October/Halloween 2014 ReadaThing: LOGBOOK

(cut and pasted directly from LucindaLibri's Logbook from the August/September/Labor Day Readathing, and made changes where necessary)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The October/Halloween ReadaThing is about to begin!

We've already been chatting on another thread about what we PLAN to read. This thread is for what we ACTUALLY read, as well as where, how, with whom or what...

(I've worded the questions as if you are posting just after you read, but feel free to post before, during, or after!)

**What book or books did you read?
**Where did you read? (specific or vague is fine) Posting a picture of where you read is encouraged.
**When did you read? How long did you read?
**Doing anything else? food, music, listening to someone snore, watching the sun rise or set...

Other Suggestions for Comments:
**Is it a GOOD BOOK? Tell us what you thought of it...
**Were there any passages worth sharing? (because they made you smile, or shake your head, or stick a postit on the page)
**Did it meet or exceed your expectations?
**Do you recommend it?
**Was it a fast read or a thoughtful read?
**Did it make you laugh or cry or "be afraid, be very afraid"?
**Was it boring?
**Would you read it again?
**Are you going to throw it off a cliff into the sea?
We aren't expecting a full review of the book, although, that's fine... just give us a flavor of the book...tempt us into reading it or warn us to keep clear!

Have some fun with your reading! There's going to be a good group of us reading along with you (virtually speaking), and we'll be really quiet, except for the tapping of the keyboards as people check in.

The signup page is here: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/ReadaThing-Oct2014

For those in the "No Timeline" group, please fill in the timeline indicating when you actually read and keep adding on as you feel moved to read throughout the weekend!

I'm looking forward to following everyone's reading projects . . . when I'm not reading myself!

Have a Great ReadaThing!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That being said (or copied and pasted, if you prefer), go out there and read up some scary books! Celebrate Halloween all week (I know I will).

To start things off right, I read part of Dead Streets, the second book in a series written by a local author that I am madly in love with (the series, not the author). I'm so jealous of my friend Mary, because she's taking one of his creative writing classes this semester. But yes, omigawd, great series! *squee!*

Oooooops, I just noticed that the ReadaThing doesn't start til 9pm on the wiki, even though on the other page it says 5pm. My bad, sorry. I'll go away now (until 9pm that is).

>3 VampAmber: Actually, I think you'd gotten the start time right. It looks like there was a typo in the Wiki markup (missing ||), which bumped the first line outside the table. I've fixed it, in case anyone did read at that time and want to fill it in.

I've been out all evening but will be able to settle in for some reading soon, starting with The Greyfriar.

I started the morning by listening to A Terribly Strange Bed by Wilkie Collins while eating breakfast and then finished reading Captivate by Carrie Jones. Back to listening again now while I 'get stuff around the house done' and so it's The Small Hand by Susan Hill.

Well I didn't know about this until late last night. I did read yesterday since I was home sick from work. I read Her Last Whisper by Karen Robards. I enjoyed it and was surprised by it.

I totally spaced on the RaT beginning (good thing I wasn't in charge of putting up this post!), but I did read last night, continuing with Northlight by Deborah J. Ross/Deborah Wheeler. It's an ancient ER book, as an ebook. Seriously weird...the first section had one protagonist, then we dropped her entirely and went on to a longer section with a different protagonist - I presume that at some point the two of them will get together. I don't know what they'll do, though, they're both pretty sad sacks (oh, what shall I do with my life because I can't have X!).

I've finished The Small Hand and then started listening to Brideshead Revisited (I know that one's not horror - but...). I've also read part of Avengers: Hawkeye Earth's Mightiest Marksman and have my fingers crossed that I'll finish that tonight so that I can start Night Watch at the airport tomorrow.

It was a day off from work so I spent it on the sofa reading. Last night's couple of hours I spent reading a little bit of several books to decide what to focus on. Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest and The Etched City by K.J. Bishop are the winners. Four and Twenty Blackbirds is creepy but a bit too languid for me right now (about 1/3 in). It's also a bit rich in a Southern Gothic way. So then I switch over to The Etched City which can actually also feel slow-moving, but the worldbuilding manages to capture me for awhile. I also continued my reading of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm translated by Jack Zipes. I hit a string of familiar ones today: Briar Rose, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, The Six Swans. There was one I'd never read called The Juniper Tree but I recognized a line from it (My mother, she killed me. My father, he ate me.) because it's the title of a fiction collection.

I only got through one chapter of The New Annotated Dracula. I was very distracted with worries, some texts coming in, etc.

I read on the big sofa downstairs, lying on my side with a pillow under my arm propping me.

http://www.librarything.com/pic/4592874

I may switch to the audiobook (narrated by Tim Curry, Alan Cumming) before bed.

I read at 10 pm (the first time I had a moment to breathe, today! Fun, but busy). Got a couple chapters into Dracula (my edition, an ebook from Project Gutenberg, has extensive forewords about Bram Stoker and about the DEEPER MEANING (mostly, sex) of Dracula. Very silly. But I did get started on the story). Also finished Dry Storeroom No. 1 by Richard Fortey - not as good as I was hoping. That one's a library book, I wanted to get it out of the way. Read both of them at the dinner table. And now, having caught up on online stuff, I'm going to bed.

ETA - yay, I filled in a gap! Nobody had read at 10 pm PDT.

I have been reading but not reading any horror books. I finished Her Last Whisper by Karen Robards last night. I am now reading Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth. And also reading Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix. Hoping to finish one of these books today if not both.

Started reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's incredibly cute so far. Kinda wish it wasn't 7am already, so I could read a bit further (yay insomnia... not). Read on the couch, as usual, with a kitty alternating between sleeping on my lap and kneeding my hair. Still haven't figured out why she does the hair thing, but judging by how loud and how much she purrs when she's doing it, I guess it makes her really happy? *shrugs* It's cute even though it's confusing. But yeah, sleep, then hopefully a bit of time before the Halloween party I might be going to later to read some more.

Just found this RaT log thread so I'll just mention that yesterday morning @ 7am eastern US and today I've been reading All the Light We Cannot See for my neighborhood book club. It's so quite in the house I think I'll put in another hour. Hope you're all having fun!

I started reading Night Watch at the bus stop, on the bus and while at airport. It won't let me change the touchstone to the Sergei Lukyanenko book on my phone!

I've been doing snatches of reading, but have so far failed to read for even half an hour, let alone an hour.

I'm finishing off my current reads in progress (Ancillary Justice and Three Parts Dead) with the aim of having some proper horror for Hallowe'en itself!

Just started Pines by Blake Crouch. Hoping for good things.

During my time slots last night & early A.M. I managed to get in 154 pages of The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family and 138 pages of Dragonfly in Amber. I am looking forward to getting back to both this evening.
I spent my reading time in my usual reading place: on my bed. I got up when the hubby announced supper: Reuben sandwiches with homemade chocolate cake for desert. Love my man! Then it was right back to my books while he watched the telly.

I read about 60 pages of Joyland by Stephen King during my time slots today. It's a great story but not very scary yet. There's a ghost haunting the haunted house of an amusement park where this kid works and he's just gotten to the point where he is actively trying to spot it.

I read in bed with 2 dogs on top of me and 1 under my left arm. Luckily they're little dogs.

I wish I could do it every day this week!

I read for a good bit of the afternoon, between loads of laundry, but I'm still working on some library books (mysteries), not my Manly Wade Wellman. I'll get to it soon, though!

My reading has been all over the place -- I had to finish The Forbidden Realm (ebook) and Lady Audley's Secret (audio) today before I could begin my horror themed read. It has a slow beginning, but The Haunting of Hill House (audio) is becoming delightfully creepy and I had to find something extra to cook until I came to a good stopping point!

Read some more of Dracula from 6:30 pm till 7:40 (I'll count that an hour). Do some walking to reach my goals for the day, then I'll start Sparrow Hill Road - which is a ghost story, by an author I love, and a library book due back Tuesday. Seems to be perfect.

Didn't read a horror-themed book this time, because I felt like a good laugh. Read a decently big chunk of The New New Rules by Bill Maher. Humor books tend to cheer me up a bit, and because too damn much stress lately, that's exactly what I needed. Read it in bed this time, too, which is a somewhat rare occurance for me anymore. And now, the beginnings of my hangover says sleep, and I must listen.

I'm partway through Greyfriar, a steampunk novel featuring vampires. I'm also listening to Seraphina on audiobook. This isn't a horror-themed book, but it does have dragons.

I managed to get some reading done on my commute today, which was lovely. I'm really enjoying the 'past' in Ancillary Justice; struggling a bit to engage with the 'present'.

Didn't manage to read last night - I fell asleep instead. Did read this morning, from 9 till 10, but that was more Dracula. Need to get moving on Sparrow Hill Road!

Read a bit from The King In Yellow in bed, with all the lights out (on my Nook, so I could still see). Not the best of ideas, seeing as how, even now, it's still dark out. Not exactly a scary book, more just a creeping dread that manages to be more frightening that straight up scary. I can definitely see why H.P. Lovecraft was inspired by this. Ahh, Hastur...

Listening to Pines and am definitely intrigued. Also, reading Cabinet of Curiosities by Preston/Childs.

>27 VampAmber: Yeeeah. That's why I don't read much horror...

From 8 am to 9 am reading Dracula - which is weird. I know the story, even some of the details, but I've never actually read the book (or seen any of the movies) so I don't know exactly how it will be expressed. It's also interesting reading it right after Blood Red by Mercedes Lackey; the first part, in Castle Dracula, is set in the same area and runs into some of the same types of people and superstitions (which aren't, in both cases). Now everyone's in England, so that link is gone, but so many echoes of so many vampire stories...

From 10 to 11, and again from noon until 3, I read Sparrow Hill Road (and finished it). That is fantastic. Ghost stories, yeah, but dealing with people, and all the myriad ways people think and feel and act. They're really a bunch of short stories packed together into a book - same protagonist, a very twisty timeline (particularly since several of the stories happen in at least two times), and a really nasty Big Bad (who isn't in all the stories, just a few). There are some really unhappy stories - ones where there's nothing that can be done - and some that are rife with possibilities. Death isn't the end...sometimes it's a beginning, or a beginning again. I do love Seanan's stuff, and this one is among the best.

There's also a couple tiny mentions of the family in the Incryptid series - one mention of the Healys, and an appendix with Price family descriptions of some of the creatures Rose comes across. Fascinating.

And now I need to scan their covers and return Sparrow Hill Road and Dry Storeroom No. 1 - they're due back today. More reading later.

Between yesterday, last night & thus far today I have read another couple hundred pages in The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of a Literary Family, about 80 in Dragonfly in Amber, and in entirety: The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. That last one is a page turner. Not really a horror story but quite suspenseful and it held my interest well. This was my first Henry James and I found that I quite like his writing style.
Tonight I plan to read more in the Bronte bio and some scary short stories.

Also I have filled in all of the blank slots within the timeline. However if some of you are wanting any of them and just haven't got around to signing up for them please help yourself and I will happily step back from some of them. I was surprised at how many were empty and just didn't want there to be no one reading at those times.
Hope I've not stepped on any toes.
thanks,

Finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's memoir Wait Til Next Year today (moving in places, unexpectedly hilarious in others), and have been chipping away at Yellow, which I think would be going better if the author's arguments about race and diversity weren't quite so dense and abstract. I do hope I finish that one soon, though, as my reading pile seems to have grown bigger instead of smaller. I guess that's what happens when you complete one book but start two more ...

31 rainpebble
I think it's great you filled in the empty slots! More than 1 person can read in each slot so I'm sure you haven't hurt any feelings.

I'm closing in on the ending of Joyland by Stephen King. I wonder how it will end...

>31 rainpebble: You're actually going to be reading all those times? Impressive. There have been a few gaps earlier on - not many, but a few - and it's nice to have the slots filled, but they need to be filled with reading as well as in the wiki.

I've been filling in slots as I read - I'm in the No Timeline group, and several of us do that. So there aren't as many blank spaces as it appears, some of them just get filled in after the fact.

Busy afternoon/evening; finally managed some time starting at 9:30, and read through until 12:30 am. I'm about 3/4 done with A Red Heart of Memories. Lovely book, like most of Nina Kiriki Hoffman's - and such rich characters. I've read A Stir of Bones a couple times, and I remember them then (it's a prequel written after the rest); it's interesting seeing this different angle. I have Past the Size of Dreaming, the next book, to read when I'm done with this - but now bed.

Not enough time for reading this week, but I did sneak in an hour last night on non-horror themed book again - The Holy Terrors

Just about to start my time slot. Reading the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges today. Nothing like a little light reading first thing in the morning. Ha!

>34 jjmcgaffey::
Hi Jennifer. I have 3 alarm clocks set up in my room so yes, unless someone else steps in, I will be reading during all of those hours. I am retired & so can nap & snooze when I feel the need. And I don't mind reading the nights so much. I am reading two books that are over a thousand pages each & so was planning at least 6 hours a day anyway.

Last night and today I have continued to read more in both of my chunksters, The Brontes & Dragonfly in Amber. I also have read: East of the Mountains by David Guterson, House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III, (kind of creepy) Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, (very creepy) The Other by Thomas Tryon, (definitely in the horror genre) and I am half way through Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, (definitely the horror, creepy, crawly genre).

Well, back to it. Had an hour to eat, shower & post. Picking up Uncle Silas again.

Creepy reading.............

>37 rainpebble: - Ooooh, Uncle Silas is great fun (of the creepy crawly variety!) - enjoy!

Read from 9 to 10 am on Dracula, and then from 3 until 8 pm finishing A Red Heart of Memories and reading all of Past the Size of Dreaming. Great stories - fascinating aspects of magic (multiple different forms of it), great characters, unexpected forms of conflict both internal and external. The only thing is, it really should have been one book - Dreaming wouldn't, I don't think, make much sense without having read Heart first. A minor quest arc in Heart that leads on to a longer one in Dreaming. And it's very amusing how the Big Bad suddenly becomes a side issue - I bet it would have pissed him off if he'd realized it.

>37 rainpebble: Have fun! I work for myself, but things keep interfering with plans to just read...thanks for being able and willing to step in.

Read on Reign Fall from 8pm-11pm. It technically works, because it's about a half-demon princess. It's the third one in the series, and it's very unputdownable. I fully blame my fiancee for pulling up top ten videos about horror movies, otherwise I would've read for a lot longer. As for the wheres and whatnot, front room couch again, with a caramel apple to keep me company for a few minutes, then shortly after that was completely nommed, a kitty in my lap.

Read a bit more from Reign Fall starting at 4am, but it ended shortly after 5 because of the wrong kind of Halloween scare: a spider made its way down from the ceiling and landed on one of the open book's pages. YEEP! I didn't want to ruin the book (because you DON'T DESTROY BOOKS, and also it's from the library), so I didn't just squish it in between the pages when I had the chance. By letting it live that much longer, though, it tried to crawl onto me, so I jumped up and swatted at myself for a few minutes, partially disrobing to make sure the spider wasn't in my hoodie or my shirt (good thing the blinds were completely closed). Took a few more minutes of trying to find the damn thing to kill it, and finally I gave up and got on the computer (because the computer desk is across the room from the possibly-spider-infested couch, and that definitely makes me safe... not). So yeah, no reading done for the past fifty minutes or so. Ugh. And I really wanted to finish that book tonight, too. *shrugs* But then again, who needs sleep?

Taking a break 15 minutes early to log my reads, then a 2 hour nap before continuing.
Since my last post I have continued reading Uncle Silas and am loving it. Also through the evening, night & this A.M. I read:
Christine by Stephen King; (3*),
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin; (4*),
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie; (4*), &
Night Tales II: Nightshade & Night Smoke by Nora Roberts; (3*).
I have also been reading from a compilation of Poe, from Mistresses of the Dark and from 50 Great Horror Stories.

Gonna snag something to eat & hit the rack for a couple.
I hope you all are enjoying this RaT as much as I am.

So I ended up with no internet access while I was away from home, but I also had little actual reading time so I'm still making my way through The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. On my return today, I slipped Hunger by Melvin Burgess in to listen while I drove to the supermarket and back. Didn't get far - probably about half way through the first disc, and I'm not sure whether I'm going to stick with it for the whole thing as I wasn't really enjoying it, but I'll give it at least another listen tomorrow and try to get through the first couple of discs - I think there's only six in all anyway.

(Thanks to VampAmber and imyril for the offers of help in adding my reading times to the wiki - as mentioned above I didn't get online, I have however, kept a note and so will go through and add a few of those sessions in now and then hopefully tomorrow will be a more successful day on the reading score)

I've needed to get through some library books, so I haven't even got to the Manly Wade Wellman book I planned to read. Also, I've mostly been reading in small chunks, although they have added up to finishing two books, so not so bad.

I wasn't aware we were doing another ReadaThing until yesterday afternoon. Therefore, I signed up for no specific time.

Read more of Dracula, from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm today, and then again from 2 pm until 3:30 pm. I thought it was going fast, but I'm only about halfway through - of course, I'm only reading in bits. I don't know. And right now I'm quite thoroughly pissed at all the protagonists, especially the men - they've made two or three egregious errors in the last chapter, both missing obvious danger points and demonstrating total sexism (which is, admittedly, correct for the time) and thereby putting Mina into unnecessary danger. Just being _stupid_! Grrr.

Read a bit more The Graveyard Book earlier. I'm actually a little disappointed with it so far. I usually adore anything and everything that Neil Gaiman writes, but this one is reading a little dull for me. I'm guessing it's because it's a children's book? But that theory doesn't completely work, because I loved Coraline. *shrugs* I'm hoping it starts picking up more soon, because I'm about halfway through, and I'm not yet fond of it. Maybe I should just read his adult novels from now on, and skip over any of his kid's works.

I finished Ancillary Justice last night, so today I think I'll pick up The Woman in Black as a proper Hallowe'en read before going back to Three Parts Dead.

I just deleted the description of what I read from message #45 and removed my name from the ReadaThing participants for this particular reading. My reading was not on the topic of horror or spooky. Sorry that I did not read the instructions carefully enough.

I will be able to participate if we have a December read about the holidays -- Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.

I read Black Christmas in my lie-berry chair (no pic) from 7:59 to 9:01. I suppose I dither and hum more than I realized when I'm reading; I got through more pages with a closer, timed application.

Someone is killing the young women of Murdock's senior high school class. In the days leading up to Christmas, during a blizzard, the killer taunts the town sheriff with grisly clues. The last time there was a murder in town was 1958...there have been three today.

The book isn't meeting my first, favorable impression of it. The pace gets bogged down in too much exposition, and the characters all lead bitter lives full of guilt and regret that I get to hear too much about. Bummer. I'm about half-way through. The book isn't bad enough to jet, but I am glad that it was published before authors felt that every horror book had to be more than 400 pages. Seriously, it doesn't even work for Stephen King, and he's got 'the knack.'

Still, it touches on some of my favorite things in horror and suspense fiction- snow, Christmas, an agreeably high body count, a psycho killer, and a trashy, lurid cover.

ETC grimmer nd sich, and being posted in the wrong damn place (thanks jjmcgaffey).

Have spent most of the day listening to Hunger by Melvin Burgess expect to finish it before bed.

>49 sallylou61: You can put all of it right back up. We suggest a horror theme, but we don't require it. No worries. All books count, we just encourage reading something perfect for October. Sorry that that wasn't explained well enough. But yeah, all books count. ^_^

As my reading times are complete I will just give a quick rundown. I spent just a bit less than 69 hours in reading time in this RaT. The books I completed are:
The Turn of the Screw, East of the Mountains, House of Sand and Fog, Rosemary's Baby, The Other, Christine, The Boys from Brazil, And Then There Were None, Night Tales, Mistresses of the Dark, Uncle Silas, The Brontes and Dragonfly in Amber & 50 Great Ghost Stories.
I read from a total of 14 books, completing 13. I read 6,777 pages plus the introductions & notes. So I figure that I averaged approximately 100 pages per hour of reading. But into that I have to factor potty breaks, snack, water, coffee & tea runs. So I am fairly satisfied with my reading.
At first I didn't think I would really get into the creepy & horror genres but I found that I actually had fun with those books. My favorites were probably Uncle Silas and Mistresses of the Dark. That one has some really wonderful authors included within the covers.
Hope ya all had as much fun with this as I did. But now I am exhausted. It is 5:30 P.M. our time and I will probably be in bed by 7:00. The little goonies will have to help themselves to the bucket of candy on the porch. The dog & I will be out.........as in like lights!
See ya next RaT.



Well, give her some gray hair, some poundage, a few wrinkles & it could be me. The dog is definitely mine.

>53 rainpebble: Wow, that is very impressive ... and inspiring as well!

As for myself, I'd read for 13 hours and finished three books: Greyfriar, Seraphina and International Flavor. Greyfriar, a steampunk fantasy, is the first in the Vampire Empire series. It was somewhat entertaining but not particularly memorable. Seraphina, on the other hand, was excellent. It featured superb writing and a wonderful fantasy world created by the author. International Flavor is a graphic novel, the third in the Chew series. I really love this hilarious horror/police-procedural series, with its themes of food and cannibalism. This second book in the series featured a vampire too. Finally, I started Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, a choose-your-own-adventure book for the adults, featuring zombies, of course ... a perfect Hallowe'en read!

This was my first Read-a-thng, and I enjoyed it very much. I also liked having the optional theme, as it helped me choose and focus on particular books from my large TBR pile. I will certainly participate in the next Read-a-Thing!

I read the first six chapters of 11/22/63. I'm a slow reader, but, as usual, no one can tell a story quite like King. The story is of a man who is asked, by a friend, to go to the past to prevent the assassination of president Kennedy, but he has his own agenda, and the only catch is he must start on Sept. 9, 1958. I couldn't help but wonder, as I was reading, what would be the fate of the friend who asked. He tried to do the task himself, but was diagnosed with cancer, and didn't have the time to wait. It is a clever revamp of old time travel ideas. Sort of like Narnia with respects to how time passes. I highly recommend this one to anyone looking for a good mind bender...and a good scare, for I can almost guarantee it is in the future of this book. Happy Halloween.

Read a bit more Dracula from 2:30 to 3:30 pm. Finished it tonight, after the RaT was over - fascinating, but more for its echoes than for the story itself. I dug Sunshine out of its box, but didn't get around to reading it - I will anyway, soon.

>53 rainpebble: Thanks for filling in the gaps! Glad you had fun, too; sleep well!

I read the first few chapters of The Woman in Black across the course of the day, although not consistently enough to put any extra entries in the timetable!

I'd forgotten how much I love the language of this novel; the Gothic complexity of the sentences lulling you into an entirely misplaced sense of time and perfectly setting the atmosphere for what is to come.

I'll finish it over the weekend. Very glad to have revisited this for Hallowe'en.

Thank you everyone for another great ReadaThing - I do love seeing how many of us are reading and what we're reading like this :)

Thank you to everyone for sharing and thank you to the organizers!

Yes, a huge Shout Out Thank You to the people who put this RaT together for our mutual enjoyment. It was a great week and I look forward to the next.

Hi, I was told in message 52 that it was not necessary to read a Halloween book. Here is what I had written and deleted from message from message 45.

This week I read Rosanna of the Amish by Joseph W. Yoder. This book, which was originally published in 1940, was written to provide a more accurate picture of Amish life than what had been portrayed in books about the Amish. I knew that my father, an anthropologist who was an expert on the Amish, felt that it gave an accurate description of their way of living. Rosanna of the Amish is a biography of Rosanna Yoder, a 19th century Amish woman, and her family, written by her youngest son. At first I thought that the writing "spoke down" to the readers as if they were children, and that there was too much repetition in the book. However, either I got used to the style, or the writing improved (or both). Soon I became very interested in the story, and enjoyed the book as a whole. I read the 1995 centennial edition (centennial of Rosanna's death), which contained both a short supplement about the different branches of the Amish religion and an updated bibliography.

The reason I read this book this week (finished it Friday morning) was because I took an adult education 3-session course about the Amish this month, and was disappointed in it. I had not read anything or studied the Amish for many years, and decided to read a book which my father, who has been dead over 40 years, liked. He died in October.

Thank you to everybody for reading, and extra thanks to everybody who took my idea and made it a reality. ^_^ Maybe we can do this again to ring in the new year? Though I promise I'll pull more of my weight next time.

Thanks to all those who organised, encouraged and read during this ReadAThing - I've enjoyed it and have spread my wings a little into new areas - While I can't say I really enjoyed all of it, I found some new treats, so it's all good. :D