Do you have a reading plan? Tell me about it!

Cafe Society
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Who here has a reading plan? It doesn’t have to be disciplined or exact. Are you trying to read a classic every month? Have you got a list of all the early SF authors you want to read? Are you trying to learn everything possible about WWI, or the Maori culture, or Trancendentalist thought? Do you have a journal, or take notes on your reading?

I’ve been meaning to start something resembling a reading plan. I feel that I should properly start with Gilgamesh and ancient Greek plays and go chronologically, but I’m pretty sure I’d burn out that way, because I am by nature something of a dabbler (which is why being a librarian is my perfect job). So I’m going to be a bit more relaxed than that. My goal is to have at least one serious or classic-type work going at all times; since I usually have 2 or 3 books going at once, this is quite possible for me. This isn’t intensive or incredibly studious; slow and steady progress is my goal.

My sources for reading ideas are coming from two lists, as well as my own head. They are The new lifetime reading plan, an expanded version of Clifton Fadiman’s book (you can see the table of contents on Amazon), and The well-educated mind, which gives pointers on how to take notes and read at a deeper level, as well as a list of books to read. Partly, I just love books like this, so I’d get more if I could; everyone feel free to recommend another one.

I’ve started a reading journal, which I’ve broken up into several categories: fiction, history, poetry, drama, biography, science, myth and religion, folk and fairy tale, essays, and even children’s classics. (It’s really just a binder with paper in it.) Since the book I’m reading right now is Boswell’s Life of Johnson, that’s the first entry (kind of an odd thing to start a journal with, hm?). And since I’m about to start Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s daughter, I’ll put that in too–why not? I’m trying to just write down the basic information, something about the author, any deep thoughts I have, and a few quotes from each work.

So, any tips, recommendations, or cautionary tales? What is your reading plan, or your ambition for one?

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Wow. That’s really ambitious and complicated. I just do Fiction -> Non-Fiction (science or natural history) -> Non-fiction (job-related) -> Fiction…repeat…repeat…

I’m not sure if you can call that a plan but I do keep a list!

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Wow, that’s way more formal and complicated than my reading plan. Kudos to you if you do something like that.

If I were to formalize my reading “plan”, it would look something like:

  1. Go to bookstore
  2. Pick out 3 or 4 books that look interesting to me
  3. Go home with books, try to hide them from wife
  4. When wife finds one of the books, get yelled at for having another book in the house
  5. Read 2 of the books.
  6. Start another one, but lose interest. Put it on the shelf to finish later. Never come back to it.
  7. Look at the fourth one, realize that it wasn’t that great a choice to begin with, and put it in the pile of books going to be traded in.
  8. Read some book off the bookshelves at home that I haven’t read in a while but looks interesting. (Probably not a book that I’ve only started before).
  9. Next week: Repeat from step 1.

Come to think of it, that’s not really much of a plan. I wouldn’t know where to start.

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50 Book Challenge, so far up to 30.

We set some limits on what did and didn’t count (i.e. comics OK if they’re over 128 pages, collections count as one book). My grilfriend’s at 31.

I planned to use it as a means to blow through my 5,000+ page backlog, but I mostly ended up getting new books.

There was no rhyme or reason to the choice of books, but I definitely have been reading more than ever before (excepting college perhaps).

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I’m trying to read/learn everything to do with knitting. Generally, I check them out of the library, and I’ll buy my own copy of particularly good ones when I can afford it. I’m also reading a lot of decorating books/magazines to come up with a plan for re-painting/unwallpapering the house. Most of them are filled with the ugliest, strangest things. (“Make a display of your spare toilet paper rolls on a wooden tray!” Um… no.) I can’t find much fiction that interests me lately. I also read a lot of cookbooks.

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There is a college whose curriculum seems to be based around reading and discussing great books - and they put the schedule for all 4 years up on the web.

Some day, I’m going to start and just do the reading from that list (I plan on it every September, and then forget or get behind. Maybe this year.) Thanks for the book suggestions - I need a way to organize and take notes, perhaps those will work for me.

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What college? I would love to see a link. That sounds awesome!

I have The New Lifetime Reading Plan too, although I tend to pick mainly the 20th century novels (especially the ones in the “Going Further” section), although I plan to start on The Communist Manifesto today.

I am on a somewhat formal reading plan this summer. It’s a program from my local library where I have to read a book (or do an activity) from a set of 12 categories. The theme of the program is “Passport to Reading,” and some of the categories include “Read a book by an international author,” “Read a book you’d take to the beach” and “Read a book set in another time period.” The categories are flexible enough that I can easily choose a book, but narrow enough to make me think about what I’d like to read rather than just reading 20th century American novels.

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I don’t have any real formal plan but last year I started out with a new year’s resolution to read 12 books i hadn’t reads before. I tended to reread books a lot and spend more time on TV and games than i liked.

Well I read 20 new books that year.

This year i upped the number to 24 new ones for the year. I’m up to 16 so far.

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The college is St. John’s College, with campuses in MD and NM.
As far as a reading plan, I don’t really have one. I started the summer with the thought of reading some of the classics I’d never read, like Jane Eyre. I haven’t managed to finish it yet. Instead, I go to the library and wander the stacks until I find some that look interesting. I don’t worry about fiction or non-fiction, just the appeal of the book.

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Try Kenneth Rexroth’s Classics Revisited and More Classics Revisited, and Henry Miller’s The Books in My Life.

Both brought to you by the friendly family folks at New Directions Books.

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But be warned…following the Reading Plans of these two gentleman might turn you into a hairy, drug-addled, beatnik sex-maniac.

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That sounds really cool. I can’t find the one you’re describing very easily through a search (do you know how many reading promotions are called ‘Passport to Reading?’ A lot. Including a Disney promo.), so could you tell me what the categories are? I would love to know. Is there a link to your library maybe?

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:eek: OH. MY. GAWD. You are me, just in another state…

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Heh. My reading plan can be summarized as trying and failing to keep up with several independent streams of books.

First are the unread books and magazines from my sf collection. 5,000 pages? I’ve got 2,000 books backed up. (I’m trying to index them to see where I am, so that’s just an estimate.)

Second are the books my wife has given me for the last three or four Christmases. I’m doing better on these, and am down to about 10.

Then if I’m foolish enough to go to the library I have 2 or 3 that have priority, since they have to be returned. These go in streaks - lots of history books, evolution books, etc.

Then there are books I’m reviewing for the book review column of the magazine I write for. These are technical books.

And finally there are non sf books I’ve bought myself. It all makes for several very nice piles by the bed. I’m not including all the other books that have migrated into our house somehow, which I would like to read sometime. I did achieve my goal of reading all of Shakespeare, next in this list is reading all of Churchill’s History of the English Speaking peoples.

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I’m trying to get myself to read more Literature. I’m also keeping track of what books I read this summer, because I’ve never done that and I want to know how many books I read.

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Well, I used to be in the same state. Where do you think I picked up all those habits?

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I love to read and read at least an hour each night. During the week it is “just for fun” reading. Sunday mornings are reserved for my “deep” reading. I get up, shower, go to breakfast and read. It has taken me some few months to slog through the book on Buddhism that I just finished. Next I gonna start a book about improving your intelligence. It’s called “How to think like Leonard Da Vinci” or something like that.

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50 Books Challenge. I’m up to…23 or something.

When I hear about/see a book I want to read, I write it down in a notebook. There are about 300 titles written in the notebook. I used to work in a bookstore so I was always finding books that I wanted to read, but rarely the time to do so.

After I’ve read a book, I write the title in another notebook. I’ve been doing that for about four years now. The two notebooks go together.

I’ve banned myself from buying books for a couple years now. Unfortunately, if it were a successful ban, the ban would have been lifted by now. I just can’t stop myself, although I must say my book buying has gone into decline of late. I just can’t get excited about a book at the store anymore, knowing how many books I have lying around, unread.

Other than that, I don’t really have a plan, per se. I read a lot of non-fiction, especially history and science. I’m muddling my way through The Iliad right now, though, in an attempt to have a more well-rounded education. Classics r tuf.

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I have a reading plan, though it’s not a hard and fast one, and I frequently make exceptions.

I have four stacks of books in my room. The current stack is Canadian literature, and I’ve been plowing through that all year (I plan to make it my area of specialty for my post-graduate studies). It’s organized chronologically because I like to see how writing styles have changed and how events have influenced writing in this country. Most of it is fiction, though I have a few non-fiction works there (the philosophy of John Ralston Saul, the traditional religious stories of the Haida, etc)

The next pile is mostly non-fiction and defies a label – spirituality would probably come closest, though in addition to religion, there are a number of fairly mainstream books on psychology and ecology – just stuff that feels like it fits together. There’s no internal arrangement there, or at least not a rational one.

My next stack is “world literature,” really a miscellaneous fiction/poetry/drama pile, which ranges from the great classics to pulp horror to manga. It’s also arranged chronologically.

My last pile is gay literature (I already finished a stack of that, and now I’m building a new stack, which will undoubtedly grow by the time I get to it), which is composed both of authors known to be homosexual or bisexual (Tennessee Williams and EM Forster wind up here, rather than on world lit), or works with queer main characters. Don’t know why I give it a special, seperate place, but it’s probably because that’s the kind of stuff I would have loved to have been able to read when I was coming out.

Anyway, I read, on average, 40 or 50 pages a day, and finish about a stack per year.

Is that too geeky a plan?

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Not if you have a good translation!