2020: The Year Jennifer Attempts Reading Challenges...#Pondathon

This year I’ve decided to get myself out of a reading rut and be more active in the reading community. One of those ways is to participate in various reading challenges. Over the next few days, I will share these challenges with you. Some will overlap...in fact, most will, but all will be fun...I hope. Wish me luck and join me if you wish! I’ll need all the encouragement I can get!

Up first... Pondathon!

What is the Pondathon?

The Pondathon is a co-operative and story-driven readathon hosted and run by CW from The Quiet Pond. The aim of the Pondathon is to read books and collect points to protect the friends over at The Quiet Pond from the encroaching malevolent forces that threaten our friends in the forest. Have fun participating in the Pondathon readathon by joining one of five teams, each with a unique way to collect points and signing up! You can also follow the story of the Pondathon as it unfolds, and participants can also complete 'side quests' during the readathon to collect extra points. The readathon takes place from January 24th 2020 to March 7th 2020. More information about the readathon can be found here.

Information about Joining the Pondathon

1. To join the Pondathon, simply sign up anytime between January 18th 2020 to March 5th 2020.
2. Choose a team, create your own animal character for the Pondathon and create a character card!
3. Create a blog post, bookstagram post, booktube video, Twitter thread, or whatever medium you wish, with '#Pondathon' in the title or your tweet. Share the character you have created and your character card!
4. Link back to this post so that others can find this readathon and join in.

Share your updates on your blog/bookstagram/booktube and social media. You are more than welcome to tag @thequietpond or @artfromafriend on Twitter or Instagram in all your updates! We'd love to see all of the beautiful and awesome characters that you create!

My Pond Character

My Pond Character is called Kally, and she's the Reader of ALL of the Books! Kally is a cuddly (and a bit nerdy) Koala who is much more of a lover than a fighter, but she is determined to help protect her new friends and the forest as she’s seen the devastation that comes when malevolent forces attack. She is a member of Team Varian, and has been tasked with reading books to help research ways to help. She hopes to learn how others have battled evil forces or faced challenges in their lives in various worlds and time periods and perhaps that will lead her friends to victory. If that doesn’t work she has her trusty bow and arrows (as long as she doesn’t shoot herself in the foot...again). Kally doesn’t want to fight, but she’ll do anything to help her friends and the forest.

My Team

My (Tentative) Pondathon TBR

[I am only sharing a few books (in no particular order) that I possibly plan to read as I am a mood reader. One of the rules for Team Varian is that we don’t read the same genre twice in a row so you’ll see quite a variety!]

So, wish me luck!

And if this sounds like something you’d like, join us!

Oh, and I’m always open to book suggestions as I’ll be exploring many different genres this year!

#ARCAugust and Bookish Bingo Wrap-Up!

It’s time for the final wrap-up for two reading challenges I have been doing the last few months…Pretty Deadly Review’s Bookish Bingo and ReadSleepRepeat’s ARC August.

First up Bookish Bingo…

While I’ve read quite a bit over the last few months I only managed to make two bingos.

Magic - Riverkeep

June, July, August Release - Resisting the Rebel

 FREE SQUARE

Mental Health - A World Without You

Food in Title or On Cover - Man, I Hate Cursive: Cartoons for People and Advanced Bears

Over 500 pages - Scary Out There

2016 Debut - The Season

Mental Health - A World Without You

Starts with S, U, M, E, or R - Second Chance Summer

Yellow Cover - Doodletopia

As for ARC August…

I didn’t manage to read all ten books on my original goal list, but I did read a few of them and several more that were not on the list (as well as a few non-ARCs which I didn't include in the list below).

ARCs read in August:

Keeping Her Secret by Sarah Nicolas

Wake the Hollow by Gaby Triana

Running with the Pack by A.M. Burns

How to Tame a Triceratops by Will Dare

A Tale of Two Prom Dates by Evie Alexis

Lazy Crafternoon by Stella Fields

Twentieth Century Fox: A Century of Entertainment by Michael Troyan

Scary Out There edited by Jonathan Maberry

Polaris by Beth Bowland

Man, I Hate Cursive: Cartoons for People and Advanced Bears by Jim Benton

All Shook Up by Chelsey Krause

Thieving Weasels by Billy Taylor

With Love from the Inside by Angela Pisel

Waking the Bear by Kerry Adrienne

Resisting the Rebel by Lisa Brown Roberts

I read more books in August than I have in a long time. Let’s hope it got me out of the slump I’ve been in this summer.  My ratings and reviews for these books can be found on my Goodreads page.

My next challenge…Pretty Deadly Review’s Fall Bookish Bingo Card.

What about you?

Did you read any good books in August?

Doing any challenges for September?

#ARCAugust 2016

I meant to post this yesterday, but time got away from me…

This month I have decided to participate in #ARCAugust because…well…I find myself with several ARCs I need/want to read.  So I am only reading ARCs this month!

I have seen people tweeting and blogging about it in the past, but this is my first time participating.  

ARC August was started by Octavia and Shelly over at ReadSleepRepeat.org as a way of making a dent in the TBR ARC piles/lists some of us have.  The rules are simple…you read ARCs all month and review them or post your thoughts about them on some form of social media (for me it’s my blog and Goodreads).  They can be old, new, digital, or print…as long as they are ARCs, they count.  You set your own goal and you do your best to meet that goal.  As they said on the sign up post, “It’s your chance to clear your shelves and get those NetGalley ratios up!”

I think this will be a great motivator to me because I really need one right now. So we shall see…

As for my goals for the month, I would like to read the following ARCs at some point this month (a mix of old & new, print & digital):

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

Waking the Bear by Kerry Adrienne

Resisting the Rebel by Lisa Brown Roberts

With Love from the Inside by Angela Pisel

Thieving Weasels by Billy Taylor

Nice Girls Endure by Chris Struyk-Bonn

The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

Tell Me Something Real by Calla Devlin

Scary Out There Edited by Jonathan Maberry

If...excuse me WHEN I get these read and have time for more than I’ll keep going!
Obviously it will happen...because I said it will!
And, of course, I'll probably add an ARC or two or three...

Wish me luck!

Blogger Summer Reading Program Final Week!

This week was the last week of the Blogger Summer Reading Program and despite an horrible migraine and an unexpected trip out of town, I managed to meet my goal for this week!!!

I read and really enjoyed

That means I finished all of the books I listed as my "summer" reading goals!

Look for reviews of all of my Summer Reading Programs throughout the next couple of weeks!

Blogger Summer Reading Program Week Three!

Only one week left in Bekka and Whitley’s Blogger Summer Reading Challenge…and I was able to meet my weekly goal and finish my two books (and more) during this past third week!

Three Day Summer by Sarvenaz Tash

& 

Song of Summer by Laura Lee Anderson

My reviews will be posted the first week of August when I post my thoughts on all of my Summer Reading books, but I really enjoyed these books. I am grateful for this challenge because I might not have read them yet if not for the challenge.




As for the last week of the challenge, my final reading choices are:

The Big Summer by Jamie B. Laurie
&
Five Summers by Una LaMarche

Wish me luck!  What are you reading this week?

Blogger Summer Reading Program Week Two!

So another week has passed in Bekka and Whitley’s Blogger Summer Reading Challenge…and I was able to meet my weekly goal and finish my two books (as well as a few non-challenge books) this past week!

Yay!!!

The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

&

The Dead of Summer by Heather Balog

I have decided that I am going to do a big wrap-up post(s) at the end of the month where I post my reviews of the “summer” books read during the challenge.  This way I have some time to think about what I just read rather than just rushing to write something that makes no sense (which I am likely to do if I post them right now).  But I WILL review them so be sure to come back to see what I thought (will say I LOVED The Square Root of Summer…definitely recommend it!!!).

As for next week’s Blogger Summer Reading Challenge goal…hoping to get these two read:

Three Day Summer by Sarvenaz Tash

& 

Song of Summer by Laura Lee Anderson

Looking forward to them both…such colorful covers.

So what is everyone else reading this summer?

Any recommendations?

Blogger Summer Reading Program Week One!

Well, Week One of Bekka and Whitley's Blogger Summer Reading Challenge has come to a close and I am proud to say that I have met my personal goal for the week!  Despite the world (and my body) conspiring against me, I read both a print (Two Summers) and an ebook (Second Chance Summer) with the the word "summer" in the title. I'll be posting my reviews of these two books in the next few days so be sure to check back if you want to know my thoughts!

And of course, crafty me made a Blogger Summer Reading Program Goals card for this challenge...I couldn't help myself.

So glad I was able to check two books off the list, but it was close though...

If you follow me on Twitter, you might know that last weekend, while watching my nephew play baseball, I got a sunburn so bad that my hands were swollen and I couldn't open and close them without pain. It is not easy to hold or read a book when that happens.  To top that off, I ended up with a migraine a couple of days ago and...well, it was just not a great week.

But I met my goal and I can hold a book now, so that's progress! Yay! And get this, I even managed to finish a couple of other books I was reading at the same time.

Now I am looking forward to my next "summer" reads...

The Sqaure Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

and

The Dead of Summer by Heather Balog

Wish me luck!  Maybe this week will be a little less eventful (and less painful)!

Good luck to everyone else on their summer reading!

Reading anything good?  Any recommendations?

Blogger Summer Reading Program 2016

Tomorrow kicks off the Blogger Summer Reading Program hosted by Bekka from Pretty Deadly Reviews and Whitley from Reading with a Vengeance.  You can check out their blogs for more info and there is a Twitter chat tonight at 8 pm EST (#BloggerSRP).

I blogged about my goals for this month’s challenge earlier this month along with a list on my “Summer” reads.  My goals for the first week of the program are to read:

Two Summers by Aimee Friedman (print)

AND

Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson (ebook)

I am reading other books as well, but these are the two I have chosen for the first of the week of the challenge.

Wish me luck! I haven’t read anything by either author so I am looking forward to them.

Anybody else doing the Blogger Summer Reading Program (you don’t have to be a blogger, by the way)?

Anybody have a summer reading list or goals?

Summer Reading Challenge

Remember when you were a kid and every summer they’d give you a summer reading list that you just couldn’t wait to complete? Maybe it was just bookworm me who looked forward to that. Each summer I’d eagerly work my way through the list earning free pizzas from Pizza Hut’s Book It, tickets to Six Flags for reading 600 minutes (yeah, I read a lot more than 600 minutes…unfortunately it was one ticket per kid or I‘d be set for life), or whatever prize/reward there was at the end. Of course, I liked it better when I could pick my own books to read.

Well, I was thinking about doing a summer reading challenge this year on my own, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  I’d already completed the adult one that my local library has going (It really wasn’t much of a challenge to someone who reads all of the time.).  I then asked my nieces and nephews if they had received lists that I could look at to see what middle and high school kids were required to read these days. Maybe something there might spark my interest and give me an idea. Yeah, they looked at me like I had lost my mind.  Read…when you didn’t have to?  (You’d think they’d be used to me by now…not sure any of them have ever seen me without a book).

Anyway, I wanted to do something.  Then I came across a post on Pretty Deadly Reviews. Whitley from Reading With a Vengeance and Bekka from Pretty Deadly Reviews have teamed up to create the Blogger Summer Reading Program. And I have decided that I want to take part!

You can find more details on Bekka's blog, but you basically set your own goal and each week in July go back to the Pretty Deadly Review blog to report your progress.  And with each weekly goal you meet, you get an entry into the Blogger Summer Reading Program giveaway….oh, and you don’t have to be a blogger to join. You can find more info and sign up here.

So what are my goals? Well, I thought about this for a bit and then every time I turned on the TV yesterday they were talking about it being the first day of summer…and it hit me…I am going to complete a Summer Reading List…literally.  Confused yet?  Well, I looked at my TBR list and realized that I have a lot of books with the word “summer” in the title. Therefore, I am going to attempt to read some of those books for this "summer" reading challenge.

Each week I want to read and review one eBook and one print book that has the word “summer” in the title.  I have selected 8 books from my TBR (even though I have several more) and hope to get them all read.  I plan on reading/reviewing other books as well during this challenge, but these are my 8 for the challenge:

Print:

Two Summers by Aimee Friedman

The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

Three Day Summer by Sarvenaz Tash

Five Summers by Una LaMarche

eBook:

The Dead of Summer by Heather Balog

The Big Summer by Jamie B. Laurie

Song of Summer by Laura Lee Anderson

Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson

Well, wish me luck! I’ll be posting my progress as well my thoughts on the books as the summer progresses. Fingers crossed that I get these read!

 If you want you to join in, please check out Bekka’s post here.