Week 14: Read a book in a day!

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the 14th post in the series, when I read a book in a single day. Here you will find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

I wrote out a list of at least 60 goals I wanted to accomplish by the end of the year when I started my "resolution" this year. One of the more recent additions has been to read a book in a week. Technically, that's not something new to me. I used to read all the time in high school and college. My friends from home joke about how I used to make up excuses about my parents grounding me or making me do chores so that I could stay in at night and read my newest book.

(Yeah, I was am a huge nerd.) But ever since I graduated and have been working in sports, I haven't been able to find much time to read for fun. That all changed this past week...

I have become the go-to substitute teacher for P.E., French, journalism/yearbook in the school district I work for. All those teachers have my cell phone number and call me in advance to schedule me for assignments. Well on Tuesday (the day before my birthday!), I showed up to fill in for a P.E. teacher I subbed for in the past. I was ready to go, in my athletic attire, before realizing it was Day 1 of state testing.

Crap, that meant I had to sit in the cafeteria and monitor students who took their standardized tests for three-and-a-half hours! Silly me, thinking I was going to teach a P.E. class and play basketball. Usually I bring a book with me to sub, but the last time I taught P.E. it wasn't necessary... I was stranded for three hours with nothing to do!!

Enter the wonderful girls P.E. teacher who saved me! She had a book a friend told her to read in her purse and spared me. I've heard a lot about the Stephanie Plum series but never got around to reading it before.

(Source)

It was RIVETING! I literally couldn't put it down. Granted, I'm a sucker for mystery-type books ever since taking a Detective Fiction class my sophomore year at UCSB. Well, I got through about 75 percent of the book at school and needed to know how it ended! I couldn't wait, so when the final bell rang I went to Borders, bought a latte and finished the book in less than 45 minutes. Holy cow, I haven't read like that since college. I need to get back at it. Long story short, it's a good thing I finally got around to this book because it's going to be a movie starring Katherine Heigl, set to release in January 2012. Maybe this means I'll add the other 16 books in the series to my to-read list!

One of my goals for the year -- and I feel that this is a very conservative figure -- is to finish 15 books by the end of the year. To get my feet wet and dive back into reading. Another weekly goal I set for myself this year is to read two books in a week. Let's see if I can be that ambitious given my crazy schedule this year.

Read as much as I do? Or do you want to read a lot? Then be my friend on Goodreads and let's compare books! :)

Last, but not least, I've decided not to self-host my blog any longer. It's an expense I don't need in my budget at the moment. Eventually this blog will cease to exist because I am not paying the fee to renew my site in 2011. While I've liked Wordpress, I can't stand the photo limit imposed by the site. So back to Blogger I go! Here is my new site for the future (it's still a work in progress).