Even More Reading

A quick addendum to the first post.  Since I chose 10 plays for Jenn to read, she's adding 3 books to my list and 3 books to her list.  For now, we're keeping it secret, but I will say that I'm making my way through the first novel pretty quickly, so I'm hoping to post about it soon because I already have a lot I want to talk about.  I may not wait until I'm completely done.  Just playing it by ear.

Joe and Jenn's Summer Reading

So, it turns out that as someone with a Master's Degree in English, I'm woefully and embarrassingly under-read. I've tried to combat this in the last couple of years, but with teaching and writing and (let's face it) watching a lot of TV and Movies, I've failed miserably. I did manage to read a few things last summer. Hunger Games, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Study In Scarlet, and I tried to read A Tale of Two Cities but had a really hard time following it.

This summer, I'm determined to do better. Jenn and I have each made a list of ten books that we want to read, and then we chose 5 books off of each other's list to create a list of ten books to finish before school starts in the fall. On top of the novels, I've made a list of ten plays that I've never read and made a list of ten plays for Jenn to read.

Don't know if I want to share the master list with the blogosphere yet. Might just have that be a surprise until each post is published. Guess I'll check with Jenn and see what she wants to do. Furthermore, I don't know if I want to even document this project with a blog. On the one hand, it helps ensure my success, as evidenced by my continued efforts on my AFI 100 Years 100 Films Blog, but frankly, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I haven't read some of these.

I also don't want to be restricted to the current list. I do want to read the second Hunger Games book at some point, and possibly the third to help avoid any spoilers that might come up now that the films have started coming out. Also, I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird, which I'd like to do before I get to that on the AFI Blog. Maybe those will have to go on my shorter, Winter reading list, should something like that exist.

See? Right there, admitting that I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird was a little hard for me to do. But, I've never shied away from something because it was too hard or embarrassing. Ok, I do that all the time, but being online helps make me fearless, so maybe it'll help that as I admit to never reading these books, I've already read them and discussed them in blog form.

We'll see what happens.