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...

3 comments:

  1. I wish you luck! I can't say I would be able to read any of the classics you've listed but if you can get through 80% of Sense and Sensibility you'll probably be fine ;) I myself have never tried it and the last classic I tried I did not get past the first page.

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  2. Hi Ava,
    Long time no... post, lol. I'm also trying to read some classics before college starts (in August, for me), because I'm scared to seem like an idiot in English classes when people are talking about books "everybody's read"! Good luck this summer and with college...

    About the books you want to read, though, I can definitely recommend A Game of Thrones (it's awesome and so addictive!) and the Night Circus. I want to read Insurgent, too, seems like everyone's reading it. Oh, and Wicked is great-- yeah, definitely find some time to read Wicked, I finally read it a few weeks ago and loved it. :)

    Kat @ A Myriad of Books

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  3. I hope you like If I Stay by Gayle Foreman. I recently read it, and I absolutely loved it! I can't wait to pick up the next one. Good luck on your summer reading!

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