24 Hour Readathon: Update #1 & a HUGE Interruption

Title of book(s) read since last update:  None...yet.  Can you believe that?
Pages read since last update:  100+ ??? 
Amount of time spent reading since last update:  2 1/2 hours
Mini-challenges completed: 1--"Love to Hate"
Other participants you’ve visited:  None...yet.  Sad, I know!
Prize you’ve won:  0

I know I sound pretty pathetic so far!  I actually had a really slow start, as I seemed to not be able to really settle in right at the beginning.  Since I got a late start, and was struggling to get into my reading, I packed up my library stack and headed off to the library where I had a couple of books waiting for me.  That took me FOREVER thanks to a slew of construction we have between my house and the library.  Literally every street between my house and the library is down to one lane, filled with orange barrels, lights were blinking, and heavy trucks were dodging in and out of the construction.  To be honest, I have whittled down my trips to the library to Saturdays only, since getting around is much worse during the work week.  Anyway, I did THANKFULLY get into my audio book, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine.  I grabbed a salad on my way home, and am back to really focus!

Since getting home, I popped in the audio book because I can't quite give it up.  I've cleaned my house from top to bottom as I've listened and am now ready to settle into a nice chair in my room and read for the next three hours!  At least my house is clean now and I've exhausted myself into the ability to settle down and read.  :)

UPDATE:  So, in the middle of this post, my fire/CO2 alarm started going off.  To make a long story short,  I had to call the fire department.  Big red truck with flashing lights pulled up.  No carbon monoxide, just change the battery.  Yes, I thought I was stupid.  Changed battery.  Still kept going off.  I looked it up online, tried everything known to mankind.  Nothing. Called builder.  He said call electrician, who said, "Pull it off the wall.  Sounds like you have a defective alarm."  Does it sound like I'm having a good Read-a-thon?  A stalled start, fire department visit, tears over a squealing alarm that was bothering me and my neighbors, and half a post that was written that I had to bag because the meme was over.  *sigh*  I'm calming down.

I think I'll keep going with the Read-a-thon casually, but I'm a bit flustered right now, as well as feeling pretty defeated.  All is well though.  I will try to come back and be supportive.  Sorry, but my parade was rained on today.  At least it didn't happen in the middle of the night! 

I couldn't help but think of that hilarious scene from Friends where Phoebe's fire alarm kept going off no matter what she did.  I tried to embed it here from YouTube but they are all disarmed.  Here is the link if you want a good laugh.  At least it's a universal frustration we can laugh about!

Review: Love's First Light by Jamie Carie

One of the books I rotated into my reading was a book I won about a year ago from Allison's Attic of Books, called Love's First Light by Jamie Carie.  I hadn't even really heard much about the book, so I had few expectations and was pleasantly surprised by the nice read that it turned out to be!  Thank you to Allison for providing me with this book.

Synopsis:  Set in the time of the French Revolution, Christophe St. Laurent has just lost his entire aristocratic family to the revolutionary Robespierre.  Years after their annihilation, Robespierre still vows to have the head of any remaining aristocrats or their children, as he feels they have taken from the poor for much too long.  This forced Christophe into hiding, avoiding any possibility of running into Robespierre or his revolutionary followers.  One night as Christophe is out alone, he sees a beautiful young woman at a local cemetery, and after paying attention, notices her returning their night after night.  One day, the two lock eyes and feel a spark of interest.  The young woman was the widow Scarlett, pregnant and widowed by none other than Robespierre's younger brother.  The two fall in love, but the past lives and interests of them both could shatter their hope for a future together.

Review:  From the beginning, I really liked the easy manner in which Carie pulls the story together.  I found her sentence construction and story telling to be straight forward, yet engaging.  Honestly, it was an easy read that had me caring about the characters in such a way that I had to keep reading to know what was going to happen next. 

Although I know some of the history of the French Revolution, it was interesting to have a story that approached it, sympathetically, from the aristocrat's side.  This direction in story telling made me feel much more sympathy for those who lost their lives as children, who had nothing more than their family lineage to blame for their deaths.  I thought that Christophe's story, and the painful loss of his family made it all the more important for us as readers to see him happy again.  Having him fall in love with the equally saddened Scarlett seemed perfect, although the gap in their backgrounds definitely complicated the story and kept it moving.

Altogether, I found the novel to be a fun, engaging read.  Some of the "instant" falling in love sequences, when characters simply looked at someone and fell in love had skeptical me scoffing a little, but it was sweet.  I can't say that I know how that whole eyes locking from across the way and knowing you're in love thing would actually work, or if that exists, but it did seem to pull characters together that you genuinely cared about and wanted to see happy.  Who am I to drag my jaded views of love into the formula, right?  In the end, I would say it was a good, fast read, and an engaging story that I can recommend to anyone who enjoys a little historical fiction, and a clean, sweet romantic story.

*FTC Disclosure:  This book was won from another book blogger.  No monies were exchanged or earned for this review.

This book also counts as my 3rd and final book for the "Books I've Won Challenge."  That means I can officially say I've completed two book challenges for 2010!  I am pretty modest in the number of challenges and books I will commit to when I enter a challenge, so I can't say this is amazing, but nice to complete another challenge.  Thanks to Allison again for providing me with this copy of the novel to read!

48 Hour Challenge: Finish Line

I finished up the 48 Hour Challenge tonight. I spent more consistent time reading today, but will admit to not getting in as much time as I would have liked. This challenge was productive though, and I had a chance to read a pretty popular book that's been kicking around, The Hunger Games. It was a pretty good read, even if two chapters from the end, my mother yelled at me from the kitchen, "Put the book down now. It's time to eat lunch!" Admittedly, that was not a good moment to take a break, but I managed.

To wrap things up though, here are my statistics:

• Hours Spent Reading: 12 hours
• Books Completed: 3 1/2
• Pages Read: 1, 223 pages
• Hours Online: 5 1/2 --includes chat time w/ Dar about The Hunger Games

Here are the three books I finished:

I also got part way through:

Overall, I didn't quite reach my goals, but for as zombie-like I've been about sleep, I think that's pretty good! Now, I'm off to read some more before bed. Can you imagine? Thank you to MotherReader for hosting yet another great 48 Hour Challenge this year. Whether you joined in to read or not, I hope you've had a great weekend and read something great yourself!

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.

48 Hour Challenge: Hour 14 Check In

Okay, so it's a little past the 10 hour mark I said I'd report in, but that's all right. Can I just say that I think I have narcolepsy or mono? Ha, ha. Since getting here to Hawaii, all I've done is sleep, and I mean SLEEP. I started reading for about 30 minutes last night, and then fell fast asleep. I finally gave up and went to bed. Since getting up this morning though, I was determined to finish my first book before writing my update post.
Here are my stats:

• Hours Spent Reading: 3 1/2 hours
  
• Books Completed: 1, Strange Neighbors by Ashlyn Chase
  
• Pages Read: 354
  
• Online Time: 45 minutes
• Hours Into Challenge: 14 hours

Not a great start, but at least I was honest about my complete inability to be an around the clock reader! After about 10 hours of sleep, I think I'm ready to be a bit more focused today. I'm heading out to go for a walk (which I love to do when I read...I call myself the master walk-reader), and then I promised my mom we'd head out to a matinee today. That will also allow me to go pick up Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, since from what I understand, I'll instantly need to read it after The Hunger Games. I'm actually reading these with Dar, from Peeking Between the Pages, and she's already started The Hunger Games, so I better get going! Mahalo to everyone, and I'll check back in later. I hope your own reading is going well today.
Goals for today:

• Read for at least 6 to 7 more hours
• Finish The Hunger Games & purchase book two
• Take my mom to a movie today, as that's her one true wish since I arrived!
• Later tonight, circulate the web and Twitter to see how everyone else is doing.
• Beg another mango off of my neighbor? :)

Here are a few of the flowers in my mom's yard that I just couldn't resist snapping a picture to share!

48 Hour Challenge: Starting Point

Tonight I'm getting started with the 48 Hour Book Challenge being held by MotherReader. This is a great event, and one that each reader can use to simply read a few more good books, to catch up on reading challenges, and even to read to give money to charity. I would love to read for charity, but hadn't set anything up ahead of time, so I'm just going to try to cover books that I need to read for this fall, as well as books I've been wanting to read for quite some time.

Since I'm getting started a little later than I originally anticipated, I think I'll only be reading for a few hours before I go to bed. Sorry, but I'm not one of those folks how can stay up around the clock. Yes, I'm a bit of a pansy now!

Here are the details of how I'll be reading and posting over the next 48 Hours:

• Reading Time Goal: I'd like to read for 20 hours. Yes, that's mild, but probably realistic for me.
• Posting: Because we have a bit of time to cover, I think I'll just post about every eight to ten hours. That way I don't kill readers off with all of my posts!
• Books Read: Honestly, my only real goal is to read Hunger Games and Catching Fire with Dar, from Peeking Between the Pages. I'm so excited to join her in this, as I think we're quite possibly the only people on the planet who haven't yet read these books!
• Starting Time: 8:30 pm, Hawaiian time
  

Well, I'm off to get some reading done. I'm going to try to finish Strange Neighbors by Ashlyn Chase, an ARC I have to finish up. After that, who knows what I'll be reading. I do have a great list to choose from though!

Whether you're participating or not, happy reading! I'll be back in the morning to post my first update.