Thankfully Reading Weekend 2017

It is one of my favorite times of the year! I love Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. There is lots of yummy food, no presents and lots of time for reading. Thankfully Reading is the first readathon I ever participated in seven years ago. I love this readathon because there are no rules and I can read whenever I can fit it in. Thanksgiving is pretty busy with cooking and family time so its good to have some quiet reading time. As usual I will be starting my Thankfully Reading on Wednesday. This is the first time since I started this readathon that I am working outside my own business so I made sure to take Wednesday off for cooking and Thankfully Reading! All updates will be in this post. For more information on this readathon and to sign up head to the host, Jenn's Bookshelves website! http://www.jennsbookshelves.com/2017/11/14/2017-thankfully-reading-weekend/

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Here are all my Thankfully Reading posts from previous years!

I am getting my TBR list together and I have picked A LOT of books haha. It's as if I have two weeks to read and not just a long weekend. Here is my print book pile. I also have an audiobook and some e-books. I can't wait to get started!

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Kick Off Morning!

Yay Thankfully Reading starts today and I couldn't be more excited. 

  • How will/did you celebrate Thanksgiving? I will celebrate Thanksgiving at my house. My immediate and extended family will be coming and enjoying the day with us. I am so excited.
  • What’s in your TBR pile for the weekend? My TBR pile is pictured above. I also hope to finish up some ARCs and an audiobook.
  • How much time do you think you’ll have for reading? I should have a lot of time for reading except for Thanksgiving Day. I have one photo session on Friday and then my husband and I will probably binge the last season on Broadchurch Sunday but that is all I have planned! 
  • What book are you starting out with? I am going to start out with Alias Grace on audio. This morning I plan to cook most of my Thanksgiving dishes so I will listen to that as I cook. 
  • Are you reading print, ebooks, or audio? Maybe a bit each? Definitely all of them! 

I will check back in later today! Happy reading!

Wednesday

Day one of Thankfully Reading is in the books and it was a good day. It was so great to have an entire week day to read. 

I woke up early this morning and started cooking so my first book had to be an audiobook. I decided on Alias Grace. I am loving it. It’s such a good book. I bought the Kindle edition and added on the Audible audiobook and that is my new favorite thing. It is terrific how easily you can switch betweeen the two. I am about 40% of the way through this book. 

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The first book I finished was Confess by Colleen Hoover. I have a love hate relationship with some of her books but this one I liked better than any others I have read. It was a quick and entertaining read. 

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And then I finally dove in to The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur. I loved this book of poetry so, so much. I can’t always relate to her poems on a personal level but they always crush me with the honesty and the rawness of them. 

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The last book of the evening that I started is the absolutely stunning The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo. This book is gorgeous! The covers, the paper, the colored inks and the illustrations are just amazing. It’s so aesthetically pleasing I can barely concentrate on the content of the actual book!

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I am so happy that I had such a good reading and cooking day!  I am ready for Thankgiving tomorrow and so excited to spend the day with my family!

Wednesday Numbers:

Pages read: 703

Audiobook Time: 5 hours 30 minutes

Books finished: 2

Thursday 

Thanksgiving was wonderful! I had all my family at my house. We had four tables groaning with food and it was amazing. We have the best cooks in my family. 

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​I listened to my Alias Grace audiobook while getting ready and cleaning up after. It is getting really intense. I am about to find out what really happened to Grace. I was finallly ready to sit down with Language of Thorns and a glass of wine but eyes were dry so I popped upstairs to take out my contacts and I accident broke a blood vessel in my eye. 😭 My mom suggested I not strain my eye and read. So that was it for the night. I didn’t even update the blog until this morning. So sad. But I think I will be fine to read all day today. I have a photo session in a few hours and then the rest of the day to read. 

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Thursday Numbers:

Pages read: 64

Audiobook Time: 3 hours 37 minutes

Books finished: 0

Friday 

Today was another good reading day! I finished The Language of Thorns. I loved this book of fairy tales from the Grisha Verse. You really don’t have to read any of the Grisha books to appreciate this. I love the twist she puts on some classic fair tales. So good! And the book itself was gorgeous! The illustrations, the ink colors and the beautiful cover made a wonderful reading experience.

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I also finished Alias Grace. This was such a good book! I don’t know why I have only read three Margaret Atwood books as I have loved every one of her books! I am also looking forward to watching the mini series on Netflix. 

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​I started One of Us Is Lying. And it is so good so far. I don’t think I have figured out the culprit yet and I am enjoying the different POV. That can be a very risky way to write a story as it can get confusing but I am liking it in this book.

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I also started the Young Elites audiobook. I have been wanting it read this series for awhile and I have owned the second book for months. So I finally found the audiobook on Overdrive. I am really enjoying it so far. I love everything Marie Lu writes. 

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I had a great day of a wonderful family photo session, yummy Thanksgiving leftovers, a Christmas movie and lots of delightful reading time!

Friday Numbers:

Pages read: 479

Audiobook Time: 4 hours 15 minutes

Books finished: 2

Saturday 

I didn’t get in as much reading today as I thought I would. I had a lot of stuff today so I just mainly listened to my audiobook and read print books here and there.

I finally started Shadowshaper. This is a book I have been wanting to read for ages. And when I posted a photo of my to read shelf to Litsy everyone was like read that one, read that one. It is really good. The shadowshaper stuff can be a little confusing at times though but I am thinking that is intentional.  

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​I finished One of Us is Lying. I loved it! I did guess part of the ending before the end but I still really enjoyed reading this book. 

I am also reading The Thousandth Floor. I got the second one accidentally at the library but luckily I had the first one on my Nook. I am really enjoying this book so far. It’s set really far the future and NYC is now all inside in a thousand floor tower. It is fascinating world building. I have also had a ton of Thanksgiving leftovers this week. I probably need to go on a long walk tomrorow to compensate for all the delicious food I have eaten. 

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The main reason I didn’t get much reading in is that my sister, brother in law and I went shopping this afternoon. It is Small Business Saturday so we went to our local downtown and supported our small, locally owned businesses and got some Christmas shopping done. Tomorrow probably won’t be that great of a reading day since I plan to decorate for Christmas and watch the final season of Broadchurch.

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​Saturday Numbers:

Pages read: 453

Audiobook Time: 4 hours 17minutes

Books finished: 1

Sunday 

So sad it’s the last day of Thankfully Reading Weekend. And I ended up having an awesome reading day due to the fact that Broadchurch doesn’t come on Netflix until tomorrow. Boo!

I finished The Young Elites audiobook and was not happy with the end. Hoping that it gets resolved in book two but not hopeful at this point. I really enjoyed that book. It was very good!

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I about 2/3 of the way through The Thousandth Floor and still loving the concept of this book. I am looking forward to settling down and reading it more tomorrow. 

I finished Shadowshaper and it did not disappoint. I am always afraid that having a book really hype do up will cause my expectations to be overblown. But this one really came through. I loved it and I love Sierra. She was an awesome heroine and I can’t wait to read the next one! 

​I took a break from novels for a minute to see what graphic novels Hoopla has. I found the next two Archie volumes and the last volume of season nine of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am loving the Archie volumes and can’t wait until the next ones come out. It also inspired me to watch a few episodes of the show Riverdale which I really enjoy. 

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I also started the book Hanna Fell From The Sky. Whew. That’s a tough one to read! It is very maddening. It’s all about an fundamentalist LDS like cult. The men are awful and they have all the power as the young girls are forced into plural marriages. It’s truly horrible. But the book is beautifully written with some magical realism elements popping up. I am looking forward to seeing where this book goes!

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Sunday Numbers:

Pages read: 644

Audiobook Time: 4 hours 6 minutes

Books finished: 4

Wrap-Up!

What a fun Thankfully Reading Weekend! I had a blast reading and enjoying some relaxing down time.

Total Numbers

Pages read: 2,343

Audiobook Time:  21 hours  45 minutes

Books finished: 9