In an hour or so, the 24 Hour Readathon begins! We’re all ready here — me, my wife, and our bunnies.

Not sure how long any of us are going to be reading for, but the wife definitely isn’t staying up overnight. Much as I’d like to, I haven’t for a few years, so I might not make it through the night either. But even a few hours dedicated to reading are well spent. All my updates are going to be edited into this post, so it might get a little long, but at least I won’t be doing tons of posts!

13.59: About to start, but the wife isn’t home from groceries yet and we haven’t set up her update post on this blog (coming soon!) yet. Still, here’s the opening meme:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? Cloudy Belgium!
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? Probably Waking Gods. It’s certainly the one my wife is most looking forward to me having read…
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? We don’t really have many snacks lined up. No doubt I’ll demand a mug cake at some point.
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! I’m taking this weekend for reading out of my exam revision time. Cell bio, human bio and ecology, coming up in early June. Save me.
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? As always, I’m going to take it easy; read if I feel like it, stop if I don’t. I haven’t done the full 24 hours in a long time, and that’s fine by me.

Now I’ll just get laundry on and groceries in and then start — probably with The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery. My stack is here, though I probably won’t be sticking to it very well!

14.58: I’m about 80 pages into The Soul of an Octopus. Paused for a bunny snuggle (with Breakfast, the brown bun pictured above; Hulk, our grey lady bun, is sulking on a shelf, appropriately enough) and to help the wife pick a new book. (Her update post is up here, by the way!)

15.28: We both just totally derailed to eat hummus and cheese doritos, and now the wife is off to get us cornbread, more hummus, and some chilli. If you’re in Belgium and within reach of Leuven, the hot dogs at Wurst are okay, but the hummus is amazing.

16.22: I read more while Lisa was out, but then she came back with a copy of the new volume of Saga, some cornbread still warm and fresh, and a pot each of chilli and a pot each of hummus. Om, nom, nom.

17.16: Almost teared up after the death of one of the octopuses mentioned in this book. Non-fiction is not normally so heartwrenching! And here’s a photo of me and the wife and Breakfast chillin’. Hulk is still on her shelf.

18.14: Just finished The Soul of an Octopus. Fascinating book. In the meantime, Breakfast and Hulk have been exploring the flat together without much supervision, for once. There’s been no violence, yet! I’m going to have a break now and play some Stardew Valley, and then I should get on with reading Waking Gods — before my wife explodes.

19.36: Reading Waking Gods now, have been for maybe half an hour. Annoyingly, my Kindle’s running out of charge, though.

21.07: I just took a break after getting to about halfway through Waking Gods, and we ended up taking the bunnies for a drive (the slight stress helps bunnies bond). Now they’re shockingly quiet…

23.17: Yeah, nope, not feeling it. Which is sad. Maybe I’ll be back tomorrow?