Sunday, March 10, 2013

Year of the books update

So the year of the books has gotten off to kind of a mediocre start. We went strong at the beginning and then I just didn't realize how busy we were going to be for a little while. Both of the boys had some really big school projects that they were working on in the evenings for a while and then for the past month we've all taken turns getting sick and that has thrown us off a bit. My personal reading has practically come to a standstill and I feel really bad about that.

But you know who is taking the year of the books and running with it? Matthew! The little bit at we did start reading every night at the beginning of the year really jumpstarted him. He has always liked to read but the idea of counting pages and making kind of a game out of it really sparked something in him and he's been a reading machine ever since the first of the year. He got 11 books for Christmas and read them all in the first few weeks of January. Then at the end of January and into February he finished off the last two books of the Harry Potter series. Then he got to work on the Fable Haven series and he's currently almost at the end of book three. He's plowing through books so fast that I'm scrambling to come up with something to give him when he finishes each series to keep him going. That kid rocks! Seeing him with his nose constantly in a book makes me happy and reminds me of me as a kid. He's being a great example to the rest of the family, who aren't doing nearly as well as he is.

Shawn is currently reading a gigantic 1,000 page novel though, and he hasn't read for pleasure in a while, so that's another person the year of the books has affected. He's pretty busy and doesn't always have time to read but I have caught him reading in bed until the wee hours of the morning recently. He has mentioned recently how nice it feels to be reading for pleasure again.

Josh and are are supposed to be reading a book together but we're the ones who are struggling. After he finished The Hiding Place and we enjoyed our WWII discussions so much we decided to read a book series about WWII together. We both started on book one for a few days and then got sick and busy and abandoned the plan. We're not giving up though. I'm going to get us back on track.

For me it's been frustrating that I'm having such a hard time making the time to read because I LOVE to read. It's actually really weird to me that I'm having to force myself to plan some reading time into my day because in the past I've had to force myself to plan some day into my reading time. I usually have no problem losing myself in a book. It just seems like lately I'm busy and easily distracted and every time I sit down to get started I remember 20 other things I was going to do and I put the book down and never get back to it.

Our nightly reading hour was really fun at first but we struggled to stick with it when the boys got so busy with school and then we got sick. Sometimes it just feels like there aren't enough hours in the evening to get everything done. I'm trying to come up with a better schedule that will work for us.

I knew when I started this project that there would probably be some successes and failures though. I learned from our year of adventure last year that sometimes plans don't always work out like you think they're going to. So I'm OK with there being some ebb and flow to the process. The point was to get everyone more excited about reading for pleasure and it's been a gigantic success for Matthew and even for Shawn. Josh and I are going to recommit to getting back on track. I think Josh is struggling a bit to find a genre that really excites him. He does like to read and he's a good reader, he just needs to find a series or a genre that he's really passionate about. I'm working on finding different types of books for him to try. As he's getting older his tastes are changing and I'm struggling to move from the younger kids series to helping him find some more mature books to read. We're working on it. I'm confident that we will find something that resparks that passion for reading. I think maybe I'm dealing with the same thing right now. I've been reading a little of everything lately but I need to find something I'm really excited about to remind me how much I love to get lost in a book.

So there is the update in our project. Some successes, some failures, but there is still a lot of year left and we have a lot of adventure left to experience!

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