Bout of Books Day 7 - Update and Stretch Goals

This week, I did a fair amount of reading, though I didn't do much posting. I finished Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, started and finished Megan Abbott, The End of Everything, and the Manga by Naoki Urasawa, Monster for the Book Riot Read Harder challenge. I read some of Kathleen Belew's Bring the War Home, but not enough. Today, I'm going to try to read more of that book, and then maybe some other book I had started and set aside a while back. I have quite a few options on that score. I've been in a lazy mode, so it will probably be fiction or another graphic novel/ trade issue of a comic book. Reading so much about the far right for research is finally getting to me.

Bout of Books Day 2 - Update

Yesterday, I was in NYC on vacation, so most of my reading was done on the subway. I had a lot of places to go, and I got quite a bit of reading done, mostly in Quinones' Dreamland, which is just excellent. I also read a good chunk of it on the plane today.  Last night, because the b&b where we were staying only had a lamp on one side of the bed, and I neglected to bring a book light, I stayed up pretty late reading John Dean's Watergate memoir, Blind Ambition, So far, it shows him barely hesitating to help Nixon do a bunch of crazy shit to attack his political enemies.

Today's Challenge: bookish favorites. This year, I'm planning to re-read two different old favorites: A.S. Byatt's Possession which really swept me off my feet when I read it in the 1990s, and the newish translation of the Master and Margarita, which I first read for a college class in the 1980s.

Bout of Books 25 - Sign-Up Post

I really need to post some other things on this blog, but for now, here's my official sign-up post for the next "Bout of Books" read-a-thon, which started yesterday. The last time I did the read-a-thon, it was at the beginning of the semester, and I didn't have much time to read. In fact, the spring semester has been so busy that I got pretty far behind in my reading goals for the year, so I'm hoping doing some read-a-thons this summer will get me on track.

This week, I'm planning to finish reading Sam Quinones' Dreamland, a book about the American opiate/opioid epidemics, tracing the marketing and proliferation of oxycontin and black tar heroin in parallel tracks. I met Quinones when he was in the early stages of the research for the book, and I've been looking forward to reading it ever since. Other reading goals for the week include finishing up Kathleen Belew's Bring the War Home, and also starting a new work of fiction. I'll probably also try to finish reading the Mueller Report in PDF, but I suppose that doesn't count as a book yet.
  If you're not familiar with it, here's a description of the Bout of Books:

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 13th and runs through Sunday, May 19th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, Twitter chats, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 25 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team