Oh No She Didn't!

Bout of Book Read-a-Thon

Oh yeah!  I just signed up for another read-a-thon!

Bout of Books runs all week from midnight this morning to midnight next Sunday night.  That's 23 hours before NaNo begins for me.  And I got lots of prep stuff left to do for my NaNo novel.

So why?  What has got into me?

Reading that's what.

For one thing, though I don't intend to stop altogether, my reading will slow down in November and probably not pick up again until January.  Writing will have to move to front in November and Xmas gifts take second place to that.  Then the holidays themselves.

So why not go out with a blast?

Besides I have several unfished novels sitting here that I simply hate the thought of still hanging over me as NaNo begins.

Also its not like part of the challenge for this thon is reading around the clock like Dewey's was this past weekend.  For this one it is read whatever you can whenever you can and participate in the reading community via blogs, twitter, fb, good reads etc.  There are challenge and prizes for this one too of course.

Part of the motivation for me is that I just pulled out of a reading slump in September that began during Nano last year.  That was the longest reading slump of my life and so totally mystified me.  I credit all the reading community things I participated in in the last two months for that: BBAW, BBW, and all the challenges you see in the side bar to your right.  Because of them I've read more in the last 8 weeks than in the previous 8 months combined.

So, the books I hope to finish this week?  The list is similar to the one I made for Wonderfully Wicked and Dewey thon because I only managed to finish one off those lists--Breaking Dawn.  So for now the list includes the unfinished novels only, books I had to set aside because of commitments or library due dates:

The Child Thief by Bron
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (I also need to get my review for this written and posted this week if I want to be included in the Wordshaker bookclub for which I sent for this book from the library for in the first place.
East of Eden
And several fairy tale/fable/myth anthologies

Oh, and my review copy for Youth and Other Fictions by Jonathan M. Cook which I'll begin with tonight because I'm slated to join its blog tour with a review and giveaway in early October.  Watch for the announcement.

Youth and Other Fictions is billed as a literary YA thriller.  Set in a highs school the story is witnessed through two character's eyes.  One of them a student and the other a teacher.  I've already read ten percent and I can't be certain yet but it looks like it is headed toward a major school tragedy preceded by months or years of adult apathy regarding a severe bullying problem at the school.

I was hesitant to accept this commitment coming at this time and not because of the NaNo commitment coming up next Tuesday and the following 30 days but because my planned NaNo novel also deals with a bullying problem in a high school and it is my first YA attempt.  The risk of this possibly being too close to my own concept had me anxious that I would either 1) allow my own work to be too influenced or 2) allow myself to be too intimidated by another author's work so that I second guess myself.  Or both.  But I decided to trust myself.

I'd been immersing myself in YA novels, movies and TV series set in high school for several months now  but have started to taper off and planned to quit completely half a week before November 1.  My purpose was to soak of the ambiance and drag up submerged memories and emotions to infuse my story in November but once I seriously begin the writing I probably need to switch my own reading and watching fare to a genre as different as possible from what I'm trying to do.

I don't know exactly how much time I will get to devote to reading put it will be at least several hours per day.

That's all I'm putting in the list for now but that doesn't mean I'm limiting myself to the list.  There will be a little bit of go with the flow. Because of visual impairment I am a slow reader and I like chunky books and books that make me stop and savor words like chocolates with mystery flavor centers.  So I'm not into keeping a tally of number of books or pages read/finished.  Instead I will occasionally tweet about what I have been reading and what its impact on me is.