It’s time for the 24 in 48 Readathon again!! *bookish party* You can sign up and get the details here: https://24in48.com/

I participated in #24in48 for the first time this winter and really enjoyed it; 24 in 48 is like a slightly extended and more flexible version of Dewey’s and it’s very low-pressure. The goal is to read for 24 hours within a 48-hour period, but really, you just read as much as you can and enjoy all of the social aspects of the challenge. I actually did pretty well last time; despite the fact that I entered the readathon on a whim, I finished The Just City by Jo Walton and read about 400 pages of The Wise Man’s Fear. You can find my post from last time here: https://beachesandbooks.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/24-in-48-reading-challenge/.

#24in48 runs from July 23-24, which has the makings of a great bookish weekend. This time around (of course) I have some obstacles: I’ll be working Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon I have concert tickets to see several bands at a summer music festival. (Mostly I’m going to see AWOLNATION; I love them and have never seen them live.) So I’m planning on fitting in as much reading as I can Saturday evening and Sunday.

I tried to be strategic with my TBR stack by picking mostly shorter books, graphic novels, and YA, which seem to work better for me during readathons. I also threw in a of standalone short story that I have on my Kindle. My goal is to finish at least 3 of these during the weekend, but I think that depending on my choices I can definitely exceed that goal. One of the things I like about readathons is that if I don’t finish certain books during a given challenge, I carry them over to the next one. So the books I don’t finish here will likely be on my TBR for the next Bout of Books in August 🙂

So here’s what I’m going to attempt to read during the Readathon, ranked from most to least likely to actually read them:

Saga, Volume 6 by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples – if nothing else, this is the book I will finish during #24in48. Saga is the only graphic novel series that I follow regularly; I love its heart and creativity. Luckily, I was first in line to put a hold on this at my library, so I snapped it right up.

Six Months, Three Days by Charlie Jane Anders – Anders is the author of All the Birds in the Sky (which I read earlier this year) and the former editor of io9.com, one of my favorite sites. This is her Hugo-award-winning novelette that I broke down and bought on ebook after the price finally dropped. It’s very short and about two people who can both see the future, but in different ways.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor – for some reason, they do not have this novella at my library, or I’d have already read it. I found it on BookOutlet.com, and it finally arrived today 🙂 It’s very tiny, which means very doable for the readathon. It won the Nebula and was nominated for both the Hugo and Locus awards, and it sounds like science fiction with a focus on interactions between diverse societies, which is my preferred type of scifi.

Second Star by Alyssa B. Sheinmel – So I used to be a big fan of the TV show Once Upon a Time, and during the Neverland season I started searching for Peter Pan-inspired YA to read. I stumbled upon Unhooked, which I wasn’t able to get into but may try again another time, and Second Star, which sounds like a retelling where all of the Peter Pan characters are surfers and there is a love triangle. I am really interested to see how the author pulls this off; it could either be great or really terrible.

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur – this is a poetry collection that’s been getting a ton of buzz; I was inspired to snag this at Barnes&Noble after someone posted one of the poems on Bookstagram. The poems are very short yet full of emotion, which I like.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi – I actually saw the movie version of this graphic novel a few years ago (in French, in college, at an indie movie theater. It was a very hipster time for me.) or I probably would have read it sooner. It’s about a girl growing up in Iran during the revolution, and the story was so well told in the movie that I felt I wanted another look.

Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick – another graphic novel! I may or may not be in a graphic novel mood during #24in48, so we’ll see how many of these I end up reading. I keep hearing about this on different blogs; it’s a dystopian, feminist graphic novel set in a prison for noncompliant women.

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell – this is the only Rainbow Rowell book I have not read yet; I’ve been avoiding it because realistic YA isn’t usually my thing. But Rainbow Rowell is wonderful, and I’ve liked every book she’s written so far, even when I thought I wouldn’t (I thought I’d be really bored by Landline, but it was actually very sweet). Not sure if I’ll have time to get to this during the challenge; it may end up being a Bout of Books read instead, but it’s definitely happening this year.

I can’t wait to jump into all of these! I’m tempted to start reading some of them now, but I’m going to resist. Is anyone else participating in #24in48??? Feel free to link to your TBRs!