I just finished my first 24 in 48 readathon. You might have noticed if you follow me on Litsy or Twitter, since that is pretty much all I’ve been posting over there. Sorry about that. The goal is to take a weekend and spend 24 of its 48 hours buried in books. Sounds pretty awesome, right? The point is for it to be a low-stress readathon, so you can also just set a goal for how many hours you want to dedicate to reading. But naturally I had to go all in and try for the full 24. Here’s how it went.
The readathon started at 12:01 AM ET on July 23. I’d been pondering signing up for the last couple months, but made a last minute decision to really do it about two hours before the readathon started. I gathered my pile of potential reads, and declared my intentions to the Interwebs. Readers have the option to participate on ET or local time. I decided to participate on Eastern time as this actually spread the 48 hours over Friday, Saturday, Sunday for me in the Pacific time zone. It also eliminated in advance the temptation for me to procrastinate, and then end up reading right to midnight on Sunday evening. I fit in 15 hours on Friday and Saturday, leaving me with only 9 hours to complete on Sunday. On Sunday, I boldly took my readathon to the beach, with all its distractions, but still managed to log the requisite time. Victory!
What Did I Read?
I finished two books during the readathon: the audiobook version of Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, which is the August read for the Diverse Science Fiction and Fantasy Bookclub. I also dipped into a few other titles: The Book of Awesome by Neil Parischa, The Lady and the Monk by Pico Iyer, and SuperBetter by Jane McGonigal. All of these were titles on my potential books stack, but there were several more I never touched.
I ca
n’t say I had a firm plan going into readathon, but I didn’t expect to get all the way through Carry On, a book that I have read before in print form, but was listening to in audio for the first time. But honestly, it was the perfect pick. I really enjoyed the reader, I could listen to it while doing chores or going for a walk, and if I got distracted for a second, or a loud truck drove by, I didn’t have to rewind because I was already familiar with the story. I was intending to use readathon to get ahead on books I want to review, but I spent the largest chunk of my time on the 14 hours I was listening to Carry On. But I’ve actually been looking for ways to fit in more rereads, so I wasn’t too disappointed by this.
Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Reading?
I have to say though, that there may actually be such a thing as too much reading, and reading for 24 out of 48 hours might qualify. Once you took away the seventeen hours I spent sleeping–and no, sacrificing sleep is never an option–I could only be not reading for seven hours out of this entire weekend. I tried to spend most of that time with my husband, so that he didn’t end up feeling like a readathon widow. We still managed to go to the beach, and even play PokemonGo in the park (admittedly with an audiobook plugged into my ear), so hopefully I did all right! I also didn’t get any reviews written this weekend, something I’ll have to be catching up on over the next couple days around my work schedule. Now that I know I can read for 24 hours in a 48 hour period, I don’t think I ever need to prove that again. It was much too reminiscent of being back at university. I would happily participate in the future, but on a much lower level! I started feeling the burnout somewhere around 14 hours (though going to bed found my second wind) so maybe something under that threshold!
How did your readathon go? What did you read? How did you manage to fit all those hours into your schedule?
Required Reading 
You did an incredible job in the readathon! And yes, there really is such a thing as too much reading. haha. Doing it reading sprints such as this one should definitely be done sparingly. I will be doing the Dewey’s marathon as well later this year, but that one doesn’t require you to read for 24 hours, though it certainly is an option.
I wish I had been able to follow the readathon on Litsy, but I’m still waiting on the Android app. Unfortunately, I failed to read for 24 hours, mostly because I was sick so I haven’t proven to myself that I actually can do. I may have to give it another shot next year!
I’ve never done Dewey’s, but I might consider it. It is too soon to be committing to any readathons after that marathon!
I am very excited for Litsy to be available to more people on other platforms! And by then they will also probably have added lots of new and exciting features as well, so it will be even better.