Finished!

Woo, I made it through the final painful hours of the 48 hour book challenge. I think missing my boyfriend, having not seen him in 10 days and putting him off while I completed this challenge, is part of what made the last few hours crawl by. Also, I know I get to see him when I'm done with this, so I was just full of anticipation to finish one thing and go on to another. Also also, maybe I love to read but not to read this much in one weekend!

So my total is 26 hours, more than double last years total, and I am very proud. The note where I kept track of this is just a jumble of times and minutes here and minutes there. I finished 9 books, so I will donate $9 to RIF.

With all my preparation, I ended up not using my audiobook, probably because I didn't work this weekend like I had to last year. I made sure to get outside to switch up the scenery and take advantage of the warm weather and get out of my bed, which is where I read. I probably had too much food stockpiled, but it was fun buying it and of course I'll still eat it. I thought I would read fewer books than I did, so I'm glad I stopped at the graphic novel section to pick up some extras. The graphic novels are great for breaking up the novels. I read books I'd been meaning to for years and also brand new books. I made a good dent in my books checked out from the library. Next year I'm going to do mostly what I did this year, but I'm going to wean off the caffeine in the days before so that when I pile it on during the challenge it actually takes effect. When Mountain Dew doesn't have much effect, you've been drinking too much caffeine! Also, maybe I will drink coffee even as nasty as it is.

So of course you're wondering how much Mr. Sharp's school is going to get. Well, the donations haven't all been specified yet, and my math seems to have gotten screwy, but here's what I know so far.
Mr. Schu - $20.00
Sister - $8.75
Sister - $0.25/hr=$6.50
Dad - $1/hr=$26.00
Boyfriend - $0.75/hr=$19.50
That's a total of $80.75.

Uncle D - ??
Uncle T - ??
Friend - ??
These are the current unknowns.

Whatever it all comes out to, I'm going to match it, so it will be a minimum of $161.50!

What else do you want to know? What? Oh, who won a book? Well, I put all the names in a hat because I am old school like that, and the winner came out as Uncle T! I drew all the names, though, and made an order just in case someone decides to pass. If he passes, I'll let the next person know and so on until someone decides they want a free book!

So what can he/you pick from? Here are the titles I finished:
Graphic Novels
Level Up by Gene Luen Yang
Iron West by Doug Ten Napel
Silverfin: A James Bond Adventure by Charlie Higson and Kev Walker (really a Young James Bond)
City of Light, City of Dark by Avi

Novels
The Anybodies by N.E. Bode
The Nobodies by N.E. Bode
The Devil's Breath by David Gilman
Lexapros and Cons by Aaron Karo
Love & Leftovers by Sarah Tregay

Thanks for joining me on this adventure and all the comments and encouragements! I did have a good time and know I will be back for next year. Good luck to the rest of you finishing up!

N.E. Bode Home?

It must be late into the challenge because here I am making puns or something for everyone to groan at. I did make it to 24 hours though, so I'm mightily pleased, and I still have 2.5 hours left. So why did I write anybody like N.E. Bode? Well, because that is the author of three books in a row that I read. I didn't read them in a row; they just go in a row, but I don't want to call them a trilogy.

Anyway, the first one is called The Anybodies, the second is The Nobodies, and the third which I will finish in the next 2.5 hours is called The Somebodies. Can N.E. Bode tell me where the author got the pseudonym for her author name from? Yuk yuk yuk. I'll get some sleep later, I promise. Her real name is Julianna Baggott and she has written other books under that name, like The Prince of Fenway Park which I happen to be in the middle of.

I read The Anybodies years ago; in fact, I got it from a Scholastic book order. I absolutely loved it for it's silliness, mystery, and mention of many other books. The house where the grandma lives is made out of books and she tests her boarders for book knowledge. The main character, Fern, gets tested in my favorite chapter, Part Three, Chapter 4: The Test. I reread that one all the time. The book is similar to the Dr. Cuthbert Soup books, but I'm quite partial to the bookishness in this book.

One day I found out that there were sequels to this amazing book! Sequels, plural! Now, I am the type that likes to read the books in order and reread the first one to remember everything I can. (By book five in Harry Potter I stopped doing that, but it was hard). So I didn't read the sequels for quite awhile, probably years. Then came this challenge and I decided it would be a great time to get all three books together and be able to read them.

So obviously I recommend The Anybodies. Then I readThe Nobodies, which I read in nearly one straight sitting. I didn't want to put it down. It was really good. The author likes to add this bit about her creative writing teacher being after her and that gets very old after awhile, but she seems to get it and shortens her ranting to one sentence only here and there. The magic in this book is wonderful and unexpected and not like anything you've seen before. Also, the illustrations and covers by Peter Ferguson are awesome. He's great at drawing what I am picturing without even knowing I'm picturing that!

Now I'm on The Somebodies which is good but has a weird beginning, so even though I read 100 pages of it straight, I did have to take a break from it. When I finish this post I will get back to it. Unfortunately a different person did the cover, so they don't all look like they go together, but Ferguson did still do the illustrations inside the book.

The characters have personalities, the books can be funny, you really care for the characters, and the writing in the first two made me read them straight through because they hold your attention so well. Definitely a series I would highly recommend, or even just the first one for something quirky, mysterious, and bookish.

Love and Leftovers Review and Thoughts

Wow, I just finished Love and Leftovers by Sarah Tregay. It was in verse which I used to hate and am starting to see as a viable way to write books, and this one was beautiful. It seemed true to what people feel when they like a boy and don't know if they are falling in love or not, and there were some points where I thought ah ha! That's what it means to be falling in love, but when I'd go back to look for that passage, I couldn't find it. It was like a fleeting thought, just like knowing that you're in love can be a hard thing to figure out, and the thought may be fleeting.

I did mark a few passages that I really liked and thought got to the root of looking for love and possibly finding it and how to know the difference between lust and just wanting a body or being lonely and what it's like when you have passion - "love, conversation, understanding, and the physical stuff - all stirred together" (289). I think that starts to get at it. It's more than hormones and just getting a fix; it's liking someone for their adorable ways that no one else sees and forming a deep friendship and listening to your heart, as abstract as that is.

Have I figured it out yet? Well, I'm not very good at that abstract stuff, but I think I'm on my way with this one guy and thanks to this book. This book gave me chills at the right moments and made me confused when the characters were confused and made me want to start the book over again as soon as I had finished it. I'm not as good as expressing my thoughts as Sarah Tregay, but I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes reading about love and any teenager out there who is confused or who is in high school, because I think this book captures a typical high schooler experience very well.

I'm up to almost 3.5 hours, or $14 so far. Next up is the Anybodies, a wonderful book by Julianna Baggott or N.E. Bode, the first of three.

48HBC Finale

If this was the 24HBC I would have done quite well. Unfortunately, having work, then more work, then a broken down car in 95 degree heat 30 minutes from my parents right before the construction, then dehydration, then a party all on Saturday, a key day, really killed my time. I knew I wouldn't get to read between 8 am and probably 1 am on Saturday, so about 17 hours, but I didn't know I'd have such an eventful day to completely wear me out either. So in my 2nd 24 hours I read 54 minutes.

But in my first 24 hours I read 9 hours, and 57 minutes, and networked 1 hour and 9 minutes.

So my total time is 12 hours even I just realized. I was aiming for 12-15 hours, and this is my first year, so I'm plenty pleased.

I read 5 books - the ones I posted on and also The Pull of Gravity by Gae Polisner, Calamity Jack, a young adult graphic novel by Hale, and Ten by Lauren Myracle. I figure you're 10 in 5th grade, so it fits the requirements.

I already can't wait for next year and really enjoyed the networking and checking out other people's blogs and twitter accounts! Thanks to everyone for their support and commenting on my posts!

48HBC: Wednesday Wars

Update: Currently at 7 hrs, 52 min of reading/blogging time and 1 hour, 9 min of networking time, for a total of 9 hrs, 1 min as of 17 hours into my start. (I'm using a stop watch to keep track of my time so a)I don't have to remember when I started/stopped reading and b)because I'm kind of anal like that and want to be exact.) I feel quite accomplished. I'm on my 4th book right now.

My second book for today was The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt because I've been hearing so much talk about Okay for Now by Schmidt and read that one of the characters is originally in The Wednesday Wars. I really like to read previous books about people (when I know about them) before the next book.

This book made me wish I had paid more attention in high school English when teachers talked about themes and symbols and "crap" like that. Now that I'm reading more advanced books, I'd like to understand them as well. If I stop and think about what certain parts of the book mean, I can come up with a meaning, but usually when I ask someone else, they come up with what I think of as a better meaning. There may be no wrong or right (contrary to HS English teachers' beliefs) but some meanings are better than others.

The Wednesday Wars talks a lot about Shakespeare, and I'm sure that the author put in the specific parts and plays to make some type of symbolic connection. It makes the book that much more interesting. I thought this book was powerful because it talks about the Vietnam War and a relationship between authority and students, specifically one teacher - Mrs. Baker - and one student - Holling Hoodhood. She hates his guts at the beginning, as he puts it, but she does warm up to her here and there. Schmidt makes some smart moves in this book by making you think all is "swell" when the next chapter, walls (or the ceiling in this case) come tumbling down. He writes a shocker or two into the book as well.

One main theme of the book is being who you want to be, not what someone else wants you to be. Holling learns this early on through The Merchant of Venice but doesn't apply it until much later. On page 48 he says people trapped a Shakespeare character into being a certain way without allowing him to "be anything except for what he was." This plays into the story within Holling's family throughout the book.

There are many parts I found to be profound and many great Shakespearean lines in this book. I highly recommend it and look forward to Okay for Now.

48HBC Blog Post: Creature Tech

Update: So far I'm at about 5 hours of reading time, so I'm going to be blogging and networking for the next hour before work.

I read Creature Tech by Doug Ten Napel, a YA graphic novel. I read Ten Napel's Ghostopolis a week or two ago, and loved it. So when I went to get books for this weekend, I went straight to his last name and found two other books by him, including this one. I recognized Ten Napel's style right away on the cover with the straight lines of the main character, Dr. Michael Ong. This book starts in the past to give the reader an idea of where the plot comes from once we get about 30 pages into the book. We see a giant moray eel fall on a house and crush someone to death.

Then we get to the present day and meet Dr. Ong who becomes a world-class scientist and works at Creature Tech, a place where he and a couple others go through strange things in crates given to them by the government. His town isn't very happy to have this strange operation there. His main task is fighting a ghost who comes back from the dead and all the cats he turns to fight against Dr. Ong.

Although Dr. Ong may sound mature, he is actually a very young man, and there is even a bit of love in this book. Ten Napel combines the science fiction with love with humor, unbelievably. Some parts are visual jokes and some are verbal jokes. For example, at one point the ghost is putting together an aerial view of the town and breaks into an Italian song. Once he finally puts all the pieces together and you realize he is searching for the giant eel again, he says, "That's a moray!" Here it refers to the eel and to the Italian word for love, amore.

Dr. Ong is a very smart, if not sometimes careless, person, but he also comes across as normal in some ways. He has friends, he fights with his dad, he's falling in love with the girl he used to make fun of in high school. The characters in this book, including the bad guys, make this a great story, and the plot twists, foreword, humor, and excellent drawings make it even better.

I should mention something about the foreword. It's written by Terry Mattingly, the director of the Washington Journalism Center, and he gives a very interesting view on the story - he said it feels just like a storyboard for a movie. It's good to read the foreword because when you come to certain parts in the book, it makes them easier to understand.

48 Hour Book Challenge

Here we go! Starting at 7 am on Friday morning but I don't think I'm having cereal for breakfast (catch that reference?). It's time for the 48 hour book challenge. How many hours can I read in the next 48 hours? Well, with work all day Saturday, it certainly will be a challenge, so we'll see.

I'm starting with Creature Tech by Doug Ten Napel, a YA graphic novel.

Here is a link to the challenge: http://www.motherreader.com/2011/05/sixth-annual-48-hour-book-challenge.html



Happy reading!

48 Hour Challenge

Coming up this weekend between June 3rd and 5th I will be trying to read at least 12 hours out of 48 hours in a row for a contest.

Here is the link: http://www.motherreader.com/2011/05/sixth-annual-48-hour-book-challenge.html

Another blogger and fellow tweeter, @motherreader, puts on this challenge yearly. I will be blogging about the books I read, which will probably mostly be YA and will include several graphic novels. Feel free to sign up yourself or just check out the many blogs of people competing and find some more great books to read!