Summer Reading Reality Check 2009

So I know that summer has been over for roughly 2 1/2 months now, but school and work has pretty much consumed my ENTIRE life, so I'm not cranking out posts as much as I would like to. Anyhoo, here's a list of everything I read this summer:

Practical Magic- Alice Hoffman
Paper Towns- John Green
The Sisters Grimm: The Everafter War- Michael Buckley
The Jane Austen Book Club- Karen Fowler
The Last Olympian- Rick Riordan
Dragon Slippers- Jessica Day George
Lean Mean Thirteen- Janet Evanovich
Prince of Persia- Jordan Mechner
Coraline- Neil Gaiman
Savvy- Ingrid Law
Fearless Fourteen- Janet Evanovich
Wonderland- Tommy Kovac and Sonny Liew
The Tale of Desperaux- Kate Dicamillo
Smiles to Go- Jerry Spinelli
Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat- Lynne Jones
Book of a Thousand Days- Shannon Hale
A Kiss in Time- Alex Flinn
The Luxe- Anna Godbersen
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince- J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- J.K. Rowling
The Revolution of Sabine- Beth Levine Ain

Of course, not as much as I would have liked to have read this summer, but I think I took a pretty good stab at things. Until next summer (or maybe Christmas break)!

Summer Reading List

So now that school is over and I've turned in all of my assignments and taken my last final, I finally have time to officially make my summer reading list (even though I started it in the beginning of March) and actually read it. So without further ado, here it is (though I may make changes to it in the future):

John Grisham: The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker
Deborah Caletti
Sarah Dessen
Joan Bauer
Lauren Willig: The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine
Joann Fluke: Strawberry Shortcake Murder
Janet Evanovich: Lean Mean 13, Fearless Fourteen, Finger-Lickin' Fifteen
Inkheart
Inkspell
Inkdeath
The Extraordinary Adventure of Alfred Kropp
Chains
The Luxe
The Book Thief
Paper Towns
The Graveyard Book
Generation Dead
Book of a Thousand Days
Story of a Girl
Princess Ben
Impossible
The Host
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe
Tender Morsels
Pretty Morsels
My Stroke of Insight
Criss-Cross
Savvy
The 13th Reality
What I Saw and How I Lied
Me, the Missing and the Dead
Memoirs of an Amnesiac
Ghosts of Kerfol
Lucy Giant
The Unrivaled Spangles
Sammy Keys series
Burn Notice: The Fix
Sold

Offical Reading List- Fall Semester 2008

So I did it. I read 43 books this semester. Yeah. And I wonder why my grades suffered this semester (it's my worst semester academically yet). Though in my defense I did have to read at least 30 books for my YA lit class, so technically it was just this class that screwed me. I did find a couple books out there that I love and some that were not worth my time and should not have even been published, but I'm glad I'm done "speed reading". My quota on average for the semester was roughly 2 books per week. Crazy. Now I just have to explain to my parents who are paying for my schooling why I'm now going to have less than a 3.0. Joy.

Young Adult Lit Class

So I'm taking a YA lit class at BYU and we have a set of in class reading that we have to do as well as guidelines for our outside reading. Here's a list of what we have to read this semester:

The Outsiders
Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World
Muckrakers
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Buried Onions
Robert Cormier book- (we had to choose a book from a list of Cormier books which were, I am the Cheese, Tenderness, After the First Death, The Chocolate War, Tunes for Bears to Dance To, or Rag and Bone Shop. I chose Tenderness, which was the "worst" of them. By worst I mean it was the grittiest and had the least hope for mankind compared to the rest. If you've ever read Cormier you know that you're not in for a "light" read.)
Running Loose
Whirligig
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Out of the Dust
Monster
Blue Skin of the Sea
Howl's Moving Castle
Make Lemonade
American Born Chinese

We also have required "elective" reading which is:

Read at least one YA book by each of the following authors:
Laurie Halse Anderson
M.T. Anderson
Kevin Brooks
Lurlene McDaniel
Gary Paulsen
Paul Volponi
Jacqueline Woodson

Read at least one YA book from each of the following categories:
audio book
fantasy, science fiction, horror, or suspense
old time 'juvenile' fiction (pre-1920)
petry
romance
LDS author: [choose one] Crowe, Ellis, Heuston, Hughes, Leavitt, Plummer, Rallison, Randle
graphic novel
Printz Award winner or honor book

The good thing about the elective reading is that you can double dip or kill 2 birds with one stone by listening to a romantic fantasy book, which kills three items. I'll make a list of what I've read once I've got most of them read. I'm telling you, I really wish I could speed read to get in everything that I want to read.

Summer Reading Reality Check

So here's an update on what I actually read from my summer reading list. Though of course I didn't get to every author on the list, or at least some of them, I did make the attempt.

Sharon Creech: Heartbeat

C.S. Lewis: Prince Caspian

Meg Cabot: Ready or Not

Janet Evanovich:
One for the Money
Two for the Dough
Three to Get Deadly
Four to Score
High Five
Hot Six
Seven Up
Hard Eight
To the Nines
Ten Big Ones
Visions of Sugar Plums

Gail Carson Levine:
Fairest
Ella Enchanted
The Fairy's Return
For Biddle's Sake
Ever

That was as far as I got as to reading things by authors on my summer reading list. I do make that list bigger than I could possibly ever read, but I like to have variety. I must say thought that Janet Evanovich captured most of my attention- especially since the protagonist has two main love interests.

Summer 2008 Reading List Thus Far

Sharon Creech
Meg Cabot (I know, I'm still in middle school)
Terry Pratchett
Douglas Adams
Chuck Palahunik
Frances Meyer
Christopher Moore
Lemony Snicket- I need to finish 10-13
Nick Hornby
Joanne Harris
Anita Diamant
Gail Carson Levine
C.S. Lewis
Jerry Spinelli
James Patterson
John Grisham
Janet Evanovich- I hear from old people at the library all the time that her Stephanie Plum series are hilarious
Eoin Colfer- I still need to read the Artemis Fowl series- I've been putting it off since roughly 6th grade

Right now I'm working on reading Fight Club- I'm about a 1/4 in, Ella Enchanted (which my student teacher Mrs. Spaulding never finished reading to us in Mrs. Foster's 5th grade class), Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, which I just started today, and am finishing up the latest book in the James Patterson Maximum Ride series. Crazy.