omg ya’ll, it’s Hour 24

Mia and I are barely keeping it together, but I think we can manage to fill this out, finish up our page/story/chapter and then check the heck out.

1. Which hour was most daunting for you? All of these at the end have run together – anywhere between hour 21 and now.
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? Whales on Stilts! was hilarious and fun. It was a great way to start my ‘thon and I bet it’d be a fun way to end it, too.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? I wonder if we could vary the start time somewhat? It’s brutal to start at 5 am over and over.
4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? As always, I love all the support from everybody participating and the mini-challenges are so much fun!
5. How many books did you read? I finished three and read some of three more.
6. What were the names of the books you read? Whales on Stilts!, The Rough-Face Girl, and Leviathan were the books I finished (one MG, one picture book, and one YA, respectively). Tending the Wild, Sailing to Sarantium, and If You Come Softly are the three I did not finish, but did work on (nonfiction, fantasy, and YA, respectively).
7. Which book did you enjoy most? Hard to say, because they’re all so different. Even my two that shared a ‘genre’, the two YA, were as different as can be. One is a contemporary romance, the other a steampunk adventure. That said, Whales on Stilts! was so much fun and completely unexpected. I tend to underestimate the necessity for fun books during the ‘thon.
8. Which did you enjoy least? Nonsense! I enjoyed them all.
9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? N/A
10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? Pretty likely. Mia and I were just talking about what kind of mini-challenge we might want to host…

Mia:

1. Which hour was most daunting for you? Hour…22? Or 23? The hour immediately after Jessica woke me up, because I accidentally fell asleep for an hour. Whoopsidoodles.
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? I’d happily recommend any of Kage Baker’s Company novels. Maybe not so much anything by V.C. Andrews.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? I just want to cosign Jessica’s idea. It would be nice to have a more leisurely morning or afternoon start around the Western US, even just once.
4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? The mini-challenges are a great way to break up the hours. I know that’s not exactly breaking news, but I’m low on sleep and that’s all I’ve got.
5. How many books did you read? I read the entirety of three books, finished one book that I’d already read most of, and read parts of five more, because I am fickle.
6. What were the names of the books you read? The Rough-Face Girl, Farm 54, and Sweet Tooth Vol. 1 are the books I read through entirely; The Graveyard Game is the book I had already read most of; and I read parts of Rain, The Good Fairies of New York, We Never Talk About My Brother, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume One: The Pox Party, and Vineland.
7. Which book did you enjoy most? Hard to say. Farm 54 is a beautiful graphic novel with great use of sparing color and strong, sparing prose; I also really liked The Graveyard Game as I have all of what I’ve read of Kage Baker’s works, and The Pox Party is gearing up to be one of the best books I’ve read this year.
8. Which did you enjoy least? Well, I can’t say I didn’t get a masochistic pleasure out of reading more of the awful Rain, so I guess not that. I don’t know, I gave The Good Fairies of New York a try and just could. Not. Do. It.
9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? n/a
10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? It’s gonna happen, y’all! Hosting a mini-challenge would be amazeballs, so at least Jessica and I have, what, six months to think of something clever?

And GOOD NIGHT FOREVER.

Hour 16: Rereading Mini Challenge

Woof. Jessica and I spent the larger part of an hour and a half reading Rain to each other, which was full of wonderful gems about the crazy things people apparently can do to their bodies:

She tucked in her lips. (225)

“Been there about seven years now,” he said squeezing his chin between his thumb and forefinger. (228)

She stared, her lips relaxing in the corners for a moment and then stiffening. (231)

If I were running a mini-challenge, my challenge would be to try and stiffen or relax ONLY the corners of your mouth. With video footage proving that this is possible for humans to accomplish.

Oh, Rain.

But I was here to do a mini-challenge, wasn’t I? The Blue Stocking Society has a challenge about rereading:

Here’s the challenge:

1. Go back to your blog, and tell us about a book you’re rereading during the read-a-thon. Maybe post a picture of the book and describe why you love it enough to reread it.

OR

2. Go back to your blog, and give us a list of your top favorite rereads of all time. You know, those books that you can go to time and time again for comfort and escape. Again, pictures are always good but not required.

I don’t have any rereads in my Read-a-Thon pile, so I’ll tell you about one of my favorite rereads in general: Animist, by Eve Forward.

I bought my copy when I was probably twelve or thirteen. Sometimes you’re just at the perfect age or time in your life for a book to really resonate with you, and that was it for me and Animist. I was the kind of kid who liked animals more than other people, and the world-building really drew preteen Mia into the story. Now it’s a story I know quite well, but each time I reread it I’m coming from a slightly different place in my life and different details stand out to me. I once dated a guy who didn’t see the point in rereading, but I say phooey to him.

Now it’s not even hour 16 anymore, so I’d better get back to one of my books. Something that’s not Rain.

Jessica says: I have two rereads in my RAT pile, but I don’t think I’ll get to either of them. The first is Seed to Harvest, the collection of Octavia Butler’s four Patternist books. I’ve actually only read the first one, Wild Seed, but it’s hecka good and I’ve been meaning to reread it along with the rest of the series for a couple of years now. Octavia Butler is one of my favorite authors, with such great strength that I return to her works again and again. My other reread for today was Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, and for similar reasons. There’s a depth with these two authors, combined with strong characters, plots, and themes, that I know I will never been done with them. (That said, a lot of my favorites rereads are more like Mia’s: books that I’ve loved for many, many years, that are comfortable as my favorite pajamas, and that I know will show me different things at different stages of my life.

Hour 13: Mid-Event Survey

Halfway through already? Gorsh. Here’s the good old mid-event survey.

Mia:

Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now? The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume One: The Pox Party, by M.T. Anderson. I am 128 pages into it.
2. How many books have you read so far? I have finished two: The Rough-Face Girl, a picture book by Rafe Martin with illustrations by David Shannon, and Sweet Tooth Volume 1, a graphic novel by Jeff Lemire. I also finished The Graveyard Game, by Kage Baker, but to be fair I only had about 25 pages left on that one when the Read-a-Thon started. I’ve also read 17 pages of Vineland, by Thomas Pynchon.
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? I look forward to possibly finishing The Pox Party, and perhaps reading Farm 54, a graphic novel by Galit and Gilad Seliktar. And, of course, Rain, by V.C. Andrews, on which Jessica and I are looking forward to making some progress.
4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? Not really. My boyfriend is lurking in the back of the house, probably feeling somewhat ignored, but other than a get-together with some friends tonight that I had to beg off of, I had a free day.
5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? My aforementioned three-legged kitten, Flat Tire, has been most enthusiastic about providing us with breaks and distractions. I think she’s taking a nap now, which seems like a terribly good idea all of a sudden.
6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? How much time it can take to do the mini-challenges if you really get into them. Many of them have been too much fun!
7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? The hosts do a great job considering all the information they’re keeping track of, but double-checking challenges and links and everything would be good, just to make sure all information provided to participants is correct and current.
8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? Oh, I’d definitely try to get more sleep the week prior to the Read-a-Thon. I slept terribly all this week so staying up through the next twelve hours or so is going to be a hurdle to jump. Or something. I’m too addlepated to use metaphors sensically.
9. Are you getting tired yet? Yyyyyyyes. Though not actively falling asleep in my book, which is something.
10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? Changing up your location is a great way to wake up a bit if you’re lagging. Go to a park or a coffee shop, or go read while eating dinner somewhere. Sitting in the same place reading for 24 hours straight is liable to wear on anybody.

Flat Tire is our own personal Cheerleader. Ish.

 

Jessica:

Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now? Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay
2. How many books have you read so far? I’ve finished two – Whales on Stilts by M.T. Anderson and The Rough-Face Girl by Rafe Martin and David Shannon. I’ve also read about fifty pages of Leviathan (putting me on page 202) and finished the introduction of Tending the Wild. For the last bit of time I’ve been reading the prologue to Sailing to Sarantium, which is a whopping forty pages. I mean… That is a damn long prologue!
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? I’d like to get further in both Leviathan and Sailing to Sarantium, possibly finishing Leviathan. If that happens, I’m looking forward to picking up either Tender Morsels or If You Come Softly. Which one I pick up will depend strongly on my mood. Oh, and Rain, of course.
4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? Kinda? I guess? I drove out to Mia’s house in Stockton from Berkeley and I had to say no to a couple of other things I’d have loved to do. Why does everything interesting and fun have to happen during the Read-a-Thon?
5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Doing the Read-a-Thon with people and animals is always going to be a little more distracting than doing it without. ;)
6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? This is the first time I’ve woken up even close to the starting time – 5 am is pretty darn early! What’s surprising is that, though I am definitely starting to lag, I’m not as tired as I thought I’d be.
7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Nope!
8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? I’d try to plan my week a little better, so that I could get to sleep before midnight. Waking up at 5 am wouldn’t be as hard if I went to sleep at 10!
9. Are you getting tired yet? Definitely.
10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? I think it’s a great idea to have a big TBR pile and not commit to reading any specific books. This event is hard enough without punishing yourself or limiting yourself.

Hour 12: Hodge Podge Proposal Mini Challenge

Erin over at Erin Reads is hosting this hour’s mini challenge.

Mia and I worked collaboratively on this one:

“Pappio Prizm – Astronaut to the Stars, Ladies’ Man, Man’s Man, Man About Town – runs an exclusive ship resort, The Crystal Chandelier. It serves celebrities looking for a deeper kinship with the universe – that is, it connects stars with stars. But little does he know when beautiful Esther Weed, a voice actress with a face for radio, comes aboard, his life will change forever. She isn’t looking for a connection with the stars – but with Pappio Prizm himself. How will he handle his growing attraction to this angel of the airwaves while his ship is hijacked by an unknown race of aliens, calling themselves Swoodilypooperians, and bound towards a, I don’t know, wormhole or something. How will he strike a balance between love and work in this gripping, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride? – Pappio Prizm 1.”

Graphic "by" Mia.

 

Hopefully it’s half as fun to read as it was to write because, man, was it ever fun to write!

Hour 10: Book Sentence Challenge

What ho, intrepid readers! Jessica and I took some time to eat lunch (while still reading, of course), and then spent a perfectly reasonable 45 minutes putting together a sentence for Kate at Midnight Book Girl’s spooky-themed book sentence challenge.

Invisible monsters fake all things bright and beautiful–calling you, tender morsels, if you come softly.

We’ve done a good deal of reading, too. Jessica finished M.T. Anderson’s Thrilling Tales: Whales on Stilts!, read through The Rough-Face Girl, and has read some of Leviathan and Tending the Wild, and I read Volume 1 of Sweet Tooth and bits of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party and Vineland. I hope everyone else’s reading is going well and that you’re not too tired! It’s 2pm here in California, so we still have plenty of daylight to go.

Hour 4: State Settings Mini Challenge

Great googly moogly, we’re on hour 4 already? I’ve read an abysmally few pages, although I did finish The Graveyard Game and started up on Vineland, which explains my slow going. Pynchon does like his run-on sentences.

For hour 4 Jessica and I talked over Melissa of The Avid Reader’s Musings’ mini-challenge:

To participate in this challenge, please name three books (fiction or nonfiction) that are good representations of the USA state in which they are set. You can pick three books set in one state or books set in different states, it doesn’t matter.

We have chosen thus:

1) Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell: The classic, sweeping Southern epic. Who doesn’t think of this novel when they see antebellum manors in Georgia?

2) The Green Glass Sea, by Ellen Klages: A story about an inventive, scientifically-minded young girl whose family moves to Los Alamos, New Mexico, as her parents are involved in the secret project to end WWII. The Manhattan Project is such a strong piece of history for the state, and Ellen Klages does a fantastic job of bringing the isolated government town to life.

3) The Princess Diaries, by Meg Cabot: If this isn’t an accurate representation of what living in New York City is like, I don’t want to know about it. Greenwich Village! MetroCards! Dropping eggplants out of a sixteenth-story apartment!

Hope the Read-a-Thon is going well for all y’all. I’m probably going to take a break to shower here in a few minutes, and then Jessica and I might take ourselves down to a coffee shop for some pastries and more reading. Good reading and godspeed!

Hour 3: Book Puzzle Mini Challenge

And here we are already in Hour 3! Up now is the book puzzle, from Melissa of One Librarian’s Book Reviews.

A simple one first:

Have you guessed? It is, of course, Rain by VC Andrews.

And our second, slightly less lazy one:

This one comes out to be Seed to Harvest, by Octavia Butler. It’s her Patternist series collected into one volume. Very good – I highly recommend it and anything else by her.

Hour 2: Character Photo Mini Challenge

From the lovely Alyce at at home with books, we have our Hour 2 mini challenge.

Mia: My photo represents the character Joseph from the book I’m reading currently, The Graveyard Game, by Kage Baker. In the second book in the same series, Sky Coyote, Joseph pretends to be the god Sky Coyote to the Chumash people living in California in 1699.

Jessica: My photo represents a blurry Deryn (played by Jumping Jack Mozart) flying through London on the airbeast Huxley (played by Jelly the Fish) in Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan.

Reading update: Mia’s read a whopping fourteen pages of her Kage Baker book, and is very close to the end. I’ve read 50-ish more pages of Whales on Stilts (which Mia thrust at me as I came through the door last night), making me about halfway done.

Intro Meme

Mia and Jessica, checking in, heroically waking up at 5:30 am.

Jessica
1)Where are you reading from today? Last time Mia came to my house, so this time I came to Mia’s.
2)Three random facts about me… 1) The last time I awoke at 5:30 in the morn was… honestly, I don’t even know. 2) I love Mia’s three-legged cat, Flat Tire. 3)  I am…tired.
3)How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? I’ve got 10 books to choose from: one picture book, one middle grade, three young adult, three adult SF&F, one graphic novel, and one nonfiction book. And, of course, Rain.
4)Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? I think we’re both going for as close to 24 hours as we can.
5)If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time? Don’t be afraid to put something down and pick something new up. Even if you’re the type to only read one thing at a time, the read-a-thon is not a time to be book-monogamous.

Mia
1)Where are you reading from today? My new house! How peachy.
2)Three random facts about me… 1. I do not like peppermint tea. 2. That is why I’m drinking chocolate chai instead. 3. I am very tired as well.
3)How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? Nine. Two short story collections, two graphic novels, three SF&F, one YA, and, as Jessica said, Rain. The interminable Rain.
4)Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? We! Could! Go! All! The! Way!
5)If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time? Fortify yourself with food and drink, and never give up, never surrender.

What Mia Has Been Reading

Ahoy, all! I’m going to copy Jessica and write a little bit about some of the books I’ve been reading lately in preparation for the Read-a-Thon. (It starts in six hours or so, folks!)

+ M.T. Anderson’s Thrilling Tales: Whales on Stilts! by M.T. Anderson:”Lily Gefelty is just an average twelve-year-old girl. But her dad–a normal-enough seeming guy–just so happens to work for an evil genius who plans to unleash an army of extremely cranky, stilt-walking, laser-beam-eyed whales upon the world. Lucky for Lily, her two best friends are anything but average. Both of them are famous for their adventures. Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, invents gadgets; Katie Mulligan spends her spare time fighting off zombies and were-goats. Surely they’ll know what to do. And if they don’t? Then it will be up to Lily–average, everyday Lily–to come up with a plan.”

I picked this up at the thrift store for thirty-nine cents because I recognized the name of the author–and, okay, because of the title. It looked like a fun, goofy middle-grade read. It wasn’t until I got it home that I realized that the author is none other than the M.T. Anderson who wrote The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. “Holy crap,” quoth I, because, because it’s so easy to forget that authors capable of writing acts of great cruelty and pain may also author books for younger readers, and vice-versa. So, I did read it, and it is a fun, goofy middle-grade read that very successfully and in good humor parodies the kind of middle-grade reads that have been around since books started being written for young people. The narrator is delightfully intrusive and given to tangents, and when a joke is carried on, it’s carried just a bit father than you’d think was appropriate, but is given a twist that makes it ten times more hilarious. There’s one particular footnote that runs from page 173 to page 179 that, while unrelated to the main story, squeezes my heart in a very thoughtful sort of way. Just more proof that middle grade works can and mostly do be beautiful and nuanced and extremely funny at the same time, and that very, very good authors don’t have to dumb down their writing when they’re working for an audience of younger readers. Double extra points for the fake reading guide in the back.

+ Mendoza in Hollywood, by Kage Baker: I’m not going to quote a summary of this book, the third novel in the Company series, because they all contain spoilers for what happened in In the Garden of Iden, the first book–and as I am trying to get some friends to read the first one and get into the series (hint, hint), I don’t want to give anything away. Suffice to say that Mendoza, immortal cyborg botanist sent into the past by the mysterious Company, finds herself posted to Southern California in 1865, and despite her desire to avoid mortals she manages to get tangled up in some pretty nasty stuff. The stakes begin to rise for the reader about the Company’s true intentions, and I was so bloody hooked into this book, you don’t even know. In fact, I picked up the fourth book in the series, The Graveyard Game, immediately upon returning Mendoza in Hollywood to the library (thank the stars for a library that has the entire series stocked). I want to savor the books, since Kage Baker sadly passed away early last year and I want to make her writing last, but I just can’t–they’re stay-up-all-night-oh-my-god-did-that-really-happen kind of books–both character-driven and story-driven. It’s smart, funny, and exciting science fiction written by an extremely talented woman, and the world’s worse off to not have her in it anymore. Get thee hence and pick up a copy of In the Garden of Iden if time-traveling immortal cyborgs sound like your cup of tea, or even if they don’t.

+The Princess Diaries IV: Princess in Waiting and The Princess Diaries V: Princess in Pink, by Meg Cabot: What can I say about the Princess Diaries books? They’re such sweet, sweet candy crack. Mia is such a goofy worrywart, and the books are nice filler reads if you don’t want to get into anything heavy. I read these two back to back in a couple of hours, and they were just right for what I wanted. Anybody who’s got Queen Amidala panties is a literary friend of mine, and I’m always happy to support a Mia who’s got herself a Michael.

I think that’s it from me for now, folks, but Jessica and I will be back again soon, simply flooding you with our brilliance and Read-a-Thon antics. See y’all in a few hours!