It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

My summer has begun! Late last week I wrapped up my spring semester at an Atlanta-area homeschool group where I teach middle school American history, and high school American literature and advanced literature and composition. These past two semesters have had me reading a lot to keep up with them. Now that school is out for me until the fall, I've got an ambitious reading list planned for the summer. Here's what's at the top of my stack:

In the car on audiobook: I'm waiting for one of several options to come up for me at the library. So for now, just a lot of 90s on 9.

On my iPod: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion: A Novel by Fannie Flagg

For fun (and variety): 
Jason Priestley: A Memoir by Jason Priestley
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power by Jimmy Carter

What are you reading?

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog.

Simon Callow's Charles Dickens

Two people have recently said exactly the same thing to me: that I must be planning to assign a lot of Dickens to my high schoolers this fall, because I'd loaded my Goodreads to-read shelf with a bunch of his novels. The real reason is that I've just finished Simon Callow's new biography, Charles Dickens (or called Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World in the U.S.), which I picked up in London to coincide with Callow's one-man play on Dickens which I saw (it was wonderful, by the way). For nearly two hours Callow gave the audience Dickens' bio, hitting all the highlights of his interesting life. Sound a little boring? It wasn't. Callow was highly entertaining. So was his book. I'd learned a lot of new information about Dickens on my 2010 trip to London when I visited his house museum in Bloomsbury. A lot of what Callow did for me though was give both extra information and a fresh perspective on what I already did know about Dickens. Also while reading the bio, I realized how few novels by Dickens I've actually read (only Bleak House, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol), so I'm motivated to change that. I've got Oliver Twist downloaded onto my Kindle to start when the right moment comes. Here are a few photos from the Charles Dickens Museum:

 

100 Books Read So Far in 2011

I, along with several of my reader friends, set ambitious reading goals for 2011 in Goodreads' 2011 Reading Challenge. Last year I read about 90 books, so I decided to make this year's goal an even 100 books. At an average of two books a week, I wasn't sure I could get there but knew I could get close. It turns out that I got there quicker than I thought, having finished the 100th book on December 5. It's a satisfying milestone, reached easier than I thought due to a multitude of audiobooks listened to in the car and counting the books I build in time in my work schedule to read for professional development.

When I knew I was getting close, I really wanted to make that 100th book a memorable one (i.e. not one for work or one I felt I wouldn't have anything to say/blog about once I'd finished). I chose well. About a month ago I was meeting with a client in their conference room where three out of four walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves for employees to borrow. The client offered to let me borrow any book that looked interesting, so I left with one that I'll return to them later. It seemed particularly appropriate. I read Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life, a delightful (and short) book about the thing Quindlen loves best, which is also the thing I love best.

Quindlen's comments about how some fictional characters felt more real to her than people she knew, how as a child she'd rather have read all afternoon than played outside, how some banned books really are the best books and how the face of reading might change in the future. Once I got to this part, I noted that the book was published in 1998, several years before I'd even heard of e-readers, but Quindlen knew then that reading would be changing.

It's always reassuring to know that there are others out there who read and enjoy it as much as I do. I'm happy to have read 100 books, and I look forward to fitting in a few more before 2012 begins.

What have you read this year?