As I am sitting at my computer reviewing my course syllabus for the coming fall semester, I am once again amazed at how quickly the summer passes. Is the summer getting shorter or am I getting older? ๐ With all the summer travel and general chaos of the season, this blog has been woefully neglected over the past few months. Not to worry, I have an idea for getting Hannah and I back into reading and blogging gear…SEPTEMBER 2019: READING CHALLENGE!
I recently added reading lists to my Instagram and boy was that a bad idea. My feed is now packed with reading lists with 100’s of books that are all ‘must read’ in the genres that I love…so many books, so little time. Anyway, all of the challenge lists gave me the idea that Hannah and I should do some sort of reading challenge to keep us on point and blogging and this is what I came up with: I will choose a book for Hannah to read and she will choose a book for me to read. We will each read our assigned book throughout the month of September and blog about it along the way (if possible) but absolutely write up a blog once we finish the book about the experience of having to read something we would not necessarily choose for ourselves.
Now, this is actually a pretty dangerous challenge for us both because we really do not read the same kinds of literature. I tend towards the classics, history (non-fiction), and mystery literature, and Hannah reads social commentary, poetry, and sci-fi/fantasy. (By the way, we both read lots of other stuff but those are a few of the big ones.) Yikes! This challenge could be horrifying for the both of us!
Ok, I’m ridiculous and I couldn’t choose just ONE book so I’m going to send Hannah TWO non-fiction books, written byย amazing women, aboutย amazing women! See, I’m not too mean…should be right up Hannah’s alley! One is Stacy Schiff’s biography Cleopatra: A Life,ย the other is Lynn Hartnett’s (one of my history professors) biography The Defiant Life of Vera Figner. Both of these books are brilliantly written, very readable, and I would recommend them to anyone who is interested in reading about how women have been and continue to be major contributors in the course of human history.
If Hannah accepts this September 2019 Reading Challenge she can choose one of the two books, chose a book for me to read and then let the blogging begin! Should be interesting!!
Read on my friends!