Reading for Me

The second week of the year did not bring the finish that I had hoped to be able to report. The week was incredibly busy with the start of classes and lots of physical demands. Somehow, I managed to stay on track with reading at least one page of text for pleasure each day. (There were a couple of days where it almost didn’t happen, but having a goal and habit tracker definitely helped.)

Part of the problem this week was that I was also attempting to return to graduate work with a course on Shakespeare. While I enjoyed the topic and re-exploring the plays, it quickly became evident that the demands of the class and my personal teaching load were not going to be a healthy mix for my life. As I am writing this afternoon, I still feel very groggy after a hard 13-hour sleep last night and find myself anxious to crawl back in bed again in a few hours for more rest. Last week almost did me in!

The other issue that I am facing is the book I’m reading. I am working my way through Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, but the plot hasn’t grabbed hold of my heart yet. I’m only about 130 pages into the novel, so I’m hoping things improve as I move closer to the mid-point of the book. I’m too far into the read to desert it now if I want to stay on course with the goal of reading 40 books this year. I had hoped that I would make more progress today so I could potentially have a finish on Monday. Right now, I’m not incredibly hopeful for that.

Since there was limited reading happening here, I didn’t make any significant progress on The Pillars of the Earth or Going There. I think that I am going to use Pillars as my January book with a twist — because there have been a few — and hope to get back on track with the audio book as well. Both of those books are within the realm of having fairly quick finishes, so I don’t think I will be too far off the monthly goal if I can just manage to get my tail back in gear! Thankfully, tomorrow is the beginning of another week and a chance to make some improvements in my own reading life.

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