Extreme Reading

by

Andi Miller

A number of pastimes in contemporary society are considered “extreme.” The X Games specializes in extreme sports. There are extreme hobbies like wilderness trips, rock climbing, swimming with sharks, and if you’ve had the pleasure of playing pool with me, extreme billiards. Few would consider reading an extreme pastime, but I can attest to having participated in extreme reading just recently.

As a member of the book blogging community, I have taken part in numerous community-building activities designed to bring bloggers together over a shared pastime. “Memes”—short surveys meant to help bloggers get to know one another— circulate all the time, while themed reading days pop up around every turn. The Sunday Salon, Mailbox Mondays, and Tuesday Thingers are all organized days when bloggers post about a specific topic or address a specific prompt, share their thoughts, and read each others’ entries.

The 24 Hour Read-a-Thon is undoubtedly the most extreme community building activity in the book blogging sphere today, and yours truly was itching to get started at 7 a.m. on October 18. Dewey, the author of the popular reading blog, The Hidden Side of a Leaf, is the evil genius behind the Read-a-Thon. It takes place twice a year and compels readers to set aside as much time as they can in a given 24-hour period to devote to reading. Some readers can afford to spend only a few hours, while others go big and devote an entire twenty-four hours with little to no sleep in order to gorge themselves on books.

The latest Read-a-Thon was my second. The first one took place in June when I was still living in North Carolina. While I fully intended to stay up all twenty-four hours, a new puppy and other extenuating circumstances knocked me out at midnight. It was downhill from there. I think I finished a grand total of two books, and I knew in my heart of reading hearts that I could have performed much better.

The Read-a-Thon is far more than a solitary act of extreme reading, though. Dewey coordinates hourly activities and giveaways on her blog and has hoards of readers working behind the scenes as cheerleaders (keeping the morale up for the readers), co-hosts, and organizers. In addition, many readers also use the Read-a-Thon as a way to raise money for charity by asking their blog readers and family members to sponsor their efforts.

With environmental and charitable intentions in mind, I chose to champion both a green business, Eco-Libris, and a book donation charity through BookMooch in my reading time. Eco-Libris is a website where one can pay to have trees planted to “balance out” the books one has read. While I try to buy used books when I can, trade books with friends, and use my library, I still own an obscene amount of tomes that likely contain virgin paper. Since deforestation is a leading cause of global warming and other nasty environmental problems, I thought it only fitting to balance out the books I would read in my twenty-four hours by sponsoring a small forest of new trees. In a nifty twist of fate, Eco-Libris has a partnership with BookMooch—a book exchange site—wherein Eco-Libris awards BookMooch “points” to its patrons which they can then redeem for books on the BookMooch website. BookMooch hosts a variety of charities, so I decided any points I accumulated as a result of my Read-a-Thon payment to Eco-Libris would go to a growing library in the Philippines. By giving away my BookMooch points, that library will have an opportunity to build their collection for free.

Like any extreme event, the Read-a-Thon demands preparation. Twenty-four hours of anything requires snacks—Doritos, brownies, and some token health food like apples and salad—comfortable loungewear, and a tasty stack of reading material. Because I have the attention span of a Jack Russell terrier, and I know this about myself, I dipped into my “review closet”  for inspiration. The top shelf of my closet for clothing has been invaded by mounds of books that need reviewing. I erected a towering stack of children’s and young adult titles that would be quick, interesting, and minimally taxing on my brain. I also threw in some graphic novels and petite contemporary adult works. All in all, it was an accommodating stack of books that did keep me interested for twenty-four consecutive hours.

What most of the books in my stack had in common was a distinct sense of fun or lightheartedness; however, there were still a few that were dramatic and possessed special structural or thematic twists that made them intensely interesting and quick to read. In the early hours of the Read-a-Thon I imagined I could read all day and night with little fatigue simply because I was so excited to have nothing but reading on my plate for the day. I spent three days of prep time squaring away papers that needed grading, e-mails that needed answering, and sundry responsibilities that could have tied me down. My only fear was eye strain.

The first eleven hours were blissful. I spent most of that time sitting or lying in my bed, surrounded by my squishy comforter, propped up on pillows, with the laptop open at the foot of the bed. I could read for about forty-five minutes uninterrupted, but after that block of time I found myself in need of a new location or some eye rest. A trip to my sunroom or a round of fetch with the dog seemed to do the trick, and then I went back to reading. I checked in often at the Read-a-Thon blog during those hours, participating in some contests and doing some cheerleading of my own. I suppose I stuck to an easy flow of short books to keep my morale up and feel an ongoing sense of accomplishment. In the first twelve hours, I put away half of Sarah Vowell’s The Partly Cloudy Patriot since it quenched my need for political chatter in all the pre-election excitement. Next, I tackled a young adult novella written in verse, Psyche in a Dress, by Francesca Lia Block. While it was not my favorite book of the challenge, a little something fantastical never hurts. Jill Thompson’s dynamic and charming graphic novel for children, Magic Trixie, was an unexpected treat as I had been deceived by the cover into thinking it would be “filler.” Finally, the remarkably short and twisted young adult novel Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers kept me on my toes until I flipped the very last page. All of the books left me energized and ready for more.

The halfway point is the great test of any challenge, and the 24Hour Read-a-Thon proved no different. After the barrage of short books, I decided I might as well commit to something longer to really test my chops. I picked up an advanced reader copy of the young adult fantasy novel, Wondrous Strange, by Lesley Livingston. While the book indeed sounded wondrous, I quickly discovered that I had reached my young adult and fantasy quotas. I ditched it after 100 pages in favor of something snarky and grounded firmly in the real world—Sloane Crosley’s collection of personal essays, I Was Told There's Be Cake. Any book with baked goods in the title deserves the same, so I took about half an hour to whip up a pan of extra fudgy brownies to keep me going. The sugar high was the perfect complement to Crosley’s hilarious collection.

While the latter half of the challenge was tough, things didn’t get truly trying until hours fifteen through twenty-four. With Crosley put away and my eyes feeling as if they were full of sand, I decided to give myself a break with In the Shadow of No Towers, Art Spiegelman’s critique of the days and years following the 9/11 attacks. The pages are huge—double page spreads of classic comic strip characters and Spiegelman’s caricatures of himself. The book moved quickly, and packed enough emotional appeal and social critique to make me feel as if I had devoted my time to worthwhile reading even though it was quick, easy, and kind to my baby blues.

Feeling energized in hours sixteen through eighteen, I quickly gulped down Alice Hoffman’s historical young adult novel, Incantation. I never expected to find such a gem so late in the challenge. I figured I would only be treading water at that point. However, Incantation proved to be a thoughtful, tender, tear-jerker of a read about a Jewish girl and her family posing as Catholics during the Spanish Inquisition. My biggest problem upon finishing the book was deciding what might be able to follow it without suffering in comparison. Alas, I made a silly choice. In an effort to participate in a mini-challenge that dealt with scary/Halloween stories, I picked up my mass-market copy of Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors. While the two short stories I read were wicked and involving, my eyes protested. A mass-market paperback in the wee hours of the morning is never a good idea. Not one to be a quitter, I chose what would prove to be my final book for the challenge, Ghostsitters, by Angie Sage. I will be the first to admit I picked the book up for two reasons: it satisfied the requirements of the scary mini-challenge and it looked like mindless entertainment. Sort of like A Series of Unfortunate Events in a haunted house. I was right, and I finished it.

Hours twenty-two through twenty-four were nearly impossible. I was emotionally, physically, and intellectually spent, and my reading pile was dwindling significantly. The popcorn I munched on in an effort to stay fresh in hour twenty was torturing me, rock-like in my stomach, and I sat down with one last book—It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, a graphic novel by Seth. Looking back now, I’m sure it is a fine graphic novel, but nothing is fine at 5:00 a.m. Nothing. I read some of it, flipped through it, started again, re-read the same paragraphs over and over, and generally did not make any headway. I finished the Read-a-Thon with eight books completed, and nibbles of three more with a grand total of over 1,200 pages read. It certainly was a personal best reading day for me.

Perhaps my biggest accomplishment in the Read-a-Thon is the amount of money I raised for Eco-Libris and a BookMooch charity. While it might not sound like much, forty-seven dollars is enough to balance out fifty books—far more than the number I actually read. I will also be gifting fifteen BookMooch points to that library in the Philippines.

While the 24 Hour Read-a-Thon was a challenge and almost something of a competition with myself, the joy of it is really in devoting so many hours to reading. My life, like everyone else’s, is crammed full of responsibility on any given day. Paper grading, lesson planning, graduate school reading and writing, financial woes all creep into my head and camp out there, allowing little time for the frivolity that I really crave. The 24 Hour Read-a-Thon was a prime opportunity to leave my responsibilities and dive into my favorite pastime in an admittedly extreme but completely enjoyable way. I was able to read more in twenty-four hours than I would usually read in a month’s time, and I was able to raise some money for good causes too. If that’s not a win-win situation, I will never find one. The next Read-a-Thon is in April, and I will be ready with a stack of books at my side, another good cause to raise money for, and a big pot of coffee all set to go.

Books mentioned in this column:

Araminta Spookie #5: Ghostsitters (Katherine Tegen Books, 2008)

Dope Sick (Amistad Press, 2009)

Incantation (Little, Brown and Company, 2006)

In the Shadow of No Towers (Pantheon, 2004) 9780375423079

It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken (Drawn and Quarterly, 2003)

I Was Told There’d Be Cake: Essays (Riverhead, 2008)

Magic Trixie #01 (Harper Trophy, 2008)

The Partly Cloudy Patriot (Penguin, 2003)

Psyche in a Dress (Joanna Cotler Books, 2006)

Smoke and Mirrors (Headline, 1999)

Wondrous Strange (HarperTeen, 2009)


Andi is a recovering university academic employed by the North Carolina community college system as an English instructor. While she decided to forego a Ph.D. and career as a professor, she fills in all the free time her current position affords her with editing literary publications, reviewing, freelancing, and blogging at Tripping Toward Lucidity: Estella’s Revenge. Her work can be found in the journal, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and Altar magazine as well as online in various venues such as PopMatters.com. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), and writes fiction. Her turn-ons include new books and gelato, while her turn-offs are reality television and washing dishes. Contact Andi.