#48HBC Calling It Quits

I'm throwing in the towel. Mainly because I haven't enjoyed the majority of books I've chosen to read this weekend, but also because I've gained back all the weight I had lost this week, and I'm about to be living the single life for a week while my husband leaves town for a business trip followed by a fishing trip. I won't see him again until June 20th. I plan on getting the most out of living single. Tomorrow, I'm joining the gym and will be every day using my Pilates Crunch DVD. I plan to continue reading through 6/20 and will donate $2 for every 100 pages read from this weekend until then to my selected organizations.

Just Finished Reading...

Wake by Lisa McMann

time spent reading: 3.45 hours

pages read: 210

This book was not so great. It was on the level of the DaVinci Code or a Lifetime channel original movie - stupidly stupid but with mass appeal.

Janie discovers at a young age that whenever she gets near a sleeping person, she gets sucked into his dream, much to her chagrin. Most people dream they're naked in a room full of people, or that they're falling, or dream about their greatest desires and worst fears. Janie comes to know more about people, and perfect strangers, than she cares to.

Her senior year, Janie runs into a boy she used to know. He's had an extreme makeover, going from greasy goth guy to pulled-together, glasses-wearing cutie. The girls at school think he's a new kid, that's how well they recognize him. He and Janie grow close and eventually he learns her secret. Afterward, he seems to distance himself from Janie, and she learns through a friend that he is hooking up with her enemy and possibly selling dope. What's a girl to do?

I could deal with the short, choppy sentences and even the choppy storyline punctuated by dates and times, but I couldn't get used to the cheesy, inauthentic dialogue. Listen, nobody says 'rents. Nobody ever has. And meeting the Captain? That pushed this story far into the Lifetime television, paperback novel sold at your local grocery store or pharmacy. Finally, I find it unbelievable that there would be so many kids and adults who fall asleep napping at school and the office. Silly, silly, silly.

Just Finished Reading...

The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars

time spent reading: 1.5 hours

pages read: 129

I grabbed this book off the shelf because it was short, and I wanted to feel a sense of accomplishment first thing this morning. It turns out I really enjoyed this short children's story. Sara lives with her Aunt Willie along with her 19-year-old sister, Wanda, and her mentally handicapped brother, Charlie, after her mother passed away. Sara's father works in another town and visits occasionally on the weekends. One summer morning, Sara wakes up and finds her brother has disappeared. He got up in the middle of night wanting to see the swans at the lake Sara had taken him to the day before, but he couldn't remember the way and got himself lost in the woods.

I liked this story because it reminds me of my grandmother, and how she probably grew up. The characters are real people and funny to listen to. They all share the same names as my grandmother's family and friends: Midge, Frank, Wanda, etc. It reminds me of the "good ole' days" when there was only one television program to choose from, and people got excited about the little things. Everyone knew each other, and everyone was cordial.

Sara is an adolescent who is discontent with life. She thinks she's ugly and has clown feet made all the worse by her "Donald Duck" orange-dyed tennis shoes.

Up until this year, it seemed, her life had flowed along with rhythmic evenness. The first fourteen years of her life all seemed the same. She had loved her sister without envy, her aunt without finding her coarse, her brother without pity. Now all that was changed. She was filled with discontent, and anger about herself, her family, that made her think she would never be content again. p.35

Really, this is nothing more than what every 14 year old girl feels at one point or time.

"I feel like I want to start screaming and kicking and I want to jump up and tear down the curtains and rip up the sheets [...] I want to yank my clothes out of the clsoet and burn them and -"

"Well, why don't you try it if it would make you feel better?"

"Because it wouldn't." [...] "I just feel like nothing."

"Oh, everybody does at times, Sara."

"Not like me. I'm not anything. I'm not cute, and I'm not pretty, and I'm not a good dancer, and I'm not smart, and I'm not popular. I'm not anything." p. 39

The story only covers a 24 hour period, from one evening to the next. That's not enough time for a character to actually grow and change a whole lot. Sara is still Sara, but she finds that she had misjudged a boy from her school and maybe her father, too.

The humor in the characters' conversations is also what makes the story so enjoyable. As Sara and her friend Mary are tryin to figure out where Charlie went, Mary suggests they go back to the house as he may be there. Sara knows that won't be the case, and she repeats this again and again.

"I know he won't be."

"Well, don't get discouraged until we see." [...] "You know who you sound like? Remember when Mary Louise was up for class president and she kept saying, 'I know won't get it.' For three days that was all she said."

"And she didn't get it."

"Well, I just meant you sounded like her, your voice or something," Mary explained quickly. p. 61

#48HBC 12+ hours

Done for today.

Hours devoted to 48HBC: 12.25 hours
books read: 2
pages read: 490
audiobook: 3.5 hours (Beastly by Alex Flinn)
blogging: 2 hours

G'night.

#48HBC Update

Just finished reading...

The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall - p. 170-283 finished

This is a book I've ready many times when I was younger. I shared it as a read-aloud to my sixth graders, but never got the chance to finish it with them. So, I picked up where I left off and read the rest.

113 pages read

#48HBC Book One

#48HBC Book One

I finally finished The Dark and Hollow Places. I feel like such a slow reader for taking around 7 hours to read it. (I spent part of my late morning listening to Beastly on audiobook while I cleaned up.) This book is the apparent end to The Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy, although neither the second or third book lives up to the first. There was so much potential for this story, and it all got lost somewhere in between the silly love stories, chases, near deaths, and evil Recruiters. There was no big revelation or glint of real hope for the survivors. I'm exhausted not from the length of time it took reading this, but from Annah's constant fight and struggle to stay alive. It never ended.

pages: 377

time spent reading: roughly 7 hours

On your mark... Get set...

Go!

I woke up late so am already an hour and a half behind my starting line. First book to read:
The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan.

See ya in about 3 hours.