48 Hour Challenge: 24 Hour Check In

So maybe I should only check in every 12 hours? I'm trying NOT to freak out by my complete inability today to really do marathon quality reading. Because I have just arrived in Hawaii, my mother, rightfully so, wants to spend time with me...minus my books. I read for several hours in the morning, before we left for Kaneohe to watch "Princess Kaiulani" at the theater. It was an interesting movie. It was sad, but interesting too. I'll have to post a review later.

Since returning home this afternoon, I spent another couple of hours reading Hunger Games for my online chat with Dar, from Peeking Between the Pages, about our reading. It's been fun reading it with someone else who hasn't read it either!

This evening we had a bit of a chat about the novel, since we're both about half way through book one. Here are a few things we wondered or discussed:

• We both found the beginning set up to be a bit slow, but only because we had been told how fantastic it was, so we were waiting for all the excitement!
• I wondered where the Team Gale and Team Peetra pops up? We both have our guesses about why other bloggers are forming "teams" around these characters, but we're not 100% sure just yet!
• We talked about the element of romance in YA fiction. I had seen a post or discussion about YA fiction needing a bit of romance to really succeed. We talked about whether that was true or not. I can't say we came to a conclusion, but it's interesting to consider?
• The titles are now making more sense.
• We talked about the whole dystopian feature to the novel, what it says about society in general, and how we fight for social standing and survival.
• We did make some predictions about the end of the "games" as we wonder if the author would be mean to us or not. (I'll leave it at that, as I don't want to give anything away to those who haven't read it! Who knows. Dar and I might not be the last!)
• We then talked about whether we'd be up late finishing or not. I think that unless we fall over asleep, we might both be up reading for a bit!

Because of our lovely discussion, and my tech break to update and such, I've spent several hours online this evening. I'll quickly update my stats, go for a quick walk in the cool night air here in Hawaii, and then get back to reading!

• Hours Spent Reading: 6 Hours
• Books Completed: 1 and 1/2
• Pages Read: 500...Wow. Not very good!
• Online Time: 4 1/2 Hours
  
• Hours Into Challenge: 24!!!
  

At this half way point, I can see I have a lot of reading to do! Tomorrow will be better though, as we have plans to stick close to home and lounge about. That makes things easy for me to get more reading done though. Wish me luck! Off for a quick walk, and then I'm back to do a bit more reading until I fall asleep with my book over my face.