I've been thinking a lot about my own reading life, my role as a teacher who reads, and keeping track of my own reading life. I've recently been inspired by reading and learning more from Stephanie Affinito and her passion for books as a reader. Last week I read a newsletter from Stephanie and loved this line, "Tracking our reading helps us celebrate the reader we are becoming, not just the reader we've left behind..." in a piece she did called Why You Should Track Your Reading Life.
I've had an on and off relationship with Goodreads. I used Stephanie's account as a mentor and asked myself, why do I have so many shelves. She graciously answered my questions on twitter and I decided to follow her lead. I've revamped my tracking on Goodreads to read, currently, and want to read. So quick and easy. I realized Goodreads pulls together all your books from the previous years; I gave up tracking what year I read it in.
Stephanie also shares A Bookish Spreadsheet for tracking your reading life in regards to format, audience, and genre. I've been admiring her data views for a bit of time and decided to give this a try for myself. Wouldn't it be great to really make my reading life much more tangible for my students during conferring and reading workshop?
Which leads me to what I am reading. I've been sharing this summer all of my reading for the week and have decided to pair it down to truly what I am I actively reading and some thinking about my reading. I'm hoping this will be place I can revisit and find snippets to help my readers in third grade this year more intentionally because I'm actively reading for myself.
I'm in the middle of The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak. I found it from my go to recommendation place, Reese Witherspoon's Book Club lists. I'm reading it on my kindle and I wasn't sure about it for the first twenty percent. There are two narrators and they alternate chapters. I easily caught on to the human narrator. Each time I switched to the tree narrator I had to stop and ask, "Who is talking?" It felt really odd to me. Then the plot took a turn and there's something in the past that needs explaining and I've caught on to the tree narrator as a character in the story. I'm forty percent the way through it.
I hope you'll find me on Goodreads and we can connect there during the week.
Hi Mandy, I enjoyed reading your thoughts about tracking our books. Long ago, pre-internet, I kept a journal of what I had read. It is still fun to browse the pages to recall old books. Funny, but I don't browse Goodreads at all! Thanks for this new title, will look it up. I just finished a book that had alternating chapters with one of them being a gargoyle- crazy but true! Have a great week ahead!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for the heads up about this book. It sounds wonderful. I put a hold on it from my library, but it will be a while before it gets to me!
ReplyDeleteI love the thoughts you've shared on tracking your reading! I know moving my reading life online has allowed me to reminisce and see the wonderful books I've read before in a way I couldn't before (I used to just forget I had even read some books, which is not something I ever want to do again!). I've had a love-hate relationship with Goodreads too, but I'm glad to hear reducing your number of shelves and creating a spreadsheet has worked for you, and I hope you keep enjoying The Island of Missing Trees as well! Thanks so much for the wonderful post, Mandy!
ReplyDeleteI kept a list of books I read for the first time in 8th grade. It was mostly to see if I did indeed average a book a day. It was a fun activity. Sadly, I don't have the list, but I do have my Goodreads list which I've been using for quite a few years now. I have more connections through Goodreads than I do through Facebook. It's super helpful.
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