My Brain on Books XVIII

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don'e require a separate post..   

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

4:00AM (Sunday) - last hour.  After posting the 10PM update I spent the next several hours browsing among my ebook libraries on my various devises, flitting from book to book like a butterfly with ADD.  Then sometime after midnight I settled down with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on my Switch tabet which has just informed me its battery is at 5%.  The charger is in by the bed and its much easier take it in there to plug it in then to get to the powerstrip to unplug the cord and bring it back to the office.  So I'm wrapping up here with a final update before taking my Switch, Kindle and LOC Talking Book machine to bed for the final hour.  I've got Joyce Carol Oates story collection, High Lonesome, on Talking Books and with the way my eyes are burning and itching that is appealing to me the most right now.  Tho the hilarity of Hitchhiker is more appealing as a bedtime story than the heart harrowing of an Oates short story.  I'll decide once I'm settled.

Anybody out there a Hitchhiker of the Galaxy fan?  I was hooked after four chapters.  Now in chapter 12.  That Zaphod B.  What a hoot!  Am I the only one who visualizes him as a certain American 'billionaire' with flyaway hair and a penchant for towers?

10:00PM - I just finished Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.  I had started it a couple months ago, read over half of it over two days and somehow let it drop off my radar.  I decided to return to it and finish it before I settled in with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I'd started last month.  I thought it would take me a couple more hours, but when I tried to start in where I'd left off I was lost .  I tried backing up--from the 67% mark to the 50% mark to the 45% mark.  It was starting to come back to me but it was't the same experience I remembered from the day it had kept me mesmerized for hours in February.

So I started over.  And for the first time in a very long time I read a whole book in a single day.  I never get to enter my books in the database for the thon because I never both start and finish them on thon day.  Today I will.

5:00AM -  Possibly for the first time I gave sleep the night before the priority and did not prep this post to publish on the dot of 5AM. I set my alarm for 4AM to give me time to get my eyes open, coffee made and this post prepped.  But I kept hitting snooze.  So now I'll be spending the first hour doing all of that and the opening meme.

Intro Meme:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Longview, Washington USA.  On the north side of the majestic Columbia River approximately 25 miles from the coast and 50 miles from Portland, Oregon as the crow flies.

From my Mom's house.  The house I lived in from age 18 to 21 and again since January 2013.  See earliest posts under the label Lifequake for explanation.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

For fiction: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- All of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker stories and novels in one ebook.  My husband has been after me to read this for decades.

For Nonfiction: Advancing bookmark in Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.

But mostly I'm looking forward to free range reading.  The most important part of my plan for this thon is to not have a plan.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

It's a toss up between candied ginger and ice cream.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I'm legally blind from RP aka Tunnel Vision with less than 2 degrees of vision left.  I can no longer read even large print with my left eye.  I now prefer ebooks for the ability to enlarge fonts and control line width so I don't loose my way between end and beginning of lines.  I used to read nearly 1K words per minute but now read slower than I talk.  Very discouraging.

I've had a mood disorder since childhood featuring depression, anxiety, panic and insomnia.  Several times professionals have considered the possibility of bi-polar but finally ruled it out definitively in late 2015 when they diagnosed me with High Functioning Autism aka Asperger's.  Over fifty years of feeling 'wrong' and not knowing why.  I've spent the months since reading nf about the autism spectrum and novels and memoirs featuring autistic individuals which has gone a long way toward helping me understand much that once confused and shamed me.  Since I have several of those books in progress I'll probably dip into them today.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

The most important difference after actually sleeping the night before is to go with the flow--less plan more fun.