It’s that time again! Today is my favourite event – Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon. For the uninitiated, the readathon takes place from midnight on Saturday, October 26th until midnight Sunday, October 27th, EST. (You can find out what time it starts in your time zone here.) Where I am, that means it runs from 5AM to 5AM, which obviously I’m not ever going to get up for. Instead, I read from when I get up in the morning for as long as I can with some breaks throughout the day until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. The idea is pretty simple: read. Some try to stay awake reading consistently for the full 24 hours. Others take a couple of hours out of their day to read. Some participate in the readathon events, others unplug and focus on words on the page. I like to read and periodically check in on social media to see how everyone is doing.
This year I’m not getting two ambitious. I’m just trying to make progress on two books I’m currently reading:
I find trying to take on too much leads to disappointment and lack of fulfillment, whereas just trying to read, no matter how much or for how long, ends with me feeling like I’ve gotten somewhere. I’m loving both of these books, so it’s not a challenge to dive in. I’ve been reading Poverty Safari for a while now – it’s easy to read in terms of the language, but deals with some deeply difficult topics. I find that about every page or so there’s a line that I have to stop to re-read because it’s just so eloquent and important. I’d recommend this one for Non-Fiction November – for either design (social design that leads to cycles of poverty and abuse) or truth (this tells the true story of what it means to be born into poverty, and why that accident of birth will dictate everything from your social prospects to your mental and physical health to your likelihood of ending up in prison). Raising Demons, on the other hand, is a hilarious account of motherhood. It’s set in the 1950s I think, but so many of the experiences of motherhood are universal and feel like they’ve never passed into history. I love Jackson’s writing, and she makes me feel like I’m not totally failing at motherhood – or, if I am, I’m not alone.
I don’t plan to update my blog much during the readathon, but I will likely post a few updates on my Instagram and Twitter if you want to keep up with my progress. Please feel free to comment here with what you’re reading and how your readathon experience is going, though, and I will check back to respond to those!
Good luck to you all, and I hope you are having a wonderful readathon so far!
