The Terror of Knowing

Today is the day I finally put down the Christmas cake long enough to remember to wrap up the readathon I participated in a little before Christmas. If you use the word “participated” loosely, and I always do. So here is a breakdown of how Cramathon unfolded for me…

Day 1 (19th)

Finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s The Well of Ascension, a mammoth task considering I had probably two thirds of the book left to go. However I was enjoying the story a hell of a lot and my parents left the house for a Christmas party at about 6pm which meant I had a good 6 hours where the house could be completely quiet. I took advantage of that silence and snuggled up with a pizza and the book and I’m very glad I did. My thoughts on the book? Wow, that was some story progression, especially the last 100 pages or so.

Day 2 (20th)

After finishing The Well of Ascension yesterday (a task covering 400+ pages), I felt a bit burned out so I decided to pick up something quick and easy. I was halfway through reading Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, half-novel, half-graphic novel, so I decided to just sit down and finish it finally, and use it for the graphic novel challenge. I’m glad I read it and annoyed at myself that I read it sporadically over the last fortnight or so since I really did love the stories and its art style was beautiful.

Day 3 (21st)

Finished listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, as narrated by Stephen Fry. I had planned to re-read the Harry Potter series anyway this winter but when I discovered that my library had the audiobooks via Overdrive, I jumped on the chance to re-experience the stories through the wonderful narration of Stephen Fry. So, on my trip into town to get some final bits and pieces for Christmas, I finished off listening to the Philosopher’s Stone and I planned to continue on by listening to the Chamber of Secrets as I wrapped presents and such. As of 3pm I was at about 40% since I’d been listening to it on 1.75x speed which seems to be as sped-up as I can manage without not being able to understand Stephen Fry.

After distractions of a family-based nature as my parents arrived home from work at about half 4, and dinner, I didn’t pick back up anything until about 10pm when I realised that, try as I might, I wasn’t going to finished the Chamber of Secrets audiobook with only 2 hours left of the readathon. So, instead, I picked up Sally Heathcote: Suffragette, a graphic novel I knew nothing about apart from its title and a sort of feeling I’d heard about it through Jean Bookishthoughts on YouTube. I whizzed through it, finishing it at about half 11. My thoughts? I’m glad I read it, even if it’s just to experience another kind of graphic novel, but I’m not entirely sure if the graphic novel format is the best format for such stories. Even so, it filled a hole of time as I curled up in bed with it, and I was glad to be able to tick off another book from my TBR. (I later did a slightly more expanded review of my thoughts, if you’d like to peruse it sometime.)

Summary 

Books Read:
The Well of Ascension – Brandon Sanderson
The Invention of Hugo Cabret – Brian Selznick
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone [audiobook] – JK Rowling
Sally Heathcote: Suffragette – Mary M. Talbot, Bryan Talbot, Kate Charlesworth
(in progress) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets [audiobook] – JK Rowling

As far as the reading itself goes, the challenges and TBR went out of the window pretty much on Day 1 when I started to really get some momentum going with reading The Well of Ascension. As anyone who has ever read a Brandon Sanderson book (or any long fantasy book for that matter) will know, if you get traction, you run with it for as long as possible. I think I might have burnt myself out a little bit with it though, which meant that I didn’t really feel like reading novels after I’d finished it. This meant I stuck to audiobooks and graphic novels for the rest of the readathon which was okay by me because I probably wouldn’t ever pick up either format as a first port of call. That’s the thing I find about readathons – out of necessity I start to drift to other formats and it’s a good thing for me to do so, I think, every once in a while.

All in all, I’d say it was a successful Cramathon for me! I didn’t really participate as much on Twitter etc. as I would have liked but c’est la vie, it always seems to be the way – I read a lot and I don’t tweet much or else I tweet a lot but no actual reading gets done. Hopefully in future readathons I’ll manage some kind of balance between the two. Speaking of future readathons, Shannon from leaninglights’ TBR Takedown 3.0 is happening in the first week of the new year so watch this space for a TBR post that will undoubtedly be ignored once the readathon starts!