Well. The final couple of days of my read-a-thon, although filled with bookish goodness of a different kind, did not do much to my page count. Rather than re-capping the weekend in a separate post, I'm going to just sort of recount and wrap-up all at the same time.
Saturday 23 August
I'm almost certain that my page count for Saturday was 62 pages of Parasite by Mira Grant but really the day wasn't about reading (I know!). Instead, I met up with Hanna (Booking in Heels) and Ellie (Book Addicted Blonde) and basically bought out Leeds' Waterstones. It was the best day! We braved the Leeds Festival and York Races hoards in Leeds train station and cut a straight path to the best Waterstones in Yorkshire to re-fuel with cake and coffee. Calories and caffeine that would prove essential to the epic shopping trip that was about to ensue. In a rare twist of fate, I was the "worst" behaved and filled my basket with gay abandon.
Now, I would post a picture of my pile of shame but it's currently spread across a few discreet locations so as to disguise it from my Boyfriend, who does not appreciate a good book buying binge. Instead, I'll post pictures of the covers so that you can ogle my choices without the need for me to plead for forgiveness for my lack of self control or be complled to surrender 9 (yes, 9) books to "make space"...
After the acquire-a-thon, we headed back to my house so that we could eat and then basically sit around and chat for what turned out to be about five hours but felt like five minutes. For some reason, I felt a compulsion to apologise profusely for the nigh on unbelievable level of rain that fell and for various other things like an over-cooked pizza and the fact that I am yet to re-decorate the hall and remove the textured wallpaper that lives there :| There were many, many giggles and Hanna and I informed Ellie that she is in fact our niceness benchmark (which remains true, incidentally), much to Ellie's amusement. Seriously, though, it was the best day and they are the best and after I'd dropped them back off at the station, I was fit for nothing other than sitting in my pyjamas and reading Parasite. Which is where the 62 pages came in and the day ended!
Sunday 24 August
Boyfriend had to work on Sunday, which was a bit bleak but meant that I could rack up my final pages read of Parasite to 292 pages. I would have finished it probably had I not got distracted by the recent(ish) Dracula series. Then Boyfriend and I went out for to the pub and the local Indian restaurant, which obviously meant that no more reading got done but plenty of delicious food was consumed. A good day.
Wrap-Up Stats
Total pages read so far: 471 pages
Books read from/listened to: The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco; The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker; Parasite by Mira Grant; Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
Books finished: The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco (3.5 stars); The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker (4 stars)
My original goals included getting some listening done, some reading done (obviously), some reviews posted and to keep on track with updates. I listened to everything I wanted to and I really loved The Golem and the Djinni in the end so that was a success. I didn't get as much read as I wanted but I really enjoyed what I did read and filled up Saturday with other book-related fun activities so that's a win regardless of the slightly lacklustre page count. I posted a review (Running Away by Robert Andrew Powell) and made some progress on another so that's a sort-of success. I managed to stay up to date with my Monday to Friday updates but fell off the wagon at the weekend so a mixed bag. So a mostly successful week that was the perfect mix of listening, reading and getting back into blogging with a little more regularity AND seeing some of my favourite fellow book bloggers. Hard to feel bad about that!
Hope you all had a great read-a-thon too, whether it was all about the pages or all about the snacks or the book buying (ahem...)! See you in January for Bout of Books 12!