Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon Final Post

That was quick. This year for Dewey's 24 hour readathon, I read for 6 and a half hours and listened to an audiobook for 5 and a half hours - spending a total of 12 of the last 24 hours reading or listening to an audiobook.
Total pages in regular books: 230: Liz Fekete, Europe's Fault Lines 50; Mur Lafferty, Six Wakes 40; Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene v. 1, 140. Audiobook finished: Drew Magary, the Hike.   This fits my usual slow reading speed of 30 -40 pages per hour.  The most daunting hour was  between 1:00 and 2:00 am. I slowed down a lot - falling asleep while reading Six Wakes despite late-night coca-cola and coffee ice-cream.

 While listening to the Hike, I lifted weights, walked for about 2 and 1/2 hours, went grocery shopping, washed dishes, and cooked dinner. During the 12 hours I wasn't reading or listening to an audiobook, I was attending a friend's afternoon party, talking to my husband, doing readathon related social media stuff, and finally, watching comedian Michelle Wolff's hilarious stand-up at the White House Correspondents' dinner.  I did more of the readathon "mini-challenges"  this time - but tried not to spend so much time on social media that I failed to use the time to read.

To answer the last couple of survey questions for the final hour, I am likely to do the readathon again. I don't know what really rad thing the readathon could do to make me smile - maybe do something to create a single place with a list of what everyone read, including some stats on the most popular books read during the readathon. I imagine this could be done through Goodreads, or a spreadsheet similar to what you create for the readathon when people sign up.

I'm very much enjoying Sherry's Greene biography, and am glad I chose it for this readathon. Greene's childhood reading habits were perfect readathon fodder, and this morning in my usual morning hour of reading, I finally got to the part of the book about Greene's friendship with Claud Cockburn and his early interest in spying in the 1920s.

Dewey's Readathon Mixtape Mini-Challenge

It's almost as if Leah and 26 Letters was planning a theme for my blog today. This blog initially started as a place to store posts I'd made on Facebook about strange synchronicities between music and books, as I often listen to music while reading. 
 Anyway, this mini-challenge for Dewey's Readathon is to shuffle a music player, take the first song and match a book to it.  The first song that played on my usb drive in my car this afternoon was Thee Oh Sees, "The Axis"   It's a dark song with a pretty sound that ends in a chaotic and threatening sounding guitar solo. Looking over what I'd read recently, I decided the best book pairing for this song was Karolina Waclawiak's How to Get Into Twin Palms, a about a young Polish woman attracted to the trashy glamour of a Russian nightclub in her neighborhood in Los Angeles: Twin Palms.  The central character, like the guitar in the song's conclusion, makes a surprising decision, veering into chaos.

Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon Hour 12 - Mid Readathon post -

It's been kind of a strange one for me this time.  I spent a lot of time walking today, so listened to many hours of an audiobook, the Hike by Drew Magary, and am almost done. I read a little over 56 pages of the first volume of Norman Sherry's biography of Graham Greene, which is great for a readathon - Greene spent a lot of his childhood reading. Instead of going to school, he sometimes went to the bookshop, snuck home and then

would go cautiously to the croquet lawn where the summerhouse was that could be turned round so it faced away from house and school and there, sitting in a deck-chair, he would read all day, breaking only for lunch.

And then about 30 pages of Liz Fekete's new book on the European far right, Europe's Fault Lines. So to answer the questions, I have had a lot of interruptions, but they were my own. A friend was having a party, and I wanted to go, but she lives near a place where there is a large neighborhood festival so I didn't want to drive. Thus, I decided to walk there and back, using the opportunity to listen to the Hike, which I started a while back, but hadn't had time to finish.  For the second half, I'd like to finish Fekete. Her book is really sharp, and it is also quite short, but I probably will read more of the Greene bio because it's a bit more leisurely, and jump back into Mur Lafferty's Six Wakes, which I started reading late last night.

In honor of the reading & listening theme, I'm including this song from Helmet "Street Crab"  since The Hike includes a crab as a major character.  Trying not to be a spoiler.

Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon Opening Meme Post

Seems I only post here when there's a readathon going.  Here's my response to the Dewey 24 Hour readathon opening meme

1) Where: I'm reading in Atlanta. 
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? Hardest question. I really want to read Liz Fekete's book Europe's Fault Lines: Racism and the Rise of the Right but I also just finished most of a school year and might instead like to take a break from serious reading about politics for 24 hours. In that case, I'll probably divide my time between Six Wakes and the first volume of Norman Sherry's bio of Graham Greene, which is what I'm starting with. 
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? hot Buffalo flavored pop-chips
4) About me: I'm a college professor and I run an annual academic reading challenge . Also, this blog is supposed to be about both music and reading, but I haven't done enough with it this year.
5) Do differently? This is my second time doing the readathon, and this year, I'm hoping to do more challenges than I did the first time, and hopefully go comment on other people's blogs.