My Brain On Books XXXV

   

 

 

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..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

Meet My Reading Buddies:
Grace and Jolly
They are my sleep buddies and live on my bed but today they join me on my beanbag reading nest

The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

7:17 PM - I surrender

After the 4-5PM sprint Pacific Time I realized I needed to eat something more substantial than the finger foods I'd been satisfied with for twelve hours.  But eating something substantial tends to take the blood from the brain and redirect it to the digestive tract which brings on nap attacks.  Especially if one is already sleep deprived.  Sigh.  I tried lighter weight reading fare but even my beloved Little Women can't keep me awake.

I would like to say I'm just going to take a nap but since I've been awake for over 24hrs already I know this isn't a nap coming on.  It is typical for me after a 24hr wake period to sleep 10 to 12 hours.

The clincher for me wasn't even the dozing off.  It was realizing that I'm seeing words on the screen that aren't there.  Either I'm starting to hallucinate or I'm mistaking words with similar shape for each other:  insect for inspect; conscript for encrypt; prefect for perfect...  This made for some pretty confusing sentences and since when I read i'm seeing the words, hearing the words and seeing moving images almost simultaneously, it makes for pretty startling mind pictures as well.  It is almost like I'm ping-ponging off the hypnogogic barrier which is another way of saying, I'm reading myself to sleep.

3:33 PM - I read the whole thing!!! - In less than ten hours.  Now that's the way a novel is meant to be read.  Total immersion.  That's the way I used to read novels.  Back in the days before my vision issues forced me to sip novels like I'd always sipped NF and poetry.  Back in the days when a book a day was the norm.  sigh.  Days long gone.

This is a very short novel tho and I might even today have read in in 6-8 hours instead of nearly 10, if: 

• I hadn't been already sleep deprived, crossing the 24hr awake at 9am
• My Kindle battery had not dropped below 30% when I was 30% from the end so that the battery saver kicked in dimming the screen and more than doubling the eyestrain factor
• I hadn't needed to stop for food, drink, bios and eye rests at least once every 30 minutes.
• If I hadn't been triggered more often than that by the references to the Puritan influenced rules of the Commune the young protag escaped from at age 15.  The Commune was completely secular, founded and run for the narcissistic supply of it's power and control mad leader and yet the rules were so similar to those I was raised under in the funde sect I broke from in my late 30s I was constantly fending off shivers.  Shivers of recognition.  Shivers of memory induced shame, fear and anger.  30 years ago and the power for thsese triggeres to put me in a tizzy is still simmering in me.

I'm actually tempted to drop all the rest of my thon plans and start this one over.  I regretted not taking the time to highlight the lines and passages that gob-smacked me for their insight into the power of story to transform your life, your world, yourself.  The power of story to redefine reality by opening doors on possibility.

But I think my sleep deprivation will hinder that project and even if that wasn't a factor I need to put a bit a space and time between finishing and starting over.  I have the book for another week so there is time. 

7:22 AM - Changing it up
I did a rare thing this morning.  So rare it might have been the only time I've done it in the thirty-odd thons I've participated in.  I started out with the book I was MOST looking forward to.  Even tho it was a novel and I'm already mid novel on three different devices. I used to avoid reading more than one novel at a time but the exigencies of library due dates and holds becoming available creates situations where it is unavoidable and this past year there has been quite a few such situations.  Like setting aside one novel with a short or no wait list for one with a many weeks long waitlist.  Or for the return of my turn on a novel I didn't finish on my first turn and so after a week's long wait I pause all else to finish it before I need to start it over or as a good turn for the next in line since I'm usually well past 50% when that happens.

The novel I started this morning was The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman.  The perfect read for a read-a-thon since it is about books and the power of story.  One of the strands of the story follows a young girl raised in a commune where books are forbidden.

Ok that's all i'm going to say at this point.  Just saying that much makes me long to pick it back up.  I actually reached 23% in under two hours so I might be on track to read a whole book start to finish this thon.  Another rarity since I always have so many BIP and I read so slow with my vision issues that it seldom makes sense to start a book for the thon just so I can say I read the whole thing during the thon.

But I just might stick with this one until it is done.  Then I'll book hop the over a dozen NF on my Libby ap before returning to one of the NIP (novels in progress)

4:44 AM - Intro Meme I'm setting this to go live at 4:44 AM but it may be well into hour 2 before I check in again.  I'll be joining the first sprint with my first pick sitting in my beanbag chair nursing a hot coffee & Dandy Brew and eating a protein bar.

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

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

So this is my seventh thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thons in August 2021 & 2023.

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

Non-Fiction: Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson

Fiction: The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

A Double Chocolate Muffin.  Swoon

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• Widowed September 2020  It still smarts at unexpected moments.  But at least it is usually only several times a month now instead of constantly.  But September brought it back to several times a day.  September was his birthday and the anniversary of his Mom's and my Dad's deaths as well as his.  So it was still a rough patch three years out.  But only half as rough as last year.
• Living alone for the first time ever.  Just passed the 2nd anniversary of move in day.
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015.  In my 50s!
• Have a caregiver who comes in five days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone.
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least thee times.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.

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?

This is my 35th thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried. 

But if the weather permits I would like to venture outside and sit on the bench about 40 feet from my front door and/or the Gazebo which is across the courtyard.  My caregiver helped me practice for months to make those two walks with just my cane and I finally 'graduated' in late August.  So now I'm not such a shut-in that I can't take three steps after letting go of the door handle or porch post without panicking.

Doing anything but especially reading or writing for a full 24 hours used to be my superpower but not so much anymore.  Now that I'm in my mid sixties the price I pay for that self abuse is significant as all my systems are less forgiving. 

Also hope to do a better job than in the past of staying hydrated and getting up to move regularly.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

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