I have most recently signed up to compete (yes, like an athletic event) in
MotherReader's 48 Hour Book Challenge. I was in it for gold last year for my own mercenary reasons (ARC of Catching Fire much?), but this year, I want to go all the way for the charity of my choice. Which, I can't quite say yet because I have not gotten it approved by those who need to approve it, but it will be for a splendid cause if I have any say in the matter.What I won't be doing is seeing a show after the event as I did last year (Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and I so wish I had seen it when I was more awake). Nor will I be celebrating barricade day with my friends who are stuck on this continent and can't celebrate it in Paris with all the other Les Miserables junkies. No exciting Paris trips for me this year. Instead, I'll be reading for a cause.
I have been reading Estelle Lazer's Resurrecting Pompeii the last few days, and I am quite enjoying myself. More for her humorous commentary on stories written by Theophile Gautier which feature heroes who have a tendency to form attachments with random body parts of long-dead women: in one instance a cast of a woman's bosom and hips, the other a woman's foot. Now I want to read these stories outright, despite the fact that the author gave a brief summary of them. The stories being Arria Marcella and The Mummy's Foot.
I love how reading one book can introduce you to another. I would have never heard about Gautier, I bet, except for this book. It is just like how one blog can inform another and link to something else and it continues forever. Sometimes I get lost in reading blog posts. Oh, technology, what a "time waster" you are to me. Or is it? Certainly I learn things when I hop from one blog to the next following a stream of information that interests me.
But now I am feeling woefully tired. Perhaps I am no longer young enough to stay up late and keep night hours. That bodes ill for the challenge...
