Thursday, April 2, 2009

March: A Month in Review and Looking Ahead

After a great start to the year (having read 22 books in two months) my reading greatly lagged in March as I only five books:

Even with so little time to read I was still able to meet my goal of one Christie novel per month. I didn't get on with my personal Anne of Green Gables challenge, but I did start re-reading a childhood favorite, the Betsy-Tacy series. My biggest accomplishment was working my way through the book selected for my April 1st book club meeting, Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Speaking of which -- our meeting was last night and I have to say it was not only one of our largest gatherings, but probably one of the best discussions in recent months, which says a lot. In addition to the discussion of the three books selected, we also talked about other related books about women living in the Middle East and we had a special guest attending who has spent several years living in the Middle East. She shared first-hand accounts of the culture there, particularly for women, which was both fascinating and a little depressing. Nevertheless, I am glad we took the time to read these books. For our next meeting we are moving away from modern literature and reading Confessions by Saint Augustine and On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius. So stay tuned for my thoughts on those in the coming weeks.

I do not have high hopes for April as I will be out of town for a week with little to no time to read, so I am setting small goals. In April I plan to: re-read the next Anne of Green Gables book, finish Brideshead Revisited, read another Christie novel, possibly another Betsy-Tacy novel, and work my way through the two book club selections. Any books beyond those... well I suppose there will be a few, but depending on my moods we're all in for a surprise as to what they will be. Stay tuned and happy reading!

2 comments:

Kristi said...

Your F2F book club sounds amazing! There is only one in my area and it is on a night where I already have other obligations. I really need to search harder for one!

I also loved the Betsy-Tacy-Tib books!

Alyce said...

The St. Augustine book sounds ambitious. I really enjoyed Reading Lolita in Tehran. I like memoirs about women living in the middle East, so this was a good fit for me. I think part of the reason I'm so interested in what life is like over there is that I have a friend from grade school who lives in the United Arab Emirates.