Readathon: April 2017 Edition

This is my first Readathon without Murchie. I'll think of him often today.

Hello, friends and fellow Readathonners! The best day of the spring is upon us, and I for one am ready to dive straight in and read my heart out.

My BIG PLANS for today include a couple (or a few) dozen issues of various X-Men series, interspersed with print comics, my current audiobook, and some prose whenever I need to recharge my device. I'll also be helping out on the official Instagram feed during the later half of the 'thon, alongside the lovely Kelly of The Written World, and I'm going to try to maintain a presence on Litsy. You can find me there as xicanti.

I'll also edit this post with periodic updates about what I'm reading, what I'm eating, and what else I'm doing with my time. (Because as much as I love reading, I always do a couple other things with my time.) The most recent update will always appear at the top.

Hour Twenty-Two-ish

My last session involved lots of Instagramming, some TV in Korean so I had to read it, and far less non-TV reading than I would've liked. In the piddly forty-five minutes I actually read, though, I did start FOOL'S QUEST by Robin Hobb for the second time and creep a little bit further through X-FACTOR.

I'd like to get a bit more read before the Readathon ends, so this'll be my last blog update. I'll still be awake and active on social media, though! With any luck, I can make this my second (?) full Readathon.

To aid in that, I'm currently drinking my beloved Jumpy Monkey tea, and I'm considering having second supper. There're enough leftovers to make up a good-sized taco bowl, if I cut my remaining tortilla up and fry it into chips. Alas, I'll have to pass on more of my buffalo & bleu cheese chips as I hurt my tongue eating caramel corn and I don't think I can take anything with that particular texture.

I may watch another shorter TV episode, too. Depends how sleepy I am.

Total Time Read:

• Seven hours, fifty-nine minutes

Books/Series Explored:

• X-MEN (2010)
• FAITH: HOLLYWOOD AND VINE
• GENEXT UNITED
• MY BRILLIANT FRIEND
• X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT
• EXCALIBUR: MOJO MAYHEM
• X-FACTOR (1986)
• FOOL'S QUEST

Food & Drink Consumed:

• two cups coffee
• many glasses of water (I always lose track)
• one bowl Krave cereal, sans milk
• three bowls chocolate caramel corn, plus a bunch of individual pieces I nabbed out of the big bowl as the mood took me. I'm gonna cut myself off for the rest of the night.
• one packet seaweed snacks
• some Buffalo wing & bleu cheese chips
• two crumbled tofu tacos with zucchini, corn, black beans, edamame, cabbage, radishes, and cilantro lime crema
• one cup iced Southern Butter Pecan coffee
• one bowl coconut yogurt
• one piece fancy Easter bread whose name I can't remember
• two cups Jumpy Monkey tea

Music Listened To:

• SPEED OF DARKNESS - Flogging Molly

Other Activities:

• ablutions
• social media
• dishes
• generalized universe contemplation
• long-ass walk
• supper preparation and consumption
• Instagrammery
• Korean drama consumption

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Hour Seventeen, Maybe?

I'm bad at time on an average day. The Readathon basically destroys my ability to count hours.

But yes! I read things during my last session! Namely, I finished up the X-MEN AND ALPHA FLIGHT miniseries (if you can call two jumbo comics a miniseries), then turned my attention to MOJO MAYHEM, the second EXCALIBUR jumbo special. MOJO MAYHEM was especially fun, even though I'm still bummed Mojo greenlit the X-Babies instead of the team where Rogue was an adorable badger (or maybe an adorable skunk. She was a small, fuzzy, fat animal with a white strip down her nose, is what I'm saying, and I'd have gushed over her even if Rogue weren't my favourite because awwwwwwww).

I also got through three more issues of the original X-FACTOR before I started my shift on the official Readathon Instagram feed. Y'all can come find me there until I fall asleep, after which point Kelly will leap back into the fray.

I might read some prose before I return to comics. Or maybe I'll watch a TV show based on a book, which totally counts. Or a Korean drama, which also counts because I don't speak Korean and will have to READ subtitles!

Total Time Read:

• Seven hours, fifteen minutes

Books/Series Explored:

• X-MEN (2010)
• FAITH: HOLLYWOOD AND VINE
• GENEXT UNITED
• MY BRILLIANT FRIEND
• X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT
• EXCALIBUR: MOJO MAYHEM
• X-FACTOR (1986)

Food & Drink Consumed:

• two cups coffee
• many glasses of water (I always lose track)
• one bowl Krave cereal, sans milk
• three bowls chocolate caramel corn, plus a bunch of individual pieces I nabbed out of the big bowl as the mood took me. I'm gonna cut myself off for the rest of the night.
• one packet seaweed snacks
• some Buffalo wing & bleu cheese chips
• two crumbled tofu tacos with zucchini, corn, black beans, edamame, cabbage, radishes, and cilantro lime crema
• one cup iced Southern Butter Pecan coffee

Music Listened To:

• SPEED OF DARKNESS - Flogging Molly

Other Activities:

• ablutions
• social media
• dishes
• generalized universe contemplation
• long-ass walk
• supper preparation and consumption
• Instagrammery

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Hour Eleven or Twelve or Thirteen or Something

(I thought it was Hour Twelve, but the official Readathon site says Hour Eleven, but I know they were having some problems earlier so maybe there's a glitch? And when I count on my fingers, it's possible this is Hour Thirteen, but I'm at the part of the Readathon where I'm kind of loopy so I dunno if I can trust that.)

Well, friends, I didn't have the mostly readerly four hours in the world, but I sure did have a good time. It was briefly and gloriously warm this afternoon, so I grabbed my iPod and went for a walk with MY BRILLIANT FRIEND by Elena Ferrante.

Since I'm me, I also loaded X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT #1 on my phone so's I could read comics while I sat on a bench near a fountain, as one does. It felt mighty good to wallow in some mid-80s Chris Claremont in the great outdoors.

Hey! Here's a weird thing! When I started my massive X-Men reading project, I googled Chris Claremont in anticipation of his epic run and somehow got the impression he wrote X-Men material right up until the day he died--in 1998. I believed this for months and months into the project and was puzzled to discover post-1998 Claremont-authored stuff in my reading list.

Because Claremont? Is still very much alive and hard at work. In fact, this very day I saw tweets from a fan who just met him and got him to sign some major Kitty Pryde issues while a butterfly swooped around his head.

Maybe someone changed his Wikipedia page as a tasteless joke and I happened to look at it at exactly the wrong time? Maybe I got someone else mixed up with Chris Claremont? Perhaps we'll never know.

(Unless one of y'all can point me towards a comics creator who died in 1998 and whom I might conceivably have confused with Claremont.)

Anyways, I read comics on a bench and ran out of audiobook during the latter part of my walk, right after I found eight four-, five-, and six-leaf clovers. (This was only my third six-leaf, so I'm pretty excited about it.) Once the book ended, I paused my stopwatch and switched to Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men, which is my current FAVOURITE THING EVER OMG.

I kept at it while I made tacos for supper. Now I'm gonna dive back into some comics until such time as I need to recharge my battery and/or my eyes hurt.

Total Time Read:

• Five hours, two minutes

Books/Series Explored:

• X-MEN (2010)
• FAITH: HOLLYWOOD AND VINE
• GENEXT UNITED
• MY BRILLIANT FRIEND
• X-MEN/ALPHA FLIGHT

Food & Drink Consumed:

• two cups coffee
• many glasses of water (I always lose track)
• one bowl Krave cereal, sans milk
• two bowls chocolate caramel corn, plus a bunch of individual pieces I nabbed out of the big bowl as the mood took me
• one packet seaweed snacks
• some Buffalo wing & bleu cheese chips
• two crumbled tofu tacos with zucchini, corn, black beans, edamame, cabbage, radishes, and cilantro lime crema

Music Listened To:

• SPEED OF DARKNESS - Flogging Molly

Other Activities:

• ablutions
• social media
• dishes
• generalized universe contemplation
• long-ass walk
• supper preparation and consumption

---

Hour Eight

Last session, I finished my first Valiant comic, knocked a miniseries off my X-Men reading list, and spent a little time with my audiobook. Whee!

Speaking of that Valiant comic, y'all ought to check out FAITH: HOLLYWOOD AND VINE. It's an awesome intro to Faith as a character and to the wider universe. I can't wait for the next volume!

So far as snacks go, I had another bowl of chocolate caramel corn, a packet of seaweed snacks (THE BEST THING), and a couple of buffalo & bleu cheese chips. In the next couple of hours, I expect to eat a granola bar or two, then make some tacos and maybe have a proper go at the chips. We'll see where my tastebuds lead me.

Total Time Read:

• Three hours, thirty-five minutes

Books/Series Explored:

• X-MEN (2010)
• FAITH: HOLLYWOOD AND VINE
• GENEXT UNITED
• MY BRILLIANT FRIEND

Food & Drink Consumed:

• two cups coffee
• many glasses of water (I always lose track)
• one bowl Krave cereal, sans milk
• two bowls chocolate caramel corn
• one packet seaweed snacks

Music Listened To:

• SPEED OF DARKNESS - Flogging Molly

Other Activities:

• ablutions
• social media
• dishes
• generalized universe contemplation

---

Hour Four

Well, I woke up on time and decided to read in bed for a while instead of rushing to eat breakfast and update my blog. It was an excellent decision and one I think I'm gonna stick to for all future Readathons.

So far I've read for an hour and eighteen minutes (thanks, stopwatch app!) and finished ten issues of X-MEN (2010). That brought me to the end of the series and the dregs of my battery, so I'll be reading paper books for the next hour or two.

My brain's still mushy (I never can manage to sleep well before a Readathon; it's like Christmas), so here's the opening event survey instead of anything more [insert apt word I can't think of because of mushy-brain]:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Manitoba, right in the middle of North America.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? X-MEN BINGE, BABY! I want to finish the original X-FACTOR and a couple more miniseries.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? I made some amazing chocolate caramel corn last night and I'm gonna be digging into it throughout the day. I'm also excited to make my favourite crumbled tofu tacos with zucchini and cilantro lime crema.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I'm not a morning person. Like, at all.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? This is my eighteenth Readathon, unless I counted wrong (see: mushy brain), and I think I've got a pretty good system in place. Except, as previously stated, I'm totally gonna spend the first hour reading in bed from now on. BEST WAY TO GO.

And now, my personal tracking meme thing for Hours One through Three:

Time Read:

• One hour, eighteen minutes

Books/Series Explored:

• X-MEN (2010)

Food & Drink Consumed:

• two cups coffee
• one glass water
• one bowl Krave cereal, sans milk
• one bowl chocolate caramel corn

Music Listened To:

• None so far.

Other Activities:

• ablutions
• social media

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Hour One

A confession: I'm not awake yet. Or I'm awake but I'm still stumbling around, feeding myself and being too lazy to update this accordingly.

But hey, you're awake! Good for you!

Here's the little survey thing I'll be using to track my progress today:

Time Read:

• None so far

Books/Series Explored:

• None so far

Food & Drink Consumed:

• None so far (unless I'm having breakfast as we speak)

Music Listened To:

• None so far. (Do you sense a pattern?)

Other Activities:

• None so far.