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And They're Off!

By Tamatha Uhmelmahaye | Posted Under Book Reviews | Comments (25)

Tree-of-Books-books-to-read-683854_1600_1200.jpg

While the rest of you were sleeping off your hangovers, the Cannonballers were already off to the races, as the official start date for Cannonball Read III arrived on January 1st. Some of them have seriously hit the ground running. Others are taking their time. And it’s all good.

At this point we have 113, yes, one hundred and thirteen, participants in CBR-III! And one Junior Cannonballer. Yep, the little one (six years old) of a Cannonballer wanted in on the fun. Doesn’t that just warm the cockles of your heart? Well, it makes *me* happy.

Due to popular demand within the ranks, this year we have a Cannonball Read III blog. If you want to know what’s going on with the CBR, this is the place to go. Although not all participants may decide to join in on the group blog, I expect most of them will. About half have already jumped on the bandwagon. There are links to several reviews (and at least one full-fledged review) up already!

Speaking of reviews, I do plan to get some up here at Pajiba, of course. As I mentioned in the original posting about CBR-III, I probably won’t be posting them daily. But I do expect a couple a week. We’ll see how things go.

Oh, and Twitter! We have a Twitter account, thanks to mswas, the CBR-III’s Twitter Goddess. You can follow us @cannonballread. (Hope that makes sense, I am delightfully Twitter illiterate.)

Now, for those of you wondering if you can still join, the answer is, yes. I decided a grace period, given the holidays, the general busy-ness of life, and folks’ tendency to procrastinate, would be the nice thing to do. BUT that grace period ends by the end of the day Friday! You have until 11:59 PM EST on Friday, January 7th to email me and let me know that you’d like to sign up for CBR-III.

(If you think you signed up already, but you did not receive an email from me, then you are not on my list, which means that your original email to me got lost on the interwebs. So, send me an email. And yes, you have to email me. You cannot just mention in the comments that you want in.)

The info I need from you is as follows: your Pajiba handle* and your blog address. If you know that you want to do the Whole, Half, or Quarter Cannonball, let me know that too. If you want in on the group blog, you’ll need to set up an account in WordPress, but I can give you more info on that once you’ve emailed me.

*If you are a lurker, then make something up—this is how you will be listed in all lists of participants and how your reviews, should they be posted on Pajiba, will be identified as belonging to you.

I think that’s it for now, my little chickadees. May Godtopus smile upon you and fill your life with good books.









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Comments

Love your closing line.

Posted by: mswas at January 4, 2011 9:14 AM

The six-year-old Cannonballer puts many of us to shame (me included).

Posted by: csb at January 4, 2011 9:29 AM

Quick note regarding the CBR hashtag for Twitter. We agreed to use #CBR-III, but hashtags cannot include punctuation (apparently).

Should we use #CBRIII or just #CBR? Or maybe #CBR3?

Posted by: Patty O'Green at January 4, 2011 9:50 AM

Oopsy, nevermind. It looks like we are using #CBRIII now. Don't mind me, I'm working on my first cup of coffee hot tea.

Posted by: Patty O'Green at January 4, 2011 9:52 AM

I suppose I'll be in for a halfer this year. But that means I have to re-kindle my shiny new blog and write stuff and stuff. Why does Pajiba demand so much when I ask for so little?

Posted by: admin at January 4, 2011 10:31 AM

So I'm already behind as I haven't registered yet and I've been unable to set up a blog. PLUS Mr. Julien gave me the new Jonathon Franzen for Christmas and while it is awesome it is also long and time-consuming (We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Wipe your filthy mind and eyes back to me) and will take me ages to read. I'll make up for it by re-reading a couple of Psmiths and and Anne later in the cycle. That shows a nice competitive spirit, doesn't it?

Posted by: Mrs. Julien at January 4, 2011 10:52 AM

Whee! I've already finished my first book, but probably won't be posting until I get back to Texas next Wednesday.

I've even got a non-Pajiban friend participating! Hopefully she'll move on over here for good.

Posted by: figgy at January 4, 2011 11:05 AM

I'm one of those aforementioned "lurkers". First comment on Pajiba! I just have to say, my inner geek LOVES the six year old participating. I read a lot at that age, but unfortunately for me, cool things like the Internet did not yet exist.

Posted by: Tara at January 4, 2011 11:45 AM

Yay Tara! Welcome!

Posted by: Mrs. Julien at January 4, 2011 12:06 PM

@Mrs. Julien - I use the same strategy. Read one long ass "serious" book and follow it up with three or four pulpy novels that take about four hours to get through.

Posted by: FyreHaar at January 4, 2011 12:31 PM

Patty O'Green re: hashtag. Yes it's true that twitter chokes on the hyphen, and I didn't realize it.

I tweeted today with #CBRIII but someone else suggested the #CBR3 because there's a chance someone would leave off one of the I's.

Thoughts anyone?

Posted by: mswas at January 4, 2011 12:38 PM

Welcome, Tara! Also I had no problem with the #CBR-III tag. Does that mean I screwed something up somewhere? Cuz I feel like it does.

Posted by: Even Stevens at January 4, 2011 12:48 PM

Even Stevens You can tweet with #CBR-III but I think if you click it after its tweeted, you can only go to #CBR. The "-III" gets cut off.

Posted by: mswas at January 4, 2011 1:48 PM

I'm already having such fun reading the reviews that have been posted! It's helping my compile my "must read" list for the year, which is awesome.

Posted by: KatSings at January 4, 2011 3:43 PM

Also, are the installments of the Fables series legit entries for CBRIII? I know graphic novels are, but since they are technically collections of comics joined as volumes of graphic novels, I wasn't sure. They're shorter than typical CBR fare, but they are sooo good!

Posted by: KatSings at January 4, 2011 4:01 PM

I'm SO in this time.
question? can I just use my notes section on my Facebook? I AM lazy ya know.

Posted by: DeckOfficer!! at January 4, 2011 4:16 PM

Welcome, Tara!! :D You won't regret delurking. DON'T MAKE ME MAKE YOU REGRET IT.

I don't know why I just threatened you. I think I might have comment Tourette's.

Posted by: Jelinas at January 4, 2011 5:02 PM

As the mama of the junior cannonballer, who is at this very moment contemplating which delicious tome to review next, I have to share her reaction to being mentioned online.

"I'm gonna be FAMOUS!"

Oh dear...

Posted by: The Mama at January 4, 2011 5:26 PM

Cannonballs away!!!! Very excited to be participating this year. I even recruited a friend to join up. Now I need to focus on actually READING. I was going to last night but got sucked into a Christian Bale bio on Hulu. Tonight I vow to stay focused, regardless of the eye candy that may tempt me. Stay the course, stay the course. . .

Posted by: prairiegirl at January 4, 2011 5:51 PM

OK, I'm in. My reading tends to be...eclectic. Sci-fi followed by thrillers followed by political crap & historical stuff. Throw in whatever pops up on the "Just In" rack at the library.

My daughter seems interested, so I guess we'll be getting a review of "The Mouse and the Motorcycle".

Posted by: No Pithy Name at January 4, 2011 6:20 PM

Woo! #CBR3 seems to be the easiest hashtag, I think.

I'm going for a Baker's Cannonball -- 53 books to make up for falling one book short during CBR2.

Posted by: Sara H at January 4, 2011 6:36 PM

Yay! Happy reading, all! I'm already up to 3 of my 26 (I'm only doing a Half Cannonball) thanks to an early start.

And good luck to our lil' cannonballer - I think that's fantastic! And to think, she's doing it without the bonus of free pizza - shout out to Pizza Hut's Book-It program! I was all over that back in the day.

Posted by: MelBivDevoe at January 4, 2011 8:16 PM

My daughter (also 6) is doing the Book-It program right now too. She usually doubles the amount of "goal minutes" they have to do. She's currently reading the first Harry Potter book.

Posted by: Sara H at January 5, 2011 12:22 PM

but but but...I don't have a blog...

Posted by: Blank at January 5, 2011 2:48 PM

Blank - They're easy to set up. But if you are really adverse to creating a blog, you can do what a few other Cannonballers are doing--just use the group blog to post your reviews.

Posted by: tamatha at January 6, 2011 8:42 AM