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48 Hour Wrap-up
Jun. 9th, 2008 08:34 amThe numbers:
Hours spent reading - 21 hours, 45 minutes
Books read - 5 and just over three-quarters (of Sarah Dessen's The Truth about Forever)
Pages read - a lot more than I normally would have read in the time, but enough fewer than many doing the Challenge that it's pointless to count.
Number of pairs of dead parents - 2 (two apiece in The Penderwicks on G. St and The Truth about Forever, which I thought odd if perhaps not that striking to others)
Number of birthday wishes missed - just 1, but it's MotherReader's, so hardly insignificant. Happy birthday!
The uncrunched:
I was pleased that I did just what I'd said on the tin, and didn't worry about not reading for time spent on family stuff of whatever type, but didn't spend any time I could have been reading/blogging on other fritterings. I knew I'd get through far fewer books in the time spent than a lot of people, so tried not to worry about it. (But still did a bit, inevitably.)
Not going to get all emo on your poor selves, but the mix of reading actual books, reading about books and writing about them is a complicated one, at least for me. Sometimes it's a cheerful sense of being part of a loose online community of people who love books (especially, though not exclusively, children's and teen) and share recommendations and just enjoy talking about books with people all around the world and sometimes there are silly amounts of energy spent worrying about having or 'deserving' a place in that community, however loose it is. </over-share>
Other than that, I enjoyed the opportunity to do something like this in company with a bunch of great readers, and many thanks to MotherReader for organizing it again! It may take a while to have a look at the huge number of books that were read and talked about by the combined forces, but it's something to look forward to.
Last of my reflections about the weekend: I have been alerted to the fact that I failed pretty miserably to show Fly on the Wall's delights, and have rectified that with the alerter, but am sorry my tiredness/headacheyness yesterday afternoon had me insufficiently emphasizing the fact that this isn't just a kind of female-oriented Doing It [shudder], even with the addition of real humour. I didn't bother trying to defend the book from the 'Pornography!' cries, as there isn't much point - though it's definitely a teen book rather than one for younger children. But ultimately, it's only about the guys' bodies in as much as everyone has a relationship with their own body, and that's as individual, and potentially impossible to discern unless you are in Gretchen's situation, in boys as it is in girls (and adults, of course). And Gretchen's original wish to be a fly on the wall was in order to understand guys a bit, and for her that pretty naturally went through the curious -->horrified and enthusiastic focus on their nekkidness stage before it could get to the more complex understanding, which it did. This is E. Lockhart, after all, and the observation and description of human behaviour is almost guaranteed to be much better than average.
Hours spent reading - 21 hours, 45 minutes
Books read - 5 and just over three-quarters (of Sarah Dessen's The Truth about Forever)
Pages read - a lot more than I normally would have read in the time, but enough fewer than many doing the Challenge that it's pointless to count.
Number of pairs of dead parents - 2 (two apiece in The Penderwicks on G. St and The Truth about Forever, which I thought odd if perhaps not that striking to others)
Number of birthday wishes missed - just 1, but it's MotherReader's, so hardly insignificant. Happy birthday!
The uncrunched:
I was pleased that I did just what I'd said on the tin, and didn't worry about not reading for time spent on family stuff of whatever type, but didn't spend any time I could have been reading/blogging on other fritterings. I knew I'd get through far fewer books in the time spent than a lot of people, so tried not to worry about it. (But still did a bit, inevitably.)
Not going to get all emo on your poor selves, but the mix of reading actual books, reading about books and writing about them is a complicated one, at least for me. Sometimes it's a cheerful sense of being part of a loose online community of people who love books (especially, though not exclusively, children's and teen) and share recommendations and just enjoy talking about books with people all around the world and sometimes there are silly amounts of energy spent worrying about having or 'deserving' a place in that community, however loose it is. </over-share>
Other than that, I enjoyed the opportunity to do something like this in company with a bunch of great readers, and many thanks to MotherReader for organizing it again! It may take a while to have a look at the huge number of books that were read and talked about by the combined forces, but it's something to look forward to.
Last of my reflections about the weekend: I have been alerted to the fact that I failed pretty miserably to show Fly on the Wall's delights, and have rectified that with the alerter, but am sorry my tiredness/headacheyness yesterday afternoon had me insufficiently emphasizing the fact that this isn't just a kind of female-oriented Doing It [shudder], even with the addition of real humour. I didn't bother trying to defend the book from the 'Pornography!' cries, as there isn't much point - though it's definitely a teen book rather than one for younger children. But ultimately, it's only about the guys' bodies in as much as everyone has a relationship with their own body, and that's as individual, and potentially impossible to discern unless you are in Gretchen's situation, in boys as it is in girls (and adults, of course). And Gretchen's original wish to be a fly on the wall was in order to understand guys a bit, and for her that pretty naturally went through the curious -->horrified and enthusiastic focus on their nekkidness stage before it could get to the more complex understanding, which it did. This is E. Lockhart, after all, and the observation and description of human behaviour is almost guaranteed to be much better than average.
