It's Almost Canada Day!

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that Lisa and I have both been reading and posting about Canadian books much more frequently than usual in the past several weeks. That is because it will be Canada Day on July 1 and that is the deadline for completing the 10th Canadian Book Challenge. Lisa has completed her 13 books (Hurray for Lisa!) and I have 1 to go.

Starting on Canada Day we will both be participating in the 11th Canadian Book Challenge which is moving to a new home this year at The Indextrious Reader. This is a fun challenge, I have participated for for several years now and have discovered lots of great Canadian writers I didn't know about before. I encourage you to jump in as well.

If you want to celebrate Canada Day here in New Hampshire, Great North Aleworks is the place to be on July 1. (Neither Lisa nor I will probably get much reading done that day as we will both be there!)

CC Readathon 2014

Once again I plan to start off my new year with The Classics Club 24-hour Readathon. The event begins at 8am EST on Saturday, January 4, 2014. Down the Writer's Path has a post from last year on getting ready for a readathon which will help you map out a plan if you want to join in and feel like some guidance would be helpful.
I haven't decided for sure on my reading plan yet, but I do want to read the Arthurian books on my CC list this year so I may dive into The Once and Future King.

National Book Festival 2012

Yesterday I was at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC. I was working at the New Hampshire table in the semi-controlled chaos that is the Pavilion of the States, so I was only able to hear one of the speakers. The talk I went to was one of my favorite authors, Colson Whitehead. I first discovered him (and his work) at the 2009 National Book Festival . This time he was talking about writing. Like his novels, his talk was insightful, funny, smart and irreverent.

The Festival was VERY well attended, and the day was nice (though a little hot for my taste). Each year there is a different artist chosen to create the various graphics for the Festival (including the map of the U.S. that I spent much of my day stamping). The artist this year was Rafael López and I thought his design was one of the best ones yet.