Reading Journal (23 Aug) + Reading Red in Review

Some of you may have noticed I disappeared from blogging and reading blogs for a month this summer. I also essentially stopped reading for a few weeks too. Since my post July 22 until I posed my review of Candide, I read only Candide, which was 90 pages. Besides it being summer (and therefore busy and fun for me and for Raisin), there are personal family things going on that made blogging difficult. All is alright, and I’m glad to be back!

Not only am I finding the blogging groove again, but I’m feeling my desire to read again. I have finished The Grapes of Wrath for the Classics Circuit, and I also found myself reading all of The Glass Menagerie while my son played at the library today. That felt good!

In just two more weeks, Raisin goes back to preschool for two mornings a week. I’ll have some time to get back to regular reviewing when that comes. For the next two weeks, please continue to bear with me while I try to get my feet back on the ground.

I must add a special thank you for the nomination for Book Blogger Appreciation Week: Best Classics Blog. There are so many incredible classics blogs I’ve discovered that I feel a little out of place, given my disappearance this summer and my general difficulties in blogging regularly over the past year. Nevertheless, I certainly do appreciate all my blog readers and I thank you for the vote of confidence! I don’t want to go anywhere.

At any rate, I haven’t done a reading wrap-up since the end of the first quarter 2011. Here, then are the adult books that I’ve read and reviewed on Rebecca Reads since the end of the first quarter.

Reading Red

For my Reading Red project, I was to read books from my shelves that had a red cover. I didn’t keep up this theme very well in general. I do have so many more red books to read!

• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• No Name by Wilkie Collins
• Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, The by Charles Dickens
• Red Badge of Courage, The by Stephen Crane

Other Reads

• “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver
• After by Amy Efaw
• All Different Kinds of Free by Jessica McCann
• An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
• Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brogsol
• Babymouse by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm
• Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, The by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
• Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire
• Castle Waiting (Vol 2) by Linda Medley
• Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London by Andrea Warren
• Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton
• Dreamer, The by Pam Munoz Ryan
• Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
• Flaubert and Madame Bovary by Francis Steegmuller
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• Glass Castle, The by Jeannette Walls (reread thoughts)
• Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
• Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay
• Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch
• Jane Austen: A Life Revealed by Catherine Reef
• Lives of the Presidents by Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (reread thoughts)
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (reread thoughts)
• Nom de Plume by Carmela Ciararu
• Our Town by Thornton Wilder
• Poetry of Anne Bradstreet
• Space Between Us, The by Thrity Umrigar
• Summer Book, The by Tove Jansson
• To Be a Slave by Julius Lester
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (reread thoughts)
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Your Child’s Writing Life by Pam Allyn

Books Not Reviewed

I read a few books in July that got lost in the cracks since I did not post for most of August. These were:

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I’m sure I’ll reread this again in the future. So much great thoughts in that little book!
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. A light read. If my book club reads it sometime, I’ll reread it and write about it then.
• Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch. I was surprised by how unmoved I was by her “read a book every day for a year” project. I kept thinking the whole time: what about your four kids?! Why don’t you spend a year nurturing your family instead of reading by yourself? I love reading and I love books, but I felt her project just seemed….selfish. Some nice insights, but not a favorite for me.

From here

I don’t have a new project to begin. I’m just hoping I can read my book club books and Classics Circuit books each month. My other goal is to read the books I own. If I don’t want to read them, why do I have them on my shelves?!

Life is pretty busy right now! How is your reading going?