The Terror of Knowing

As you might have seen from my previous post, this past weekend I participated in the 24 in 48 Readathon. For those unaware of the premise, a quick summary is that you try to read for 24 hours out of a possible 48 hours i.e. Saturday and Sunday.

Now, I knew going into this that I would never in a million years make it to 24 hours of reading, no way, I’m not that disciplined, frankly, and I also didn’t want to burn myself out on reading. However, I did want to make the effort to make reading a priority this past weekend and, on that front, I’d consider it a rousing success. Whilst I did watch some TV – Taboo could not be missed on Saturday night, and we needed to finish the final episode of Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events – I mostly just read. When I got up and had breakfast, rather than putting on an old episode of Thick of It for the billionth time, I read instead, and I felt so much better and productive for it. Don’t get me wrong, I also spent the entire weekend inside, in the same chair, which made me a little cabin fever-y but nothing a week at work can’t cure, I’m sure.

But, for now, I wanted to wrap-up the readathon by briefly mentioning what I read, since I read some really great things that re-invigorated my love of reading, and I would like to share them. (Also, not gonna lie, this might be the most productive weekend I’ve ever had, reading-wise, so I need to document this moment for posterity’s sake!)

These are the stack of books I hoped to choose from over the course of the 24in48 readathon. (Not pictured: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire audiobook, as read by Stephen Fry)

I purposely picked books that were different genres, different lengths, different formats, in order to keep me interested and keep me productively reading – if I started to get bored of A Series of Unfortunate Events, for example, I could switch over to a memoir or to poetry. As far as TBR stacks go, I feel like this was one of my most considerate and successful, as you can see below…

Read for 14.5 hours in total | 1182 pages | 7 books

Completed 7 books – 3 graphic novels, 1 poetry collection, 2 novels, 1 memoir:
Saga, Volume One – Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
Saga, Volume Two – Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
Saga, Volume Three – Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
Wishing For Birds – Elisabeth Hewer
The Wide Window (ASOUE #3) – Lemony Snicket
The Miserable Mill (ASOUE #4) – Lemony Snicket
Talking As Fast As I Can – Lauren Graham

& made 24% progress with 1 audiobook:
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling (read by Stephen Fry)

Considering all I wanted to do was prioritise reading, I’d say I’ve definitely met that goal for this past weekend and I’m very proud of the progress I made. Whilst I would have liked to have a little more War and Peace under my belt, I’m not in the least surprised that I favoured shorter reads for quicker gratification. However, participating in this readathon has allowed me to think carefully about what I was reading and it has taken a bit of pressure off me in terms of the yearly challenges I’m doing though, so that will definitely help when War and Peace takes longer to read than other novels. (See Around the Year in 52 Books, Book Riot Read Harder, and my 2017 Read for any progress updates on my yearly challenges! And I will be trying to periodically upload reviews for all the things I’ve read so far in 2017, I swear.)

All in all – a very good weekend of reading and I’m very glad I participated in the readathon; I highly encourage you to try it out for yourself if you haven’t before!

Did you participate in the 24 in 48 Readathon? How did you do?
Comment below or link progress posts if you have them – I would love to hear about your weekend’s reading.

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