My Brain on Books XXVI (#reversereadathon)

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't require a separate post..   

5:55 - Wrap Up: I got to read again for the last fifteen minutes but it wasn't enough time to finish 100 Days. So typical of me. I sometime handle a dozen books or more during a thon but almost never start and finish the same book inside the 24 hours so I seldom get to enter a title in the database.  This time I handled only two.  The Oates which I started weeks ago and did not finish and the 100 Days which I finished half an hour too late. But overall it was a good thon.  Got a good solid six or eight hours of dedicated reading and a whole lot of scattered minutes of reading.  And I spent a couple hours at least leaving social media updates and comments on the hub blog before I had to go to bed last night.

3:33PM - Just told it's time to fix Mom's lunch.  Probably won't get back to reading before 5.  And with only 10% of 100 Days of Sunlight left too.  Came soooo close to having a start/finish inside the 24 hours so I won't be able to enter it in the database. 

100 Days of Sunlight
by Abbie Emmons

1:22PM - Too bad I didn't follow the plan I laid out in my last update.  If I'd gone straight to bed and straight to sleep by 2AM I may have been ready to stay awake after Mom beeped for help before 6AM.  It was nearly 6:30 before my sister finished dealing with the rash that has been harassing her since the hospital stay.  It had seemed to be a reaction to the meds they put her on--the blood thinner and/or the statin--but they took her off them over three weeks ago now and tho the rash is much better and no longer a 24/7 issue it still flares now and then.

I was wide awake by the time all was quiet in the room again and I was sorely tempted to just go make my coffee and get back to reading.  But I'd gotten less than two hours of sleep and I knew it would be irresponsible of me to try to make it through the day without at least a couple more.  So I made myself lay there until I got sleepy again and it seemed like forever.  Then when my alarm for waking Mom at 9 went off I was groggy and completely unready to be awake.  Though I never went back to sleep again after that it took me a good hour to get my eyes and mind focused enough to read.  That would have been a good time to switch to audio but I was stubborn.

What put me on this path was picking up 100 Days of Sunlight again after I got in bed.  I thought another chapter or two wouldn't hurt and I had been so sleepy just twenty minutes earlier.  Ha.  Next thing I knew it was after 3am and I kept on reading.  I was on a path to skipping sleep altogether.  But at 3:30am I got the gapes so bad I couldn't stop yawning and when I yawn I can't see plus it tears up my eyes so I still can't see between the yawns.  So I gave up.

100 Days of Sunlight is the book I've been reading all morning and I suspect I will be staying with it until I'm done and I'm only 64% after more than four hours of reading it so even if I didn't have duties related to Mom I probably can't finish before 5.  At some point well before then I will have to stop reading to fix Mom's lunch and sit with her while she eats.  When that will be is hard to know because Saturday is her shower day and usually she is already half done with that by now but today is off kilter because of the histamine my sister gave her for the itching before dawn that has made her groggy all day.  My sister has just got her started on the shower routine.

1:44AM - I got to spend a sublime two hours with Night, Sleep, Death, the Stars.  Then, needing a change of pace as I did not want to carry the mood of this story into my dreams.  I needed a buffer so I switched to 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons, a YA coming of age,  Two chapters in and my eyes began to close.  I need to take advantage of that as if I fight through it as was once my habit I will reach moment of revival and likely sail thru until dawn.  But I have to be well rested and alert by 9am when Mom's wake-up routine begins.  And I would have no opportunity to nap again before 9pm.  I'm hoping I'll wake around dawn which will give me a chance to read for a couple more hours before time to wake Mom but it will have to happen without the help of an alarm as I sleep in the same room as Mom.

10:44PM - After Mom's lights out I chose to spend a few minutes updating on social media and then visit the Dewey Hub and left several comments.  An hour went like that.  Now I'm about to do as I planned and submerge myself in the Oates novel for at least an hour.  Two would be even better.

Night, Sleep, Death, the Stars
by Joyce Carol Oates

9:00PM - I've been reading Night. Sleep. Death. the Stars by Joyce Carol Oates sporadically since 5PM.  There were a number of duties related to Mom, the dinner hour and kitchen cleanup that took me away from it and most of those times were not conducive to audio reading either.  But according to the progress bar on the Libby ap I've advance 7% which puts me at 57% on the book which I've already been reading for over three weeks.  This isn't the way I prefer to read fiction.  I prefer to read novels in long gulps that allow me to get lost in the story.  But I did manage to get one session with it today that was around an hour long so that allowed me to get sucked in enough I was unwilling to switch to a NF for the spotty episodes.  This is a quintessential Joyce Carol Oates.  It is eerie the way it seems ripped out of the current headlines even though it's publication date was scheduled months if not over a year before the events precipitated by the George Floyd murder and the ensuing protests.  

The story is centered around the family, wife and five adult children, left behind by a wealthy business man and ex-mayor who died of complications created by a brutal beating and tazering by two policemen who'd taken exception to his having pulled over on the Expressway to object to the beating and tazering they were subjecting a brown-skinned man to.  A wife whose lost her identity and siblings whose rivalries suppurate in the rage of grief.  In the raw pain of the abandonment of their father they abandon each other by various means from willfully misunderstanding the other's coping methods as person affronts to actually withdrawal and avoiding their company.  I sense it is shaping up into a tragedy of a King Lear proportion.

Just got the call that Mom is ready for our lights out routine.  After that I'm free to get lost in the story again.  

5:00PM - I will be reading every moment I can snatch but may not get to update here or social media before Mom is in bed after 9pm.  Mom came home from the hospital post stroke 3 weeks ago today and has not regained enough mobility yet to spend the weekend with my brother's family as has been her habit which left me free for most read-a-thon weekends since I moved in in 2013.

The reverse thon start time is a mite awkward for me due to it being smack in the middle of dinner prep and then there is feeding Mom followed by her bedtime routine.

But I will snatch moments to read.  My books for this time-frame, including the two listed in the Intro Meme, are on a smartphone sans SIM card via Overdrive's Libby ap that I keep in my vest pocket.  I also have the option of dozens of audio books via library of congress BARD for the print disabled loaded onto 5 separate android devices with 2 full battery backups.

The start time is also the end time tomorrow and that means it ends right at the start of the busiest four hours of our day here and thus I can't just put my book down and sleep as I can when it ends at 5am.  In fact I'll have to be not only awake but alert and on duty for another four to five hours after end of thon.  So I can't skip sleep entirely between 9pm tonight and 9am Saturday morning.  I may not insist on the regulation 7.5hrs in my ROW80 goals for this round but I should get more than four and six would be better.

4:44PM - Intro Meme:

1)What fine part of the world are you reading from today? And what time is it where you are?
Longview, Washington USA situated in the V formed by the Cowlitz and Columbia Rivers.  On the north side of the majestic Columbia River across from Raineer, Oregon approximately 50 miles from the coast and 25 miles from Portland, Oregon as the crow flies but drives about double that.

At my Mom's house.  The house I lived in from age 18 to 21 (or 1975-78) 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: Night. Sleep. Death. the Stars by Joyce Carol Oates
For Non Fiction: Writing as a Path to Awakening by Albert Flynn DeSilver

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

spicy hot chocolate with a little piece of very dark chocolate

4) Do you have a #reversereadathon plan of attack?

This thon day marks 3 weeks since we brought Mom home from the hospital post stroke. So my plan is: Be flexible and be OK with not reading every minute of the thon.  Be OK with having to get some sleep as Mom's needs come first.

also to follow advice i give to thon newbies and vets alike: 

Stay hydrated!

Get up and move once an hour.  You can read while you pace you know.  i like to stand on my mini-tramp with a ebook or audio book to encourage bloodflow in my legs and brain.

Blink.  Seriously.  Dry eyeballs can't see.  And the hands rubbing them can't hold books

5) Are you doing the readathon solo or with others?

i'm solo for the most part but I may read aloud to Mom for a bit or listen to an audio book with her while feeding her meals.

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