24 Hour Read-A-Thon

The 24 Hour Read-a-Thon began this morning, April 21st, at 12am GMT, which is 7am in my time zone in Chicago. I had all good intentions (hahaha) of doing nothing but reading and listening to audiobooks today but my plans were derailed from the start when I didn’t wake up until 7:30. Grumble.

Several errands and a few unavoidable phone calls later and I’m putting up my introductory post during hour five.

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

USA, Chicago

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

The Gunslinger by Stephen King.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

I have a bag of pistachios. I’m trying to go with a healthy snack. Otherwise I’d be eating Cheetos.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I love birds! See: Weekend Birding. If you’ve been here before, you already know this.

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?

This is my first read-a-thon. I’ll be listening to audio and multitasking during the day and reading a print book in the evening.

Are you participating?

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Hour Five Mini-Challenge: Book Sentence

From On the Wings of Books:

For this challenge you will use book titles to form a complete sentence, and then take a picture of your sentence and post it to your blog, facebook or twitter account and then come back and fill out the linky with your link.
 
 
 

The sound of a wild snail eating the butterflies of Grand Canyon, every last one.

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Hour Six Mini-Challenge: Book Appetite

From Book Journey: Take one of the books you are reading today. Now lets pretend that you are going to have a book discussion with friends regarding that book. They are all coming over to your house and you are providing food and beverage to go with said book.

1. Title and author of the book: Stay Awake by Dan Chaon, a collection of creepy short stories.

2. The menu: I’ll be serving some yummy Hot Bat Wings for an appetizer, Mystery Chili for the main and Chocolate Spiders for dessert while the theme from The Twilight Zone plays in the background. Bwwaaahh hahahaha. Eat if you dare!

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Hour Eight Mini-Challenge: Book Staging

From Midnight Book Girl: You know how real estate agents will stage an apartment to attract potential buyers? Well, that’s what you’re going to do to a book!

I couldn’t use the book I’m reading because it’s an ARC and doesn’t have a cover. So instead I used the book I won last week and had some fun with it.

And yes, those are my Star Trek toys. And, yes, I have more of them!
 
 

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Hour Nineteen Mini-Challenge: Theme Songs

From Letters Inside Out: Match your current read (or most recent read if you are in between books) with a song!

I’m reading Stay Awake by Dan Chaon, a collection of short stories.

My song is Stay Awake from Mary Poppins, to ‘stay awake’ and read. Of course it just might put me to sleep!

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End of Event Wrap Up

I made it to hour 20 which was 2:30am for me. I listened to the last hour of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, and then another 4 hours of The Gunslinger (Dark Tower #1) by Stephen King while I multitasked during the day. In the evening I read about 100 pages of Stay Awake by Dan Chaon.

I had hoped to listen to more than 5 hours of audio but after I began The Gunslinger I realized it was not a good audiobook for multitasking other than mindless activities, like cleaning house or exercising. The book required more than a little concentration on the characters and the world building. I should have known better as fantasy books always require more concentration for me. My print book was a good choice. I like short stories. The only problem was I was tired by the time I started reading it.

I also spent more time than I expected doing mini-challenges and visiting other blogs. This is not a bad thing, I enjoyed the social aspect a lot. It just cut down on reading.

There were also real life interruptions of phone calls and errands, and another lost hour rescuing an injured bird and bringing it in for the night. That necessitated I get up at 7am this morning to get the bird to the wildlife animal hospital.

This was my first read-a-thon and enjoyed it immensely. I will definitely participate again, but next time I will be more prepared and choose audiobooks that are better suited to marathon listening.

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