Plans for the 48-Hour Book Challenge

So, MotherReader announced the official date and rules for the Seventh Annual 48-Hour Book Challenge about two weeks ago. If you've never  heard of such a thing, here's the lowdown on one of the Kidlitosphere's tentpole events.

Basically, we pick a span of 48 hours within the selected weekend and read. Yep. That's it in a nutshell. We read for 48 hours, or as close to it as we can get without suffering hallucinations. We also blog about it. So, we read and we blog for 48 hours. If you read that description and went, "Ooo!", think about joining us. If you read that and went, "Wow, these people are cool but nuts" . . . think about joining us anyway. There are very few hardcore enough to actually read for 48 hours straight. I myself have never broken the 30 hour mark because, y'know, sleep. I like it.

(If you read that and went, "Why would anyone want to read for 48 minutes, much less 48 hours?" I don't think you're on the right blog.)

We also gab on Twitter, Facebook, and each others' blogs. And finally, we tally up what we've done and pledge money to various charities. This year, MotherReader has formalized it and asked us all to donate to Book People Unite for Reading is Fundamental, which has had its budget slashed like a cheerleader in a horror flick.

It's a community-builder (all that gabbing!), it's a marathon, it winnows down our TBR stacks, it flexes our blogging muscles, and it's a way of harnessing all that energy into doing good. How can you lose?

I've been contemplating my plan of attack. I tend to pick a theme and stick with it. I've done Books I Told Someone I'd Read, ARC-a-Palooza, and Books I Can't Wait to Read. I've had the best success with the last theme, so I'll go with that again. I'm already trawling through my LibraryThing wishlist and putting in my order at work for those books that make me do a little happy chair dance.

In past years, I've written each review and put them up immediately . . . then proceeded to let my blog stagnate over the summer, because a children's librarian during Summer Reading Program is analogous to a one-armed paper hanger. So this year, I'm still going to write the reviews, but what I'll post during 48HBC will be the bare-bones info about the book and the time, plus capsules or comments. Then I'll have a backlog of reviews to go up during the summer. This will be especially handy since many of things I already know I want to read are electronic ARCs from NetGalley, some many months out, and I prefer to post those as close to the actual street date as I can.

So that's my plan. What about yours? Will you join us? Will you cheer us on? What will you read? Share!