I know that neither of the reading challenges I'm participating in this weekend have officially finished, and I could easily squeeze more reading time in if I wanted to stay up all night. But, the last three hours of my evening have been spent reading the hashtag on Twitter — #YASaves. The hashtag ended up trending last night for quite a while, and it's in response to an article published by the Wall Street Journal. I've linked it here, but it's likely to make you angry... It's an article talking about how horrible the current YA market is, because so many of the books deal with dark topics like cutting, suicide, abuse, eating disorders and more.
Wait, what?! Seriously?! Somedays, I really hate people.
I could seriously rant about this for a long time. But, I won't. I'm going to rein in my tongue and accept that the many YASaves tweets last night from myself and so, so many others is enough to express my anger and disappointment on the issue. So, I will simply say that I am, once again, incredibly disappointed that they are letting someone who doesn't read YA lit, or understand the importance of YA lit to millions of people, speak as if they are the authority and the voice of the people. Really? Sigh. If you want people to take you seriously, you should probably read the books you are dismissing, demeaning and condemning.
I know I said I wouldn't really rant. But I had to let just a little out. Maybe later I'll have more to say, but right now, all I want to do is spew venom at the people who are so small minded they can't understand that not talking about a problem doesn't make it magically disappear, so I'm going to move on.
I spent hours on Twitter tweeting my own thoughts and reading about the experiences and thoughts of others. Which means, I wasn't reading my books.: P Because I spent to much time doing things not reading, I'm choosing to stop my readathons now, so that I can get some sleep tonight, and be awake and alert when I have to help keep 8 different 5 years old attentive and sitting still for 2 hours.
I did keep a fairly detailed accounting of my time spent on the challenge, but because I'm stopping so early, I don't actually think that time really makes a difference at this point, so I'll just tell you what I read.:)
Even with all the time I spent doing other things, I did manage to get 5 different books read, 6 if you count the book I read Friday morning, before I 'officially' started my challenge. I read:
What Daddy Did by Neal Shusterman (Friday, before the challenge began)
Stolen by Lucy Christopher
The Mermaid Summer by Mollie Hunter
The Boys Next Door by Jennifer Echols
Endless Summer — Jennifer Echols
King of the Wind — Marguerite Henry
Even though I spent a lot of time doing other things, I'm pretty proud of my reading progress this weekend. I *might* get a little more done tomorrow, but who knows. For now, I'm just glad I was able to participate and managed to read a little more than normal.:)