The 48-hour Reading Challenge!

...or, well, not exactly 48 hours...more like...I dunno, eight to twelve? A bit more?

So I'm going to do this thing over. With rules this time.

I went into it sort of half-assedly. I read the page with the announcement and guidelines, and talked to Elise about her experience doing the same thing on her own, and stocked up with Smart Ones, Lean Cuisines, and 100-calorie packs so I wouldn't have to cook at all during the weekend. I selected ten or so way overdue library books (bad me. BAD LIBRARIAN!)--perhaps a little optimistic, but I wanted backups in case I didn't like the one I was reading, and I didn't want to waste time rifling through my collection deciding on another, because I would most likely take gobs of time doing that...and I wanted to spend my time reading, goldurnit! (Almanzo Wilder said that in Farmer Boy, and he was so ashamed of himself. *sigh*...I need a Little House reading weekend...and a Judy Blume...and a Beverly Cleary...and an L.M. Montgomery...and a Maeve Binchy...)

So I had my little stack, and my foodstuffs, and Neil was all kinds of supportive of it. I was planning on starting Friday night after dinner, maybe 8:00 or so.

This was my first mistake. Next time, I am STARTING AT A CONCRETE HOUR. None of this "whenever I get settled in" crap.

Because, you see, my sister came over to work with Neil on her website. And I thought I could just go in our bedroom, lay on my tummy on the bed, put a pillow at the foot to rest my arms in and put the book in front of the pillow (I have a definite system for reading in bed) while she was there. But did I retreat? Oh, no. Lily is much too fun! I stayed up with her and Neil until we were all yawning and fighting sleep...we chatted and looked through catalogs and laughed at recent familial hilarity and so on. And it was a great Friday night! I regret none of it.

But, it didn't start my 48-Hour Weekend Reading Challenge off well. I tried to read a bit after she left, though I was dog-tired...but instead I fell asleep on the couch for two hours. I stumbled into the bedroom (teeth unbrushed and unflossed), contacts clinging to my eyeballs voraciously, and set the alarm for 7:30.

Saturday included a necessary errand--taking my car into All-Star Automotive for alignment and to get a re-issue of my inspection, which had failed miserably last Saturday due to the huge crack in the windshield that was TOTALLY STARTED when I bought the car but I didn't notice because it was right on the windshield-wiper line, and when I called Toyota a month later, they refused to believe me so I had to pay out of pocket for the whole replacement. But I'm not at all bitter or ANYTHING. Anyway...we dropped off the car, then stopped in Barnes & Noble where I accidentally purchased the last issue of Simple Scrapbooks (it is a Collector's Item, people! how could I not?) and a British scrapbooking magazine encased in plastic which was apparently enough to warrant its $11.95 price tag. I know from experience that the Brits SUCK at scrapbooking, but when I see everyday British magazines on sale at B&N I often cannot help myself. Because despite not having the very, very best of times there, I do miss an awful lot about England. (And NOT just Harry Potter's wang, I swear. I also miss living on the same street that Rent was playing.)

Okay, so we go back home, and putter around a bit, and I shriek "I am going to start reading at 10! If I don't make a time, I'll *never start*!" I set up my station in the bedroom, all windows open to let in the RIDICULOUS 73-degree July air, and cracked open Alphabet Weekends.

I like books with multiple perspectives, a la Maeve Binchy, and this promised to be such a book.

And I was liking it all right. But not loving it, you know? And I wanted to love something, especially if I was committing to this read-all-day thing. I hadn't had that in awhile. I was also reading Inkheart at work, a chapter a day during lunch because it mostly sucks but I want to give it a chance, listening to The Host on audiobook in the car on the way to work, and was about seventy pages into Then We Came to the End (cool cover, look!)

...but I hadn't been as happy with it as I thought I would. I'm not giving up on it, yet, but it's just not a super-fun read.

So I put aside Alphabet Weekends for the time being, and took up an epistolary....because I loooooooove epistolaries!! This one, Which Brings Me to You, was the ticket:

Couldn't put this sucka down. Billed as "a novel in confessions," it tells what amounts to a backwards love story. But instead of flashbacks, the hero & heroine tell their backstories to each other through letters, just after they've met for the first time--both hoping to meet again. Almond and Baggott are co-authors, and [I assume] Almond wrote the guy's letters, and Baggott the gal's. I read this through the rest of Saturday, finishing right before 2:00 Sunday morning.

Okay, but it wasn't like I read solidly through Saturday, as I'd wanted to. No, there were plenty of Bejeweled breaks, WordTwist pauses, Guitar Hero moments, Google Reader, e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter checks (yes, I rejoined...I'm probably following you if you're on there, so follow me back so we can dish!)...I think I watched some TV, and I *know* the Golden Girls made an appearance for an hour or so. Or an hour and a half, or perhaps two. (Between Blanche's sass and Sophia's constant need for independence despite the handicap of old age, I really can't control them.)

Sunday was much like Saturday, except I was reading a different book: Pretty Little Mistakes.

I was kind of wary about it, but mostly excited. A "do-over novel," with "one beginning, 150 endings: the choice is yours." And, at 504 pages, this isn't one of those dog-eared slim Bantam books of yore:

(Not that this is, either...I just liked the photoshopped cover.)

What I soon discovered was that this adult version of the old Choose Your Own Adventure-style books was depressing. Each of the 150 endings (well, I'm assuming "each" since I'm not done yet--I'm probably halfway through but I have NO IDEA how many pages I've read and this is EXACTLY why the kid versions drove me crazy because my neurotic self MUST read EVERY SINGLE page, every option, before I can consider the book "done") tells how you die, and while some are, I guess, *meant* to be nice (i.e. You live to the very old age of 102, surrounded by family and friends, and heaven is a opalescent meadow filled with all the loved ones who preceded you in death), some are terrible, like being randomly stabbed in the street by a schizophrenic. No matter how pleasant the book makes death sound, I still hate hate hate reading about it. Someone just died in The Host, and after sobbing through pretty much most of the last half of HP7 in the car, I am SO DONE with sad or depressing things in books. DONE. (Of course, I cry All The Time while reading L.M. Montgomery, but somehow it's different.)

And? The crap you get yourself into (yeah, it's second person...another mark against it, as far as I'm concerned) is insane. In-SANE. Bordering on ridiculous, in many cases (practicing voodoo in Iceland? Running across a football field at halftime nude with meat strapped to your chest?). I soooo almost put this book down, several times. It's to the point now where I'm interested enough to keep reading, far enough along where I might as well just finish off the damned thing already, and somehow, begrudgingly, liking it.

Okay, so final tally from the weekend: About one and a half books. Not terrible, but definitely not what I'd hoped from it. So I've decided, I'm doing this again...because I really didn't make it a challenge at all. I stopped often to pursue other leisure activities, and it ended up just being a weekend where I read a lot.

Next time: No internet. No TV. No video games. No phone (not that I'm a phone talker...but it's the principle of the thing, people). Start at a pre-arranged time Friday night, and don't deviate. And maybe put some shorter, YA-level books in the mix, like the copy of I Love You, Beth Cooper that just arrived from PaperbackSwap, or really do have a whole weekend dedicated to a single author. Log hours more thoroughly, as well as pages read.

Maybe in the next few weeks, I'll be able to. The report is forthcoming...and let's hope it encompasses more than a book and a half.