Reverse Readathon! August 2019

It's time for another Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon! I link up with the Dewey 24 Hour Readathon, which is held twice a year. This time they are humoring people on my side of the planet and starting at 5:00 PM Pacific Time. It is much easier for me to be up then that at 5:00 AM.

Since I'm old I probably won't go for the whole 24 hours, and I'll do a few car trips (with my audio running). I already set the crockpot to make dinner, my kids are adults and I plan to make them run the house, and I'm ready to read!


There's a BINGO card I'll be checking and I'll tweet out books as I finish them. And I'll update here during the day, since that way I can check my progress next year. Ready?

START:
8/2: Friday!

17:00:

Leverage in Death, J.D. Robb. pages 335-386 (end).  I started out by finishing a book, which gave me a sense of achievement!

Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan. I listened to this while I dropped the boys off at their pizza place. And usually I only listen for a minute or so at a time during a rape scene, so this was hard work! It was nice to come home and go back into a police murder mystery.

Connections in Death, J.D. Robb. Usually I don't read these back to back, but I thought it would be fun to see how many threads carry through. Like, the friend Nadine won an Oscar at the end of Leverage, and the celebration party is a few weeks later to start off this one.

19:00:

Fifteen minutes online!

Survey:

1)What fine part of the world are you reading from today? And what time is it where you are?  Renton, Washington, USA.  

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I have no idea what I will be reading.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? I made pesto lasagna!

4) Do you have a #reversereadathon plan of attack? I am surrounded by books so I will just keep picking them up.

5) Are you doing the readathon solo or with others? Solo!

23:30

Connections in Death, J.D. Robb. Finished. It was fun reading it right after, but I'm glad I have to stop here. I'm going to move into some nonfiction now.

Hunger, Roxane Gay (page 93). On deck!

I had a coke that my kind niece brought over for me, which should have me jazzed enough to stay up too late.

Saturday 04:00

Hunger, Roxane Gay (page 93). Finished! I really like the variation in chapters, some longer, some brief. 

Past Tense, Lee Child. I switched over to bits of this when Hunger got to real. One thing Jack Reacher never is, is real. Now I'm at 20%.

I think it's time for a nap, and then I'll work on Past Tense and probably The Emperor's Blades.

8:00

My alarm woke me! I'm going to read some The Emperor's Blades. I'm not really liking it though, so I'll probably switch out before it's done. I'm supposed to be about half-way by next Tuesday.

11:00

I've been scattered while reading this morning, still sleepy and bad at concentrating. I've divided myself among:

Past Tense which has lots of tiny super suspenseful moments (Lee Child's specialty)

The Emperor's Blades, which needs better women.

Founding Martyr, a gift from my BIL to satisfy a childhood craving for a history of Dr. Joseph Warren

and some fanfiction. Silver and Gold was a great Thor AU where Heimdall adopts Loki as a child.

I think my goal for the next few hours is to try to stick with something for at least 30 minutes. But first I'll go see what is happening on the internet!

13:00

Past Tense and The Emperor's Blade got 30 minutes or so each, and then I picked up and finished

The Best We Could Do, by Thi Bui, a fascinating graphic novel about her parents, her family, their history in Viet Nam and then in America, and how that all defines and influences their relationships to each other. Good stuff.

Now I'll play around saying hi to other readers until 1:30 and then do my 30 minute dives again until something hooks me.

15:00

I put down the book I was planning to read and grabbed Cyteen, which I've been rereading very slowly. I first read Cyteen in three volumes, although I now own the combined version. So I've been rereading it backward in large chunks that were roughly were the three books were. The first book is hard to read that way -- you are very invested in Justin and Grant and their adolescence does not go well. But I finally got through the parts where Ari is raping Justin and laughing about it and so I zipped through the murder and the fall out. Now I kinda want to reread the fun parts again but I think I'll wait a few years.

I have no idea what I'll read next. I'll probably start with some more Past Tense and then bounce to something. Only two hours to go! I probably can't finish anything so this is just moving bookmarks along. Maybe I'll see what I need for the BINGO. It would be nice to get a black-out, but I don't really have a least-favorite color so that's hard.

17:00

And that's a wrap! I spend about 30 minutes watching TV for a BINGO spot (tried Catch-22 but then it got R rated and I bailed, then tried Anne With an E  but then Anne had a flashback from a crying baby instead of expertly stepping in to deal with it, so I bailed. Read to the next commercial break in the Jack Reacher book (I feel obligated to put it down for suspense when I reach those obvious cliffhanger moments). That took me up until the last hour.

I tried to read my Warren biography, but I'm too sleep deprived to parse complex sentences. So I grabbed Book Lust figuring the short sections would be my speed, and then wandered to my library web page to see if a book Nancy Perl mentioned was available, and then notice that a comic book I wanted to read was in Hoopla, and spending the last hour reading Cemetery Girl by Charlaine Harris. I haven't finished yet but I probably will tonight.

Closing Survey!

1. How would you assess your reading overall? Productive! I finished three books I had already started, two books completely, and made progress on several more. I slept for four hours so I'm tired but not dead.
2. Did you have a stategy, and if so, did you stick to it? Just read whatever I felt like. If I found myself unable to stick to something I made an effort to give 30 minutes to each book. Whenever I finished something I'd hit up social media.
3. What was your favorite snack? I didn't eat much! The lasagna was good and I toasted a bagel for Saturday.
4. Wanna volunteer for our next event? Maybe? I should volunteer for the next Reverse. These are much better for my schedule.