Despite the numerous and wondrous distractions which kept me from my goal of reading obsessively throughout the entirety of the Read-a-thon, this will be the first (out of three events) for which I will have remained awake for all 24 hours. I'm no stranger to insomnia, we're long-time friends, but it's usually the case that aiming for sleeplessness is the surest way to bring about a surprise 12 hour "nap".
While the day hasn't succeeded in wearing me down, IT definitely has. I'm not surprised in the least that it's as dark and foreboding as I had ever indication to expect. What surprises me is how easily it's crept under my skin, along the length of my bones, up into my mind and down into my soul. As the grown members of the "Losers Club" find their memories returning, I too find myself recalling events past that I'd just as soon not remembered. To be fair, this is a welcome development, in that my writing is largely informed by my own experiences, bordering on memoir, and so to remember so much more of my childhood is a boon to the writing I hope to do during this year's National Novel Writing month. On the other hand...it's just a darn good thing I've got such a capable therapist to handle the aftermath of this book's reading.
I'm not suggesting that anyone should avoid reading IT, but be prepared. Be more prepared than I was. Be as prepared as you can be, and then prepare some more. You must steel yourself if you're going to put yourself through the paces alongside these terrified children hiding behind the guises of capable and successful adults. King has a talent for exploring human nature that I had failed to recognize up to this point. I'm not sure what I could have done, had I known beforehand. I hope I'll know what to do after the fact.
Seriously, this book is messing with me. I need that, to some extent. I just hope there are a few doses of mercy along the way...maybe even just one?
Please?
No matter how hard you try, there's just no accounting for every possible variable you might encounter in the course of any given day. Read-a-thon is surely no exception. As Jurassic Park's Dr. Ian Malcom, played by Jeff Goldblum, put it "Life, uh, uh...uh...finds, uh...a way." And I now understand it to be an unavoidable fact of life that there will always be something that puts a crimp in my attempts at an unabbreviated Read-a-thon.
Now that it's passed, it's time to get down to business.
Having won both a door prize and a mini-challenge prize, and with no more distractions in sight, there's nothing stopping me from tackling my chosen read in earnest. I know I won't finish, but that doesn't mean I can't take a sizable bite out of the remaining pages. I may find my mind wandering, I may grow tired, but I'm determined to fight my way to the finish. I'll keep checking in on Twitter periodically, to cheer people along and continue sharing in what has now surely devolved into a kind of madness, but reading's the thing until the Read-a-thon draws to its close.
Okay, technically halftime isn't until the top of the hour. Plus, I didn't really get going until about an hour into the event, so I am in effect posting this more than an hour before the actual mid-point of the Read-a-thon (for me). If we take an even closer list, I've easily spent more time blogging, tweeting, and reviewing the blogs and tweets of others than I have actually reading, which throws our entire metric way off. Thankfully the Read-a-thon is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike soccer, so no one is tallying up these extra minutes so as to apply them later after regulation reading time has expired.
Mid-Event Survey
1. What are you reading right now? I'm still working on IT, completely entranced by it but moving therefore at a rather trance-like pace.
2. How many books have you read so far? Can I get away with saying I've read from one so far? Zero just sounds ever so much more awful...
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? More of IT. I'll finish it without picking up another book, but by 8am tomorrow? Not likely.
4. Have you had many interruptions? How have you dealt with those? See preceding paragraph. Between challenges, posts, tweets, texts, food delivers, food ingestions, and the surprising receipt of an unbirthday present package with lovely Read-a-thon quality snackstuffs and a pair of even lovelier knit handwarmers, I've had a very full day of not reading IT. I dealt with them by leaping at the chance to engage in more Read-a-thon related hijinks and shenanigans!
5. What surprises you about the Read-a-thon most, so far? There was an hour or two there where I thought I was the only person still tweeting about it. Things have picked up in the last few hours, in part because I went ahead and followed a dozen more participants, and I expect to see #readathon among my tailored trends any time now. But for a moment there, I was worried.
Another hour to the real mid-point, but there's the gist. I don't expect it to change, except for having joined in slightly less hijinks. The book's really picking up steam now, and I'm falling further and further down that rabbit hole. Pretty sure there's no Wonderland at the bottom of this one, though.
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| Okay by me! |
One of the most fun—and most delightfully distracting!—parts of the Read-a-thon is the hourly Mini-Challenge. These games-for-prizes put on by participating blogs add a regular dose of whimsy to break up the monotony of reading page after page after page. This isn't to say our chosen reads aren't absolutely enthralling, but it's a blast rushing between chapters to assemble whatever a given challenge calls for and share it with the rest of the Read-a-thon world.
So far, I've entered two Mini-Challenges. The first, Book Staging, hosted by Kimberly at her blog, On the Wings of Books, asked that we arrange a photograph of the book alongside something from the cover, or to do with the story itself. I decided to take the newspaper boat from the cover and first chapter of Stephen King's IT a step further, and posted a proud picture of the result.
For the second, Show it Off!, over on Dead Book Darling, Kay asked for a picture of one of our favorite, most beautiful or precious volumes. I chose my leatherbound edition of Robinson Crusoe, which is not only one of the oldest volumes in my library, it's easily one of the most beautiful.
Whether or not either of these entries leads to a prize remains to be seen, but winning's not entirely the point. As with the Read-a-thon itself, it's the sharing and revelry that matter most. Plus, as luck would have it, I managed to snag a door prize earlier in the day! Given my choice of a number of excellent prizes, I went for The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell.
"From the actor who somehow lived through it all, a “sharply detailed…funny book about a cinematic comedy of errors” (The New York Times): the making of the cult film phenomenon The Room.
In 2003, an independent film called The Room—starring and written, produced, and directed by a mysteriously wealthy social misfit named Tommy Wiseau—made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as “like getting stabbed in the head,” the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Ten years later, it’s an international cult phenomenon, whose legions of fans attend screenings featuring costumes, audience rituals, merchandising, and thousands of plastic spoons.
Hailed by The Huffington Post as “possibly the most important piece of literature ever printed,” The Disaster Artist is the hilarious, behind-the-scenes story of a deliciously awful cinematic phenomenon as well as the story of an odd and inspiring Hollywood friendship. Greg Sestero, Tommy’s costar, recounts the film’s bizarre journey to infamy, explaining how the movie’s many nonsensical scenes and bits of dialogue came to be and unraveling the mystery of Tommy Wiseau himself. But more than just a riotously funny story about cinematic hubris, “The Disaster Artist is one of the most honest books about friendship I’ve read in years” (Los Angeles Times)." —from the Amazon Book Description
I'd recently read an article about the debacle this film turned out to be, and with a reviewer claiming it to have been "like getting stabbed in the head", I couldn't pass up the chance to read the inside scoop. I can't wait to read it, although I just might do well to hold on to it until next spring's Read-a-thon comes along.
Back to the day's fun, and more reading. Further updates to follow!
Initially, when considering my Read-a-thon options, I'd wanted something uplifiting, positively life-changing, to brighten the end of an otherwise difficult week/month/etc. I'd also wanted something substantial, however, and not many cheerful reads at my disposal were of the sort to be anything more than simply entertaining. There's nothing wrong with that, of course—it's preferable in most cases, I should think—but what I wanted most of all was some gravity. Boy-oh-boy, did I get it.
I slept hard last night, dreamt of zombie apocalypses (which isn't even remotely my style), and shortly after setting things up for the day's event discovered I had the sort of sinus headache that throws "Up" and "Down" out the window, leaving me disoriented, and painfully far from the sort of zeal I'd like to have when tackling the day. Add the cold and the gray outside to the dismal run-up, and honestly I can't think of a better personal setting for one of King's darkest tales.
It's been slow goings, but I'm enjoying it so far. I haven't read much of King's fiction, though I own at least a dozen works all told. Carrie and Christine each left me feeling sickly inside, somewhat sullied, as if I'd besmirched my soul by allowing their scenes to play out in my mind. I expect no less from IT, but hope that I'm more prepared to cope.
I see a lot of progress amongst my Read-a-thon compatriots, books falling by the hundreds; I won't be matching their speed today. But I don't mind. It's enough for me to spend the day reading, at whatever pace I can manage, and sharing once again in the celebrating of a love for literature. After a quick lunch, I'll get back to it, and with any luck at least take down a few more chapters before another update feels due. Until then, happy reading to everyone participating, and anyone else who just feels like curling up with a book this weekend.
