Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Time: Saturday, 4:45 p.m. 16.75 hours in, 31.25 to go.

Books Finished: 1. Ironside by Holly Black. (Awesome. More on that later.)

Pages Read: 323.

Time Spent Reading: 5 hours.

Math is hard. Little Willow is kicking my ass.

On to the next book.

First, I forgot to mention why I’m Book Challenging solo. Jules really wanted to participate too, but she has a storytelling gig today. Break a leg, Jules!

Second, the Progress So Far: not great. I kicked this off at midnight, having just watched a movie and had a late dinner with the husband. Including beer. I took a book to bed with me, but fell asleep before I’d actually opened it. An inauspicious beginning, but I tried to catch up this morning. I read Ironside by Holly Black between 9:30 to 12:45, then had to tap out to make lunch for self and husband, eat lunch, drive husband to subway station, and shower.

Score so far: out of 15 hours, I’ve spent 3.25 reading, and have 226 pages under my belt. Not awesome. And I made the mistake of peeking around at other contenders blogs to see how they’re doing. People: have you SEEN how much Little Willow’s read? I knew she was going to be serious competition, but DAMN.

It’s now 3:00. Husband (i.e., distraction) is safely on his way out of town, I’m brewing coffee to make Mexican Cocoa, and I’m about to get back in the ring. Can’t let Team 7-Imp down. Gots ta represent, yo.

Good morning. It’s now Saturday, a few minutes past midnight, Eastern time. I’ll be participating in MotherReader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge from now until 12:01 a.m. Monday. I have a huge stack o’ books, and I’m ready to play.

May the best reader win!

Welcome back! Believe it or not, we got tagged a third time for this meme, by Jone of Check It Out!. That’s what happens when you procrastinate on responding to the first tag. Good thing we’d already planned a sequel.

Here’s part two of our response to the 8 Things Meme. This time, we’ll be listing 8 things not many people know about each other. Mwah-ha-ha-ha!

The rules, again, are as follows:

Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

eisha: Here’s my list of 8 Things You May Not Know About Jules. I’ll try to keep it clean…

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Hey, all. We’ve been tagged TWICE in the past two days with the “8 Things” meme. So here’s what we decided to do. First, in today’s post, we’re going to play it straight for Kelly’s tag, and each list 8 random things about ourselves. Then, in our next post, we’ll each list 8 random things about the OTHER person for Michele’s tag. What will we reveal about each other? When we’ve been friends for nearly half our lives? And even roommates for a couple of years? Ooh, you’ll just have to tune in and see…

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Hey, everyone. Two random things:

1*  Jules insists that we share these photos of Eisha at Grace Lin’s birthday party. The one with Anna Alter is by Elaine Magliaro and is posted at Wild Rose Reader. And the one with Elaine is by Alvina Ling, from the Blue Rose Girls.

2*  A while back, Jules suggested the idea of interviewing Hank Green, the elusive other half of Brotherhood 2.0 and founder of EcoGeek. The idea was very warmly received by our fellow bloggers. We’re happy to report that he was very pleased with the idea, too!

Now, since everyone seemed so enthusiastic about it, we thought we’d share this opportunity with the rest of you, too. Is there anything you’d like us to ask Hank? We’d love to hear from you – just include your questions in the comments here, or email us at seventhings *at* gmail *dot* com.

{Anyone else with children listening to Dan Zane’s new CD suddenly want to break into song when you hear “hear ye”? Alkelda?! Track #6, the “Choo choo Ch’ Boogie,” opens with Rankin’ Don a.k.a. Father Goose belting that out . . . but I digress}.

Anyway, Eisha and I don’t normally do posts announcing things such as the new issue of The Edge of the Forest, ’cause, well . . . we figure everyone else is covering it and that — if you have any sense — you read Big A little a anyway and already know about it. But this is just to say that you all should go over and read Volume II, Issue 5 (since I started the sentence that way, I’ll have visions of sweet, cold plums in my head all day), ’cause Kelly and her writers work so hard on this publication and it’s so very good. There’s a lot of great stuff in this issue, as always, including Little Willow’s feature on The Bermudez Triangle and how it’s currently being challenged in Oklahoma, which she was telling us about on Sunday. Kelly also tells us all about Tracy Grand’s JacketFlap.

Every issue is worth reading, and the articles never disappoint, but this is just to say that it’s there and kudos to Kelly and her crew for such an informative online monthly.

Happy birthday to my very best friend, the ultimate co-blogger, a super mom, and an all-around kick-ass human being. Jules, I mean this from the bottom of my heart…

 YOU ROCK!!!!

 You also look absolutely fabulous for, ahem, 24.

Susan Thomsen asked me to do a write-up about a project from my former life (at least it feels like that anyway) over at Chicken Spaghetti. Take some children’s lit, American Sign Language, hand-flapping actors, and theatre and mix it all together, and that’s what the write-up is about. If you’re interested, it’s here . . . Now back to our program . . . If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t miss Elaine’s interview below or her new blog, the Wild Rose Reader. Bye for now and until next time . . .

…Twice, in fact, over the past two weeks. First by Fuse #8, as a “Thinking Blog.” And then by Lindsey at Zee Says to list 5 non-bookish blogs that we read. So we’re multi-tasking by responding to both memes in one post.

First, the Thinking Blog meme. We’re flattered. And a little baffled. We mean, yeah, we’ve got advanced degrees and stuff, but we also say “dude” a lot. It’s actually pretty funny, if you look at the reviews we were cranking out when we first started this blog back in August. They’re all “blah blah protagonist’s motivation blah alliteration blah blah synecdoche yadda yadda pathetic fallacy blah.” We were trying so hard to be, you know, professional and stuff. Now we tend to trade knock-knock jokes back and forth, and ask people what their favorite curse word is. And yet we got tagged, by one of the smartest blogs in the kidlitosphere. Go fig. Maybe it’s just a ploy by the intrepid Ms. Fuse to get Eisha’s boots. (Yeah, that’s right, I’m on to you, Bird…)   

Right, so, anyway… In return, we’d like to tag a few more Thinking Blogs we dig: Chicken Spaghetti, Propernoun.net, the Excelsior File, the NCBLA blog, and Journey Woman. Thanks, all, for providing smart, interesting content and unique perspectives on literature and other issues we care about.

Second: the Non-Lit-Blogs meme. We’re pretty heavy on the lit-related blogs, but between us we were able to come up with some that aren’t all about books. Read the rest of this entry �