Hitting the Books: Summer Reading

Once again, with Summer Break "officially" starting at noon today, I set a reading goal for myself, just as I have placed (a smaller) reading expectation on the students with whom I'll work next school year. This is a ritual as ancient as the New Year's Resolution, but this time, (just as I did last summer) I meant it. One of my "goals" is to do more reading, and in doing so using my time more wisely... translation: less time surfing the net or playing X-box 360.

Of course, as a conscientious English Language Arts educator who will be teaching one new course in September (and the content that goes along with it), I have quite a bit of "required" reading to work through in anticipation of delivering good lessons. Beyond that, though, I want to make the effort to be "better read," whatever that means.

In the interest of working toward this personal improvement goal, I have already (just barely) begun one book (Frome), and have acquired the remaining titles, primarily from the school "book morgue," which need to be read. They're sitting right up in my attic office along with the curriculum, manuals, and bequeathed lesson plans which need to be ingested over the next ten weeks.

So, including books I have read before (some over a decade ago!) here is what is on my menu this Summer:

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

There are also a number of books not on our school Summer Reading List that I am hoping to both read and re-read, too, so I definitely have to get after it!

What reading are you planning on doing this Summer?

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!