Book in a Day: A Reluctantly Slow Reader’s Challenge

I am one of the very few authors out there who wasn’t a reader growing up. I actually hated to read as a kid. To me, reading equaled school work and why would I ever want to do school work for fun?

I’ve also always been a very slow reader so reading was a challenge for me growing up. Now, I do count myself as an avid reader. I LOVE to read. I love books (obviously). I’ve made a career out of books. But I still struggle with my slow reading speed and my short attention span. Even if it’s the best book I’ve ever read, it’ll still take me about a week to finish because I usually can only read for ten minutes at a time before my mind starts to wander and I start searching for other things to do.

Then a few months ago, a blogger friend of mine, Sara Santana of What a Nerd Girl Says posted her progress on Facebook as she read the final Mortal Instruments book (City of Heavenly Fire). She finished the entire thing…IN ONE DAY. The book is 725 pages long. To some of you this might not seem impressive. To me, it seemed damn-near impossible. It was like looking at someone who had super powers and thinking, “Wow. Must be nice to be a superhero.” But it also inspired me. I may not be able to increase my reading speed over night, but I think, if given enough motivation and self-encouragement, I might be able to improve my attention span.

So I came up with the idea to challenge myself to read an entire book in one day. Something I don’t think I’ve ever done before (unless you count picture books.)

Welcome to my BOOK IN A DAY challenge.

It starts tomorrow, July 8, 2014.

I will be tweeting my progress on my twitter page @JessicaBrody and on Instagram @JessicaBrody in case you have nothing better to do but follow along or check in on me, or, if you feel so inclined, send me some words of encouragement (I could use them!) I will also be timing myself to see just how many hours it takes me to read the entire book and so I can estimate how many hours I have remaining based on my current reading speed (because I’m a numbers nerd who likes stats. Don’t judge.)

Anyone is welcome to join me if they so choose. Just use the hashtag #BookInADay and we’ll support each other!

I selected by book with careful consideration. I chose to read a third book in a trilogy so that I’m already invested in the story and the characters and already know that I like the writing. Also so I’ll have a little extra motivation to get to the end (as I’ve been waiting two years to get to the end!) I will NOT be reading a 725 page book (I’ll leave those conquests to Sara and her superpowers), I chose a book with a fairly average number of pages for a YA book: 338 pages.

This is the book I’ll be attempting to finish in one day tomorrow:

I absolutely LOVED the first book in Kiera Cass’s trilogy so I’m excited to finally get to this one and hopefully (if I succeed) finish it in a day.

Wish me luck, everyone!