day.

Around 1:00 or 1:30 I read and thought about Cleo Wade’s Heart Talk, short memes, quotes, and short prose pieces about “Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life.” I found myself writing down several quotes and copying them in my quote notebook.

I decided to try the audiobooks on the Cloud Library while I began to clear away Thanksgiving decorations and replace them with Christmas ones. I didn’t get a lot accomplished, but I did enjoy the book I had selected, purely on the basis of color–pink! Pink is the next color in my Celebration of Color Challenge, so I chose:

I had discovered I really liked memoirs last spring when I required a Memoir Project of my Advanced Writing Students. I read several they had recommended as well as several reviewed by blogging friends.

After nearly an hour had passed getting into this book, I took out my Kindle and read on the third book of the series about the Dali Lama’s Cat. I made a dent in what I had left to read. I find that I can read several books simultaneously if they are as diverse as the ones I encountered today.

By then it was time to fix turkey sandwiches for supper, and I got caught up in

season 2 of Virgin River, watching one and a half episodes before I got back to reading.

I read two chapters of Cowgirl Smarts

I made an astounding discovery. The copy of the paperback I have is signed by the author to someone named Roxanne.

Next I reviewed my notes on Vesper Flights and wrote a draft of a review I will post soon on this blog

To end the Read-A-Thon, a twelve hour, not twenty-four-hour Read-A-Thon, I went back to Heart Talk to end the evening on an inspirational note.

Well, I didn’t make 24 hours, but 12 hours helped me make a dent in my TBR, logged in a black-covered book and started a pink-covered book for my Celebration of Color Challenge, and started the first book in The Classic Club challenge sponsored by Readerbuzz.

I’d call that a successful, most enjoyable day of reading.