When I wrote this article about individualized approaches to reading instruction, I learned that an effective way to get students reading is to have them set “volume goals” for the number of pages they will read each week.
In Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers, Kittle explains that reading should be taught a little more like math. In other words, out with selecting a novel for an entire class — reading is a complex a skill that needs to be practiced, over and over again, requiring individualized choice and pacing for each student.
Reading does not come as easily to me as it once did. I’m not sure why; I used to spend hours buried in classics like Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, or Madame Bovary.
I’m told that my grandmother realized I could read when I started dictating birdfeeder instructions to her at age four.
I am blessed to have what Kittle calls “a reading memory,” in other words, positive associations of pleasure with reading, such that I will go to great lengths to maintain “a reading life” as an adult.
This year, I challenged myself to read #52booksin52 weeks. I have since amended that goal to #40booksin2020, but let me tell you — I highly recommend setting a “volume goal”! It is so much fun and it shoots so much energy into your reading life!
(If you read 40 books in a year, you basically have to read 10 books every 3 months).
Here are some of the books I have enjoyed so far in 2020:
- Run, by Ann Patchett
- Naturally Tan, by Tan France
- The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
- Educated, by Tara Westover
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb
- Burn The Place, by Iliana Regan
- The Universal Christ, by Richard Rohr
- Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, by bell hooks
- The Divine Dance, by Richard Rohr
- The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth, by Christopher L. Heuertz
- The Conscious Bride, by Sheryl Paul
- The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, Translations by Daniel Ladinsky
- The Tender Bar: A Memoir, by J.R. Moehringer
- The Essential Rumi, Translations by Coleman Barks
- Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction, edited by Judith Kitchen
- An Honest Hunger: Poems, by Robert Lowes
- The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, edited by Robert Bly
- Driven to Distraction, by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey
Thanks for reading. Back to my book.
