Bout of Books 6.0: Wrap Up

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 7th and runs through Sunday, January 13th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 6.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books 6.0 team

The last week of my life has been crazy absolutely. To be completely honest, I almost didn't do Bout of Books because of it. But then I was like: NO. I'M GONNA BE ABSOLUTELY CRAZY AND DO THIS. So I did. I didn't quite meet all of my goals (the aforementioned life craziness kept me from that),. But let's review what I intended to do and what I actually did.

MY GOALS

• Read at least 6 books from the list below.
• Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman
• Shadow & Bone by Leigh Bardugo
• You Have Seven Messages by Stewart Lewis
• The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
• Crewel by Gennifer Albin
• Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
• Fever by Lauren DeStefano
• My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick
• Participate in at least 1 Twitter chat.
• Network with bloggers and make awesome new friends.
• Participate in at least 3 challenges.

THE RESULTS

• I read 5 and a 1/3 books
• The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
• Cinder by Marissa Meyer
• Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
• Fever by Lauren DeStefano
• The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith
• Shadow & Bone by Leigh Bardugo
• I participated in the Wednesday Twitter chat
• I made friends with a few bloggers through the Twitter chat (notably a few Whovians and TV nerds ^_^) and got a little friendlier with a few bloggers I'd been following before the chat.
• I participated in 3 challenges
• Scientific Discovery hosted by The Book Barbies
• The Page 48 Challenge hosted by Booking in Heels
• Rewrite the Synopsis hosted by A Day Dreamer's Thoughts

So I was close. I read half the books on my list, added in a book that I didn't think I was going to read and made it through a third of a book that was on my list. I've never done a readathon like this before so I wasn't totally sure what I was capable of and a bunch of family stuff got in the way, so I would say I'm pretty impressed with myself.

All in all, I had a lot of fun. The Twitter chat was probably the highlight. Everything moved so fast and I was crazy overwhelmed but it was amazing, especially since I got to chatting with other bloggers. I also absolutely loved the challenges. I think my favorite was the synopsis rewrite. It's funny though, because I actually have a friend who got in an accident and had metal put in her arm. Another friend of ours saw the cover of Cinder and actually said "Hey, that's V's arm!" And that's where the inspiration for the rewrite came from.

I'm not sure I'll be able to stop trying to read a book a day now that this is all over. I doubt I'll be able to manage that (I couldn't even do it for the challenge!) but it'll be nice to try. Or well, nice as long as I make myself go to bed at a decent hour! I'm already terrible at that, though, so we'll see.

Thanks a million times over to Amanda and Kelly. I can't imagine the amount of work you guys had to put in to make this event happen. My gratitude is endless and I CANNOT WAIT for the next Bout of Books.

To read my original goals post, click HERE.
To read my progress report post, click HERE.