June 08, 2008

48 Hour Challenge Completed


The Finish Line
I am glad it is over because it became clear rather early on that I wasn't going to do very well. A 48 hour reading binge doesn't bode well with running a family, especially when the brunt of the reading is to take place on my busiest chore day. My husband did help a bit when he took all the kiddos to the movies to see Ironman. Despite this most wonderful of reprieves I only read 273 pages divided between two books. I mistakenly thought the last 100 pages of The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery would be a breeze to finish. Those 100 pages ended up taking me 4 hours. That's slow even by my standards. The rest of my frequently interrupted time was put into T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone. I have another 100 pages to finish it. If we combine the two books together I can safely say I read 1 book. Disappointing. On the bright side, maybe I'll win a booby prize for being the biggest loser. =)

4 comments:

Vasilly said...

Don't beat yourself up so much. I totally understand where you are coming from. There are five kids living with me and I thought that The Secret Garden would be an easy read and it wasn't. I barely finished in time. One the bright side, at least you were able to participate.

Lenore Appelhans said...

I found it hard enough to stick to (oh so many chores calling and my cat meowing) and I don't have kids.

Unknown said...

Don't be so hard on yourself. I think you did great. It's really hard to do something like this when you have a family. I was only able to do as much as I did because I only have one child, and he's almost a teen and thus fairly self-sufficient. And there are others who read much more than I did. I think you should be proud of yourself for what you did accomplish. And like I posted on MotherReader's blog, I think we're all winners just for making reading a priority. (And for those of us with kids, it has the added bonus of modeling the importance of reading for them!)

Petunia said...

Thanks all. Apparently I was a cranky-pants yesterday. My apologies. I did have a good time and I will participate again in the future. 273 pages is probably about 200 pages more than I would have gotten read without this challenge. Thanks for all the encouragement.