Hour 15 (with a few challenges thrown in for good measure)

Oy vey. Have finally gotten around to sinking my teeth into a book and it's so good!  I realize that it's been a couple of hours since I last checked in, so I wanted to give an update and check on my RAT buddy Sherry Ann!

Been reading: "The School for Good and Evil" by Soman Chainani

Food: nothing but water, but I'm feeling the munchies starting to hit. Maybe I'll have some OJ to put off eating for awhile, at least until I finish the book.

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Total books finished: 2
"The Pirates! In An Adventure With Ahab" by Gideon DeFoe (154 pgs)
"Jim Henson's Return To Labyrinth Vol. 1" by Jake T. Forbes and Chris Lie (208 pgs)

Total time reading: 11 hrs 49 min - 7 hrs 12 min audiobook, 4 hrs 37 min reading

Total pages read: 580

Total challenges participated in: 6     Hour 1 (introduction questionnaire), Hour 2 (books and music), Hour 3 (book cover/food challenge), Hour 4 (book spine poetry), Hour 12 (Mid-event survey - see below), and Hour 13 (Best of Your Reading Year - see below below)

Total blogs visited: 7


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Mid-Event Survey
1) How are you doing? Sleepy? Are your eyes tired?

Yes, getting sleepy most definitely, though my eyes aren't tired yet. It's coming, though.

2) What have you finished reading?
Just two books, both of them enjoyable. "The Pirates! In An Adventure With Ahab" slightly better than the "Return to Labyrinth" manga.

3) What is your favorite read so far?
So far, it's the book I'm reading right now, "The School for Good and Evil". Can't wait to finish it!

4) What about your favorite snacks?
Sadly, it was the salad. But the tater tots are close behind. :)

5) Have you found any new blogs through the readathon? If so, give them some love!

I couldn't do this without my faithful RAT buddy Sherry Ann @ Sherry Ann's Book Blog! I haven't spent a lot of time reading others blogs, but I have checked out nearly every blog that hosted a mini-challenge!  This spot will have some names in it after the RAT is over with, I promise. For now, I just want to get back to reading!

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Hour 13 Mini-Challenge - The Best of Your Reading Year

This challenge (hosted by Lisa's World of Books) invites you to pick 3 of 19 categories and answer honestly!

1) Best Author of Your Reading Year: Louise Penny. This was a tough one, but I enjoy and read her books like no others, and I'm gearing up to read my second one of hers this year (the fifth in the Gamache series) and I'm so looking forward to it. 

2) Best Children's Book of the Year: "The Secret Staircase" by Jill Barklem. I totally adore everything about her books, but most especially the illustrations, in this book in particular, are out of this world. I've always loved books that were small (like Beatrix Potter's) and were full of little details and little watercolored illustrations and anthropomorphic animals. Jill's books are a great example of all three of these things, and take me right back to reading them as a child - though I don't think I ever did read her when I was a child, only as an adult. But you know what I mean, right? It just puts me right back to a head full of open wonder. Simply marvelous.

3) Best Graphic Novel Author of the Year: Rick Geary. This is a pick-your-own category, but when I was looking through my list of books that I've read this year, I noticed that not only have I read a lot of Graphic Novels and Mangas, but that the ones I enjoyed the most and felt myself wanting to re-read were by Rick Geary. Picked up totally on a whim, I have since read every copy of one of his books in my library system. There's something about his drawing that's spot-on, and he seems to distill just the exact right amount of information (and deliver it at the right time) that makes reading his work like a little bit of enchantment. Sure, it's enchantment about murders and unsolved crimes from the last couple of hundred years, but it's enchantment all the same to me. 

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Okay, back to it! Just over a hundred pages to go in my book, and then it's on to something else!