48-Hour Book Challenge Finish Line 2015

It was a sad moment when I realized it was now 100% impossible for me to squeeze in 12 hours by midnight. But as I said on Facebook earlier to my sister, "Sondy, somehow I just now realized (how did I not realize?) that I can't make it up to 12 hours magically with a little bit of time here and a little bit there, I need 6 hours today and 6 hours tomorrow. Or, you know, if 2 hours today, 10 hours tomorrow. Hahaha, I'm so not making it. Oh well, it's fun anyway."

48-Hour Book Challenge, 2015!

Once again I make the 48-Hour Book Challenge attempt. There's a lot going on this weekend, and... we shall see. Twelve hours of reading and blogging and networking are required for true official participation, and I've never actually managed that yet. (That's my 48-Hour Book Challenge label link, and will take you to all my posts on it, this year's and the last couple years'.)

But, you know, two years ago I had a baby, and last year I had a one-year-old. This year, clearly, I have a two-year-old, and my chances are a little better... but on the other hand, this is Father's Day weekend. Not that we're doing a ton, just thinking through logistics and groceries and dishes, and it isn't the best possible weekend to be selfish and hide in a corner with books. Though hey! Even being selfish, I want to spend time with my family -- this is a good problem to have.

Concluding the 48-Hour Book Challenge for Another Year

48-Hour Book Challenge Finish Line! I don't want to stop now, I want to buy Dangerous and keep reading. But there's a house rental I need to call about FIRST THING tomorrow, asking if I can schedule a viewing (ideally before someone else snaps it up), and Toddler will want care and attention and then there's another viewing appointment in the afternoon...

I didn't make it up to even 12 hours, sadly. Besides the things I mentioned in my starting post, the weekend was full of pain -- the D&C I had two months ago after my miscarriage seems to have caused complications, and OW. This... would be to my advantage, Challenge-wise, as it gave me a good reason to just lie on the couch and read. But it also messed up my sleep -- not sleeping at times in the night when I was trying to, sleeping on the couch during the day when I wanted to read. So it goes.

At any rate, I did more than last year, and I had fun. Just read one book, Writing the Other, but I thoroughly enjoyed gobbling it up. And reading aloud many parts of it to my sister, and discussing them. (Which I counted in my time, part of why I read it as slowly as I did -- I figure if reading aloud to kids counts, this should too?)

I read a Kindle version, but according to Amazon the paperback edition is 122 pages. So yes, the 4 1/2 hours I spent reading it was definitely slow!

My total time was 7 hours 45 minutes. 4 1/2 hours reading, 1 1/2 hours on my starting line post (mixture of how blogging takes longer than you think, plus I'm just generally slow at things), 45 minutes on this one (yeah, see above), and 1 hour networking -- replying to comments on my blog, linking to my blog, and browsing and commenting on other people's blogs!

Didn't review anything this year. Will continue to read and review the books I mentioned in my starting post list, just not officially as a part of the Challenge. Mmm.

So, for a more concise summary of 48hbc stats:

Total hours: 7 hours 45 minutes

Books read: 1

Pages read: 122

Hours reading: 4 hours 30 minutes

Hours blogging: 2 hours 15 minutes

Hours networking: 1 hour

48-Hour Book Challenge, 2014: Diverse Books!

Attempting to participate in the 48-Hour Book Challenge again this year! (See my 48-Hour Book Challenge label for last year's posts.) With the Toddler and house rental hunting this weekend, making it up to the full 12-hour minimum for participation may be slightly tricky, but I have a waaaay better chance than I did last year with a seven-month-old.

Starting late today, after noon, so technically I'm doing the 7:00 a.m. Saturday through 7:00 a.m. Monday slot. As it's the latest one allowed.

The theme this year is diverse books, in solidarity with WeNeedDiverseBooks. Now, I only noticed that the Challenge was coming up a few days ago, and my shelves themselves seem to be pretty sad on the diverse front, for the most part. At least the ones in my TBR virtual pile. And I haven't gotten a library card at the new place yet, nor put any books on hold. But! I have a Kindle, and a credit card. Heh heh heh.


First up is Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, a fun nonfiction pick I'm looking forward to. At least, it feels fun to me. Can't remember where I heard it recommended, and couldn't find the source in quick searches of my bookmarks and Feedly tags, but I'm pretty sure someone or other on Twitter or in the blogs I follow mentioned it.


Next is Dangerous by Shannon Hale. I always want to read her books anyway, and it sounds like this one fits the theme.


Then I'm going to attempt to read big chuncks of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner. A... less "fun" nonfiction pick. I already have it and had read the first chapter a while back. It's important stuff to be aware of in general, and I think also important for a novel I've worked on a bit that involves some slavery. Slavery can look a little different in a historical form, so a fantasy novel will probably draw more on that, but I want to at least know more about the modern-day than I do now, so I can make informed choices. Not to mention more research can help with feeling the full horror.

Oh, and as far as the diverse theme goes, it talks about slavery all around the world. Again, not as much the positive and fun side of things, but again, I think it's important.

When I can't take that any more, I'd like to read Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay, an excellent book I was distracted from earlier somehow or other. It's fantasy inspired by eighth-century Tang Dynasty China.


Maybe another fun nonfiction book next if I can find one, but barring that, I'd like to pick up The House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia from the library. (It's actually available, without needing to put a hold on it; and it isn't by an author whose books I'm one hundred percent sure I'll want to own.) It was on Writing Excuses as the pick of the week in the episode "Writing the Other," and sounds pretty wonderful.

If I finish those this weekend, I'll take it from there. And possibly start writing reviews of them, which always takes me a while. I think it's a good list to be getting on with, for now!

All right! On to the reading! Yay!

48-Hour Book Challenge Finish Line

It will probably come as no surprise that I didn't manage twelve hours in the 48-Hour Book Challenge this weekend. No, I made it up to a whopping three hours and eighteen minutes! Woo! Well.... it is what it is. I wish I'd tracked the time I spent on my starting line post, I could have included that. I mean, I don't think it's supposed to count, but when you're so far from the twelve-hour minimum, the rules become a little less relevant.

I would've liked to post about my progress here and there, but that would've been taking more time from my 3h18m, so I didn't.

I did eventually decide to make an exception to my rules for myself that I talked about in my starting line post, regarding writing reviews before reading. An exception for the sake of the Challenge. Unfortunately, I did not decide that or prepare my reading materials in time to take advantage of a couple baby naps that would have been glorious -- I was holding her the whole time, so no way to write reviews. But I didn't have my Kindle to hand, or even the book I wanted to start with loaded onto my Kindle, so I ended up reading blogs on my phone instead. Woefully unprepared.

Should've at least spent that time focusing on reading other 48-Hour Book Challenge blogs, but I didn't. Bother.

So, here's the breakdown. In those three hours and eighteen minutes I finished up a review of The Last Unicorn and posted it, drafted another (An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis), started reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy, and did a tiny bit of "networking." Sort of. I mean, I didn't really spend a measurable amount of time reading other people's blogs. My networking was mostly putting the link to my starting line post on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, and replying to one comment on it.

I spent 2 hours and 11 minutes on those 2 reviews. I spent 45 minutes reading. I spent 22 minutes on my tiny bit of networking. (How did those few things take that long?!) I made it 53% of the way through The Death of Ivan Ilyich on my Kindle. It's one of those older Kindles that can't do page numbers. Based on Amazon, in print it normally runs around at least 80 pages, though. So I read around 42 pages in my 45 minutes this morning. Okay. (I've said before that I'm not a particularly fast reader, I just read a lot. Now I can't even say that. *sob*)

Well, it was fun, and I probably wrote more this weekend than I would have without it. I hope next year I can do at least a bit more. I'll try to get another little personal book binge in here, soon. And, unrelatedly, to clean my house. Poor house.

Oh, one more thing I need to do before I sign off. I almost forgot. You need some pics of Baby from over the weekend, right? For the road. Well, I might be able to help you, there...

You would eat your toes too, if you could. They're delicious. Trust me.

Oh, look at that! I rolled over and now... Hi camera! Would you mind if I ate you?

After one of the naps, when I put her down. That didn't really work out, contrary to appearances here. Sorry about the orientation, having technical difficulties with Blogger.

 

Do you like my hair? Isn't it beautiful?

A walk, my pacifier, and air blown in my face? This is the BEST DAY EVER!

The Last Unicorn

Installment #5 in the Book Reviews for Melanie series.

Also a book review for The 48-Hour Book Challenge, though I began editing the review earlier. Obviously I'll only count the time I spent on it during the Challenge!


The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Read: 12/2/11-12/4/11

The Last Unicorn is so beautiful it hurts. It's a perfect little gem of a book. (And I love the cartoon, too, which if I'm recalling correctly I actually saw before the book. In some ways, contrary to more purist ideas and my own inclination, movies before books can be a good order, because it seems it can lead more often to loving both. And wow, the cartoon is cheap right now, I should get it...)

I need to read it again. I can't do it justice here, otherwise. Reading it again is no great sacrifice. I would do it before writing this review, but I'm attempting to write my reviews much faster, and will accept no excuses delaying any of them. So, bother.

Obviously I must read it again at some point, though, if not right this instant. Not only would I want to because the book is good, but Patrick Rothfuss says I should read it again. It's right there. On the cover.

Speaking of Patrick Rothfuss, as one can tell from the cover, he, um, very very much likes it. He talks about it a lot, but this is one of my favorites that I could find... language warning, but... yeah. The part at the top, before he gets to Tad Williams, though the whole thing is good.

Oh, one other thing. So beautiful it hurts, sure. But... there's humor, whimsy, silliness, too. It's not all dignified or quite what you would expect. It's an odd blend, but again, pretty much perfect.

I mean, the incompetent magician is named Schmendrick. Yeah. It's hard to be very dignified with a name like that. And he pretty much is the incompetent magician, the standard by whom all others shall be judged. In the words of my edition's generic blurb, "...a kind of poor man's Merlin whose devotion to the exquisite creature he follows is exceeded only by his mediocrity in magic."

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful book.


"'How can it be?' she wondered. 'I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorn [sic] or if they had changed so that they hated all unicorns now and tried to kill them when they saw them. But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else--what do they look like to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?'

"Sometimes she thought, 'If men no longer know what they are looking at, there may well be unicorns in the world yet, unknown and glad of it.' But she knew beyond both hope and vanity that men had changed, and the world with them, because the unicorns were gone. Yet she went on along the hard road, although each day she wished a little more that she had never left her forest."


"'It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is,' he said. 'There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that uncorns [sic] when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two--the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue.'"

And on a smaller scale, a good representative phrase I noticed and loved: "When Schmendrick looked at her again he had managed to pull his face together, but it was still struggling to escape from him."

The rest of what I'm going to quote is scented faintly of spoilers, so to those who are sensitive to those strains, read no further. They are so good (and so sideways to any true spoilers) that I can't help myself. I quote on, for the beautiful, beautiful themes.


"'Fools, fools and children! It was a lie, like all magic! There is no such person as Robin Hood!' But the outlaws, wild with loss, went crashing into the woods after the shining archers, stumbling over logs, falling through thorn bushes, wailing hungrily as they ran.

"Only Molly Grue stopped and looked back. Her face was burning white.

"'Nay, Cully, you have it backward,' she called to him. 'There's no such a person as you, or me, or any of us. Robin and Marian are real, and we are the legend!'"


"'The hero has to make a prophecy come true, and the villain is the one who has to stop him--though in another kind of story, it's more often the other way around. And a hero has to be in trouble from the moment of his birth, or he's not a real hero. It's a great relief to find out about Prince Lír. I've been waiting for this tale to turn up a leading man.'

"The unicorn was there as a star is suddenly there, moving a little way ahead of them, a sail in the dark. Molly said, 'If Lír is the hero, what is she?'

"'That's different. Haggard and Lír and Drinn and you and I--we are in a fairy tale, and must go where it goes. But she is real. She is real.'"


"'...How can anything that is going to die be real? How can it be truly beautiful?'...

"'I was born mortal, and I have been immortal for a long, foolish time, and one day I will be mortal again; so I know something that a unicorn cannot know. Whatever can die is beautiful--more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world.'"


There. It's alright, you can come out now. I'm done.

48-Hour Book Challenge

I'm so excited!

It's 6:08 in the morning on a Saturday. That's not why I'm excited. That's just why it's amazing that I can be excited. I'm up because I know everything works better when I treat my schedule and my baby's schedule the same on weekends as I do during the rest of the week, and I recently made some adjustments so I've finally started getting up as early during the week as I always mean to.

I'm excited because I'm participating in the 48-Hour Book Challenge this year! It's the 8th Annual, but I think I only heard about it for the first time last year, from my sister Sondy at Sonderbooks. I'm sure she's participated for many years now, but apparently I wasn't paying attention.

I couldn't do it last year, but this year... I can make the attempt! Woo! Between a seven-month-old and some things I have going on this weekend, I very well may not manage even the 12-hour minimum required for true official participation, but I'm going to have fun.

Go check out the rules, but basically, the idea is one reads and blogs about books as much as possible over a 48-hour window of time. Yay!

Baby last ate at 5:15 a.m., so I'm hoping she won't get up for the day quite as early as she normally does. Uh-oh, she's awake, poked my head in to grab my Kindle, and her eyes were open. But she's not making any noise yet, so there's still hope...

I may be posting this waaay later than the 6:08 mentioned at the beginning. Not because of my propensity to run on. We'll see.

I sort of have my structure picked out for me, because at the end of April I signed up for the May Challenge at 750words.com, which involved writing 750 words every single day, and then... I didn't. Quite. My penalty to myself was that in June I would always write a book review before sitting down to read a book. (I've stayed sane with all the times nursing and pumping that I could be reading by staying more or less current with the many blogs I try to follow. Not the same, but also fun.) I decided to count separate sittings on the same day as one sitting, only requiring one book review, unless I switch books. If I finish one book and start another on the same day, they still require a book review in between.

I also decided to count writing a book review as both drafting a review and then editing and posting it. Doesn't have to be of the same book, I could draft one review and then edit and post another, but both parts have to be included.

Because I forgot about these rules once recently, at the moment I need to post one more review and draft two more before I will allow myself to read. So that structures this Challenge nicely for me.

The first book on my list is The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy, for SLOBS (a book club) on Monday, and it's very short, so then I'll be doing even more writing and blogging. Or as much as I actually get to. We'll see.

Left to myself (er, left to... less of my rules-following self? I have no idea.), I would have chosen more reading and less blogging for the Challenge, but this works.

I have no actual physical TBR pile, they're all scattered all over the place (and in notes to myself to get a hold of other books I've heard of), but for this weekend... Well, see the above. I figure I'll read whatever I feel like at the time, when I get to the reading parts. Which, after The Death of Ivan Ilyich, will probably be reading more of Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines. Which is longer. But I have both of them on my Kindle.

So! A sort-of picture of my TBR pile!

Wow, there's a lot of nonfiction at the top of the list right now. And somehow neither of the books I've mentioned so far are on this list. Meh.

Now, I would also give you a picture of my favorite spot to read, but this house doesn't really have any reading corners I'm in love with. And you know what's more important than a "where" picture? A "when" picture.

Yes, it is quite possible to photograph a "when." I'm not talking about sunrise or sunset, either.

My favorite time to read.

See?

Well, this is my starting line post. It's 7:36 a.m. now. Er, make that 8:19. I think the latest allowed window is 7:00 a.m. on Saturday to 7:00 a.m. on Monday, and I haven't started yet, so I guess that's the window I'm taking. I'll be tracking my time on everything using Toggl. Don't want to spend too much time on this post that I could be using on the Challenge, so I guess I'd better hurry and put this up!