Bout of Books 29: Once Again I'm Participating--Are You?

Before I took my blogging hiatus, I participated in a number of Bout of Books readathons. I even served as a Bout of Books expert several times and had a great time participating and cheering everyone. While this Bout of Books falls during the week I return to being physically in school, I still want to try to participate. Not familiar with it?

About Bout of Books:
The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 17th and runs through Sunday, August 23rd in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. All reading-in-place times, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges are completely optional. For Bout of Books 29 information and updates, visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

My TBR for Bout of Books Week:

The goal of Bout of Books is simply to read as much as you can. There used to be blogging challenges, but they have dropped those this time around. There will be photo challenges on Instagram that I will participate as I can. I do not have a defined TBR yet. I do know I will try to do an audiobook and with returning to school this week, I will probably continue to do some books I have on my list to want to be able to recommend to students through booktalks--formal or informal conversations. 

If I pull together a more formal TBR, they will be updated in this section prior to Bout of Books. 

Daily Updates:

Instead of posting daily, I will continue to update this post. While it means you will have to keep checking back, this is the way I have done it in the past, and would like to continue doing so (since the guidelines permit it still). 

-Monday-

  

• Read:  
• 20% (80ish) pages in The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster before I fell asleep. 
• 50 pages in The Voting Booth by Brandy Colbert
• Time Listen:
• 45 minutes of Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Lantham (roughly 40 pages)
• Books Completed: 0
• Pages Completed: 170 pages
• Instagram Challenge: completed--see my post for my currently reading

Thoughts from Monday: This is going to be a busy week, with getting worked items ready to go for the start of school (staff reports back to the building physically on Friday in my district) and doing a bunch of errands before it all begins. I am squeezing in reading when I feel up to it and have the time--such as listening to an audiobook at the grocery store yesterday. 

-Tuesday-

  

• Read: 
• 30% (about 120 pages) additional of The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster
• additional 15 pages in The Voting Booth
• Time Listen:
• 30 minutes of Dreamland Burning (roughly 25 pages)
• Books Completed: 0
• Pages Completed: 150 pages 
• Instagram Challenge: completed--see my post for the cover love prompt

Yesterday was one of those days I do not feel like I got anything accomplished other than being in my car back and forth running my daughter to appointments and such. I also had a hard time focusing, so I just was not as productive as far as reading went. 

I spent the later time in the night I would be reading watching the Democratic National Convention and I loved the diversity portrayed during the roll call portion. It has me thinking about it and how we need more of that! Also, I loved that the broadcast showed Joe and Jill Biden in the school library of the school Mrs. Biden used to teach at--yay for school libraries!!

My goal for tomorrow is to finish a book! I am not one to usually read more than one book, but I have been bouncing due to lack of focus. I listen to the audiobook while in my car though yesterday I did spend some time listening to music too as I was reading my Kindle while I wanted for my daughter to finish her dentist appointment. Find out tomorrow (or likely Thursday morning) to see if I am successful!

-Wednesday-

• Read: 
• 50ish pages of Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster
• Time Listen:
• none
• Books Completed: still batting 0--its been a week
• Pages Completed: 50ish today
• Instagram Challenge: completed--see my post for my latest 5 star read

This is by the worse day of reading I have had this week. I had too much going on today and tomorrow is going to be crazy too. Still planning and hoping to finish my first book of the week tomorrow. 

 

-Thursday-

• Read: 
• 120 pages in Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster
• Time Listen:
• 0 :(
• Books Completed:1--finally!
• Pages Completed: 120 pages
• Instagram Challenge: I did not get a chance to do the spine poetry challenge

What a day...I had so much to do to get ready to be back in my school library physically beginning tomorrow. I also did not manage to get much sleep on the Wednesday evening so I crashed early in the evening than I normally would. I am happy I FINALLY finished a book this week. 

-Friday-

 

• Read:
• 25 pages in The Voting Booth by Brandy Colbert
• Time Listen:
• 45 minutes (roughly 35 pages) in Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Lantham
• Books Completed:1
• Pages Completed: 60 pages
• Instagram Challenge: once again I failed at getting this done. I hope to get to tomorrow's 2020 challenge.

Today was the first day back for teachers in my school district. We have several week of workshop days to help get us ready for hybrid learning. I am glad for the days and I am also glad that they are having what would be our traditional larger meeting, available as a Zoom session too.  

I will be doing a separate post about reopening my school library, but here are some pictures I took today:

 

The carpet is being cleaned and then I can go about placing the tables and chairs marked six feet apart as mandated by my school district. I have many other things to figure out as far placement goes, but I am in a holding pattern until the carpets are cleaned. 

Outside of school, yesterday was my husband's birthday. We celebrated it with pie--he prefers it over cakes, a few gifts, and a movie night. This weekend we are going to be taking some down to my library and also working on our basement. Hopefully we will eek in a few more movies and games too. :)

-Saturday-

• Read:
• 250 pages in Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door
• 50 pages in Rick Steves' Great Britain
• Time Listen: 0
• Books Completed: 0
• Pages Completed: 300
• Instagram Challenge: completed! Here is my link to my post about 2020 Releases I am looking forward to this year.

Well today did not turn out the way I expected--I completely thought I would sit down and read most of the day yesterday after doing some things around the house. I mentally needed to check out and instead, I delved deep into working on our summer vacation next year. We are very blessed because we have not had the struggles that many are experiencing during the pandemic thus far. We were supposed to go to Europe in July for a dream vacation, but obviously that had to be cancelled. I have been working on planning it again because while we are so sad it did not work out, now we are doing it on our own and planning it to what we want to see and where we want to go. It gives me hope and lets me de-stress from work. :)

-Sunday-

• Read:
• 50 pages in Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door
• 150 pages in Rick Steves' Great Britain
• Time Listen:0
• Books Completed:0
• Pages Completed: 200
• Instagram Challenge: I did not get a chance to take a picture of my shelves sadly. I did post pictures of my shelves on the How Do I...book tag. They are pretty representative of what my shelves currently look like. 

Well I failed at updating this in a timely manner. It is now Tuesday and Bout of Books finished up Sunday evening. I just was focused on getting ready to go back to work Monday with students and did not sleep well leading into Sunday so I was wiped. We took boxes of books down to my school library too. 

Overall, I finished 1,050 pages and throughout all of that, I only finished 1 book. My reading was bouncing way too much to actually make progress in books. Oh well! I am pleased I was able to continue my streak of reading every day--whether it is 25 pages or 15 minutes to 5 or 6 hours. 

How did your Bout of Books turnout? I would love to know! Are you going to consider participating in the next one? Bout of Books 30 will be in January 2021.I hope you will join me!