Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Summer Reading Goals

Pretty simple, what the title says: my goals for this summer in terms of reading. Most of this is stuff I want to read to prepare for college and be educated, a lot of it is stuff I feel like I "should" read. And some of it is stuff I'm just plain excited to get in my hands!

Books I started long ago that I want to finish:
Atonement by Ian McEwan (40% complete)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (80% complete)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (90% complete)
Bloodrose by Andrea Cremer (20% complete)
Paper Towns by John Green (20% complete)

Classic books- I hope to read 3 from this list:
Anthem by Ayn Rand (or anything by her)
Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzergerald
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzergald
Oliver Twist or something by Charles Dickens (I would love to say I've read one of his books)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Persuasion by Jane Austen
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Duman
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (I read this in 6th grade and I want to see if it's anything like I remember)


Ok... let's be realistic. I hope to finish 1 or 2 from that list! That list was taken straight from all the public domain books I've downloaded on my kindle. :)

Books on my shelf I want to read:
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
The Secret Life by Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
Welcome to Harmony by Jodi Thomas
IQ84 by Haruki Murakami
Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Not on my shelf, but hopefully will be soon:
Insurgent by Veronia Roth
Sweetly by Jackson Pearce
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Just saw the movie and loved it! Sidenote: I like watching the movie first because if I read the book first, the movie is always disappointing.)
Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (the 1st one was one of my favorite summer reads last summer)
City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare (not much to say... she's one of my favorite authors who ever graced this Earth)
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult (or anything by her, she's one of my new favorites)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins

FINAL GOAL: Finish 1 book a week this summer. Which would be a huge improvement on the fact that I've read about 5 books all year so far. That means 17 books (based on my own school schedule- I have a very long summer that started yesterday and ends halfway through September). Which actually shouldn't be that hard when I think about how I used to read that much all the time. Although I do have a full time job and I'm preparing to move out. So we'll see...


EDIT (Nov. 2012):
An update on what I actually read...
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Paper Towns by John Green
I tried to read Insurgent by Veronica Roth but I never finished it... just didn't like it as much as the first one. Probably will come back to.
Needless to say I didn't make much progress on the classics...

Thursday, May 10, 2012

A Short Little Update

Here goes, I'm just gonna talk about my life reading/non reading for a little while, because every once in a while I miss blogging.

I'm finishing my senior year- one week left of finals and then I'm done. Graduation is in 2 weeks! I'm enrolling in college at Oregon State University this fall (go Beavers!), I'm majoring in pre-med, and other than that, I have no plans! I am so excited to start a new chapter of my life.

The last book I read was the Kite Runner by  Khaled Hosseini... it was really good, a little slow, but powerful. I read it because my English teacher said it was her all time favorite book. It's not one of my all time favorites, but I liked it a lot. (4/5 stars).

I read so much "classic" literature in the past school year in my English class- it took up most of my pleasure reading time, but I enjoyed having these titles under my belt. I read Fahrenheit 451, Things Fall Apart, Lord of the Flies, Crime and Punishment, The Stranger, The Poisonwood Bible, Night, Hamlet, Man's Search for Meaning, and probably a few others that I don't remember. Some I liked more than others. My favorite was The Poisonwood Bible because it was just fantastic, but I also really liked Crime and Punishment just because I can say I've read it, not so much because I enjoyed it. :)

I read a few books for fun- one in paticular was called "The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofono. 5/5 stars, I loved it! It was about a girl in Witness Protection because she was wanted by the Mafia for witnessing a murder, the Mafia that had also killed her parents.

As I reported on earlier, I read Inheritance, a series which I love although the ending was bittersweet. I also read the sequel to Nightshade, entitled Wolfsbane- it was as awesome as the original. I bought the third one Bloodrose but I haven't read it yet. I also read a Jodi Picoult book titled The Tenth Circle- it was also very fantastic and I absolutely loved it- 5/5.

I discovered the show How I Met Your Mother and I haven't really gotten any reading or writing done since... haha. But seriously, it's the best show ever. Or Scrubs. That's a good one too. I'm currently watching Parks and Recreation since I finished all the episodes of the aforementioned shows. It's decent... but not HIMYM. I could probably start a TV blog with all the TV I've been watching. Actually, writing this post makes me realize I now watch TV (or play Skyrim...) in the time I used to read. Thankfully I know that's only a phase and I'll get back into reading soon, especially when I go to college.

My writing life has all but disappeared. I said I would do NaNoWriMo in December... I did write some, which is great, but nowhere near what I did the year before. I was consumed with college applications at the time and had to let my writing go for a little while. I still have awesome ideas that I open every once in a while. I hope someday when I'm a money making doctor I'll actually get something published (ha).  But seriously, I would love to be a writer, and it was a tough decision deciding not to just go major in English, but I know I'll keep writing because I love it. I have a bunch of awesome story ideas and I will write them down someday. I'm currently doing this re-telling of Sense and Sensibilty in High School that I love because Elinor Dashwood is one of my favorite characters ever written and Marianne reminds me exactly of my sister. We'll see how that one turns out.

Thanks for reading, or not reading. But it felt good for me to update this with all my life's boring details. :)