April 2023 Dewey’s Readathon- Sprints

One of the traditions we have maintained in this readathon is our hour-long scheduled reading sprints. Our scheduled reading sprints occur at

Hour 1

Hour 4

Hour 8

Hour 12

Hour 16

Hour 20

Hour 24

We have threads posted in Goodreads for these as they happen, and we try to post them on facebook and twitter and tumblr (and ideally on discord too). You decide how much of the hour you will try to use for reading, and whether you will choose specific books for these. I enjoy picking a few shorter books specifically for these, and often finish one or more of them during the sprints because my focus is better. I also have been known to play an audiobook while crocheting for the hour, pointedly not doing much social media during the sprint (not always possible as an admin, but sometimes this works out).

In addition to these, folks often post extra sprints on whatever social media they are using. These may be hour-long or shorter. Sprints are great for exercising your ability to focus on reading, and over time you may find that they get easier and make non-sprint reading easier as well. If you are looking for ways to get back into reading more, or want to increase your reading quality, these are a great option. Also, after a sprint, if you have been sitting still, be sure to get up and stretch, drink some water, and do some basic self-care before getting back to the books.

April 2023 Dewey’s Readathon- Sites

Our first readathon of 2023 is here. Are you reading for this one?

Our sites this year include

WordPress: This blog here is our wordpress site. Expect less frequent posts here. Mostly at the moment this site is where we post broadly useful information. We used to do hourly posts here, but the amount of traffic on here is much lower than it used to be, as other newer social media sites have popped up. I still like the old-fashioned blog website format, so we are definitely maintaining this site, and for stuff like dates and all our various projects, activities and sites, this is a good starting hub.

Twitter: For fast, easy interactions this is a great site, and we are still posting on our twitter account. We had a slow start getting this part of our Dewey’s postings spun up this season, but it is going to be an active Dewey’s media account this weekend.

Facebook: This is one of our most active sites over the past few years, along with Goodreads, so we will definitely be posting regularly on facebook this weekend. Julie, one of our amazing admins, posted a couple BINGO boards on facebook for this readathon. Many participants like to post their responses to the quarterly progress questionaires on our facebook, and we love to see your TBR and reading buddies on there.

Goodreads: This is one of our primary sites, and even when we have minimal activities on our other sites, we always have readathon-day discussion questions, reading sprint threads, various reading challenges, and places to talk about your books, snacks, reading buddies, strategies, etc. This is where most of our pre-readathon and between-readathon activities are hosted.

Instagram: We do photo challenges on this site, and we love to see photo updates from our participants on instagram.

Tumblr: In the earlier days of Dewey’s this was one of thepretty active Dewey’s platforms. (This is the site I was using when I first started participating in Dewey’s, I think). We have a photo challenge on here and also post the sprints and quarterly update questions on this site.

Discord: This is our newest site, which we added during the uncertainty surrounding Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. This is of course a hugely versatile site, and we will be making better use of it in future readathons. This first event we will be a bit more exploratory and experimental on our nifty new discord server as we get an idea of how me can use its many cool features.