Reading Rambo

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us.

The minithon lasts 8 hours (10 AM to 6 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon.

By 'read for eight hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners.

The point is, justify it or don't. Does…

IT IS MINITHON DAY. I have felt like writing lately (meaning this past week) Not At All, but who am I to reject a perfectly good minithon. They are the best. This one is coinciding with being at my parents' and going to see Pitch Perfect 2, BUT I have been reading despite this.

For those worried that Ernest Cline's second book would suck, DO NOT WORRY, for it is engaging and great. But my middle brother stole it, so I am now working on:


Got a lotta feelings about this book. Which have been switching around a lot.

To get to my parents', I woke up at 6:15 AM to get to a train. This is too early for normal humans, but how else was I supposed to both have time to see Pitch Perfect 2 / Mad Max at my parents' AND see the Goodman's production of The Little Foxes last night? By teleporting? I would if I could, but I can't, and I honestly think that expectation is unreasonable. 

Despite an extreme lack of planning, I got a small (MINI) coffee at a bakery, and ate like half …

I actually did weirdly better in this readathon than I have in most others. I'm over halfway done with Boy, Snow, Bird, halfway through Medieval Women, and I read a chapter of 2 Kings, meaning I have two left and then BAM! 1 Chronicles ahoy.

I also ate Chipotle, grilled cheese, mini muffins, hummus, carrots, and copious amounts of Mr Pibb. Oh, and one of the mini pies my girlfriend baked because she is awesome.


So much eaten! A relatively okay amount read! Boy, Snow, Bird is starting to get weird and I was somehow not expecting that. WHAT'S YOUR GAME, OYEYEMI. 

Medieval Women is fantastic. It's this book of essays published in 1975 and based on lectures by Eileen Power, who had died by then. Our culture's ideas about women are at least partially based on ideas formulated during the medieval period! We cannot understand our present without looking to our past! History is important! Etc!

I love the minithon. I wish we could do it more often, but frankly, we're all too la…

So I woke up 20 minutes late for the minithon (which starts at 10 CST, so NO EXCUSE), but I promptly ate a bag of mini muffins and read the first essay in Eileen Power's STELLAR collection, Medieval Women. I have now read excellent things like:
Just as in the nineteenth century the Romantic movement followed on the 'age of reason' and the Revolution it inspired, so in the Middle Ages the turbulence of the Dark Ages was succeeded by the age of chivalry and of the Virgin.
GOOD STUFF.  I also have an assortment of snack things, because that's why we do this.



Quorn is made out of like, soy and dirt. So healthy. Mm.

I'm probably going to read more of Medieval Women, because I think I took it from the home of one of my grandparents and have been meaning to read it for yeeeears, and also I've just been reading a lot of medieval stuff lately. Anyone been noticing that? I certainly have. And yes, I'm counting Game of Thrones. 

I also have Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi…

MINITHONS FOREVER.

Tika at Reading the Bricks is hosting another minithon this Saturday. Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us.



But honestly, reading for 24 hours would make me want to stab books with a letter opener (it'd be better if they were all epistolary novels. ahahaha). But eight hours? GOT IT. I can work that into my day. Plus by 'read for eight hours' what's really meant in the minithon is 'read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks. But mostly your snacks.'

My current plans for the minithon consist of sitting in Wisconsin with a cat constantly headbutting me while I eat things and attempt to read currently the following books (we'll see how many make it up there):

Catherine de' Medici, Leonie Frieda.  I'm at the point where Catherine's husband Henri II (king of France) is about to die in a joust. Then his mistress is getting shipped out and oh, h…

I LOVE THE MINITHON SO HARD.

IMO, you definitely want a readathon to end when you still want to be reading, as opposed to painfully pushing yourself to keep going, watching the clock with a barely suppressed groan as you realize you're nowhere near the finish line. As the clock ticked down to 6 pm (CST), I found myself rushing to pick up books I hadn't touched yet. "No! I need another hour!"

This is one of many reasons why the Minithon is the best. Along with the snacks and GIFs and minithon hashtag stalking.

HOW TO EVEN SUM UP THIS MINITHON. The minithon of January 2014. Extra-delightful because it is cold and I had no wish to leave the apartment. First off, the ladies were, as always, a cause of sheer joy. I do not know how various book blog people actually find each other, but I feel honored — NAY, BLESSED — to be in their company and seeing pictures of their snacks.

I FINISHED Bill Bryson's America, 1927, which was great and wonderful and I shall most def review …

Halfway through the minithon and I have:

1) Gone grocery shopping.

2) Eaten an orange and the remaining hummus I made yesterday.

3) Taken a shower.

4) Read the first chapter of Bleak House, almost to the 2/3 point of Behind the Candelabra, and am 30 pages from the end of Bryson's 1927.



Plan for the rest of the thon is to finish 1927 (yayyyyyyyy), read the first excerpt in The Essential Feminist Reader, and start like three other books. Just 'cause.



CARRY ON, MINITHONERS

Ah, it is time for the minithon, hosted by the completely awesome Tika at Reading the Bricks. We love Tika.


SO. The minithon is eight hours, and we mainly are just going to eat snacks (be on twitter) and read books we have justified somehow as mini. HERE'S MY STUFF:



THAT LIST, for those who don't want to squint at spines, is:

Notre Dame de Paris, Hugo
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Wigs on the Green, Nancy Mitford
The Essential Feminist Reader, ed. Estelle B. Freedman
What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal, Zoë Heller
Medieval Women, Eileen Power
One Summer: America, 1927, Bill Bryson
Bleak House, Dickens

Notre Dame de Paris has a tiny goat in it! Wide Sargasso Sea is a mini reinterpretation of Jane Eyre! Wigs on the Green I have no idea! Essential Feminist Reader is made up of tiny little mini essays and things, and I have now run out of justification powers. BUT THEY ALL WORK, WHATEVER I NEED TO START READING.

I plan to finish 1927 and this eBook I'm reading — Behind the Candelabra…

SO. Here we are. Eight hours later. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable day (aside from the coughing and waiting for my roommate to bring home bourbon because I've been told it fixes this). I think I've actually read more than in any other readathon I've done, so SUCCESS.

1) Finished Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

2) Did about 60 pages of Eats, Shoots & Leaves

3) Read two stories in Emma Donoghue's touchy subjects

4) Read the first 100 pages of Harry Potter and awwwwwwwww. "Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like 'Mimblewimble.'"

I love everything about this book. But MORE ON THAT NEXT FRIDAY. I actually loved all the books I was reading today, which is obviously great. This is my sixth Emma Donoghue, and I'm super-happy it's a short story collection, because I think her short stories are much better than her novels. Her novels are good! But her short stories are very very good. And usually are …

MIDWAY POINT OF THE MINI READATHON.


I seriously love that we're able to do this. And God bless Twitter, y'know?

So. I have finished Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and — *sobs* — WHY can't I just live in Whistle Stop, Alabama, WHY.

I get that this is manufactured and not real and helps build the Southern mythology, but I LOVE the Southern mythology, so let's just all believe in it, please.

Started Harry Potter and was delighted by how easily my 12-year-old copy stays open after being read by almost all the kids in the family and carted around by me from home to dorm to Chicago. Also I found this on the inside:

"Alice J. Burton earned this book at Chautauqua, NY in 1999 at the
age of 14 (written in Oct. 2000)"
I'd recently found books by my grandmother with her name + college written in them, so I was on a Mark This Book kick.
I've also read like a chapter of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, my favorite part of which thus far might be:
 When my own moth…