Onwards and Upwards

Well, that was fun! I am going back to sleep in a bit, but since I had to get up anyway… The cats were understandably alarmed when, after spending a full 24 hours practically ignoring them to focus on books and the computer (neither is furry or purrs, so they do not see why the human would ever ignore them for such cold, inferior things) their human FELL ASLEEP for a whole 5 HOURS!!!!! No canned food was dished out and no pets or snuggles were forthcoming for all that time after the human set the books down. Things have gotten straightened out a little now, though. Food is in the dishes again, including the evening canned food, and maybe the human will finally put away the stacks of books that have been occupying some of the cats’ auxiliary sitting spots for the past 2 days.

While the cats are distracted with their food, I can pop back online for a quick wrap up post. If you missed it, we just finished our 2021 Reverse Readathon, which ran from 8pm EST yesterday till 8pm EST today (well, Aug 7th. It is midnight now here, technically now the 8th, but you get the idea). Despite some interesting snags relating to transferring account access to the new leadership team (Dewey’s has a LOT of accounts on a LOT of sites now, since every so often a new social media site or tool pops up and gets added to our collection.) we managed to make this readathon happen on time, and from my end it seemed to go pretty smoothly. I had fun and got some good reading time in, and I hope everyone else did too. Thanks, everyone, for being so supportive and patient as we figure out what we are doing.

Our next readathon will be coming up in October. We have not confirmed a date yet, in part because most of our leadership team is catching up on lost sleep at the moment (yes, probably even those with cats), but I’ll be posting our first official October 2021 Readathon announcements very soon.In the meantime, be sure you log your books in our Completed Books database, and if you didn’t during the readathon, check out all the guest posts, discussions and activities on our website, and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Goodreads. (We also have a Tumblr page again, so if you (still?) use Tumblr be sure to follow our page there. Here, btw, is a linktree with many of our site links all in one place- very handy.

I (Jamie, your ‘fearless leader’, or perhaps ‘first among equals’ Dewey’s host) am really into community building, and there is such a huge potential for community building within the bookish realms of the Internet. So, besides lots of mentions of cats, you can reasonably expect to see frequent posts and activities under my readathon ‘regime’ that encourage everyone to check out each other’s book blogs, etc., and explore all the other bookish resources online. While we are getting set up for our next official event, take some time to explore book groups and pages on Facebook, book blogs on Tumblr, bookish accounts on Twitter and Instagram, and booktubers on Youtube. When you find ones you like, make comments on their posts, follow their pages, and when you’ve read the books they recommend, participate in the discussion about those books. It makes the bloggers and bookish social media people happy when people like their posts and make comments, and all those discussions about books make the authors of the books happier because real people are talking about their books.

But, for now, my cats are fed and snuggling into their sleep spots, and I definitely need to stop yawning and join them for the rest of my post-readathon long nap.

Goodnight, fellow readers!

Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!

Cheer your fellow readers!

Join our Goodreads or Facebook or Reddit groups!

Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!

Tag your posts with #Readathon on all your social channels

Welcome to the August ’21 Reverse Readathon!

Hey hey, friends! Heather and Andi here! I bet you didn’t expect to see us, did you? (PS: we’ve missed you!) We’re back to help facilitate this very WHOA-LAST-MINUTE Reverse Readathon while the new hosts–Jamie, Julie, and Kelley–get their feet under them. Because this was a very last minute thing, we truly apologize to anyone who may have gotten left out or overlooked who wanted to help behind the scenes. We will all be back to normal with our usual amount of organization and spreadsheets for the October event. But now it’s time to READ!!! The whole Readathon team is so happy to have you, every single one of you, for this event and many more to come. Cheers to books! AND READERS!

• Enter your finished books into the DATABASE here!
• Cheer your fellow readers!
• Join our Goodreads or Facebook or Reddit groups!
• Watch for posts and stories on our Instagram!
• Tag your posts with #Readathon on all your social channels

2021 Reverse Readathon PreChallenge

Welcome back to Dewey’s Readathon! We had some changes to the administration of this much loved, long-lived reading institution after the last Spring Readathon. The new leadership team is coming together as we prepare for our most casual Readathon event of the year, the Reverse Readathon. For folks who have never done this one, we start at 8pm instead of 8am, so this year the Reverse Readathon starts August 6th at 8pm EST. We read, chat about reading, add far too many new titles to our TBRs, and whatever else we enjoy doing during readathons. All our events are about having fun and reading, but this one is more casual, at least so far.

So, the Pre-Readathon Challenge for this readathon is also more casual. Starting Sunday, July 11th, keep track of how many hours you read. This can be on social media, or in a notebook, or on a spreadsheet, or wherever works for you. Over the next 4 weeks leading up to the Readathon itself, see how many of these prompts you can check off. There are only 8 prompts, so if you aim for 2 per week you can finish all of them, and it is up to you whether you count the same book for multiple prompts.

1. Read a murder mystery/crime novel OR romance novel set in a place you’ve never visited.
2. Read a play published after 1950.
3. Read a book listed on either the Guardian’s 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read list or Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.
4. Read a book in which at least one character is non-binary gendered, where this is a character trait, NOT the central conflict of the narrative.
5. Participate in a book-related Goodreads, Facebook, or other social media group (not Dewey’s).
6. Add a book to your pre-readathon TBR that is mentioned in a book blog, booktube, or other bookish social media site. Read the book.
7. Read a science fiction/fantasy novel, OR if you mostly read sci-fi/fantasy anyway, read a Western or cozy mystery.
8. Read a non-fiction book.

You can keep track of your progress online or on paper or wherever, but if you post your progress online, feel free to use the hashtag #2021ReverseReadathon .