I like how last time I posted, on March 3, I was quite optimistic about the reading I was going to do over Spring Break. Needless to say, I got hardly any of that reading done. In fact, up until this morning, I had not finished reading anything except student papers for over two months, since I finished The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon on March 13.

I’m not optimistic that I’m going to finish the 52 this year. I just started book 8 today and I changed my own rules to allow creative nonfiction to count just so I could have book 7 (The Writing Life) and book 8 (Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith) count.

I don’t think it really matters though, in the grander scheme of things. Would it be awesome if I could read 52 books this year? Absolutely. Will I be a worse person for not accomplishing this task? Of course not. I’ve gotten much from the 7 books I have read this year. The point is that I’m teaching myself to enjoy reading again. It’s a hard task after you’ve learned to hate it for so long. It’s a joy to read for enjoyment again. Somehow coursework and required reading throughout my BA and MA killed that. My real challenge, knowing that this was true for me, is to figure out how to not only keep my own love for reading alive, but to figure out how to keep it alive for my own students. I’ll certain have to work on that.

In the meantime, I’ve got some reading to do.