Well, don't click to look inside...I borrowed the picture from Amazon.com. Since I have retired I have a lot of time to think up fun stuff for the family to do. This October 1st we began our first annual reading challenge.
It all began when I decided to set a goal of reading 500 books in a year. OK, everyone Laugh out Loud now. What was I thinking? That would be about 41.+ books per month average. Mission Impossible.....so I set out the rules for our reading challenge and offered it up to my grandkids and my sons and daughters. We're aiming to read 100 books in a year for the adults, an average of 8.3 books per month. The grandkids goal is 50 books in a year. They each get a participation prize, a book and bookmarks that I will be making them and there are other prizes in the challenge too.
Amanda was the first to complete a book in October, so she won a prize for that and my boys have done excedingly well. In October, Storm read 3 book and a total of 483 pages, Kane read two books totalling 416 pages and Noah read 8 books for a total of 919 pages! A total of 1,818 pages were read in October by my three champions! They certainly exceded my expectations.
Grandma Beth and Grandma Mary each read 8 books and Miff read 5 books! I am so excited about our project. I felt this was a pretty great start!
Everyone has to report the name of the book, the author, (# of pages read for the boys) and they send me a one paragraph summary of each book. The purpose is two fold. It will help me to know what they are interested in when reading and it will hopefully enhance their reading skills.
Reading is fundamental and if they can read, they can succeed and accomplish anything!
I remember as a kid I was a total book worm...I loved Walter Farley's Black Stallion stories. I can remember the smell of the old Indianola Library every Saturday when we made the journey to town to shop and browse. I loved that Library! And so did my brothers!
I collected the Cherry Ames nurse stories by Helen Wells and I convinced everyone I would be a nurse by having my nose in those books every minute of my spare time. Then my Grandma Dillard turned me on to the Emilie Loring romance stories set during the WWI and II eras. Oh yes, I loved to read!
What I have found during my retirement days here of late is, I still want to write a book and I don't like only romance stories.....there had better be a mystery thread or I feel like I'm looking into someone else's daydreams. I really enjoy having the time to read now too!
I want to extend the challenge to my friends too, so I'll be sending my blog URL out to more folks and we'll see who wants to participate with this and share their monthly readings. I know it is difficult to find the time to read when you work and are busy with holidays and family, but it is interesting to see what everyone is reading.
So I'm off to send out my email invite! I can't tell you how much fun I'm having with this!
Til next time!
