A New Way to Keep Track of the Books I’m Reading

Earlier this year, I realized I was reading six books at once: one for Sunday School at church, one for a church ladies’ book club, one for review through Crossway, an audiobook with Samuel, a fiction book on my own, and a non-fiction book on my own. This is almost unheard-of for me. As a younger reader, I took my books one at a time and read them slow enough that I thoroughly appreciated them. I paused to imagine what the characters looked like and built entire worlds in my imagination along with the author. Now that I’m teaching, attending a church that likes to read books together, and have an independent reader in the house, I’ve realized that I’m going to have to learn to read more than one book at a time. It’s a fun challenge, and in order to meet this fun, new challenge, I came up with a new system for keeping track of books.

In the past, year-by-year I’ve listed books in the month in which I finished them. In this new system, I have four lists, titled “Reading,” “Read,” “Like to Read,” and “Didn’t Finish.” (Don’t worry–there’s just a couple books under that last category.) I still have my “Read” list divided by month and year, but each month is its own bullet point rather than its own heading. This means that I can keep this as a running document rather than making a new document each year. It’s a living, breathing reading list, just like a story.

So, following in the footsteps of my summer ’21 self, here’s what my reading list looks like half-way through the year. I hope you’re finding some great books to read as well! If you are, would you be willing to share them in the comments? I enjoy reading about what you’re reading, too.

Reading:

• Make It Stick by Brown, Roetiger, and McDaniel
• The Door Before by N.D. Wilson (read-aloud)
• The Making of a Poem by Strand & Boland
• Saving Leonardo by Nancy Pearcey
• How to Steal a Dragon’s Sword by Cressida Cowell
  

Read:

• January: The Wreck and Rise of Whitson Mariner by S.D. Smith (Audiobook), Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (BCS), The Great Escape by Jenny Dale, The Sower by Scott James (Crossway)
• February: The Household and the War for the Cosmos by C.R. Wiley (Audiobook), Prince Lander and the Dragon War by S.D. Smith (Audiobook)
• March: Amulet books 1-8 by Kazu Kibuishi, Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (BCS), Does It Matter What I Believe? by Samuel James (Crossway), 100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson (Audiobook), The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
• April: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, True Life by Mahaney & Whitacre (Book Club), Dandelion Fire by N.D. Wilson (Audiobook), The Light Princess by George MacDonald (Audiobook), The Coddling of the American Mind by Haidt and Lukianoff, The Company We Keep: In Search of Biblical Friendships by Jonathan Holmes (Book Club)
• May: Covenants: God’s Way With His People by O. Palmer Robertson (Sunday School), The Chestnut King by N.D. Wilson (Audiobook)
• June: The Liberated Imagination by Leland Ryken, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Becoming Free Indeed by Jinger Duggar Vuolo, How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger
• July: How to Steal a Dragon’s Heart by Cressida Cowell, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (re-read)
  

Like to Read:

• Rethinking the Purpose of Education by Jason Barney
• Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
  

Didn’t Finish:

• Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White (read-aloud): We had too many other great books to read, and the kids lost interest. We’ll come back to it. Charlotte’s Web is one of my favorites.
• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron: Practicing Morning Pages has been really helpful, especially in teaching me to be less critical of my writing, but I struggled with some of her ideas about God. They weren’t based on the Bible, and I can see them misleading her readers.
  
  

Photo: Me reading a book after a night of fighting crime (just kidding; I found this photo on Unsplash by Road Trip with Raj.)