So the time has come for Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon, and like last time (or the time before? idk), I was supposed to have plans this day and then the plans got NOT EVEN CANCELED, just rescheduled, which is like, the best of all possible worlds.
(The plans were a crawfish boil. I’d have been so sad if it was canceled.)
This will be my master post, and I will update it as I go along! Feel free to ignore everything, but your takeaway regardless should be that readathons are the best.
In Conclusion
Y’all, I’m going to be super real with you: I went the heck to bed. After Hour Elevenish, I read some nonfiction and started Meredith Duran’s latest, The Sins of Lord Lockwood, and then the family went out for Indian food, and then I came back and finished The Sins of Lord Lockwood (A plus book), washed my hair, and went to bed at nine. I was all “I’m going to stay up late and do more readathon!” but I forgot that I hate staying up late and I love to sleep. So uh, yeah.
Anyway! I read three books, including one that I’m planning to write a proper post about. That’s still pretty good! And I’m hoping that for the October readathon, I can dedicate myself fully to the cause.
Hour Elevenish
Welp, I took a break from Readathon, as expected, to go hang out with family. It was great! I had a vodka freeze for lunch, and it turned out to be much more potent than I expected, so I had to take a nap.
But! Now I am back! And I have returned to the readathon with great enthusiasm and vigor, tearing through Shadow Girl by Liana Liu. It was a strange and distant read about a girl who takes a job as a tutor to the daughter of a wealthy banking family. Now what? Meredith Duran?
Nearly the End of Hour 3
Wow, when this is all over I’m going to probably write a long long post about Naomi Alderman’s The Power. (I know, it’ll be a scorching hot take by me, only two years after the book’s publication.) I went investigating to find out if Naomi Alderman is able to be cool about trans people, because The Power so entirely leaves them out of the story, and found a review of a trans lady’s memoir that reads exactly like the letters Book Naomi writes to Neil in The Power. Not to mention the book has two non-white protagonists but never engages with race at all, like really not at all. And–
Hm. I seem to be talking myself out of this book. Well! I’ll say that it was a fascinating and engaging read. I needed to start this readathon with a very strong read — because I’ve had a bookish hangover after reading Tara Westover’s Educated — and The Power did the trick in spades. Next up, I’m thinking romance novel? Or YA book?
Opening Meme (Pre-Hour 1)
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
Louisiana! And the weather is cooperating for once, so I’m hoping to get a few hours here and there of reading outside in the sunshine!
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
Hahahahahaha come on, stop it. Look at my stack. (“Stack.”) There is no way to choose a most-exciting book out of this chaos.
That said, I’ve got Meredith Duran’s latest romance novel checked out on my ereader, and I’m pretty excited to read it. I also have, um, Tamora Pierce’s new book about bb Numair Salmalin? Soooooooooooo.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
I didn’t stockpile snacks! (eek) I have relatives in town, and while the plans for the day are very hazy, I feel reasonably confident that they’re going to include food at some point. I didn’t want to buy a bunch of snack food and then not be hungry for dinner with my aunts.
4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
My name is Jenny, and I did my first readathon only last year, a fact that now seems highly unlikely to me. I love readathons so much. Can it be that they only came into my life a year ago?
Anyway! I have 35 books checked out of the library (not counting ebooks, not counting books from my university library), and I’m hoping to make a dent in them because that’s legit unreasonable.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?
In the past, I’ve been very focused on reading hard and tearing through as many books as possible. This year, in part because I know my reading will be interrupted with family time, I’m coming at it with more chill. I have a bunch of research books checked out at the moment, and I’d like to spend a lot of the day reading and taking notes. I have a new bibliography and note-taking app. I am very excited about my new bibliography and note-taking app.