August 4th, 2014 I challenged three of my sisters to a 24-hour marathon of reading - a read-a-thon. Only two of them accepted the challenge while sister #1 thought it was dumb. I had broached the challenge days before and the other two were all for it but I kept putting it back. I wasn't scared or anything but I had a goal in mind and I wondered if I could actually achieve it. The goal was to read 1000 pages - about three books or less. It's small to other people but I thought finally, why not?

So it began promptly at nine o'clock at night, rather than midnight because I probably would have been asleep. Though the beginning was a slow start for me as I didn't actually start reading until around 10:30ish. My younger two sisters were already close to 100 pages in and showed no signs of stopping before I finally sat my butt on the couch and opened a book. My first novel was 'Once and for All' by Sarah Dessen.

Dessen is one of my favorite authors and I usually go through her contemporary books quick enough so I figured it was a good first pick to get my mind running. For the next two hours I moved from the couch, to another couch, to my moms bed, and finally back to the second couch. A little after one in the morning I was becoming bleary eyed and I had just under twenty pages left. I gave myself a pep talk that I was going to get through these eighteen or so pages and I was going to take a break and well, sleep. By 1:24 AM I closed the book and took a deep breath. Sister #2 was only 160ish pages in her book as she had kitchen duty and spent the last hour or so cleaning. Sister #3 was more than halfway through her book and close to my current page count. With the finished book I had 357 pages while sister #3 had around 280. I was going to sleep. She was not.

It took me awhile to fall asleep after I counted everyone's pages because if sister #3 was going to keep reading, she was going to beat me. She's seven years younger than me and I could not let her win. But I did fall asleep.

For nine hours. I WAS NINE HOURS BEHIND.

I woke up and sister #2 was asleep while sister #3 was already onto her next book, about 150 pages in. Including the pages she finished in the previous book she read, she was almost 300 pages ahead of me! A thirteen-year-old was ahead of me in reading. I plucked my next read from my bookshelves, 'We Should Hang Out Sometime' by Josh Sundquist, and tried to get back into the spirit of reading and winning.

But I couldn't, I was too distracted. My younger brothers were watching the cartoon 'Avatar' and as I grew up with the show I couldn't help but watch along with them and offer some commentary on the characters. For inspiration, I pulled up a previous conversation I had with my roommate from college and told her what was going on.

*Names have been scribbled out for privacy*

With this in mind, I began to read and I didn't stop until I had to shower, take sister #1 to her boyfriend's house and make lunch. But after that, I didn't stop until I finished the book a little after five. Sister #2 had given up and decided to watch 'FRIENDS' and sister #3 was another hundred pages in. At this point I was still thirty or so pages behind her so I immediately began the third book, 'NIL' by Lynne Matson.

This book was by far the most interesting of the other two and I was quickly immersed in the world. I had a few breaks while reading this as well that included going to the store for dinner and dinner itself. At this point it was 8:30 PM and I was only 60 pages from my goal of 1000 pages. At this point I was also ahead of sister #3 so I wasn't trying to speed read but I really wanted to hit 1000 pages.

Fast forward thirty minutes and I was forty or so pages from the ending. I was also nineteen pages short from my 1000 paged goal. I was a bit upset and sister #3 was making fun of me. But then I remembered I began to read 'The Awakening' by Kate Chopin earlier, thinking I could read it but I stopped after five chapters and couldn't get into as quickly as I thought. In the end I read only sixteen pages of that and my total that came to 997 pages total in 24 hours.

My pride is still a little stung but not as bad as I beat my sisters so all in all, I called it a good day.

Though me and my sisters have decided to do another marathon of reading but this time the whole 24 hours as in no sleep this time, or we'll try to have no sleep, this coming Christmas break as we will all be home, sister #1 included in this one as well.

If anyone would like to join us, I challenge you to.