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Welcome to the first installment of “The Reading Report”! My hope for this series to keep not only a record of the books I am currently reading and have finished, but also to keep an ongoing conversation with you about your reading life! In Volume 1, I will only be sharing a list of what I have read over the past year, just to give us a jumping off point. It is pretty long, but I wanted to get these recorded someplace besides my old planner. So, let’s get started, shall we?
Books Finished. . .
I started keeping a running tally of books I finished in September 2016, so I am going to start my “Reading Year” there. At first I included on this list chapter books I had read aloud to my 6 year old son, but I have not been doing that lately since they are all on his school reading list. So I will not include them in this post, either. Goodness knows my list is long enough already!
September 2016:
- Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (listened to audio on Librivox)
- Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall (pre-reading for AmblesideOnline, will be noted by the abbreviation PR-AO going forward)
- Minds More Awake by Anne White
October 2016:
- At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald (PR-AO)
- The Little Duke by Charlotte Yonge (PR-AO)
- The Water-babies by Charles Kingsley
- Penrod by Booth Tarkington
- Abel’s Island by William Stieg (read totally for fun after finding it for $.50 at Goodwill)
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (PR-AO)
- The Wonder Book for Boys and Girls by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Heroes by Charles Kingsley (PR-AO)
November 2016
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (inspired to read this one by a discussion on the CiRCE Close Reads Podcast)
- Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
- Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne (PR-AO)
- Kim by Rudyard Kipling (PR-AO, followed a discussion on the AO Forums)
- An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott
December 2016
- Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat (PR-AO)
- The Hobbit by J. R. Tolkien (This was a reread just for fun. Part of it I listened to on audio, read by Kara Schallenberg of kayray.org.)
January 2017
For some reason I have no record of books I finished this month. I think I had started my slower reading at that point, and it was getting a little more difficult to get through as much. We also started our first year with AmblesideOnline, so I had a little more on my plate school-wise.
February 2017
- Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers (read along with the CiRCE Close Reads podcast discussion)
- The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (I listened to this on audio via Librivox and then read each act afterword. This was another book discussion in which I participated on the AO Forum.)
March 2017
- The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan (I found out about this one and the next by Buchan, which are part of a series about a World War 1 spy, from Brandy Vencel at Afterthoughts.)
- Greenmantle by John Buchan
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Re-read for fun and as part of a discussion on AO Forums)
April 2017
- Lady Ludlow by Elizabeth Gaskell
- Death at the Excelsior and Other Stories by P. G. Wodehouse
And that is where my list of books finished ends. In May we had a lot going on in our family. Plus, the weather was pretty much perfect for spending time playing with the kids outside, so there was less time for just sitting around reading. I also started adding some more longer term reading to my plate. But completing 25 books in about 9 months isn’t too shabby for a slow reader! I have not set specific goals for how many books I would like to read in a year, although I know a lot of people do. I am more interested in quality over quantity, at least at this point. How about you? Do you set goals for your reading? Do you track what you have read/are reading in some way? I would love to hear about it in the comments!
Be sure to come back for Volume 2 of The Reading Report in which I will be talking about my actual current booklist! Until, then, go get lost in a story!
