My original goal had been 50, but when I hit that at the end of June I decided that I could probably do 100. In addition to 100 books, I also gave up reading any books written by straight white men. Here are my overall thoughts on reading 100 books.
1. 100 books is a lot. With 52 weeks in a year that is essentially two books a week. I ended up putting a lot of pressure on myself, and at various points, reading was not fun. It was a job that forced me to sacrifice quality over quantity.
2. Why is anyone reading books written by white men? 88% of books reviewed by the New York Times are written by white men, and less than 30% of books published by major publishing houses are authored by women. But, change is happening, and it's not hard to make that change for yourself. By focusing on who was writing the books I was reading, I was able to develop relationships with genres, authors, and reading communities that I would not have found otherwise. And, by focusing on the authors of books, I was able to be critical of what was most prominent in books stores and online. I did make a few exceptions to this rule:
- Y: The Last Man was written by a white man. It's also my lowest-rated book for the year.
- I read several books by Neal Shusterman. He was born in New York and has lived in the United States all his life, but I am unsure of his ethnic background. I spent so much time looking.
3. When you're on a mission to read 100 books, it becomes a personality trait. Books became the centerpiece of my life this year. Not only my personal life, but also my life as a teacher.
- I organized and ran the first Scholastic Book Fair my school has ever had.
- I took over the summer reading program for my school
- I made book display posters for every teacher to hand outside their classroom and let students know what they're reading
- I take students on monthly field trips to the public library
- I have librarians from the public library come to every family event my school has
- I work every day in my classroom to make literacy a central piece of everything I do with students
- I do all the major bulletin boards and they are all book-themed. Here are a couple of examples of recent boards
I work in a school with no library, which means I have spent A LOT of my own money to build my classroom library. Every day kids ask for books I don't have. We get a lot from the library, but having instant access to books through my classroom library sometimes makes the difference between kids reading and kids not reading. If you would like to help out my classroom library here is a link to my Classroom Amazon Wishlist
Below are the books I have read so far this year. Once I finish my last three I will do a "best of" list to end the year.
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