"I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books."

Borges

Saturday, June 09, 2007

48 Hour Reading Challenge

A few days ago, I found out about the 48 Hour Book Challenge on Mother Reader's blog. I promptly signed up and even had somewhat of a plan in mind. Yesterday my boxes from BEA arrived and all thoughts of planning ended.

Currently I'm unpacking six boxes of books and reading both The Mysterious Benedict Society which I already love and The Guardians, Ana Castillo's new novel about immigration that I also already love.

I just pulled out Puff the Magic Dragon, Peter Yarrow's lavishly illustrated picture book that I stood in line to get a signature for and I know it's going to work its way into this challenge. Other books that are clamoring to be part of the reading feast this weekend are:
Piglet and Papa
Manga Shakespeare - Hamlet
Manga Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet
Lost City Radio
Micographica, Renee French's new book
Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Wilbur Smith's new book, The Quest
Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke
Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan
Sparrow, a Novel
Gracie
The Ashleys
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold (signed!)
Confessions of a Teenage Amnesiac
A Distant Soil
The Winter Rose
The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty
Only Revolutions
The Echo Maker
Wrestling with Angels
Tree of Smoke
Two Moon Princess
Erec Rex
The Christmas Jar;
The Kitchen Sink (poetry)
The Mice of Bistro des Sept Freres
Amelia Rules! What Makes You Happy
The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (no I couldn't get Flight and missed his signing because the line was too long) heavy sigh.
Shiver
Kennedy's Brain
Fablehaven

Well that's it so far. No way am I going to be able to read all of those and the list may change depending on what else I find in my box digging (Mother Reader, does sorting books count in this reading challenge?). It'll be interesting to see which books I end up reading and how many of my list I'll get to. Signing off to go finish sorting books on the floor while reading The Guardian.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gina! How'd you get that Junot Diaz book? At BEA? Dang, I want that one! LOVED his book Drown.

Little Willow said...

Confessions of a Teenage Amnesiac is amazing!

MotherReader said...

I wish sorting counted. Or stacking up your books and photographing them, 'cause that's fun too.

One thing that helps is eliminating the younger books and the graphic novels which aren't part of the challenge. That will leave you with, what, four boxes?

Gina Ruiz said...

The Junot Diaz book was sitting on the floor in stacks and stacks. I took one.

I can't wait for Confessions because Elsewhere was tremendous.

Darn! No sorting and no picture books or graphic novels. Yep four boxes is about right but then I have shelves and shelves of other stuff too. Nice to come up for air for a minute and find nice comments like these.

Anonymous said...

I'm the co-founder of a new literary magazine, Slice, and a big fan of Junot Diaz's work. Please check out our website and read about our debut issue, which includes an exclusive interview with Junot Diaz about how he began his writing career. www.slicemagazine.org.

Kaza Kingsley said...

Gina,
I saw you mentioned my Erec Rex series on your reading list. Did you ever get a chance to read them? (Book two is newly out now.)
Let me know!
Kazakingsley@fuse.net
http://www.erecrex.com/

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