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!

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 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!