48-Hour Book Challenge Finish Line

For this year's challenge, I read 20 hours and 30 minutes total. This included:

• 3 complete novels (Voyage of the Basilisk, I'll Give You the Sun, Portrait in Sepia)
• 2 non-fiction books partially (Darwin and the Barnacle, Quack This Way)
• 3 hours and 45 minutes of an audio book (Furies of Calderon)
• Half an hour of social media time

Quack This Way, by David Foster Wallace and Bryan A. Garner

DFW: ... You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers--not all of whom are modern...I mean, if you are willing to make allowances for the way English has changed, you can go way, way back with this--becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It's like eating candy for the soul.

"Mr Arthrobalanus" by Simon Carnell (from Darwin and the Barnacle)

Distinctively deviant,

you're an angel

dancing on the pinhead of yourself,

I'll Give You The Sun, by Jandy Nelson

Because what if it's Jude who has it? Why wouldn't that be the case? She surfs waves as big as houses and jumps off anything. She has skin that fits and friends and Dad and The Sweetwine Gift and gills and fins in addition to lungs and feet.

She gives off light. I give off dark.

(PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Twins: The Flashlight and the Flashdark)

*****
I wish I hadn't done a lot of things I did back then.

I wish going into that closet with Brian was the worst of it.

The right-handed twin tells the truth, the left-handed twin tells lies.
(Noah and I are both left-handed.)

Portrait in Sepia, by Isabel Allende

In our family we serve tea when a situation is slightly uncomfortable, and since I feel self-conscious almost all the time, I serve a lot of it.

The Voyage of the Basilisk, by Marie Brennan

(After all, it has been so very long since there was any satisfying scandal about me. I find that respectability grows wearisome after a time, when one is accustomed to being a disgrace.)

48-Hour Book Challenge Starting Line

Starting now, at 7:45 AM with The Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan!

48-Hour Book Challenge Finish Line

For this year's 48-Hour Book Challenge, I managed:

• 22 hours of reading
• 3 hours, 20 minutes of listening to an audiobook
• 1 hour of blogging and social media

For a total of 26 hours and 20 minutes!

I read 7.5 books--2,253 pages!--plus 3 stories from my audiobook, Dark and Stormy Knights.

And now, I am so tired...

Earth Girl, by Janet Edwards

On the surface, none of that seemed to have the slightest connection to my unknown parents, but of course it did. Everything did. Everything in my life was because of them and their decision. Everything kept coming back to the shadowy figures who'd handed their ape kid over to Hospital Earth and walked away. If they hadn't done that, my entire life would have been different, and I wouldn't be telling a bunch of lies to an off-world class.

Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan

Esperanza smiled and reached over and gently pulled the yarn, unraveling the uneven stitches. Then she looked into Isabel's trusting eyes and said, "Do not ever be afraid to start over."

The Fire Horse Girl, by Kay Honeyman

I was lost and trapped inside the story at the same time. I wanted my own story. Why didn't they believe that if I had left my home and traveled over the ocean, I needed to be here? Why couldn't I tell them how hard it was to live in China, how people broke off pieces of you to make you fit? Why didn't they want to know what it was like being a Fire Horse, full of a strength and power that only destroyed everything I touched?

The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent, by Marie Brennan

Some years later--after stories of my exploits aboard the Basilisk began to filter back home, and the outrage over my Erigan deeds had faded somewhat--there were those in Scirland who romanticized me as some kind of champion of the Moulish, nobly aiding them with no desire for my own gain. This is entirely false, and I cannot decide if its falsity is too flattering to me, or perversely insulting, to myself and the Moulish both. One could imagine that I approached my research the way I did out of respect for our hosts and their traditions, but insofar as that is true, I cannot claim credit for it. It was the accidental consequence of my true reasoning, which was concerned with how to achieve the best results with a minimum of fuss.

Thirteenth Child, by Patricia C. Wrede

"This is the most important lesson you must learn about magic," Miss Ochiba went on. "There are many ways of seeing. Each has an element of truth, but none is the whole truth. If you limit yourselves to one way of seeing, one truth, you will limit your power. You will also place limits on the kinds of spells you can cast, as well as their strength. To be a good magician, you must see in many ways. You must be flexible. You must be willing to learn from different sources. And you must always remember that the truths you see are incomplete."

Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer

 I parrot: Grandfather is not a bad person, Jonathan. everyone performs bad actions. I do. Father does. Even you do. A bad person is is someone who does not lament his bad actions. Grandfather is now dying because of his. I beseech you to forgive us, and to make us better than we are. Make us good.

Guilelessly,
Alexander

Bamboo People, by Mitali Perkins

"A man full of hatred is like a gun, my son," Peh says. "He can be used for only one purpose--to kill."

The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green

Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Peter Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.

Starting the 48-hour book challenge...

Now!

Thank you, Mother Reader!