Saturday, June 20, 2009

Spring Reading Thing Wrap-up


How did I do? I started the challenge out with eleven books on my list. Of those original eleven, I read six. Not too impressive. But I felt free to expand my list as the days went by…I think it was "legal" but am not really sure it was in the spirit of the challenge. I read an additional 19 books. So I am happy with the amount that I read, I just wish I had stuck to my original list a little better. (And the butchered list, if you want to view the mess, is here.)

What was my favorite? My favorite from my original list would have to be Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It wasn't an easy read, it didn’t hook me and make me want to not put it down. But it was written in a way that made difficult concepts easier to understand, it was thought provoking, and it was amazingly timely considering it is more than fifty years old. It's the book above all the others that I am happiest to be able to say, "I've read this." Of the add-ons, I loved two, The Help by Kathryn Stockett - ooh that was good, and When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton.

Where am I stuck? I went through another Callapidder Days challenge without cracking open Pillars of the Earth - what is my problem? I have heard great things about it, it's sitting there waiting for me. I don’t know why I just haven't felt the urge to read it. And I really thought when I wrote my opening post that I would make a concerted effort to finish John Adams by the end of the Spring challenge but I didn’t. You might say, just give up on John Adams, but I don’t want to do that. I started the US President's Reading Project to learn more about history…I will have to force myself to read all of them until I start getting a firmer grasp of the subject.

What's next? I'm working on a few other challenges... The First In A Series challenge, the 2009 Audiobook challenge, the A-Z Reading challenge,and the Chronicles of Narnia challenge.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Katrina for hosting the challenge. I didn’t get to nearly as many of the other blogs as I had hoped but the ones I did get to, I enjoyed. And I got some good picks, for example, after seeing it listed a few hundred times, I went and bought The Mysterious Benedict Society which I L-O-V-E-D! So thank you also to the all the participants - it was great fun being part of this community of readers. See you in the Fall!

1 comment:

argsmommy said...

Thanks for your comment on my Spring Reading Thing Wrap-Up!

I love all the neat reading challenges you have found. I don't think there is any way I could finish up all the Narnia books with my kids to be part of that challenge, but I really should join the US President's reading project. It's been a personal goal of mine since I was in college, but so far I've only read about Washington and I have the same John Adams book on my night stand, collecting dust. So you're not alone. : )

Kellie