Mini Readathon: The readathon for people with reasonable expectations

I'm sitting here at my computer at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday before even visiting the coffee fountain, dispenser of all life.

But that's the last unreasonable thing I'll do today, because the minithon is all about reading miniature books, eating miniature snacks, taking frequent social media breaks to see what everyone else is eating and reading, and doing so for a miniature period of time (eight hours . . . or less, for those of us who have a wedding to attend at 2 p.m. and/or just wander away at some point in a mini-snack-induced daze).

So what am I reading?

I was listening to a Literary Disco podcast the other day, and one of the hosts was talking about how he and his wife have started reading to their newborn baby to get her into a bedtime routine. Right now, they're doing The Wind in the Willows, and he talked about how surprisingly adult the prose is and how strange it is to revisit the book as an adult.

Then I went to Disneyland and hit up Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, which gave me the vague feeling that Jay Gatsby was partially modeled after a reckless amphibian, and that's just not a hunch you leave unexplored.

Perhaps we all aspire to be J. Thaddeus Toad. The waistcoats alone!

So that's all I have planned to read today, because having a stack of books at my elbow has never seemed to work for me. Although I do have several comics here that I might intersperse among the antics of besuited woodland creatures.

Onward and snackward!

*FAST-FORWARD EIGHT HOURS*

Well, I didn't get very much reading done, on account of I had to go to a wedding ceremony midway through and didn't deem it wise to carry on reading during the ceremony.

But I did get through fifty pages of The Wind in the Willows and finish volume 1 of Manifest Destiny and consume pizza bagels and mini Oreos and a full-size bagel and a tiny can of Sierra Mist and two regular-size cups of coffee.

Pretty sure those are the rules.

Thanks for hosting, Tika!

Minireadathon: I'M AWAKE I'M AWAKE. WhadidImiss?

The Minithon's been in progress for about 2 hours now, and I've just stumbled out of my cave and toward the coffee. This is why Angelenos are notorious for being late to everything: Pacific Standard Time, that cruel minx.

I tentatively planned my reading for this thing, but it's mainly just whatever books I'm in the middle of right now.

• I'm halfway through Elizabeth McCracken's Thunderstruck & Other Stories (short stories are miniature longer stories).
• I'm also halfway through Middlemarch (not miniature in girth, no, but the people in the cover art are quite small) and determined to finish it by 2015, so help me.
• I've been saving Horrorstor for this day because I have a feeling it will whiz along. And it's about an IKEA, basically, where all the furniture and the meat products come in pieces. Small pieces.
• Sex Criminals Volume 1 is a comic and therefore inherently miniature. Let's hope nothing inside is miniature. *nudge-nudge*
• Oh yeah, and I checked out a couple of Star Wars middle-grade chapter books yesterday because of reasons.

I have coffee in my cup. I have miniature quiches in the oven. READY, SET . . .

UPDATE: It's after 7 p.m. now, and I've just kind of . . . kept reading and eating. But I guess I can't keep counting all this toward my minithon achievements indefinitely. Otherwise I'll be 83 and still making a list of all the tiny foods I've accomplished, and then it will be a list with just PRUNES written over and over and over.

Despite starting the minireadathon 2 hours late and going shoe shopping in the middle of it, I did manage to put the following into my brain and/or face:

• One heart-achingly beautiful short story from Thunderstruck (16 pages)
• The entirety of Horrorstor, which fit the mini theme even more closely than I thought because so MANY things were in small pieces by the end (243 pages)
• Three mugs of coffee
• Seven tiny spinach quiches
• Three teensy oranges
• Innumerable cheddar Goldfish
• Half an ahi tuna slider

But I've got all these snacks left over . . .