Bounded by Books - To List or Not to List?

Reading lists. I usually view them askance, as something akin to required reading, which isn’t fun like the liberty of an unbounded field of choices. I usually don’t know what I’ll read after my current book until I’m finished, and I like the suspense and the freedom (not to sound silly, but it does feel a little like setting out on a road trip where your boundaries are suddenly expanded hundreds or thousands of miles). In high school, I was part of a homeschool literature club (one of the most fun things I’ve ever done—I’ll have to write about it sometime!) and we read a classic a month. Sometimes it took me the whole month to read it (The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Last of the Mohicans, anyone?), so while I loved reading classics, I felt like I never had the chance to read whatever I wanted. My route was always mapped out for me (I wouldn’t trade it for any other reading experience, however!).

A Giant Stack of Books in Germany - wikimedia commons

So I’ve never made anything more definitive than an “I’d like to read this someday” list; until this month that is, when I had to assemble one for the Read-to-Win program … it was my duty as a participating author. To see a photo of me with books stacked as high as my chin (okay, I’m not that ambitious—I was holding them) and my full list, click here. (I got a kick out of Katie Lynn Daniels' description of her reading list, too!)

But now that I’m committed to this list, I feel a sense of calm and orderliness. The task of deciding what I’ll be reading in the next three months is accomplished ahead of time, and accomplishing things early is a nice thing to do, isn’t it? These are books I’ve wanted to read for some time, and I still have the liberty of picking what order I read them in, so I don’t feel unduly confined.

So, are you as rigid a list-maker as a college professor? Or are you free-spirited and like the adventure of not knowing what book is around the corner? What books do you definitely want to read this summer?