Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon Oct 2019

Here we are and I can pretend I wasn’t too tired to get up at 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00.  I have breakfasted and been reading Carmilla, which is short enough most people would have finished it by now.   By J. Sheridan Le Fanu, probably my second favorite vampire story to Dracula.

Anyway, here is the opening survey:

Opening Survey!

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Bethesda, Maryland, USA
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

I am thinking to read a Bellairs children’s book.  For some reason I never read any of his as a kid even though they appeared to be the sort of thing I liked.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

I’ve got some bean dip and chips which should be good.   Not sure whether I’ll get to it though because I have to leave for an event which probably includes dinner.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I don’t like telling somethings about myself.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

I am staying in someone else’s house so it will probably dramatically decrease my reading time.   Not that I’ve been great about that for a while.  I remember readathons where I spent the vast majority of the time reading.   That was fun.   Maybe in April.

 

Around midnight I finished Carmilla, a novella about vampires written 25 years before Dracula by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.  I really enjoyed this, Dracula is a better, more complex story, but this is very good.   Probably my second favorite after Dracula.   A young lady lives with her father in a castle in Styria.  There’s a deserted town nearby and another deserted castle.   Into their lives literally crashes a mysterious, beautiful young woman.  She is traveling with her mother who cannot stay to take care of her so our heroine’s father invites her to stay.  We know, without being told, this is a big mistake.  Her creepy mother is never really explained, but the story is entertaining.  Slow and Victorian – those of you who like a lot of action would probably not enjoy this, but if you like a heavily atmospheric story with a lot of lesbian undercurrents (over-currents?), you’ll probably like it a lot.

After that I started John Bellairs’ The Curse of the Blue Figurine.  This is the first of a series of books about Johnny Dixon who is a boy living with his grandparents in 1951.  I don’t know what’s going to happen, but somehow it involves Egypt.   I got this idea from Jean at Howling Frog  who’s been reading Bellairs.  I remember him being around, very popular when I was young, but for some reason I never read him.   Not sure why, so I’m trying him now.

What with it now being well into November, I don’t think I’ll dig up the closing survey.  Maybe next year things will be more back to normal.

Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon

Eight hours from now the Readathon starts.   I thought I’d signed up a while ago, but it appears not, so I’m signing up now.   Of course, I have some stuff going on, but I will do what I can to read as many of the other hours as I can and report here.   I hope many of you are joining me in spirit.   I love the idea of people all around the world reading together.   Let’s hope I spend a fair chunk of tomorrow doing that.   I’ve been too busy and will be for a while before things go back to something like normal.   Or a new normal.   We’ll see.   In the meantime, I decide that with only 8 days left (this was the other day) I would switch to short works to cover R.I.P.   I will be reading those most likely though I forgot to bring one to where I’m living now, so have to revise that.   But still short. creepy novellae should be good.   Is it novellae?  Maybe I’ll look that up.

 

I wanted to put some art work in here, but this is something I’m not good at on the laptop.  I need to lookup how to do things on here that I usually do with another button on a mouse.   At any rate, sleep, then readathon to the extent possible.   I would not be optimistic, but I’ve done such a lousy job the last few that it’s conceivable I could do better today (we’re just past midnight.)   Good night, sleep tight, and readathon away!