One of my most exciting adventures this year, though, was taking our son to the library for the very first time and getting his own library card! He absolutely loves going, and we try to go every two weeks on Fridays when I'm typically off work. Apparently reading the books to him and being in the library regularly has similarly stimulated my reading fervor a bit more, so I feel like I've read more in latter 2015 than the years coming up to it.
Another exciting development was beginning to teach the five-year-old how to read beginning around October using the aptly named Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I found this on Amazon at some point and kind of held onto to it until I could get a feel of when he was ready to start learning. I must have hit it right at the right time, because we got through it pretty quickly and caught on to a lot of things fast. We had anticipated completing it by the end of 2015, but holidays, two weeks of sickness, and a week of winter VBS got in the way. However, we should be finished in about a week now and ready to grow into newer reading lessons from there.
Back to the blog, I wrote last year that I had not found a routine that works for me in reading, reviewing, blogging, etc. I've been frustrated the past few years of trying, and I think that's because I don't have a lot of time it seems. Also, I always seem to be heavy into it until about February and then I don't get back into it again til the next January. And here we are.
Instead of getting frustrated this time, though, I'm just going to do what I can when I can do it. This is mostly just an exercise in writing and putting my voice out there to the random people who land on these pages from Google. :)
I still can't review a book to save my life.
In tracking my reading on GoodReads this year, I included all the books I read to the boy for records' sake, but I didn't include it in my reading accomplishments. I'm sure there's a challenge out there for which all of those books would qualify.
Finally, I failed reading the Bible in a year, even worse than last year. I credit this to working in the evenings as a tax preparer through the end of tax season. The same thing will happen this year as I attempt to make extra money to pay off some stuff, which is going swimmingly by the way. I didn't even attempt starting the Bible in a Year for this year because I knew I'd get derailed when tax season begins (which should be soon).
Challenge Updates:
- Bible in a Year: I read 182 out of 1189 chapters, which is only 15.3% of the entire Bible. I made it to 25.7% in 2014.
- 2015 Authors A to Z Reading Challenge: I read 10 out of 26 authors (not counting the child's books). That's actually pretty good for me. :) I only reviewed 6 of those.
- 2015 eBook Reading Challenge: I actually read 6 eBooks to just exceed my goal of 5! Of course I only reviewed 1/2 of them.
I may forgo challenges this year for lack of time. However 2017 I should hopefully have more time to pay more attention to what I read. And maybe I'll find a challenge I can actually do this year. I want to jump on that bandwagon so hard.
LeviSamJuno
