Readathon: Strategy and Preparations of a First Timer

So, I'm pretty excited about the readathon.  And I guess this blog post is going to be an attempt to get out all my extra enthusiastic energy.  WEEKLY GEEKS had a challenge with a few questions to answer about preparation for the readathon, so that's what I'm going to do.

* if you are participating in the read-a-thon or not.
I think it is obvious that yes, I am participating.  I'm excited.  Romo is participating too.

* do you have a strategy?
Kind of.  I'm going to try to stick with short, easy-to-read, and highly entertaining books and stay away from denser, "literary" fiction.  I'm going to be totally flexible about what I read next.  I have novels, a book of essays, and a budget to download an e-book to my kindle if I decide that I absolutely have to read a certain book that is not currently in my apartment. I was thinking that it would probably be Incarceron, but it is NOT AVAILABLE for kindle.  Which means that I won't get to read it for the readathon.  So I'll have to see what people are reading and blogging about.  But I'm excited about the freedom to purchase something immediately if something catches my eye on a reatathon blog post.

* do you have a stack of books prepared to read from?
Yes.  I have lots of stacks of books.  I took out a bunch of library books, and grabbed some off my bookshelf.  Then I went through today and pulled probably another 25 more, just in case.  I have stacks of books everywhere.  Most likely to be read... and there are too many, so I'm going to apologize now for being lazy and not linking or including authors... are: Hunger (there are a few, so the one on the sidebar), Break, One for the Money, a few essays from You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start In the Morning, The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Don't Die Dragonfly, Paranormalcy, Sherlock Holmesy, The Giver, An Abundance of Katherines, Daniel X, and just stacks and stacks more.  I definitely will not get to all of these, but I like to have options.  I'm the girl who brings two suitcases for a week long trip.  What can you do?  Oh, and I've got an audio book for when I shower, cook, and work out.

* will you try to read as many books as you can or as many pages as you can?
I'm not particularly worried about either one.  I just want to stay up the whole time, read 90% of the time and check out some awesome blog posts and blog myself the other 10%.

* do you have special food and snacks planned?
Kind of.  I have a lunch and dinner prepared already.  And I am going to prepare breakfast and snacks tonight.  I'll probably drink lots of coffee and tea, which I do normally, but I'm always looking for an excuse to drink more coffee.  I'm going to try to eat healthy, even when I get really tired, which is when I like to eat donut-like snacks.

* do you have a special spot all set up for reading?
Again, I'll be taking care of this tonight.  I'm going to make sure my whole apartment is cleaned.  I am going to set up my couch all cozy-like so that I can read and keep an eye on twitter/blogs any time I need a short break or any time I want to blog about what I'm reading.  I'm also going to clear off my kitchen table so that  I can read while I eat, and maybe do some reading in the bath or on my exercise ball.  This actually isn't much different from where I normally read.  It's just going to be clean.

* will you get your Saturday things done on Friday so you can read guilt free?
Yes, I did the shopping yesterday and am doing the cleaning tonight.  Sunday I'll do laundry and bills.  Anything else can wait until next weekend.  But it's not a big deal.  I lead a simple life.

* if you have others living in your household, do you have to work around their schedules too?
I live by myself, which is something I had to get used to at first, but which I am ultimately grateful, because I can totally do things like the readathon guilt free and and without any distractions.