Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

That’s a wrap on our first read-a-thon of 2020!

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?

You're welcome to go back and do any of the challenges/games you're interested in that you may have missed! And badges will be posted soon!

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
5 books for a total of 1318 pages.

2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
exceeded them, since I had hoped to finish three books.

3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
I did. It was interesting to watch the categories click off and kept me focused on getting the reading in where I could.

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
The Water Dancer

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
I think you guys do an amazing job.

6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
When possible. I have done three of them now and enjoyed them.

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
I read 1,958 pages and listened to six hours of audio
My books completed:


Not completed but used for audio hours:


Completed with the girlies for page counts:


2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
I didn't expect to read so much, LOL!! Biggest distractions were 2 days of migraine, sick kids, housework piling up that I was (trying) to ignore, and a fun day off from reading with the girls on Saturday... but that wasn't distracting :-)

3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
I had so much fun. I enjoyed working with the team ( Lucky Charms), and ticking off a bunch of prompts for all of my challenges and playing most of the games.

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
and and

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
No way! It's always great! I don't know how you mods do it. I did miss the pictures of how far we traveled in pages, and also the collective cover quilt, so I'm hoping they make in an appearance in one of this years read a thons

6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
Of Course !!

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
Finished 15 books, plus...a large number of picture books. I read 3546 pages, plus about eight hours of audio, but tbh I'm still reading (it's only 5pm in my time zone), so I estimate around 3800 total by the end of tonight?

2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
I did! I'm very much a mood reader, so while I was confident I'd hit my goal of number of books (I wanted to read 5... and... boy did I), I was less positive I'd end up actually finishing the specific books I meant to finish. But I finished the last one on my list this morning, and I'm pretty pleased with that.


3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
I had a lot of fun! I haven't done a team-based reading challenge like this before, I really enjoyed that aspect.

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
I had two especially great reads - Red, White and Royal Blue, which I know everyone and their mother have read and loved already, but I'm late to the party, and Interior Chinatown, which I'd been waiting for for mooonths and which I just absolutely loved.

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
Honestly, I don't have any ideas - the person above me mentioned that previous readathons had some visual elements that sound fun!

6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
Yep!

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
I finished 7 books and read/listened to 2048 pages (converted audio to pages)

2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
Yes, I wanted to finish 7 books and I did! I had a couple days where I only listened to books because I had vertigo - ugh.

3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
It was fun working with Team Fruit Loops and just reading more than usual.

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
I had three 5-star reads:
The Woman in the Window
What the Wind Knows
The Hours Before Dawn

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
The readathon was great! Thank you, Mods for all you do.

6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
Yes

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
I finished 5 books and just under a third of the way through my sixth, for a total of 1721 pages.

2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
I don't really set huge goals for read-a-thons, so I guess? Looking back at my kick-off post, I'd said I had a list of 4 or 5 books that I wanted to read, and I read a total of 5. Not 100% sure if they were the same books that I was originally thinking of, but I count that as goal accomplished.

In terms of distractions, I completely jinxed myself on Saturday by saying that should have been my busiest day. I ended up having a horrible week generally, with personal life stuff for the first half, and a nasty cold for the second. At least being sick gave me plenty of time to read.

3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
To be honest, I felt a bit disconnected from this read-a-thon compared to others in the past, but I think that was mostly on me and the week I had than on the event itself. I had a lot of fun reading, but felt bad that I didn't contribute as much to my team as I wanted. Thanks to my amazing team for keeping up with my posts in the thread and adding them to the spreadsheet for me!

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
They were all 4 star reads for me so it's hard to pick a favourite. I guess if I had to pick one, it would be No One Here Is Lonely, which I considered upping to a 5.

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
I really like the daily games, and would love to see those again in the future. The only thing that I really didn't try this time around was the individual challenge, because I just couldn't wrap my head around how it worked and it seemed like a bit time-consuming to track.

I don't really have a suggestion specifically, but I always find it a bit tricky to keep up with the team challenges because things happen so fast. I generally can check-in once when I get home from work (when I haven't started reading yet), and again at the end of the evening to track what I've read, but by then it feels too late. Again, this is probably an issue that's more on me than on the structure of the challenges, so I'm not sure if it really needs to change or I just need to approach my participation differently.

6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
I hope so because I usually have a lot of fun with them, so I always intend to participate if I think I will have the time to devote to it.

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
I finished 4 books, and read 1152 pages which included 10.6 audiohours, and 2.8 audiohours that weren't included in the pages (this is how much I'd listened to before the rest of my team smashed the top level of audiohours for wild cards - so after that we converted and included our audiohours into pages read).

2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
I didn't actually have any goals. But the read-a-thon time was full of distractions - chores, a trip to take my mum to visit a friend in hospital, work, packing to go away for a long weekend, travelling, unpacking, swimming, walking, spending time with family, and then repacking and travelling home!! I knew these 2 weekends and the week between was never going to be a time to shut my life down and just read!

3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
I did have fun - I always enjoy working as a team to achieve things for the read-a-thons.

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
Probably The Secret Runners of New York by Matthew Reilly. I don't think I've read a Matthew Reilly I haven't enjoyed, but I wasn't sure about this one, but it was great!

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
No suggestions - I don't know how you moderators come up with ideas like this - just reading it the first day did my head in!! Loved the inclusion to track audiobook hours as well as print books/ebooks to gain wildcards!

6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
Yes!

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
I finished 6 books (two were started before the readathon), read 1095 pages and listened 10.5 hours of audio.



2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
Yes, even though I felt like I didn't get much reading time in during the week.

3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
Yes, I liked doing the games this time round.

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
Goldilocks by Laura Lam

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
More of an observation, and it might have just been my reads, but I did find the team challenge prompts a bit hard to fit my books to. They were really creative, and I think most people managed to get the author initials to work. The wildcards from pages/hours was a good idea, as otherwise I would have felt like I wasn't contributing much. So if we did the same format again, I'd like to see some items that we are highly likely to find on a cover or within the text.

6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
Sure.

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
7 books, 1281 pages, plus 14 hours of audio

2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions? I met my goal of books but I didn't read as many pages as I might have. One distraction was following all the threads here! But I enjoyed that.

3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts? I enjoyed the daily games and also being part of a team

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon? Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - written almost 100 years ago was a real hoot

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons? The amount of work the Mods do on this, as well as the seasonal challenges and the yearly challenge is incredible! You are so creative and dedicated. I noticed we mostly used Author Initials, so maybe some different categories would allow us to vary that. Using print books and audiobooks, there was no easy way for me to search for words in the text, for instance.


6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons? Yes, it got me to read several short books that I wouldn't have read and ended up enjoying. Plus I liked being part of a team. I just joined this group maybe a month ago and I feel like I got to know people.

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
I finished two books and 926 pages.

2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
Yes, I did! I aimed to read 900 pages.
My distraction was a book hangover. After finishing two books at the start of the read-a-thon, I couldn't really get into any of the other books I was reading.

3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
Yup, I did. I liked the Progress Thread and seeing how many pages others have read since it pushed me to meet my goal on the last day of the read-a-thon.

4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. Used it for ATY prompt 7. A book set in the southern hemisphere - Sydney

5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
Maybe make an easier individual challenge? I thought this read-a-thon's individual challenge was kind of hard.

6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
Yes. :)

Kudos to all the mods for organizing this!

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read? 2 books and 747 pages
2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions? I wanted to read a small book also. Work got in my way and I took a side consulting job that took my attention away for a whole Saturday.
3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts? I always have fun. Doing the group challenge is always fun and it amazes me how much everyone reads in a week.
4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon? Hidden Bodies
5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons? I enjoy the different types of group games the moderators come up with.
6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons? yes

1. How many books did you finish? How many pages did you read?
I finished 5 books, 2 of them I had started before the RAT and were at about 10-15% read. I read 350 pages and listened to 26 hours of audiobooks.
2. Did you meet your reading goals? What were your biggest distractions?
Yes and no - I did read at least 4 books, that was my official reading goal. My silent goal was to read more physical books and at 350 pages, I'm a bit disapointed, but it was a busy week... My bigest distraction was work
3. Did you have fun? What were your favorite parts?
Yes I did, the team challenge was my favorite part.
4. What was your favorite read of the read-a-thon?
Oh I'm really bad at picking favorite books. Let's just say they were all 3,5-4,5 stars for me.
5. Do you have any suggestions for how to make the read-a-thon better for next time? What would you like to see more of in future read-a-thons?
I have no suggestions. I want to thank the mods for the whole organisation, the tasks, the daily games! This was my first RAT and it was a lot of fun, but I know it was a lot of work for you, so a big Thank you from me!
6. Do you plan to participate in future group read-a-thons?
Yes, yes, can't wait