Hour 24 – See You in October

Oh my goodness, you guys, this has been a blast! Thank you so much to everyone who participated and to the amazing ladies who volunteered, whether through co-hosting, Twitter Party Hosting, Mini-Challenge Creators, Goodreads Co-Mods… you were all so amazing and a delight to work with.

We do have our final Reading Sprint this hour on the Goodreads Group. So please join us as well try to sprint to the finish line and go out on a bang!

As we announced in April, our next readathon will be hosted October 24th, so mark your calendars!

Please keep your eye out in the coming weeks for a post for Volunteers. We will be needing all kinds of volunteers for the next readathon. We would love to have some volunteers to write warm up posts, volunteer prizes, host mini-challenges, and co-hosts on the blog. In the meantime, please take a moment to fill out the end of event survey and enter the books you read into the Database. Thank you for spending some time reading with us!

Closing Survey

1. How would you assess your reading overall?
2. Did you have a stategy, and if so, did you stick to it?
3. What was your favorite snack?
4. Wanna volunteer for our next event? Stay tuned for the recap post!

Link up below or leave a comment!

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels

Hour 23 – Bullying in Judy Blume’s “Blubber” by Lordy Belance

In her book Blubber, Judy Blume sheds light on the unfortunate reality that is bullying. According to the section “Judy Blume talks about writing Blubber,” Blume got the idea of writing this book after a girl in her daughter’s fifth grade class was bullied by the class leader (who is similar to Wendy).  Like Rochelle, Blume’s daughter was quiet and observant. She did not know what to do about the bullying. Therefore, Blume wrote Blubber with the purpose of encouraging bullied children and bystanders to tell a trusted adult what is going on, and to get children and adults to have more conversations with each other to help each other out. 

Book Summary: Almost everyone in Mrs. Minish’s class, including the protagonist Jill Brenner, picked on Linda Fischer because of her weight. They called her Blubber (a word they learned from her report on whales; blubber is the fat inside a whale), harassed her in the bathroom (37-41), and frequently made her say “I am Blubber, the smelly whale of class 206” (105). Sadly, there was more where that came from. The mastermind behind it all was one of Jill’s friends, Wendy. Her followers were Jill, Tracy, Caroline, and about the rest of her classmates. Later in the book, Tracy pointed out that Jill was following Wendy because she was intimidated by her (150). The tables turned when Jill angered Wendy by disagreeing with her idea to continue the trial without providing Linda with a lawyer (155). Wendy responded by saying that Jill was “turning chicken just like [her] chink friend [Tracy]” (155). After Jill stood up for herself and Tracy, Wendy declared that she will regret being born and then turned the class against her. Jill suddenly knew how Linda felt when she and her classmates bullied her and then changed her ways at the end of the book, starting with befriending Rochelle, the quietest kid in the class. I’m glad you learned your lesson, Jill. There needs to be justice for Linda, though. 

Other examples of bullying that took place in the book were Jill being rude to her little brother and refusing to take an interest in his knowledge of Guinness World Record facts, Miss Rothbelle being unnecessarily harsh towards her students (like seriously, pulling Linda’s hair and banging on Jill’s desk was childish and uncalled for), and Mrs. Minish marking Jill’s math homework wrong just because she solved the math problems differently. Only a monster would stunt a student’s individual thinking. The Worst Teacher of the Year award goes to… Miss Rothbelle and Mrs. Minish! I hope they enjoy the ceremony, where the audience will be throwing rotten tomatoes at them from every angle!

Let’s face it. Bullying is still a problem, and a majority of us dealt with it as kids and teenagers. Even adults deal with it. I was bullied as a child myself. For instance, my classmates would ask me if I was retarded, and they would sometimes steal my lunch. Please comment below your experience with bullying, whether you were the bully, the bullied, the bystander, or the upstander. Feel free to omit anything you aren’t comfortable sharing. Also, be sure to check out the book! Ciao! 🙂 ❤

New Mini-Challenge:

Completed Books Instagram Challenge – by Gabby hosted on the Readathon Instagram Account.

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels

 

 

Hour 21 – Let’s Talk About Pizza

First things first. Preliminary freak out!!! I’m a co-host for my absolutely favorite event in the world!!!! YAYYYY!!!

My name is Steph and I’ve been participating in Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon for just over a decade now. I’m thrilled to be co-hosting today. You can find me over on Instagram (@frontyardharvest: which is where I’ll reveal the Bad Books mini-challenge answers and a winner at the end of Hour 24—in my stories), on Twitter (@seestephrunmtl), or on Goodreads. 

How’s your reading going? We’re creeping towards the final few hours and I’m ultra-pumped to head closer to the finish line with all of you. 

It’s dinner time in my neck of the woods (Eastern time zone) and I’ll be munching on my traditional readathon meal of pizza. In the past, I’ve enjoyed frozen, delivery, and homemade pies, and tonight I’ve ordered in to ensure I’m fully focused on my co-hosting duties. 

I’m taking this incredibly seriously! Pizza, though, I’m a little more lax about. I am the opposite of a pizza snob. It’s one of my favorite foods and, IMHO, even bad pizza is pretty delicious. Unless it has corn and broccoli on it. What a travesty!

So let’s talk pizza. Do you also enjoy a pizza pie during the readathon? Tell me about your favorite toppings. Mine is mushrooms…and then a whole lot more mushrooms.

What about book-related pizza happenings? Any memorable pizza scenes you can think of? Yes, there’s a Goodreads list for that…

Finally, if you could share a pizza with any fictional character, who would it be? I think I’d love to chow down with the Everworld crew. David, Christopher, April, Jalil, and Senna. 

I’m off to grab a slice, read a few more pages of my book (The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires) and cheer on all of you rad readers. 

You’ve made it this far! You got this! 

New Mini-Challenge:

Bad Books – by Steph

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels

 

 

 

Hour 19 – Do You Do Music?

Hello again, friends! This is Kate and I am back for another hour 🙂 So far I’ve managed to finish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I’ve read 50ish pages from The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. I have completed three BINGOs (which I’m super stoked about). I’m about to change books so that I can get a few more squares and hopeful get a BINGO BLACKOUT! How are you doing on your bingo boards?

Back when I was in college, I had to have music on while I studied. Without it, my mind would wander and I would get distracted and wouldn’t be able to focus on the reading material. However, I was really picky about what kind of music I needed to have on. I needed it to be music with no words, but not classical music. Maybe like elevator music? I had a favorite Pandora Station that I would always put on. It was the Yiruma station. I just checked and it’s still there, so you should check it out. Just really peaceful piano music. My absolute favorite song by him was The River Flows In You. I would play this on repeat on the ipad and it just made all the reading and focusing so much better.

Now that I am out of college and no longer studying, I find that I am the complete opposite. I need absolute silence to be able to read and take in what I am reading. It has been years since I have listened to anything by Yiruma or put on the Pandora station.

What side of this do you fall on? Do you like to have music on while you’re reading or do you find it a distraction that takes you out of the world that is your book? Let me know in the comments below.

I can’t believe we only have 6 hours left! The time sure does fly when you’re enjoying a good book.

New Mini-Challenge:

Vague Recollections – by Kait

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels

Hour 17 – What is your ideal novel?

Hi Reverse Readathoners,

This is Juli from ich lese. Hour 17 is midday Saturday for me and the perfect time to take a break and ponder what makes the ideal novel (confession: this is not the first time I am examining this issue).

 

 

Think back to your favorite book(s). … What general characteristics or elements of a story would describe that book? … Now, let’s narrow it down to three.

 

Ok, I’ll start. My all-time favorite book is The Perfume – Story of a Murderer, so I am making this my example of how I derived at my top three elements of my ideal novel. I read it for the first time in the 90s in Germany and have lost count how many times I’ve re-read it since (thus have had plenty of time to finetune this list). And yes, it holds up in English as well (totally plugging this book here as I believe everyone should read it).

Anyway, here is my list:

(1) language over plot

(2) feelings of strangeness, melancholy, or dread

(3) a character that pushes the human condition

The Perfume, to me, is truly a (1) language over plot novel.  I remember reading it and being able to smell all the described smells, words prompting my memories, smells I don’t think I had ever consciously smelled before. I was blown away in what detail and intricacy Patrick Süskind could even describe the most mundane odors like that of brick or a door hinge. Of course, many of the smells were unpleasant. Pair that with a plotline that could lead to murder and you have a novel that is just one big fat (2) feeling of weirdness, discomfort, and despair. And guys, I live for an eerie read! 18th century France was dirty and hopeless. The protagonist’s story is tragic and his acts are outrageous and vile. Yet, there are flickers of promise and light leaving the reader ever so slightly sanguine. … which brings me to my last point, (3) Grenouille constantly pushes the envelope and as he does so the reader gets forced to consider the boundaries of the human condition. How easy is it to slip into the cloak of a villain when you have never experienced kindness? How thin is the line between genius and madness? What would YOU do with a talent as absolute as Grenouille’s? 

Leave your ideal novel elements in the comments! I am so curious to see your answers. 

Happy reading, 

Juli

 

New Mini-Challenge:

Alliterative Aspects of Accounting for Activities – by Rachel Noel

 

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels

 

 

Hour 15 – Belle’s Guide to Readathon

So this is what hour 15 looks like? During the regular Readathon hours I am always asleep by this point. Instead I have glorious sunshine and plenty more hours in the day. This is Ellie reporting for co-host duty!

Which fictional characters do you think would love Readathon? It’s totally Belle’s cup of tea, so I asked her for a few tips.

Make sure your TBR is well stocked:

Stay active:

Get a reading buddy!

Stay hydrated:

Try reading your book from a different angle:

Take your book everywhere:

And when it all gets too much, take a nap:

It’s also time for my mini-challenge, so do head on over to Curiosity Killed the Bookworm to take part. You can also find me on Twitter @patchworkbunny.

New Mini-Challenge:

Draw It Out – by Ellie

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels

Hour 13 – Morning? Evening? Night?

Good DAY may work better for this huh?!

Hello! And welcome to the second half of the Reverse Readathon! I’m your fearless host Heather and I’m here to entertain, lead, and create what mayhem I can for an my shift. How are you holding up? Are you just getting started or have you been going strong all night/morning/evening/whatevenistimeanyway? Most importantly, what are you eating and what are you planning to eat later? A girl has her priorities. Hit me up in the comments or come say hi on Twitter. I’ll be there at the @readathon account for awhile and I’ll be back there later for a TWITTER PARTY. Reading Sprints are promised!

New Mini-Challenge:

Dewey’s Bookshelves – by Sherri Knight. Post a picture of your bookshelf on Instagram using the hashtag #deweysbookshelves

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels!

Hour 12 – Mid-Event Survey

Hi Friends! It is Kate again and I’m just here to pop in the Mid-Event Survey. I cannot believe that we are already at the halfway point. Since we are only only doing posts every other hour for the Reverse Readathon, I thought I would just post a really quick post so everyone would get a chance to answer the survey and see other participants answers. If you’re looking for an idea on what to start next, take a look at some of the recommendations below. I look forward to seeing everyone’s answers!

Additionally, I just wanted to add a reminder that we are having our third Reading Sprint this hour on the Goodreads Group.

Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now?
2. How many books have you read so far?
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon?
4. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?
5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far?

Link up below or leave a comment!

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels

Hour 11 – Tips To Help You in your Quest to Keep Going!

Welcome to hour 11! I’m Katherine and I’ll be your host for the hour. 

Yes, you made it this far. How were your first 10 hours of the Readathon? Exciting? Thought-provoking? What has your favourite book been so far and why?

If you find yourself struggling at this point, I have some tips to help you keep going:

Decide why you want to keep going— is there a character in danger you are fearful for and you want to find out what their fate is? Or is there a build up to a first kiss or a betrayal? If a family secret is about to be revealed or a new planet discovered, decide what draws you in most about the book and focus on finding out more about that.

Not hooked by the book? Don’t worry, I know the feeling. Some books just don’t work out. Pick another from your pile or E-reader.

Take a break— the Reverse Readathon is not just about reading, check out some of the mini challenges going on or hop over to Twitter.

And if you are more of a blogger, get chatting and comment on another blogger’s post.

Have a snack. Whatever you fancy, whether that’s chocolate, s’mores ice cream or something healthier, nourish your body to help concentration during the Readathon.

Buddy up! Some love to read in solitude but for others a “Buddy Read” is a great way to share the same book. It’s all about reading or listening together. You can even FaceTime/ Skype a friend and enjoy a book together or read pages aloud to each other.

We all have our favourite authors (Some of mine are Jodi Picoult and Cathy Glass). A Book by your favourite author can make the hours fly by.

Time for a short one: Graphic novels, short stories or any short book can help you get through more and help with that Goodreads Reading Challenge goal.

Change genre: fancy some romance? A thriller? Or that memoir you wanted to discover? A genre change can make you experience another way of writing. Or you could even try a new author.

Sleep is as important as activity: We all know this is a long event but make sure you get some sleep so you can wake up and see how much more you get done. In a cliffhanger but too sleepy to finish? Saving the best book to last? Keep these by for morning so you can finish on a high. And if the last day of the Readathon schedule finds you just going to bed while others are getting up, have a relaxing book to hand so you can have sweet dreams.

Whichever way you decide to tackle the Reverse Readathon and whether it is your first time or your fifth, above all I wish you the best of luck and hope you have fun in the remaining hours of the event.

 

New Mini-Challenge:

Wordsearch – Gabby. This will be hosted to both my Twitter and Instagram accounts. Have fun and good luck!

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels

 

 

Hour 9 – Read The World During #WITMonth

Hello friends!

Welcome to Hour 9. I’m Janani, and I’ll be giving y’all company for the next couple hours, here as well as on Twitter. This is my fifth year participating in Dewey’s and maybe the fourth(?) time hosting, and I love it every single time. The book community friggin’ rules, and reverse readathon time zone works perfectly for me here in India. Hour 9 is a good time to stretch your legs, get a beverage and/or a snack, maybe switch up reading formats, or hell, even take a nap. Whatever floats your boat, I’ll be here with ya. 

August is Women In Translation month, the brainchild of one of my favorite bookish humans, Meytal Radzinski. She created #WITMonth in 2014, and every year, spends a phenomenal amount of time promoting books in translation written by women and creating umpteen spreadsheets and Twitter threads for folks to add more books to their TBR. 

One of her more recent focuses has been reading and promoting translated works written by women from non-European countries, which is one of my personal favorite things about this project. Of the mere 3% books translated in the US, an overwhelming 64% are Eurocentric, which as one can imagine is not even close to an accurate representation of the number of works coming from the rest of the world. 

#WITMonth is 50 days away, so… it's time for another 50 day countdown!

Every day for the next 50, I'll be spotlighting one woman writer from around the world who maybe hasn't gotten much international attention… and maybe hasn't even been translated.#womenintranslation

— #womenintranslation (@Read_WIT) June 12, 2020

Therefore, I urge you to make space for women in translation in your TBR mountains, especially giving non-Eurocentric translations a shot. There’s so many gems to be found, and chances are you’ll find more than one thing that fits your reading taste, while helping promoting these women’s incredible work. 

If you have any #WITMonth books on your TBR, make sure to tag @read_wit and me @TheShrinkette. Buy these books, promote the hell out of them, review them across platforms—all crucial and helpful to the cause. Can’t wait to see what translated works y’all have for me! 

 

New Mini-Challenge:

Opening Line Quiz – by Neha

 

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Check out the Bingo Board!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #RevereseReadathon on all your social channels