Friday, January 3, 2014

Readathon tomorrow

I've decided to participate tomorrow in the 2nd Annual Classics Club Readathon--my first time doing one.  I'll begin tomorrow at 8am and finish reading Sunday at 8am.  In between, it's up to me to read as much as possible.  I confess I didn't know about this kind of reading event until a couple of days ago, but I'm excited to see what this is like.  It fits perfectly with my competitive nature, my enjoyment of accumulating "stats," and my interest in tests of different forms of endurance. 

It begins in less than 12 hours, and I've been wrestling with what I want to do.  Should I start a big book (Magic Mountain, for example) and get deep into it in one day?  Should I take a huge work that I've been poking along in for a long time (Proust) and try to get some real reading momentum?  Should I plan to read a couple of 250-300 page books (maybe Madame Bovary and a Balzac novel)?  Or is there another approach that makes more sense? I'll most likely decide sometime tomorrow around 7:50 am, and the at around 11am I'll wonder if I made the right choice.

I am eager to find out what the readathon will feel like at 9pm tomorrow night, or at 6am Sunday morning.  Is there some kind of reading equivalent to the marathoner's wall?  Is there a different kind of rhythm to the experience of reading so intensely for a 24-hour period? 

Much to discover between now and Sunday at 8am.

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