Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon: The Plan

I’m so excited for Dewey’s readathon this weekend, even though I won’t be able to attempt the full 24 hours. Any excuse to hole up in my apartment with snacks and my TBR pile is A-OK by me. I don’t have a strong set plan right now… I probably won’t quite make my time zone’s start time at 8 a.m., but I’ll try to get up respectably early and read ALL DAY (interruptions only for snacks and a quick trip to the library to refuel). Then Mr. Penny and I have tickets to Anyone Can Whistle (call me, Sondheim!), but the long train ride will be prime reading time, also, and I’ll probably be a little bit eye-tired at that point anyway. Then stay up late-ish, wake up early-ish, and break in time for the MoCCA festival (which last year coincided with MotherReader’s 48-Hour Book Challenge).

I’m going to try to knock out at least one complete book, hopefully more than one, but I’m trying to be modest in my expectations. I have a lot of dribs and drabs of books I’ve been in the middle of for a while, as well as a HUGE TBR pile from three different libraries, so I might be keeping track of pages read more than books completed. I’ll probably try to post updates and tiny reviews as I go (mostly, to document my snack situation). I’ll try not to put my head down and get caught unawares by napping, which was my downfall during 48HBC.

Can’t wait!

Happy Blog Birthday, Biblio File!

Thanks for the opportunity/excuse to carve out an uninterrupted block of reading time before everything gets truly crazy for the holidays! I was happy to celebrate the blog birthday of one of my favorite reads, Biblio File, today by reading Ash by Malindo Lo and half of The Magician’s Ward by Patricia C. Wrede. The instructions were:

1. Read for five consecutive hours: Check. (11:30-4:30 today)
2. Read someplace you love reading: Check. (Started off lying around on our bed, then moved to the neighborhood diner for lunch, then headed to the new coffee shop down the street, then finished up on the couch in the living room. It was my first time in the new coffee shop, which didn’t have the perfect reading atmosphere what with the drafty front door and the widescreen TV with the Patriots game on, but I’m so excited to have an alternative to the Starbucks on the corner that I’ve been boycotting since we moved here that I’m here resolving to go back regularly for the chai and the principle of the thing.)
3. Practice your other favorite reading rituals: Check. (Bed, Sunday afternoon, food, chai, sunbeams.)
4. Read something you WANT to read, not something you HAVE to read: Check, and what a relief this was. (Picked two light fantasy reads off the giant stack of library books that have been gathering dust.)
5. Blog about it: Check. (See… above?)

Blogging has been a challenge for me this year (and will probably be a big part of my upcoming New Year’s resolutions), but I’m so happy I started for two reasons: reading great blogs like Biblio File to stay on top of the avalanche of young adult books on the market, and having a forum for participating in this type of reading event. From the 48-Hour Book Challenge that got me started to Dewey’s Readathon that I missed this time around (but am ready for next year!) to this cool way to celebrate a blogging milestone, I feel closer to a community of readers when I participate in these events, less like carving out blocks of time to do this reading is selfish and more like it’s a personal and professional necessity. I’ve been doing a ton of “required reading” these days for work, Pulitzers, and the two book clubs I’m in, so I really need some motivation to dig into the books that I was excited to check out many moons ago, but have drifted to the bottom of my piles.

As for the books, neither disappointed. Ash was a sweet, sad read, and although I would have liked more scenes with Ash and Kaisa and the ending felt a bit rushed, I liked the idea of the King’s Huntresses as a strong line of powerful women in a key position at court. So far The Magician’s Ward is a great continuation of Mairelon the Magician, with Kim and thieves’ cant and the delightfully obtuse Mairelon and seriously the WORLD’S WORST COVERS and the budding romance all a-budding. I remember a fair bit of Regency lore from Jane Austen and sneaking my mom’s romance collection while she was at work (hi Mom!), and it’s a fun time period to revisit outside the confines of bodice-rippers.

So one more happy birthday to Biblio File, congratulations to Jennie, and praise be for a Sunday afternoon wrapped up in reading!

Reader… I read it.

Alas, BBAW goal-setting has already fallen by the wayside. I sigh, and promptly digress.

I’ve had lectitans’s Weekend Wonderings post on my desktop for weeks, vaguely thinking about my reading personal history. It’s hard to come up with a clear narrative; I honestly don’t remember learning to read or many picture books that I loved, although my family has told me stories about it. So, instead, here are some moments that rise to the top of my memory when I think of my extremely bookish development:

• Like I said, I don’t remember learning to read, but my mom says that I was read to constantly as a child (always with a finger following along under the words, even though Mem Fox insists that doesn’t speed a child in learning to read) and that I could read on my own by the time I got to preschool. I don’t remember a time before reading, so I’ll have to trust her on this one.
• I was an obsessive re-reader until I got to college. I easily read the Little House books, the Xanth books, the Lioness Quartet, A Little Princess, Little Women, and a bunch of others twenty or thirty times. I read The Last Unicorn every year for a long while, and The Stand whenever I was home sick.
• There was a tiny used bookstore downtown that my mom and I visited regularly that still lives as the uber-bookstore in my memory. It was run by a sweet old lady that my grandmother had worked with a long time ago, and she was always extremely affectionate and welcoming towards me, although I used to pull books off the shelves and sit in the aisles and read in a way that must have been disruptive for business. When they went out of business when I was in high school, I not only cried over it, but I took home their remaining stock of bookmarks and bought a number of books that had sat on their shelves, unloved, for as long as I could remember, including a (to this day, unread) copy of Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick.
• I used to type out recipes from The Little House Cookbook on my mom’s old electric typewriter, but I can’t remember ever actually cooking one of them.
• I had this weird large format board book version of “The Wild Swans” fairytale with holographic illustrations of posed dolls that I loved for no good reason, and it’s one of the few tattered picture books that I kept. In fact, as a child I had an extreme aversion to books with broken, taped-together spines, but I loved that one, even though the illustrations kinda freaked me out in retrospect.
• I loved the public library as a child and would check and recheck out the same books obsessively, mostly Georgette McHargue’s The Impossible People, the Lioness Quartet until I got my own copies, and The Philharmonic Gets Dressed. A summer afternoon hat trick was convincing my grandfather to take me to the park, the public library, and out to the stands by the lake for fried fish goodness and ice cream.
• I liked catalogs better than toys, or at least that’s how I remember it. I would pore obsessively over the JC Penney’s Christmas catalog and the early American Girl catalogs, before the dolls got Hannah Montana-popular like they are today.
• I was never much of a school library user (ironic, because I became a school librarian, right?). I vaguely remember my elementary school librarian as mean, I can’t even picture my middle school library, and I spent too much time practicing the piano in the band room and in the theater to step foot in my high school library more than once or twice.
• Books I’m thankful my teachers introduced me to: my elementary school enrichment teacher for reading us The Brothers Lionheart aloud, my sixth-grade teacher for reading us short scary stories and what must have been an edited-on-the-fly version of I Am Legend, my junior year English teacher for The Grapes of Wrath.
• Middle school was a really rough time for me. I only had a few friends, I was at my most awkward and awful, and I hated school. But I remember my mom taking me to the mall (which was at least forty minutes away) multiple times a week so that I could go to Waldenbooks and refill on science fiction paperbacks. If I got lucky, we’d go to this used book warehouse and/or science fiction bookstore in Syracuse on the weekends to do the same. We’d eat french fries in the car and sing along to the oldies station on the drive, or she’d just let me stare out the window and mope. She must have spent a small fortune on Mercedes Lackey, Piers Anthony, Robin McKinley, Christopher Stasheff, Christopher Golden, Stephen King, and R.A. Salvatore mass market paperbacks, but waiting for the next book and staying up all night to read them was the only thing that sustained me through those brutal two years.

BBAW: Thanks for the Books, Bloggers

School is kind of kicking my butt these days (in an absolutely good, but constant and overwhelming way), so today’s BBAW post is basically going to be a list of books that I may have picked up someday, but definitely was driven/shamed into reading when the rest of the  world did, thanks to book bloggers and Google Reader.

• Honestly, seriously: The Hunger Games. I mean, I loved Gregor the Overlander, and I would have picked it up eventually, but it hit the blogosphere so hard that I would have been ashamed to leave it unread for a minute longer than I had. This is also true for Wintergirls.
• Masterpiece, when I heard about the E.B. White Readaloud Award
• Mairelon the Magician, thanks to The Enchanted Inkpot’s book club
• Books 85-100 on Fuse #8′s Top 100 Picture Books poll. As a middle school librarian, I don’t get to rock the picture books too often, so taking the time to read through this list is great exposure to all the greatest hits. So far I’ve been especially happy about Little Pea, Anatole, The Gardener, Swimmy, Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo, and The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear.

BBAW: Reading Meme

I love memes. For the lazy/stressed out/timid blogger like me, they are such a boon to get you writing and just posting SOMEthing, for the love of God. So thanks, Book Blogger Appreciation Week for providing this quick and easy one. So here are my five-word answers to the BBAW reading meme:

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
No snacks, but sometimes chips.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
Library books, so no pens.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?
Bookmarks, always. Punish dog ears!

Laying the book flat open?
Not usually. Hurts my brain.

Fiction, nonfiction, or both?
Both, plus comics and poetry.

Hard copy or audiobooks?
Bad at listening. Reading easier.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
Section breaks good, chapters better.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
No way. It’s not homework.

What are you currently reading?
Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie
(That worked out well!)

What is the last book you bought?
Absolute Sandman, worth the cash.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
The more, the merrier. Mostly.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
On train. In bed. Always?

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Trilogies not always necessary, please.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
Tamora Pierce. The Lightning Thief.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
Genre, kinda, Size, mostly. *sigh*

So easy, and now I’m radiating a sense of accomplishment.

Most extensive bookish meme EVER.

This is an oldish meme via Steph Su Reads, but I’ve been thinking about it because I can’t imagine many other questions that would define a person as a reader. So here goes:

Hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback?
Hardcover for library books, trade paperback if possible for books I own, old mass market paperbacks for anything science fiction or fantasy, particularly if it’s rocking some crazy mid-60s cover.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?
Umm…. Brooklyn Public Library? Seriously, I almost never buy books these days. The only time I’m tempted is by a really cheap used bookstore or an indie with great staff recommendations. But I have a Barnes & Noble membership, and give books as gifts a lot, so probably B&N.

Bookmark or dog-ear?
Dear sweet lord, the thought of dog-earing hurts me RIGHT HERE. I actually meticulously unfold every dog-eared corner I find in library books. I use bookmarks without fail, particularly old Amtrak ticket stubs and this cache of overnight loan bookmarks I found in my library.

Amazon or brick-and-mortar?
Brick-and-mortar, if I’m buying.

Alphabetize by author, or alphabetize by title, or random?
I use up all my organization at work, so my home library is roughly grouped by genre and then by size. Everything’s double-rowed and stacked on top of each other anyway, so it doesn’t make too much difference.

Keep, throw away, or sell?
Seriously, who ever throws a book anyway unless it’s fallen in the bath or something vile’s happened to it? I just started getting really into Bookcrossing, so my new answer is: release! I used to be a huge keeper, but ten years of living in small Brooklyn apartments and within steps of a great public library system have made me less possessive. I generally only keep or collect books that I’m head over heels for, have sentimental value, or are out-of-print or otherwise difficult to find.

Keep dust jacket or toss it?
Keep, always.

Read with dust jacket or remove it?
Remove it while reading, but I very rarely read hardcovers that aren’t from the library.

Short story or novel?
Novels, mostly. I have to make a project out of getting through a short story collection.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?
Harry Potter. I am my mother’s daughter, and she is the world’s biggest Harry Potter fan. (Seriously, we went to London for the Deathly Hallows release so she could be “where the action was.”) Mr. Penny loved Lemony Snicket, but I stalled out in the second book. I’m willing to give them another try, but I don’t think it has the same level of emotional depth that inspires such great devotion.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
I like chapter breaks. I’m generally checking to see how many pages are left in a chapter all the time… reading in 20 or 50 page chunks is generally perfect for me.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
Once upon a time. (Although I’d pick Wrinkle in Time over a lot of fairy tales… is this a science fiction vs. fantasy question in disguise?)

Buy or borrow?
Borrow, but from the library, not other people. Borrowing from other people makes me feel pressured to get to the book immediately, and I hate feeling like I have any kind of obligation or agenda that’s been in any way imposed on me. Reading is an area of my life that I’m completely free, and I want to keep it that way as much as possible. (That kinda sounds worse than I meant it… it’s not like I’m all oppressed or anything. Just don’t tell me what to read, OK? Don’t tread on me!)

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendations, or browse?
Reviews, I guess? I read a lot of librarian/YA book blogs, the Times Book Review weekly, watch what comes up in my Goodreads friend feed, and generally keep my ear to the ground. You can’t beat browsing, too, especially on the new books shelves in the library.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger?
Wrap it up, people. Tidy endings, all the way (but they don’t have to be quite as tidy as Deathly Hallows, with the corny tribute kids’ names and all).

Morning reading, afternoon reading, or nighttime reading?
All of the above. Some before I leave for school. on the train, with kids when they’re in the library for independent reading blocks, on lunch if I’m eating alone, on the train home, a chapter before I check my email, in the evening, in bed.  I best love long stretches of Sunday afternoon reading, though, when possible.

Stand-alone or series?
I’m getting a little burnt out on the series right now, particularly the fantasy trilogy these days. I actually think twice before picking up a book if I see the line “first of a projected trilogy” in the review. A series has to be pretty phenomenal to get me through the whole thing these days.

Favorite series?
Lord of the Rings, The Lioness Quartet, His Dark Materials, the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb (but not so much the other two trilogies in the same world), Sandman graphic novels… wow, this is hard. There are probably more.

Favorite children’s book?
This is killing me, to pick a favorite. Seriously: as a child, I read constantly and with circularity. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t reading something new while simultaneously rereading some much-loved book for the umpteenth time. The first ten books I can think of that I loved intensely will have to suffice: The Phantom Tollbooth, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Egpyt Game, A Little Princess, Little Women, The Cricket in Times Square, Charlotte’s Web, Little House on the Prairie, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Julie of the Wolves.

Favorite YA book?
See above. First ten faves that come to mind: Alanna: The First Adventure, Beauty, The Golden Compass, Summerland, The Thief of Always, Coraline, Arrows of the Queen, Deerskin, The Changeover, Ender’s Game.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?
The Impossible People by Georgess McHargue. This deserves a separate tribute at a later date. Let’s just say that I probably had this book checked out of my town’s library continually from the time I was 8 until I turned 11.

Favorite books read last year?
2008 brought me: The Time Traveler’s Wife, All the Pretty Horses, American Elf: The Sketchbook Diaries, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, Bone, My Antonia, Midnight’s Children (again), Moomin, Reefer Madness, Love & Rockets, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Shriek: An Afterword, Assassination Vacation, Ex Machina, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, White Teeth, Daisy Kutter: The Last Train, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Blow-Up and Other Stories, The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose, The Plain Janes, Count Karlstein, Unequal Childhoods, The Lightning Thief, Buddha by Osamu Tezuka, Spacer and Rat, MIddlemarch, To the Lighthouse, Whales on Stilts!, The Wordy Shipmates, Lives on the Boundary, The Changeover… it was a busy year, full of Sarah Vowell, comics, some short stories, and a few classics for which I’m still patting myself on the back.

Favorite books of all time?
Can I do that thing where I name ten again (oh, but I’ll cheat, and count some series as one book)? The Last Unicorn, Lolita, The Stand, Sandman, Jane Eyre, The Lioness Quartet, Lord of the Rings, Neon Vernacular, Jelly Roll, The Arrival.

What are you reading right now?
Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick, Tales Before Tolkien, and The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for American Workers by Steven Greenhouse.

What are you reading next?
I need to reread Graceling for the NYCSLA book club (twist my arm!) and I’m excited that I just checked Ash out of the library today, so those are probably up next.

Favorite book to recommend to an 11-year-old?
That really depends on the 11-year-old, now doesn’t it? Probably Bone or Diary of a Wimpy Kid for the book-shy, Gregor the Overlander or The Lightning Thief for the Harry Potter graduate, and Coraline for the scary story buff.

Favorite book to re-read?
I love to read The Stand if I find myself home sick for a few days. I’m going to reread Sandman since I’m splurging on the Absolute editions this year. The Last Unicorn never fails to get me, every time.

Do you ever smell books?
Sure, but I don’t generally discuss it in public.

Do you ever read primary source documents like letters or diaries?
Not too often, although I’ve been thinking about reading Virginia Woolf’s journals sometime, and I’m curious about Elizabeth Bishop’s letters.

Whew.

NYC Zine Fest booty

First off, it’s officially the second day of summer vacation, and I hereby declare it The Summer of Brunch. Friday was the last day of school, and I was able to leave with the library with a minimum of angry/crying kids who didn’t get their report cards because they didn’t really think I meant business the first 673 times I talked to them about their overdue or lost books. On Saturday, Mr. Penny and I kicked off our summer vacation by meeting friends at Get Fresh Table in Park Slope for some truly tasty brunch-ing (alcohol free, but otherwise deliciously organic and free-range with a side of “pork bacon,” as detailed in their weirdly specific menu).

On our way home we stopped off at the NYC Zine Fest, where we picked the following neat things:

• a cool Jamie Tanner print depicting a squid wearing headphones and mini-comic featuring “Two Strange Stories”
• the mini-comics Underpanting and the very helpful field guide Is It Bacon? by Matt Weigle
• Magical Tales of Enchanted Mysteriousness by Daria and Patrick J. McQuade
• Papercut Heart by Ian Sullivan Cant
• volume one of a zine called NYC Lists called “Top 5 Island Fun Facts” about NYC islands
• the Barnard Zine Library zine
• two issues of Lower East Side Librarian by Jenna Freedman
• Zine Librarian #3: “Do It Yourself in Your Library”

And I got to embarrass myself in front of Matt Weigle by gushing profusely over his comics by way of trying to convince a friend to buy them and totally not realizing that he (Matt Wiegle) was sitting right there behind the table listening to my whole silly spiel. Which mostly consisted of “Alaskan folktales” and “woodcuts” and “awls for hands” and “BACON!” But he was very sweet to introduce himself after all that, and at least it wasn’t bad as the time we were walking out of Coraline: The Musical and I passed by Stephin Merritt while describing the score as “just not very song-y.” You really can’t take me anywhere.

Weekly Geeks: Reading Challenges

This week’s Weekly Geeks hit close to home:

Reading Challenges: a help or a hurt? Do you find that the reading challenges keep you organized and goal-oriented? Or, do you find that as you near the end of a challenge that you’ve failed because you fell short of your original goals? As a result of some reading challenges, I’ve picked up books that I would have otherwise never heard of or picked up; that, frankly, I have loved. Have you experienced the same with challenges? If so, which ones? Do you have favorite reading challenges?

Last year was the first year I’d ever participated in a formal reading challenge, and it was all because of Goodreads. (I love me some Goodreads. Even though I’ve neglected it lately, I am a Goodreads ADDICT.) I’ve always been intrigued by bookish list-making, canon formation, Clifton Fadiman, etc., so I suppose I’ve challenged myself to read along with various book lists my whole life (most notably that Modern Library 100 Best Novels list that came out when I was in college: 33 read to date). But, really, I’m a far more capricious reader than all that, so I very rarely get focused and read a list or an author to exclusion.

Goodreads groups opened my eyes to the zany world of people reading books for every author in the alphabet, or fifteen Serbian mysteries in a year, or books with colors in the title at the whim of a twenty-sided die. I can’t quite handle some of the wackier challenges (although I will defend to the death the right to participate in them), but last year I informally participated in the A-Z author challenge without purposefully seeking out an X author when it got down to the wire. This year I’m keeping track of an A-Z author AND title challenge just to see how far I get without actually trying, and maybe I’ll bat clean-up in the last few months of the year to finish. So if anyone knows any good X or U authors, please let me know. And how happy do you think Xu Xi is about all this? I did the same thing with a “Variety Is the Spice of Life” and finished without any real effort by April.

I’m also attempting a “Seven Classics” challenge, since it makes me sad that I actually have to put conscious effort into picking up a book written before 1950 most days. Of course, there’s the ongoing Pulitzer reading project at Along with a Hammer and I’m about to read my last E.L. Konigsburg book since I set out to read all her books… OMG, back in 2006? I really have to step it up here, people. I don’t know that challenges have led me to stretch my reading muscles too much, since I’m already a pretty diverse reader, but I think they are fun mile markers to pass in a reading year and sometimes they encourage you to pick up the pace a little bit. (Like, really? Can you just finish The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World before she writes another book, already?)

Participating in MotherReader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge not only kickstarted this blog, but was absolutely tons of fun and really pushed me to get through some books that I’d been “saving for good,” like Savvy and The Hunger Games. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more reading sprint challenges like that one. Any excuse to spend the weekend in a pile of books and snacks is A-OK by me. I’m really bummed that I missed the dates for the Once Upon a Time challenge, so I’m definitely looking forward to that one next year.

The only real challenge disappointment I’ve ever had happened with the “To Be Read” challenge. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to read books that I actually own, seeing as I read something like 200 books a year, but apparently last year, I couldn’t manage to read a single one. I’m such a heavy public library user, and borrow so many books from my own school library, that I’m always trying to get something back that’s on hold for someone else or reading a student recommendation and my personal bookshelves just sit in my house all pretty and for show. I’m not a huge book buyer any more, but still, this is a little ridiculous, so hopefully this public shaming will encourage reading of books that are mine in the legal sense.

Pre-summer reading checkpoint

It’s that time of year again: The Brooklyn Public Library summer reading program rolled out a few weeks ago. Every year I try to read along with the teen list, so here’s my pre-summer status check in:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie [Read it and LOVED it!]
The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga [Cool, and definitely on my list]
Breaking Up by Aimee Friedman [Another great pick I've already read]
Catwalk by Deborah Gregory [Totally not my thing, which probably means I should give it a try for the sake of my fashion-obsessed students.]
The Cute Book by Aranzi Aronzo [Amiguruni? Sweet.]
Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah [Have this, love the cover, will probably read it.]
Dramarama by E. Lockhart [By the author of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, so maybe I should read them together.]
Freak Show by James St. James [Totally looking forward to this... got a great rec from Jennifer, one of my D15 librarian peeps.]
King Dork by Frank Portman [The Salinger angle does not entice me as it might others, but still sounds pretty good.]
Real Food, Real Fast by Sam Stern [A cookbook! This is a great pick, and I'll definitely check it out and try cooking from it.]
Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls edited by Marisa Anderson [Cool selection, probably won't read it.]
The Rose That Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur [Um? Fine, but this book is mad old. Do kids even care about Tupac anymore?]
Skateboarding Skills: The Rider’s Guide by Ben Powell [Not on my busted knee.]
Street Scene: How to Draw Graffiti-Style by John Lee [.... kids these days.]
Tyrell by Coe Booth [Should probably bite the bullet and read this one... heard mixed reviews, and I generally resist the gritty realistic fiction.]

Selected titles I might read from the kiddie list: A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban, A Drowned Maiden’s Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz, Flush by Carl Hiaasen, Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka, Love That Dog by Sharon Creech (a re-read with Hate That Cat), The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, Rules by Cynthia Lord

And from the adult list: The Geography of Bliss; Outliers; Dear American Airlines; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society;  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

That’s a lot of reading, especially if you count the bin of books I normally schlep home from school for the summer, the backlog of library books, some Pulitzers, and the acquisitions from trips home when my mom and I go used-bookstore crawling across upstate NY. But isn’t that what summer vacation is for?

48 Hour Reading Challenge: Limbering Up

I still have to get through the rest of the work day (stupid school keeping me from reading!) before I can officially get to the starting line of 48HBC, so here’s what I’ve got in front of me to read (from memory, pile pic to follow):

• Emma Jean Lazarus Fell in Love
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth
• Chalice
• Because of Anya
• Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie
• Edward’s Eyes
• The Hunger Games (I know, I know. I know!)
• Beastly
• Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat
• Bog Child
• Sun & Spoon
• The Fruit Bowl Project
• The Willoughbys
• Wintergirls
• The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World
• Dragon’s Keep
• The Misfits
• Totally Joe

I’m sure there’s more that I’m not remembering (and that’s eighteen books already, which I think is probably more than I have in me). My personal goal is to crack twenty hours and read at least ten books. I’ve got a couple short books in there for motivational purposes, so I’m not shooting for spectacular page counts necessarily. I’m pretty much only breaking for breakfast at the diner, a quick trip to the public library to pick up some holds, and an afternoon at the MoCCA Festival to go to the Adrian Tomine/Seth panel, see Cozy Lummox’s first-ever exhibitor table, pick up mini-comics, and get some new Squidfire shirts. You just can’ t miss MoCCA. Oh, and call my mom. (Hi, Mom!)