Bout of Books Read-a-Thon Day 4 Update

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 6th and runs through Sunday, January 12th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 9.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team.

So I've reached the midway point for the read-a-thon and I have to admit it's been rather slow.  I have had to work late pretty much every day this week, but I did get a little reading done.

Graphic Novels

I've been reading the comic series Chew by John Layman and really loving them.  I finished volume 3 for around 25 pages and started and finished volume 4 for 120 pages.  I really am enjoying this series, it's weird and gross and really interesting.

 Audio Books


I've been listening to the audio book for Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey and honestly?  It's absolutely terrible.  I've only got a couple of CDs left though so I'm going to go ahead and soldier through but damn.  Very cliche PNR.  I've listened to approximately 40 pages.

Novels

I've been working through Dan Brown's latest Inferno, but it's been slow.  I don't know why, but Brown's last few books have been very sub-par.  It's like fame has made him not a great writer (I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this was a ghost writer).   I really enjoyed his early works, especially Digital fortress and Deception Point, but since the popularity of The Da Vinci Code I feel like his ability to write fast pace scientific thrillers has gone way down.  I've made it about 50 pages.

So that was my reading process so far, about 235 pages, even though a lot of that was comic book.  I don't really have any plans for the weekend, hopefully I can step up my game.  I want to finish Inferno as well as 2 other novels I've been working on since early December. 

Challenges

There are 2 challenges for today, the first is the double date book challenge hosted by Writing my Own Fairy Tale.   We are supposed to take two books that we would recommend people read together and explain why they compliment each other.

My two books are both zombies novels, but on different ends of the spectrum.  My Life as a White Trash Zombie is a really funny almost urban fantasy with a great protagonist.  If you like books like True Blood or the Chicagoland Vampires give this a try.  I would also recommend Feed by Mira Grant, one of the best books I have ever read.  Feed uses a zombie apocalypse to examine the American economic and political system. There's lots of science and technology but I also developed a really emotional connection to the two man characters.

The second challenge is hosted by Pen in Hand to create a poem from a book you're reading.  We're supposed to pick a novel and a number 1-10.  Basically you just go to a random page, count the chosen number of lines and then count to that number word.  Do that 14 times and write a poem with the selected words.

I chose Inferno by Dan Brown and chose the number 3.  Here are my words:  glowing, turned, the, strange, down, had, his, deadly, countryside, of, copper, will, sea, face.  We're allowed to take out two words (had, will) and replace them with different ones (he, traveling).

And here is my poem!

He turned his face.
The glowing sea of copper.
Traveling down the strange, deadly countryside.