Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-A-Thon Liveblog, October 2010

Edit: I’m going to be adjusting the time stamp on this post throughout the day and leapfrogging it over meme and challenge posts made in between as I update the read-a-thon progress.

5:00am PST: It’s 5am on October 9, 2010, and the Read-a-thon is commencing.  As promised, I’m leading off with In the President’s Secret Service, and Tesla (my variation on The Mad Scientist) is going with Grimm’s Fairy Tales (the original).

If you’re reading too, tell us what in the comments!

6:01am PST: One hour down.  Also one pot of coffee down.  (hey, there are two of us drinking it!) I’m 59 pages into the Secret Service book, and highly recommend it.  The story about LBJ’s peacocks almost made me snort coffee up my nose.  Tesla is 40+ pages into Grimm’s and vaguely amused by the fact that bad people who beat their wives always end up dead (or turned into amphibians).

12:05pm PST: We’re into hour 8, and both Tesla and I are going strong.  Lunch is over, and I’m halfway through Sean Ferrell’s Numb.  (Joke opportunities abound.  Feel free to jump in.) He’s still in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and his most recent observation is that everyone in Germany of the Brothers Grimm’s day had three children, all the same gender.

2:00pm PST: Just finished Numb (which was quite a bit different than I expected, but I pushed through and finished it).  Getting ready for a coffee refill and a new book.  This time I’m going off-list with David Baldwin’s Robin Hood:the English Outlaw Unmasked.  I bought this one for research purposes, and I’ve been looking forward to reading it.  Tesla’s still hanging out with the Brothers Grimm (and I admit, I’m impressed by his fortitude).

3:45pm PST: Sleepiness has begun to set in, but I’m hoping that’s just the need for a snack.  Robin Hood made the last 90 minutes pass much faster than I anticipated, so I’ll get back to it as soon as the coffee’s refilled!

6:15pm PST: Robin Hood is finished, and I’ve moved on to Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip – Confessions of a Cynical Waiter, by “The Waiter” of the Waiter Rant Blog.  This is another book that will almost certainly get a full review here in the coming weeks, but for the moment I’ll just say it’s exactly what I needed at this point in the read-a-thon.  I’ve laughed out loud enough to bring my husband into the office, wondering what I could possibly find so funny.  Here’s hoping everyone else is enjoying their dinner reads as much as I like mine!

8:15pm PST: I’m starting to feel like the Energizer bunny.  Except for that little blip around 3 (which I’m attributing to blood sugar rather than lack of sleep) I’ve been bright-eyed and bushy-tailed all day.  More surprising still, Tesla’ s still reading too – and for a 15 year old, that’s something to say!  I’m more than halfway through Waiter Rant and glad I saved it for read-a-thon.  The chapters are short and the style is very engaging – no flagging attention here.

11:15pm PST: We’re still here.  A confession: I’m getting cranky, which means it’s probably time for more coffee and possibly something to eat.  I’ve also finished Waiter Rant and I’m moving on to something else…I’ll tell you what I decide on in the next update.

12:10am PST: I’ve started on Mary Roach’s nonfiction Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void.  As I start getting tired, I’m finding that narrative and anecdotal nonfiction is holding my interest better than fiction.  I love fiction too, but the nonfiction is surprisingly compelling at 19 hours complete.  I admit…I’m beginning to doubt I will make it all the way until 5am.  Knowing that I need to get up at 7am isn’t helping, either.  I don’t function on 2 hours’ sleep the same way I did ten years ago.  Tesla may make it, but I’m giving myself 80/20 against.

01:00am PST: Tesla has made the decision to keep going all the way to the end, 5am PST.  After thinking long and hard about my need to get up 7am, I am going to throw the towel at 1:30am.  I could probably push through, but I would be absolutely useless tomorrow, and since I can’t sleep the day away, I think I’m going to retire *cough* gracefully at 1:30.  Tesla hasn’t got the keys to the kingdom blog, however, so I’ll post his final update later this morning, after I’m back and awake.

Thanks again to all the awesome cheerleaders, readers and bloggers who stopped by to offer encouragement and good wishes!  We could not have gotten this far without you, and I look forward to visiting all of your blogs again after the Read-a-Thon ends.  I’ll be posting reviews of the books I read later in the week, so please come back and read again!