48-Hour Book Challenge Update — Here in the Bonny Glen

June 6, 2009 @ 7:36 pm | Filed under: Books

Well, the arrival of the Catching Fire ARC played right into my hankering to jump into the Challenge. Instead of gardening, running errands, and cleaning house during the baby’s naps today, I read. Clocked a little more than 4 hours of reading time since 7 a.m. You know how in every runners’ marathon there’s a weathered, smiling, sunvisored gal trailing way behind the pack, fast-walking instead of jogging, knowing she’s going to come in last but just doggone happy to be there? That’s me.

Total reading time so far: 4 hrs 17 min

Books read:
Sweethearts by Sara Zarr (had already begun)
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (about halfway through)

Tags: 48 Hour Book Challenge

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MotherReader says:

Love your analogy. Saw your Twitter note about CF with “Wow, I didn’t see that coming.” Can’t wait to talk about it with you. We’ll have to see up some private chat, like the Catching Fire Club.
Posted on June 7th, 2009 at 6:01 am
Melissa Wiley says:

Ooh, great idea. If it were a Mitali Perkins novel, we could call the club The Secret Keepers.
Posted on June 7th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Rasco from RIF says:

Your website and particularly your blog are the very reasons in addition to reading some great books that I am happy I participated in this Challenge, a first for me….I’ve never been part of any book challenge. I have learned a lot and met new literacy colleagues through your sites and your writing….enjoy the rest of the Challenge!
Posted on June 7th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Anne says:

I am so jealous that you have an ARC of Catching Fire!!!! Is it as good as Hunger Games?
Posted on June 7th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Anna says:

What is the middle names of Martha and Charlotte? How about their husbands? Do you know their siblings? I would like to know because my class is doing a book report and I would like to do it on your books. Are you going to write anymore Martha and Charlotte books. Even when I finish them I won’t get enought of it.
Posted on June 7th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

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Where to find unabridged Martha & Charlotte Books

Jane, 15 yrs old
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and Scott, the love of my life

“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”

Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?

And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?

(from a post called Way Leads on to Way)

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Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.

(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)