P&PS

Like with the other spontaneous readathons seeing us through this time at home I wasn’t sure if I was going to participate in the Stay Home Reading Rush, but since I’m behind in my O.W.L.s reading for the Magical Readathon and for the month in general I figured I’d give it a go.Running over the next four days (the 16th through the 19th), the readathon has four prompts: a book with a house on the cover, a book you read in one place/room, a book set somewhere you’d like to go and a book that made you smile. Doubling up on prompts for the Magical Readathon I’m planning on reading Revolver Road by Christi Daugherty for book with a house on the cover and book set on the coast/at sea, Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis for book that’ll make you smile and a book outside my favorite genre. Then for a  book read in one place I’m planning on finishing either Heart by Sandeep Jauhar (book with a heart on the cover) or Vessel by Lisa A. Nichols (book read at night), both of which I’ve been ...

TIME READ: 14 hours 09 minutes BOOKS FINISHED: Broken Harbor, Know My Name, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vol 1, A Tale for the Time Being, How We Fight for Our Lives I ended up not getting as much reading done as I thought I might on the second day, but I had some really nice conversations with family and friends so I can’t complain about that. I also finished more books than I thought I would. Usually I end up jumping around more, but I think the shorter reading time helped with that, although I did spend a good chunk of Monday reading 95% of ‘The Dry’ so maybe not. Surprisingly I didn’t end up needing another audiobook and I almost didn’t end up finishing the one that I had. Partly that was due the fact I didn’t spend any time working concurrently on other projects and partly because this is the best I’ve felt during a readathon so far so I wasn’t struggling to focus like I have in the past. TITLE TOTAL P. PREV. READ CURRENT REMAINING Broken Harbor - Tana Fre...

TIME READ: 8 hours 47 minutes BOOKS FINISHED: Broken Harbor, Know My Name I’d advise not poisoning yourself with dairy right before the readathon starts, it leads to a rocky start, but even with that I surpassed the six hours I had hoped to reach today. Most of that time I spent physically reading so I wasn’t able to tick any projects off my list but I’m really pleased to have finished two books. I’m hoping to finish three more tomorrow: the graphic novel, the audiobook, and one other. That’s not enough for another six hours of reading so we’ll see if I quit at some point after twelve total, my original tentative goal, or if I aim for more. TITLE TOTAL P. PREV. READ CURRENT REMAINING Broken Harbor - Tana French 474 287 474 0 Know My Name - Chanel Miller 310 119 310 0 Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, vol.1 126 44 44 82 A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki 14.72 9.75 11.87 2.85 Policy Analysis of Multi-Actor Systems 170 ...

I’ve gone back and forth over how much I want to participate in the readathon this time around given the short notice and the length of my to do list, but because I’m a bit behind on my reading for the year I’d like to at least give it a go. Currently I’m planning on focusing on books I’ve started, but I may throw in either the start of ‘How We Fight For Our Lives’ or ‘It Would Be Night in Caracas’ depending on how things are going. If I do decide to go for the full twenty four hours I’m going to need another audiobook or two, but I haven’t given that any thought as of yet. I would like to finish ‘Zero K’ this year, and I could pick up ‘The Red Word’ again, despite having no real interest in finding out how it ends, since I only have a few hours left. Ultimately, my choice of audiobook is most likely going to come down to which project I’d like to work on. I have pinecones to crochet and a sweater to finish knitting, but I could pick up a more mindless project and sew some plushie...

WHAT I READ: There were lots of audiobooks as I’d expected, but I was able to do a lot more physical reading this time which was really nice. I finished three books [Women Talking (Miriam Toews), Before She Sleeps (Bina Shah), and Resurrection Bay (Emma Viskic)] and two audiobooks [Among the Missing (Morag Joss) and The Echo Killing (Christi Daugherty)] and read a smattering of other things, although less than last time. Picking shorter books that I was really excited to read really helped with motivation particularly later in the day when I was tired and my brain was looking for some other form of stimulation (I’ve never missed YouTube that much in my life). In total I read 1,524 pages which averages out to about 63.5 pages per hour. THOUGHTS (WHAT WAS EASY? HARD? WHAT WAS DIFFERENT THAN ANTICIPATED): Overall I did more physical reading than I’d expected, particularly since I had a pretty bad headache the first day, but I wasn’t as miserably tired as I was in January and I thi...

HOURS SINCE READATHON START: 43 hours 28 minutes HOURS READ: 24 hours 00 minutes WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: I’m listening to ‘The Red Word’ putting in my last five minutes of the readathon as I write this. I’ve managed to blow through ‘Resurrection Bay’ which I think is my favorite read of the weekend. The pacing was great, and the characters, their relationships, were fantastic, although I do feel a bit betrayed by the ending. ‘Before She Sleeps’ also was a bit dissatisfying in the end. I’d still recommend it, thematically the ending worked, but it was disappointing, it felt too easy and emotionally cheap and while, in some ways, that’s exactly why it works, I wanted so much more than that which brings me to the fact that I haven’t managed to finish ‘The Red Word’, topically it’s compelling, and particularly timely, but plot wise it’s so meandering that I’m struggling to care. I had such high hopes, but two readathons in and I’m not sure why I’m so insistent in finishing it. But th...