If you hadn’t heard, the first ever National Readathon Day was this past Saturday, 24-January. The day was sponsored by the National Book Foundation, Penguin Random House, Goodreads, Mashable, and some other wonderful sponsors with the goal of promoting a lifelong love of reading in America. (Here’s the main page.) I saw this very late in the week and decided my husband and I were going to give it a try.
My goal was to make progress with a book I’m struggling through, La Sombra del Viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It’s hard for me to read in Spanish for a long period of time and I wanted to challenge myself. I’m proud to say I made it through 54 pages of the book and it’s a wonderful story. I also sampled from two other books, California by Edan Lepucki and The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. California is an audiobook on my phone and I listened to about 25 minutes of it while I cooked lunch for me and my husband (no excuse to stop reading!). Willis’s book is an ebook I’ve been reading off an on for a few months and I got to a really great plot twist while reading on Saturday. I got through 10% of the book that day alone because I was so hooked.
There were times during the four hours when I wanted to go do a chore that was bugging me or I wanted to turn on Netflix and watch just one episode of The Office, but I kept reading. And in the end, it was really nice. My husband read all of Beowulf and got a chunk of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline read (by my recommendation!) and he really enjoyed the experience as well. I look forward to next year and hopefully there will be something in the community about the event so it doesn’t feel as isolated. I think this is a great idea and I can’t wait to see it take off in the near future!
Until next time, write on.
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Taking On a World of Words 