My Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon for October 2018

Today, Oct. 20, into tomorrow, Oct. 21, I will be participating in Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon. I’ll be posting updates periodically and also (mostly) on Instagram. Initially, my potential list was all from books I already own, most via Kindle.

The List

Here is that list:

1. All Creatures Bight and Beautiful by James Herriot (part of a trilogy I own)
2. American Street by Ibi Zoboi
3. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson (both on ebook and audio)
4. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (print)
5. Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first Amelia Peabody mystery, by Elizabeth Peters
6. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (part of a trilogy I own)
7. John Adams by David McCullough
8. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan
9. She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper
10. We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates (print)
11. You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alex

To that, I now have added, from library browsing, these:

1. The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson
2. Less by Andrew Sean Greer
3. The Graveyard Book, Vol. 1. by Neil Gaiman (graphic novel)
4. Claire DeWitt and The City of the Dead by Sara Gran
5. Claire DeWitt and The Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran
6. The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran
7. Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder by Shamini Flint

So 18 choices…

…of which I’ll be lucky to read two or three or four. But hey, it all will be good.

Also good will be…

The Food

My wife Kim picked up several “things” for me for today, including crackers and cheese, pizza (which we ate last night…oops), and soda. Tonight, we’ll have burgers and fries for dinner and this morning, as she is sleeping (she works midnight shift so will be heading to bed as I start), I’ll probably make a run to McDonald’s for breakfast. And later, there’ll be ice cream and wine!

The Plan

The last time I did a readathon, I had grand plans with a schedule. That didn’t work so well, so this time I’m playing it a little more by ear. I’ll read for as long as I can with a goal of 12 hours because I have done that…once. Much of the time, I’m lucky if I get eight. But my motto for today’s readathon is this: It’s all good! So however long I read, however many books I read, even if it’s only one or two…

Getting to Know You Survey

1. What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, in northcentral Pennsylvania.
2. Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I’m just playing it all by ear, so we’ll see what grabs me.
3. Which snack are you most looking forward to? Ice cream! Blue Bunny Peanut Butter Party!
4. Tell us a little something about yourself! I’m married, no children, have two cats, and work in a library as a library assistant. I’ve been there about 10 years.
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? No schedule. Just going with the flow. As is my theme for this readathon: It’s all good.

Book 1

Book 2

8 hours

About eight hours into this thang, and about four and half hours of reading with two books down as you can see above: She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper and American Street by Ibi Zoboi. I had started Harper’s book before the readathon, but only was about 20 pages in, if that. It was a short novel, but very good and a good way to start the readathon with a gritty crime noir and his debut novel. The Zoboi book reminded me a lot of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas in its subject matter, and that isn’t a bad thing at all since I loved The Hate U Give and read that during one of the July readathons. I also found it interesting that during the July readathons, I read another excellent book on immigrants: Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, who was a native of Cameroon. Zoboi is a native of Haiti. Both now live in New York City.

So…so far the highlights have been American Street and my wife’s homemade chili:

Mid-Event Survey

1. What are you reading right now? Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder by Shamini Flint
2. How many books have you read so far? Three.
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-ton? We’ll see if I’m going to make it to the second half first.
4. Have you had many interruptions? Yes. 😐 How did you deal with those? I took a nap.
5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? Not a thing. It’s all good.

The Finish

I finished at about midnight. I read three and a quarter books in about eight hours. The three books I finished were:

1. She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper
2. American Street by Ibi Zoboi
3. Normandy Gold by Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin and Steve Scott (illustrator)

I began a fourth book, Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder by Shamini Flint, but didn’t finish it.

Did you do this weekend’s readathon? If so, what was your favorite read l? What are your highlights otherwise? If not, reading anything good lately?