Visual Representation of a Reading List, via margolove on Flickr

• New mini-challenges!

  Tara’s Books that Bite mini-challenge

  and

  Trisha Ping at The Book Case’s Re-Reading the Classics mini-challenge

• Surprise drawing of two cheerleader winners:
  • Jen at Multi-Genre Fan
  • Margot at Joyfully Retired

  Congratulations! They each win a book of their choice from the Prizes page and one of the following (given on a first-come, first-served basis):
  * Laura’s bookmark set
  * 2 sets from Katrina (winner gets one of these, but we have 2 to give away)
  * Kim’s bookmark
  * a set of literary stamps
  * Read-a-thon mug
  Winners, make your selections and email your choices, along with your address info, to deweyreadathon(at)gmail.

• Winners of mini-challenges:

  Winners of Trisha of Eclectic/Eccentric’s mini-challenge: Dave, Amanda of The Zen Leaf, and Eden

  The winner of Nise’s mini-challenge is A Buckeye Girl Reads.

  The winner of Bart’s mini-challenge is Kristi from Books and Needlepoint

  The winner of Wendy’s mini-challenge is Finding Biblical Truths in Christian Fiction

Congratulations, all around!

• Still happening:
  • Joy Renee’s Reading is Fundamental mini-challenge

  • Nymeth’s Time for Comics mini-challenge

  • Nicole’s Feed Me Seymour mini-challenge

Joy Renee’s Reading is Fundamental mini-challenge starts this hour. I think she’s going to have multiple winners, too!

We also have Readers of the Hour! At each blog, we’ll randomly select one commenter who will win two books of their choice from the Prizes page. Here are your readers to visit:
• Secret Dreamworld of a Bookaholic
• The Book Cellar
• Finding Biblical Truths In Christian Fiction
• KiwiRia
• Moored at Sea

The winner of Beth Fish Read’s Eat to Read mini-challenge is I Heart Monster! Congratulations!

Still happening:
• Erika at Reading with Momma’s re-reading mini-challenge

• Nymeth’s Time for Comics mini-challenge

• Nicole’s Feed Me Seymour mini-challenge

• This hour’s new mini-challenge: Nicole is hosting this hour’s mini-challenge, Feed Me Seymour. Food-related, mmm. She’s giving away a copy of The Magicians by Lev Grossman, and a gift card (two winners)!
• Surprise drawing of 2 reader winners:
  • MariReads
  • Book Splurge

  Congratulations! They each win 2 books of their choice; make your selections from the Prizes page and email your choices, along with your address info, to deweyreadathon(at)gmail.

• Still happening:
  • Wendy’s Collection Obsession mini-challenge,
  • Nise’s Who Keeps You Company mini-challenge,
  • Beth Fish Reads’s Eat to Read mini-challenge, and
  • Shawnee’s Mix Up the Titles mini-challenge,

• We’ve got two new mini-challenges starting for you this hour! Looks like both of these will give you an opportunity to include photos in your post!

  • Collection Obsession hosted by Wendy

  • Who Keeps You Company? hosted by Nise

  Head on over for your chance at more awesome prizes!

• This hour we also have some readers of the hour for you to visit. At each blog, we’ll randomly select one commenter who will win two books of their choice from the Prizes page. Here are your readers to visit:
  • Christy (Southern Sassy Things)
  • NTE
  • Sally @ The Friendly Book Nook
  • Ti (Book Chatter and Other Stuff)
  • Swapna (S. Krishna’s Books)
• Still happening:
  • Beth Fish Reads’s Eat to Read mini-challenge,
  • Shawnee’s Mix Up the Titles mini-challenge,
  • Drea’s Guess the Book Cover mini-challenge, and
  • Kara’s Perspectives mini-challenge

Two new mini-challenges for this hour:
Beth Fish Reads’s Eat to Read challenge. She’s giving a handmade lace bookmark to the winner!

and

Shawnee’s Mix Up the Titles challenge. The prize for this one is an Amazon gift card!

Winner: Eva forfeited her prize for multiple-time participants, so we drew a new winner. The winner is Ashley. Congrats, Ashley! Please email deweyreadathon(at)gmail with your mailing address so you can receive the “grab bag” of 3 (new) surprise 2010 ARCs from Aaron’s Books.

Still happening:
• Trisha’s Excerpt Expert mini-challenge,
• Drea’s Guess the Book Cover mini-challenge, and
• Kara’s Perspectives mini-challenge

So, I’d like to take a moment and recognize those who have volunteered and worked alongside us to make this October 2009 read-a-thon a reality.

• Beth Fish has helped us solicit and organize prize donations. She’s done a great job!
• Trish of Trish’s Reading Nook will help us contact winners and get them matched with the appropriate donors. I’m very much looking forward to the help!
• Jodie of Book Gazing, along with
• Darren of Bart’s Bookshelf, have been helping with publicity. Thank you so much!

Before I’m finished here, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to our fourth, new, co-host this year. Eva has been a great addition to the read-a-thon team Trish, Nymeth and I have forged. We’re glad you’ve joined us, Eva!

Thank you, all of you, for all your help.

Now, back to the read-a-thon preparations! Less than 24 hours until the official start!

Heartfelt thanks go out to all our donors.

Tips for readers (from our extremely helpful FAQ):

People who sign up to be readers are committing to reading books, posting updates in their blogs, participating in mini-challenges when they choose to, and, if they need breaks, visiting the blogs of other readers and encouraging them. The most hardcore among us will stay up the entire 24 hours and do nothing but read and update, even going so far as to skip showering and eat meals while reading. However, not all of us are that hardcore, and it’s OK for you to customize this read-a-thon to meet your needs. All I ask is that you be honest in your updates, and that’s about the only rule for readers.

Updating for Readers: This should be individually customized. If you want to spend 5 or 10 minutes updating each hour or every 3 hours, that’s great. If you want to update whenever you feel like you need a break from reading, that’s great, too. If you want to just read and read for 24 hours straight and then write one big update, that’s also great. You do what works for you, OK?

Suggested format for updating: Again, customize this as you wish, but I suggest updating about what you’re reading, how many pages you’ve read since your last update, and how much time you’ve spent reading since your last update. You may want to keep a running total of time spent reading, number of books read and pages read; this could make you eligible for some prize drawings. Updates might also be your typical book reviews, once you finish something.

Readers visiting other readers: Do this if and when you’re in the mood, as often as you like.

Tips for Readers:

1. Pick shortish books. When you’re reading for such a long time, you might get really sick of the same book for hours on end. 2007 Readers recommended that you start with a short book so that you have a feeling of accomplishment when you finish it early in the read-a-thon.

2. Choose something light (children’s books, humorous books, graphic novels, books you already know well) and save those for the end when you’re tired and sick of reading.

3. Try not to pick really dense nonfiction unless you have the most enormous attention span ever.

4. If you’re going to use this time to catch up on other challenges, try to have a big variety available. You don’t know what will hold your attention, so don’t assign yourself specific books without alternates.

5. Give yourself permission to put a book aside and try something else if it’s not holding your attention.

6. Careful with caffeine! If you drink more coffee than you’re used to, you’ll be jittery at first and then crash later. Drinking something lightly caffeinated (green tea?) throughout the day seems to work better.

7. Don’t sit in the same spot/position all day! This could make your back hurt. Instead, move to different places in the house every hour or two.

8. In general, don’t be a masochist. This is supposed to be fun! And if anything about the challenge makes you start picturing us with little devil horns and wanting to strangle us, please stop and change it so that it works for you. Or, you know, go ahead and scream TO HELL WITH THIS CHALLENGE and go to sleep. We don’t want sleep deprivation making you hate your friendly read-a-thon organizers.

Suggested high-interest, keeping-you-awake books: See Eva’s giant post of suggestions she gathered from her readers a few read-a-thons ago.

Or, you can check out the piles of other participants in this read-a-thon:

Enter the permalink (link to exact post) to your post detailing the books you plan to read / choose from during the read-a-thon in this Mr Linky:

Mark your date planner! Clear the weekend on your calendar.

So excited you want to get started now? Check the FAQ page for more (general) information, and watch this space for updates! Stay informed by subscribing to this blog in your feed reader of choice. And follow the read-a-thon on twitter.

If you want to help, email your fearless co-hosts: DeweyReadathon AT gmail.