December/January:
- The Beautiful and the Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald. Page Count: 144. Inspirations: “Dancing in phantom glory before their dazzled eyes.” (pg. 154)
- The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson. Page Count: 384
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman. Page Count: 237. Inspirations: “Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”‘ (pg. 218)
- Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe. Page Count: 209
- Fifteen Dogs – Andre Alexis. Page Count: 171. Inspirations: “Toronto was, above all, a place for humans…. They were the city’s hazard and its sanctuary, its sense and its point.” (pg. 105)
- Black Butterfly – Robert M. Drake. Page Count: 247. Inspirations: “You are everything you know you are not.”
- Total number of pages: 1392
- Days in December: 31
- Pages per day: 44.9 (approximately)
- Goal for the month: This reading ladder is a combined December / January reading ladder since January is always crazy and I have to write diplomas! Since I had winter break included in this, I really wanted to read as much as I could. I was out of the country and found a place when I was in Mexico that was great for reading and finished all of the books (3) that I brought with me. (It was great, I was living my best life to come home to minus 40 and no sunny spots in the house) Anyways; I did most of my reading in Mexico and finished a book frantically before I left so that I didn’t have to bring it with me or wait a week to see how it finished. Overall, I really just wanted to read a lot. Not hard books, or anything that made me question my existence (while those books are fun) I really enjoyed reading just to read this month before I head into my first diplomas. There’s also a poetry book in there since I finally had the time to sit down and go through it even though I got it for my birthday back in September.
November:
- The Beautiful and the Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald. Page Count: 244 of 388
- A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini. Page Count: 367
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy. Page Count: 53. Inspirations: “And so they lived. And it all went on like this without change, and it was all very well.” (pg. 22)
- Total number of pages: 664
- Days in November : 30
- Pages per day: 22.1 (approximately)
- Goal for the month:This month, while my numbers are consistent for the most part, I have not been interested in the books I’m reading which makes it hard for me to sit down and crank out a couple hundred pages. The only reason I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns was because I needed to have it read for school. So, next month my goal is to find a book I have never read before and fall in love with it to break my slump of books that haven’t been as interesting. As well as finish some of the other books I have on the go right now. I need a break from classics when we start Hamlet in class.
October:
- Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald. Page Count: 154 of 302. Inspiration: “He supposed many men meant no more than that when they said they were in love – not a wild submergence of soul, a dipping of all colours into an obscuring dye, such as his love for Nicole had been.” (pg 215)
- Fall on your Knees – Ann-Marie MacDonald. Page Count: 240 of 566. Inspiration: “Hope is a gift. You can’t choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.” (pg 560) ♦
- Beautiful and Damned – Robert M. Drake. Page Count: 308. Inspiration: “I really want to know. If I am in your mind in the middle of the night, where it is, where I belong.” (pg 256) ♦
- Total number of pages: 702
- Days in October: 31
- Pages per day: 22.6 (approximately)
- Goal for the month: I really wanted to get my books that I was in the process of reading finished. Other than that I still have a ton of classics that I need to read but I’m really having issues motivating myself to read a book that is actually going to challenge me. That being said, I threw a poetry/ short story book for this mouth to help keep my page count up since everything else that I was reading this month was taking me a really long time to get through. Next month I want to get another F. Scott Fitzgerald book done and then something that will be a bit more enjoyable for me (A.K.A. not as hard).
September:
- Night – Elie Wiesel. Page Count: 120. Inspirations: “No prayers were said over his tomb. No candle lit in his memory. His last words had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered.” (pg 112)
- The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest – Stieg Larsson. Page Count: 563.
- Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald. Page Count: 148 0f 302. Inspiration: “I used to think until you’re eighteen nothing matters,’ said Mary. ‘That’s right,’ Abe agreed. ‘And afterwards it’s the same way.” (pg 66)
- Fall on your Knees – Ann-Marie MacDonald. Page Count: 326 of 566. Inspiration: “Kathleen sang so beautifully that God wanted her to sign for Him in heaven with His choir of angels. So he took her.” (pg 4)
- Total number of pages: 1,157
- Days in September: 30
- Pages per day: 38.6 (approximately)
- Goal for the month: First of all, I would like to apologise for anyone that was frantically waiting for my reading ladder posts for the four months that are missing in action. I fell off the wagon without my teacher harassing me to get it done. All that said and done, I read a lot over those four months and this month and am quite proud of myself. I have a bunch of classics and poetry books sitting on my nightstand that I really should read but am having a hard time making the time. Other than that I’m just trying to keep some of my numbers up and keep reading, even if it is candy reads and easier books.
April:
- The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown. Page Count: 454.
- Can you Hear the Nightbird Call? – Anita Rau Badami. Page Count: 402. Inspirations: “And as if he had read her thoughts, the old man murmured, ‘What a blessing it is to die in your own bed, under your own roof, with your family surrounding you, full of the knowledge that you have lived as thoroughly as you wanted to.” ♦
- Total number of pages: 856
- Days in April: 30
- Pages per day: 28.5 (approximately)
- Goals for the Month: This month I really want to start one of the classics I have waiting for me, and since I’m not someone who can just sit and read classics for hours upon end, I plan to have another book going at the same time to give me a mental break from the difficult language. Honeslty I have been reading a lot over the past few weeks, which makes me happy, but considering I have been reading to try and avoid my other school work, I think I need to slow down and take some breaks so I can actually get some other stuff done. This month I’m going to aim to finish around the 30’s – low 40’s. With a classic book thrown in there, that’s still a lot of reading, but I have a long weekend in there that should help get it all done.
March:
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling. Page Count: 620. Inspirations: ‘”Until the very end…. We are a part of you… Invisible to everyone else.”‘ (pg 571)
- Falling Kingdoms – Morgan Rhodes. Page Count: 412.
- The Martian – Andy Weir. Page Count: 369. Inspirations: “This is the happiest day of my life.” (pg 369)
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – J.K Rowling. Page Count: 308.
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – J.K Rowling. Page Count: 280
- A House in the Sky – Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett. Page Count: 367. Inspirations: “In China, a nomad woman churned yak yogurt into yak butter. In Jordan, Palestinian kids lived in tents the colour of potatoes. And somewhere in the Balkan Mountains, there was a bear who danced with a gypsy. // The world sucked the dankness out of the carpet in our basement apartment. It de-iced the walkway outside, lifted the lead out of the sky over the plains.” (Page 12)
- Total number of pages: 2,356
- Days in March: 31
- Pages per day: 76 (approximately)
- Goals for the month: While I’m writing this a lot later in the month than I usually do, so first of all, I would just like to say that I know the book I have written down are all candy reads. With that being said, Harry Potter makes me cry and The Martian is one of my favorite books. I would like to get into some more challenging books as I’m just about through the easier section of the pile of books sitting beside my bed. Over spring break (yay!) I should have time to read something a little bit more challenging. I have a few classics to pick from so my goal (for the rest of the month that is left aha) is to actually pick one and finish it before April. Woohoo.
February:
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K Rowling. Page Count: 800. Inspirations: “‘You heard them, just behind the veil, didn’t you?’ …. ‘They were just lurking out of sight that’s all. You heard them'” (Pg 794)
- Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling. Page Count: 542. Inspirations: “as he had felt about the phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: it was his own grief turned magically to song that echoed across the grounds and through the castle windows.” (pg 512)
- The Nest – Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney. Page Count: 353.
- The Choice – Nicholas Sparks. Page Count: 317.
- Total number of pages: 2,012
- Days in February: 28
- Pages per day: 71.9 pages per day (approximately)
- Goals for the month: This month I would really like to get through more books because last month my reading ladder really sucked. Granted Harry Potter is a candy read, however, I have a lot going on right now with a new semester starting up and getting used to new classes, so I needed a bit of a break from reading really challenging books for a while. I hope to get through another Harry Potter and another book that’s a little bit more of a challenge for me. I just want to make sure that I am still reading despite not having anytime in school to be reading anymore. (Update, my Mom really wanted me to read Nicholas Sparks with her, so I no longer have time to start a more challenging book :/)
January:
- Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides. Page Count: 529. Inspirations: “I’d never seen a creature with so many freckles before. A Big Bang had occurred, originating at the bridge of her nose, and the force of this explosion had sent galaxies of freckles hurtling and drifting to every end of her curved, warm-blooded universe. There were clusters of freckles on her forearms and wrists, an entire Milky Way spreading across her forehead, even a few sputtering quasars flung into the wormholes of her ears.” (Pg 323)
- Total number of pages: 529
- Days in January: 31
- Pages per day: 17.1 pages (approximately)
- Goals for this month: This month my goal was to finish Middlesex, it is a good book with beautiful writing and description in it, however, it was taking me a lot longer to finish than I would have liked. With exams this month I haven’t been reading as much as I would like to be, so I hope that in the last week and a bit I am able to get some reading done, even if it is just a candy read so I can take some books off of my pile of things to finish.
♦ = In my top 10 list of favorites for 2017