Hooray! Mother Reader has announced this year’s 48-Hour Book Challenge! It will happen the weekend starting June 8. This time it’s not happening on my mother’s birthday weekend (the weekend before), nor is it happening on my birthday weekend (the weekend after). Now, it IS happening the weekend of my son’s prom, and I may need to be the chauffeur. But they will probably just have to listen to an audiobook on the way to prom!
Now, I noticed that I’m not quite as excited about the 48-Hour Book Challenge as I usually am. I think there are two reasons why:
1. I had a stroke almost a year ago. I was in the hospital for 10 days and then had lots and lots of days, over the course of the year, where I didn’t have the energy to do much besides read. Now thinking of spending a whole day or two reading doesn’t sound nearly as luxurious as it did a year ago. Instead, it makes me think of feeling bad!
Solution? Well, I’ll just have to change that association, won’t I? Better read for two solid days when I’m feeling good, right?
2. As a consequence of all that time to read, but low energy to do other things — like write reviews — I’m way, way behind on writing reviews, so really I should spend the time writing reviews rather than actually reading — and that would turn it into a chore instead of fun.
Solution? I am about to start a 3-day weekend with nothing scheduled. My son’s going to his Dad’s. Why not use this weekend to catch up on reviews? I will make the resolution that any books I have read but I haven’t finished reviewing by Monday, I will turn back in to the library *gasp* without reviewing! Then I will make a resolution from here on out to review books by the following Saturday after I read them. (This is writing the reviews, not necessarily posting them.) If I don’t review them by then, I will return them, un-reviewed. I will also plan to review every book I read during the 48-Hour Book Challenge.
I’ll let you know how this goes, come Monday! The key will be that I will need to write the reviews of my favorite books first, or I won’t have the heart to turn them back in. There are some good books sitting there waiting, so I really hope I can accomplish this! I can think of it as a dry run for the 48HBC.
Finally, one more thing about this year’s 48HBC. It’s also a read-a-thon, with donations going to Book People Unite, collecting money for Reading Is Fundamental. I’ll be sponsoring myself at $1.00 per hour. If you’d like to sponsor me, let me know in the comments or e-mail me at sondy at sonderbooks.com. I will definitely be posting how many hours I read.
So, the excitement is building, and I’m going to prepare by doing my pre-challenge on the holiday weekend. I had been planning to get out and walk in a garden during the weekend, but then I saw the temperature forecast. I think I will happily stay indoors, writing reviews! I will post how many I finish on the weekend. In fact, I’ll even fess up and admit that my piles here have 14 full-length books and 9 picture books. That’s doable, right? Right?