bookgazing | 48 Hour Readathon

Just checking in to say I'm starting the 48 hour reading challenge now at 15:00 GMT. Loving having the afternoon off. Good luck to all the people joining in. I'm aiming for 32 hours reading over the whole wekend, but I'll be happy if I just reach 24 hours.

Anyhoo see you later when I check in (probably just be updating this post so hopefully you won't get a deluge of posts).

First Update

Time Reading: Four and a half hours

I finished 'False Colors' by Alex Beecroft, which was a fantastic British navy romance (bit of a departure for me). I'll be reviewing any books I finish later, so for now I'll just say I loved the central characters, but got totally annoyed by the romance convention of 'we can not be together because of a big misunderstanding we can not talk to each other about'.

Right now I'm just about to start Part Two of Zetta Elliott's 'A Wish After Midnight' which so far is lovely, really natural and a great book for teenagers. Part Two is where we get into the sci-fi fantasy bit of the book and I'm looking forward to seeing how Elliott's time travel works and what the consequences of accidental time travel are.

I love to read but I also love watching the totally cheesy 'The Mentalist' (swoon) so I'll be taking a little break now for some tv.

Second Update

Time Reading: 8 hours 20 minutes

Ok 32 hours is looking like a bit of a pipedream now. Fridays are sleeping nights for me, because the working week is loooooooong. So I lasted until 11 before I had to give up and go to bed. Didn't make it up early either. I have three and a bit hours before I have to get ready to go out and celebrate my friends engagement, which will take me up to almost 12 hours. I guess I could get to 24 hours tomorrow and then squeeze in an hour before I go to work (the way I've started the challenge goes until 12 on Monday so my lunch will come after it finishes). Maybe sneak in some online reading of Nebula winner 'The Girl Who Circumvented Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making' if things are quiet on Monday (cross fingers).

Kind of wishing I'd included those fifty minutes spent reading on the bus at 13:00 yesterday, but I couldn't post about starting while on the bus.

On the plus side I finished 'A Wish Before Midnight' and loved it. I can so see why cautious publishers were reluctant to take it, but they were oh so wrong. Very thankful to the author for pursuing her dream and to AmazonEncore for getting the book to a wider audience.

Now what to read next?

Update Three

Time Spent Reading: 11 hours!

That's not too shabby right? You can include one hour of social media time per five hours of reading so I'm fleshing my total up to 11 hours by including half an hour of social media before I get ready for engagement drinks (my friend's engagement I hasten to add, not mine). Best of all I get to use our functioning shower. It's been two weeks of duck and cover showers as our its thermostat broke and of course when that happens the shower favours cold water, so we'd get 2 minutes of heat and ten minutes of shivering. I will be luxuriating and I might even take the time to shave my legs so I can put on a dress. It's quite toasty today.

But you didn't come here to listen to my shower woes. You're wondering what I've been reading aren't you? I went back to Anna Karenina, the group classics read I'm involved in this summer. I've almost completed Section Four (and the dashing Vronsky has just done something monumnetally stupid). That and the fact that I've finished a whole book during this challenge makes me feel pretty accomplished, even if my hour total is a little low.

Thanks for the cheers everyone. Hope you're enjoying your weekends and the sun is shining (um maybe winter sun for some of you).

Update Four

Time Spent Reading: 16 and a half hours

That's a bit better isn't it? I was hungover this morning after engagement celebrations so I picked up 'White Woman on a Green Bicycle' to kick start the day, which worked as it's fast to read. It all became a bit too serious in Trinidad almost half way through the book, so once I was feeling a bit more awake (and had my Sunday dinner inside me) I swapped it out for the final pages of Part Four of 'Anna Karenina'. That's quite enough Tolstoy for now I think, as we're reading the book slowly and I don't want to rush it. Moved on to start a Victorian mystery series by Caro Peacock, begining with 'Death at Dawn'. I'm just over fifty pages in, but now in need of a brief cat nap.

Update Five

Time Spent Reading: 21 hours

And as it's work for me tomorrow I'm off to bed. Two thirds of the way through 'Death at Dawn', might get a little bit more read before work tomorrow, but this is more than likely my final total of hours. Not as big as I hoped, but not too shabby.