I've been in something of a 'reading slump' recently. I can't seem to finish anything, don't find myself excited to read anything new and even short stories and graphic novels feel like a chore. A commonly touted cure for this level of apathy is the 'in at the deep end' technique and my book based blergh just happens to coincide with the annual 'Book-tube-a-thon', a challenge to read at least seven books in a week and to meet certain challenges along the way, including to read a book with a yellow cover, and to only read a book after dark.
These read-a-thons are cropping up more and more in the Youtube and Blogging book communities, ranging from 24 hour reading sprints to rack up the page numbers, to attempting to read an authors entire backlist in a month.
I have never tried one before, but have always been curious. Obviously the idea of really cracking through books is appealing, especially to someone who wants to read as widely as possible and knows that the average lifespan of a human will not allow her to read everything! But part of my love of reading comes from being able to take time to really examine texts and think critically about them. Even something lighter and less 'literary' is made all the better when you really engage with it and take your time experiencing what the author has set up for you. So with these conflicting ideas in mind I am going to give it a shot. I have put together a list of books I'd like to get to, but won't force myself to read them if anything different comes along that appeals to me more. I feel like getting through this successfully will require lots of enthusiasm so I'm just going to let myself read whatever I'm feeling most excited about at the time.
Below are the books I'm going to try to get to. We'll see how that works out...
THE DAY BEFORE
23.30 - it seems silly to really do anything else when half an hour from now the readathon begins. So I'm sat watching The Simpsons movie from where I paused it two nights ago, my first book sat next to me. I feel I should be more excited, and anxious to start. Instead I am very tired and very very hot and wondering if this was a good idea.
23.52 - I need to buy a standing fan. I feel like it's going to be difficult to read this book if I keep fanning myself with it. Anyone interested in a blog post about the most 'fan-yourself-able' books? No?
DAY ONE
00.00 Right off we go!
00.29 Read 36 pages of On Reading, Writing and Living with Books, a short collection of essays and letters. One essay by Virginia Woolf, aptly named 'how should one read a book?' Made an appropriate and excellent start to the readathon. The lady is incapable of writing an ugly sentence and I really enjoyed her musings on considering books as art to be judged, or just entertainment to be enjoyed, a dialogue between author and reader or nothing more than words on a page.
I also read two letters from Charles Dickens, a man I have never quite gotten on with. But it was actually very sweet the way he spoke to his mate Wilkie Collins about his book Basil, and I have serious respect for his fangirling letter to George Eliot, in which he expressed love for her work, and hints that he knows her secret, but has no intention of divulging her identity. For someone who was pretty rancid to Elizabeth Gaskell, that seems like a nice turn of character.
Definitely too tired to read any more, but hoping to get an early start tomorrow!
9.17 - My first thought when I woke up, past the usual 'Everything still here? Do I have work today? Am I late for something?' Was that I need to get reading so that's a pretty good sign. I'm kicking off my first proper day with the proof of A Closed and Common Orbit. It's not on the list but I got my hands on it yesterday and I figure if I want a strong start I might as well read something I'm really excited for and know I'll love.
14.25 - Aside from redying my hair, eating a bagel and doing some dishes my day has consisted entirely of sitting on my bed reading. It's actually been really nice, reminds me of when I was a kid on summer holidays and had nothing to do but read several days a week (and play with all my many friends of course... because I wasn't a complete loser at school... ahem). I do wonder how I'm going to cope when I actually have other things to do.
16.35 - About two thirds of the way through. Fairly confident I can finish this by the end of the day. The problem is usually if I blitz through something at this speed I generally take a few days off to cleanse my pallet a little before reading anything new, but this week I'm going to have to dive straight into another book without stopping for breath!
18.40 - I took a break because I realised that however much I was enjoying the book I kept zoning out and would suddenly focus back in on the story, unsure of what had actually happened... Going to read for another hour or two before bed.
DAY TWO
13.12 - Had some thoughts about getting up early to read but then realised when my alarm went off that I could be asleep for another hour and nothing was getting in the way of that. So reading on my lunch.
13.46 - FINISHED!! An awesome way to start the challenge. I enjoyed every moment of A Closed and Common Orbit and am so sad that I'm going to have to wait EVEN longer for the next one... if there's even going to be a next one!!
15.34 - I finished my book and don't have another!! This seems like time wasted if I'm not reading something, but fortunately spending most of my day in a bookshop means all is not lost. I've nabbed a copy of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A teeny tiny volume that I've wanted to read for years. Today is the day.
19.52 - Got home and would normally read around this time. Instead, strangely, I have found literally anything else to do. I've done watercolour painting. I never do watercolour painting. I have taken the attachment off my hoover and went round the corners of my room. I must force myself to read or I will be a failure.
21.24 - Still not read anything. Instead I have taken a sharpie to the daubs of watercolour on my test sheet and have turned them into little cats. I am the worst. Just read woman why is this so hard??
22.35 - Finished The Yellow Wallpaper. All of the creepy and really really good. However unlikely it is I'd love to know if Han Kang who wrote The Vegetarian has read this. Both are short, vicious accounts of a woman slowly unraveling under the strain of society, but of course one is nineteenth century American and one is modern Korean. I should start something else but I want to sit and absorb this for a little longer. I think this may be the downside of the readathon. I can't take time to sit with a book and think about what I really gained from it, I just have to bomb onto the next one.
13.46 - FINISHED!! An awesome way to start the challenge. I enjoyed every moment of A Closed and Common Orbit and am so sad that I'm going to have to wait EVEN longer for the next one... if there's even going to be a next one!!
15.34 - I finished my book and don't have another!! This seems like time wasted if I'm not reading something, but fortunately spending most of my day in a bookshop means all is not lost. I've nabbed a copy of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A teeny tiny volume that I've wanted to read for years. Today is the day.
19.52 - Got home and would normally read around this time. Instead, strangely, I have found literally anything else to do. I've done watercolour painting. I never do watercolour painting. I have taken the attachment off my hoover and went round the corners of my room. I must force myself to read or I will be a failure.
21.24 - Still not read anything. Instead I have taken a sharpie to the daubs of watercolour on my test sheet and have turned them into little cats. I am the worst. Just read woman why is this so hard??
22.35 - Finished The Yellow Wallpaper. All of the creepy and really really good. However unlikely it is I'd love to know if Han Kang who wrote The Vegetarian has read this. Both are short, vicious accounts of a woman slowly unraveling under the strain of society, but of course one is nineteenth century American and one is modern Korean. I should start something else but I want to sit and absorb this for a little longer. I think this may be the downside of the readathon. I can't take time to sit with a book and think about what I really gained from it, I just have to bomb onto the next one.
DAY THREE
8.35 - Ready with about fifteen minutes to spare so going to get started on Station Eleven!
15.40 - So the plan was Station Eleven, but a book I have been incredibly excited to read arrived in store! so I've ditched it in favour of My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix, author of Horrorstor (also knows as 'that scary IKEA book') and the cover has yellow on it, albeit only a sliver. But it counts! I don't think I'm going to be in the mood for Jamaica Inn anyway so this will replace it. Notice how I have yet to really read anything from my original stack?
21.26 - OKAY THIS BOOK IS SCARY. I live alone and am really not sure I can hack staying up all night freaking out about demonic possession. I think I'm going to wait the half hour before it gets dark and read my graphic novel.
23.05 - finished The Wicked + The Divine #2, and met my 'read a book at night challenge'. Found it as pretty and as baffling as the first. The art is amazing, the idea is one of the best I've ever heard (the Gods reincarnated into modern day life and living the life of celebrities with fandoms and media presence) but the way it's put together feels like I've missed a few pages early on, and the characters motivations and the events of the story are coming completely out of context. I will persevere and see if #3 makes any more sense. I think that's my reading done for the day. I've actually read a thing I'd planned to! Pat on the back for me. Watch the sunburn.
7.30 - I have quite a lot of time this morning so will go back to scary book and hopefully reading it in the morning and at work will mean I'm not in a state of panic later and unable to sleep.
13.58 - this book is like if mean girls was a horror movie... Set in the eighties. I am greatly enjoying it.
16.46 - This is definitely the kind of thing that lends itself to a readathon. Compulsively readable and well written so the events are easily absorbed. I'm glad I didn't attempt Jamaica Inn, I love Daffers but I feel like she'd be just a little too dense and, like in TYW, I would want to really absorb everything but wouldn't have the chance. I am aware that I'm still quite behind. When I finish this I will still need to read three books to meet my goal, and if they're all really short I'll feel like a cop out.
20.08 - I now have the 'Jesus I'm never going to do this if I don't get a wiggle on' feeling, so just read several pages whilst hoovering.
21.48 - who got distracted watching her Miranda boxset. This fool!
15.40 - So the plan was Station Eleven, but a book I have been incredibly excited to read arrived in store! so I've ditched it in favour of My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix, author of Horrorstor (also knows as 'that scary IKEA book') and the cover has yellow on it, albeit only a sliver. But it counts! I don't think I'm going to be in the mood for Jamaica Inn anyway so this will replace it. Notice how I have yet to really read anything from my original stack?
21.26 - OKAY THIS BOOK IS SCARY. I live alone and am really not sure I can hack staying up all night freaking out about demonic possession. I think I'm going to wait the half hour before it gets dark and read my graphic novel.
23.05 - finished The Wicked + The Divine #2, and met my 'read a book at night challenge'. Found it as pretty and as baffling as the first. The art is amazing, the idea is one of the best I've ever heard (the Gods reincarnated into modern day life and living the life of celebrities with fandoms and media presence) but the way it's put together feels like I've missed a few pages early on, and the characters motivations and the events of the story are coming completely out of context. I will persevere and see if #3 makes any more sense. I think that's my reading done for the day. I've actually read a thing I'd planned to! Pat on the back for me. Watch the sunburn.
DAY FOUR
13.58 - this book is like if mean girls was a horror movie... Set in the eighties. I am greatly enjoying it.
16.46 - This is definitely the kind of thing that lends itself to a readathon. Compulsively readable and well written so the events are easily absorbed. I'm glad I didn't attempt Jamaica Inn, I love Daffers but I feel like she'd be just a little too dense and, like in TYW, I would want to really absorb everything but wouldn't have the chance. I am aware that I'm still quite behind. When I finish this I will still need to read three books to meet my goal, and if they're all really short I'll feel like a cop out.
20.08 - I now have the 'Jesus I'm never going to do this if I don't get a wiggle on' feeling, so just read several pages whilst hoovering.
21.48 - who got distracted watching her Miranda boxset. This fool!
DAY FIVE
A genuinely high volume of reading is really hard to keep up. I'm really enjoying My Best Friends Exorcism but I'm just so bored of staring at white squares with rows of black squiggles over them that I want to do anything else. I've only read about five pages today, not because I've stopped enjoying this but because there's things I want to do more than reading today. I don't feel guilty.
DAY SIX
13.04 - this day is busy busy but happily back into my books again. I think the breather yesterday did me good. Reading's stopped feeling like a chore again. I quickly got through the last three sections of 'ORWALWB' and thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite being heavily slowed down by George Eliot's essay Authorship, in which she speaks in such dense language that I had to get a biro and scribble down what I think she meant in the margins.
20.15 - Finished My Best Friend's Exorcism! Such an amazing book, so glad I picked this up. It's not the sort of thing I would usually be interested in but my colleagues were raving about it. The beauty of working in a bookshop. Someone always knows what you should read next. I'm going to give myself the rest of the night off and maybe read something short to finish off the week.
DAY SEVEN
My last day! I did have plans to try and blitz through another full length novel, but my mum is in the area and honestly I see her every few months if I'm lucky so I'm happily going to ditch that plan in favour of spending some time with her.
21.04 - had a lovely day and have spent the evening reading Matilda by Mary Shelley. Thoroughly enjoyed it, as I do everything she writes. There are definitely a lot of ways to read into the story, but I got a lot of commentary on the dangers of a woman allowing herself to be financially and emotionally dependent on a male love interest, effectively rendering herself a child again and creating a father-daughter dynamic as opposed to one of equal partnership.
And that's the end of my readathon!
Conclusion
I have mixed feelings. I certainly booted my reading slump up the butt and am looking forward to reading more next week but I do wonder how much value I got from each novel when I found myself speed reading parts. Particularly with complex texts like the essays, that encouraged a lot of thought and engaging critically with what was being said, I found that the attitude of 'just keep going and get this done' really hindered my comprehension. That said I found that the easier reads were great and I've definitely proved to myself that I can read those sorts of books at a decent pace and enjoy them to their full. I suppose the rather cop-out conclusion I can draw from this week is that it's all about balance, and that the best answer to get back into reading is, if I may paraphrase everyone's favourite fisherman's jumper-wearing, grumpy-uncle author, to just do the thing.
Let us know if you participate in readathons, and what your experiences have been.
Isabelle Flynn
Lead Barista, Newbury
I have mixed feelings. I certainly booted my reading slump up the butt and am looking forward to reading more next week but I do wonder how much value I got from each novel when I found myself speed reading parts. Particularly with complex texts like the essays, that encouraged a lot of thought and engaging critically with what was being said, I found that the attitude of 'just keep going and get this done' really hindered my comprehension. That said I found that the easier reads were great and I've definitely proved to myself that I can read those sorts of books at a decent pace and enjoy them to their full. I suppose the rather cop-out conclusion I can draw from this week is that it's all about balance, and that the best answer to get back into reading is, if I may paraphrase everyone's favourite fisherman's jumper-wearing, grumpy-uncle author, to just do the thing.
Let us know if you participate in readathons, and what your experiences have been.
Isabelle Flynn
Lead Barista, Newbury
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