Who's Ready For Dewey's Readathon???

I am!!! I haven't participated in the readathon for a long time now. It hasn't felt right. It felt like it became less and less about the memory of Dewey who started it and the community around it. I know these are my own personal issues. I took Dewey's loss pretty hard. So it hurt when it just became "the readathon" and Dewey's name was often dropped. It hurt when her name was barely mentioned throughout the event. A lot of things about it hurt. I know the blogging community has grown a LOT since Dewey's passing and of course, most people blogging these days never knew Dewey or who she was. So like I said, a lot of this has been my own personal issues.

Dewey was an amazing person though. She's responsible for so much of what the book blogging community is today. She started the 24 hour readathon, she started Weekly Geeks....she was all about bringing bloggers together and forming long lasting friendships. And she did that with no drama at all. Dewey always made you feel that you were special and you just knew that you had a true friendship with her. If you mentioned in a comment that a book sounded really good that she had reviewed, it would show up in your mailbox! I mentioned once that I was having a hard time when my dad had been hospitalized and she sent me a book and a sweet card and it was so unexpected, but it was just who she was. I miss her. I miss her a lot. And I'm ready to celebrate her again instead of looking at the readathon as a reminder of what's NOT there anymore.

The fact is, as big as this community has gotten, and as drama filled as it can be sometimes and as political as it has gotten at times, it's still very personal to me. I have made some of the most amazing friends through blogging who have changed my life for the good and friends who I will hold in my heart for the rest of my life. I've made friends that I tell that I love them every time we talk because I truly do and because I don't get to see them every day and I never got to tell Dewey that. I don't want that to be unsaid. So as big as this community has gotten and as lost as I can feel in it sometimes, more often than not, I still love it just as much as I did on day one. I just have to remind myself of that sometimes.

So on to Dewey's 24 hour readathon!!! I probably won't get a chance to blog again before Saturday morning. I have to work tomorrow from 3-11 so I'll likely be going to bed as soon as I get home from work because I have to be up and ready to start reading at 7 AM on Saturday!! I've prepared as much as I can! I did all of my ironing and some of my weekend cleaning tonight so that I don't have to worry about that on Saturday. Saturday, I plan on waking up at 6:30, getting some coffee, posting my starting post and then getting started on reading!!

I'll be reading for charity as I always do when I participate in Dewey's Readathon! The charity I'll be reading for is the Arbor Day Foundation. I'll be donating 10 cents per page read to the foundation and my goal is to get 1000 pages read which would be $100! With all the books I read and all of the paper that the hospital I work for wastes, $100 could plant a lot of new trees and replace a lot of those books! And make paper for new ones ;)

So the most important question of all! What will I be reading? I'm mainly working on finishing the too many books that I have going right now...here's the pile as it stands for now:

From top to bottom:

• Macbeth by Shakespeare - Almost done with this one
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange - For when I want some poetry
• UnWholly by Neal Shusterman - Cant BELIEVE how little of this one I've read.
• The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling - Same..only read about 100 pages of this one so far.
• Absolute Death by Neil Gaiman - This came in the mail today and I'm SO SO SO excited about this one :D :D
• Not pictured here - The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan which is in my work bag. Haven't read much of that one at all. 

Now I would LOVE to read more than that, but I doubt I'll even get all of this read...in fact I'm pretty sure I won't :p I'll be happy to finish at least a few of these though! I need my mojo back! So who else is reading with me this weekend??? I seriously doubt that I'll make it the full 24 hours...I usually make it til about 3 in the morning then konk out :p We'll see what happens!