This Saturday, October 17th marks the fall occurrence of the twice-annual Dewey’s 24-hour Readathon. This is my first time participating, and I am super excited. Even if I doubt I’ll be able to stay up for 24 hours straight, it will be a nice little vacation, and maybe I’ll be able to accomplish something. (And, bonus, avoid housework!).
You could definitely aim to finish as many books as possible in 24 hours. I admire that route. Go forth and read, little one. I of all people know what it’s like when you’re down to the wire with your Goodreads annual personal challenge and you’re cramming as many “Read”s as possible in the final weeks of December.
Or you could opt to read one huge book, and that’s also an entirely worthy pursuit. Imagine if you had 24-ish hours free to devote to A Little Life or The Goldfinch or A Brief History of Seven Killings? Wham, bam, you’ve crossed a big white whale off your TBR list.
I’ll be aiming for something in between. The three books I’ve picked to read for Saturday’s 24-Hour Readathon include a new release, a book I need to finish to get me through a series I am committed to reading, and an Advanced Review Copy (ARC) that I’ve got to get through to be in publisher’s good graces.
First, what I absolutely need to finish is A Clash of Kings, the second book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. I was hoping that NY Comic Con last weekend would herald the announcement of the next book in the series, the long-awaited Winds of Winter, but alas, Martin did not make any big announcement. In some sense there’s no rush, right? I mean he theoretically won’t publish it until just before Season 6 of Game of Thrones comes back in April-ish of 2016. But these books are loooong–and great!–and take a while to get through. I raced through Book 1, A Game of Thrones, this spring, but I got stalled in the second installment in a Bran chapter (of course). But I know there’s no way I’ll be able to finish the other three books before WOW unless I get some momentum going. And so I’ll be chucking my way through the last 500 pages of A Clash of Kings first things first.
If I get stuck or bored I’ll move on to a new release that’s gradually gaining traction, The Creeping by Alexandra Sirowy, which was released in mid-August. Sirowy’s YA mystery-thriller has been compared to Tana French’s In the Woods, one of my all-time favorite reads and one of the highlights of the last five reading years for me, in its story about a young woman who was the sole survivor of an incident in the woods when she and her best friend were girls. Yet now it seems there is new evidence to solve the unsolved crime. Two of my favorite reviewers on Goodreads gave it high ratings, which is an all-but guaranteed good read for me. And let’s face it, it’s October. It’s time for a creepy read!
The ARC I’m committed to reading this week is Cammie McGovern’s A Step Toward Falling. McGovern writes about disability in young adult literature, and, well, in any age range, in a positive, accurate, compassionate way that pushes both the abled and the differently abled to evaluate their own attitudes towards disability and chronic illness. She is an advocate I admire. I am eagerly looking forward to sitting down with my digital ARC for A Step Toward Falling on Saturday and coming out the other side of the weekend having read a moving story that speaks to my personal interests and experiences.
I’ll be live-Tweeting the October 17th 24-hour Readathon over here. Leave a comment below or tweet with the hashtag #readathon to join in the fun.
