Half #summerthrowdown (AKA #summert or # u m r h o d w )

Personally, I’m a fan of  s m e t r w o n. I don’t know who smetr is, but he/she/it won!

Anyway, congratulations everybody! We have made it to the halfway point of #summerthrowdown! When Jillian and I did our original #throwdowns, we had no idea what it would become. When Sherry and Kathy hopped on board to get #summerthrowdown going, we had no idea what it would become. Well, we’re only halfway through, and I, for one, am blown away by what it has become so far!

Honestly, our goal was basically to have someone other than the 4 of us sign up. When I made the initial spreadsheet, I left room for 50 teachers and 50 librarians. I figured that would be more than enough space. After all, we’re busy over the summer. We vacation, we plan, we hide ourselves from the Internet. There’s #bookaday and #TeachersWrite going on. I know Jillian and I have the world of respect for what Donalyn Miller does with #bookaday, and #TeachersWrite has a lot of interest behind it (not to mention Gae Polisner, Jen Vincent, and Kate Messner). I figured we’d have about 20-30 per side.

Well, as of Midnight July 2 (that’s Midnight Eastern Daylight Time starting the day, not ending it), we have had 150 people (69 teachers & 81 librarians) read 1259 books! That’s an average of 8.40 books per person, which means over the course of these 14 days, 149 people have been averaging about 0.60 books per day each. We are on pace to read 2697 books by the end of the day on July 17th.

THAT’S AMAZING!

As of Midnight July 2, the librarians hold a slight edge over the teachers, 8.94 to 7.62 books per person. Time to step it up, #TeamTeacher!

One sort of really important note. If you have not been updating the spreadsheet (which can be found here), you will see your name is in red on the spreadsheet. We will be contacting you via Twitter. If we don’t hear back from you today, we will be removing your name from the list. We need to be sure the averages are fair to all those involved. But we do want you to be a part of this! So please, be sure to update your totals with every book you read. The more we all read, the more we all win.

Another also important note: we here at #summerthrowdown can’t seem to leave well enough alone. So when Maria tweeted this:

@brianwyzlic We need to do a post on favorite books/genres from the #summerthrowdown

— Maria Selke (@mariaselke) June 29, 2012

We knew we had to do something. So, if you take a look at the spreadsheet, you’ll notice an extra column has been added to the right of your individual totals — Favorite Book Read. Simply put in the title and author of your favorite book you’ve read during #summerthrowdown in that cell. If you read something better, simply replace it.

The best part about this, though, is that you’ll be able to see what other people have really enjoyed. So take a look at what we’ve all been reading, and then get going on your next book! If you hit a reading rut (and we know they happen!), give one of those favorites listed a try and see if that doesn’t break you out of your slump.

So let’s go everyone! We’re halfway home. Let’s bring it in all the way! Go #TeamTeacher! Go #TeamLibrarian (but, you know, not quite as much). Go #summerthrowdown! Go read!