Unlike some people, I am not planning on getting a lot of reading in this holiday week. My husband is home, and I never read as much when he’s home as I do when he’s traveling. (As much as I like to read, I’d much prefer to have him around more often.)

That said, I do think I’ll finish the Cather and my monthly project (Talmage) this week. Then I’ll focus on the really old classics (Shonagon and Sir Gawain). Although I got a number of new books this week, I probably won’t get through much of them before the new year. (I’m having a hard time resisting library books lately.)

The biggest change in my reading plans this week is that I gave up on the Wharton I started and chose a different one for my upcoming Circuit visit. Since I started the Circuit, I was feeling obligated to read something no one else was reading (I selected Son at the Front). But I found myself dreading it and wishing I was reading The Touchstone. It’s not that Son at the Front was bad for the 25 pages I read – I just didn’t feel like reading a novel about Paris in August of 1914. I ultimately decided I had every right to read what I want to read. I’m glad I changed, because I enjoyed reading The Touchstone very much. It was a New York Wharton story.

Are you going to get more or less reading time during the holidays?

Merry Christmas, if you celebrate it!

Finished Books

These are the books I finished this week.

  • Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (about 150 pages, from Project Gutenberg; children’s fiction). For My History of Children’s Literature Project.
  • Growing a Reader from Birth : Your Child’s Path from Language to Literacy by Diane McGuinness (250 pages; nonfiction). It focuses on the essential skills of language development as a key part of learning to read; some flaws in the end.
  • The Touchstone by Edith Wharton (120 pages ; fiction). For the Wharton Classics Circuit.

Abandoned Books

I returned unread or partially read a few books this week.

  • A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton (25 read of 220). For the Wharton Classics Circuit. I really dreaded reading this book, so I changed my mind for the upcoming Circuit.
  • Brain Games for Babies, Toddlers & Twos by Jackie Silberg
  • Hooked on Learning. Colors, shapes and more
  • Phonemic Awareness by Lucia Kemp Henry

Currently Reading

Each week, I list my progress so I can see how my reading compares week to week. I did make a little progress on some of these.

My Books

I’m going to add some other books of mine in the coming week.

  • Our Latter-day Hymns: The Stories and Their Messages by Karen Lynn Davidson (100 read of 455 pages; nonfiction).
  • Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage (695 read of 735 pages; nonfiction). My December priority. I’m making steady progress and I was right: it’s perfect for immersion during the month of December!
  • The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon (55 read of 350 pages; fiction/really old classic).  I didn’t read as much as I expect this weekend beyond Talmage’s volume, so I still haven’t begun yet!

Old Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

  • Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (40 read of 300; fiction). For my January book club.
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation trans. Simon Armitage. I haven’t begun yet.
  • Raising a Reader: Make Your Child a Reader for Life by Paul Kropp
  • Ways of Telling: Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book Leonard S. Marcus
  • The ABCs of Literacy
  • How to Teach Reading by Edward Fry
  • Story Stretchers for infants, toddlers, and twos by Shirley Raines
  • Children’s Book Corner by Judy Bradbury
  • The Story Road to Literacy by Rita Roth
  • Phonics from A to Z : a practical guide by Wiley Blevins

New Library Loot

  • School Starts at Home by Cheri Fuller
  • Cotton candy on a rainy day : poems by Nikki Giovanni
  • The collected poems of Langston Hughes
  • Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Weatherford
  • Jam! : the story of jazz music by Jeanne Lee
  • Louis Armstrong : the offstage story of Satchmo by Michael Cogswell
  • Jazz : a history of America’s music by Geoffrey Ward
  • Cane by Jean Toomer
  • Jazz by Toni Morrison
  • A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman
  • Golden Slippers, an anthology of Negro poetry for young readers
  • To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Finds

A few books were recommended in the comments to my Medea post:

  • Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon
  • Oresteia by Euripides
  • Lysistrata by Aristophanes
  • Prometheus Bound, and the Prometheus Unbound by Shelley

And then you bloggers added a lot to my lists in the past two weeks!

  • Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (Jackie)
  • Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a Graphic Novel by Michael Keller and Nicolle Rager Fuller (Nymeth)
  • The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault (Jenny)
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Daily Words and Acts; Nymeth)
  • Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill (aka The Book of Negroes). (Eva)
  • Emma, a Manga novel (Eva)
  • The Help by Katherine Stockett (Melissa; Natasha)
  • Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman (Kim)
  • The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Jenny)
  • The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer (Valerie)
  • Song for Night by Chis Abani (Eva)
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Emily)
  • A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote (Claire)