Deb’s Comments (group member since Mar 23, 2018)

Deb’s comments from the The Reading Challenge Group group.

As a child. I spent Sundays in bed reading. I am trying to make Sunday my relax and read day. These days I light a candle in my sitting room and cuddle up on the couch and read by the daylight. If I do not have daylight, I like the chair in my library. Always snuggled up with a blanket and sometimes a cat.

For some reason I loved a book about a boy, a horse and a hawk. Today I cannot remember the name, but I read it over and over. Going back further, I also had a set of books that had a bunch of short stories in it that were geared towards increasing your skills. Each story had a word count so you could work on increasing your speed, a story quiz so you could test your comprehension and a list of new vocabulary words at the beginning. I don't know what they were called, how my parents got them or where they are now. But I absolutely loved them.

Hi, I am Deb. When I was a kid, I lived less than a mile away from our public library. It was only 4 blocks away, but at 7 years of age it was quite a distance. I used to walk there every Saturday and check out 3 or 4 books. I walked past my school, turned the corner at the park and then again at the grocery store and then walked straight until I came to the library. It was a large 2 story building with a basement. You had to walk up a lot of stairs and between two columns to get into the building. It was beautiful and magical. After exploring for hours, I returned home where I then spent Sunday in bed reading all day so that I could return the books and get more the following Saturday. Sometimes, I had the means and I could splurge 10¢ on a plastic book bag that got ripped up as it dragged along the sidewalk behind me on the way home. That always disappointed me, but it did not stop me from buying another one the next time I had a dime to spare. I loved, absolutely loved when they had bookmarks for us. I realize now, they were probably a high school art class project, but receiving a 1 inch by 6 inch piece of construction paper with an owl on it telling me "Owl hold your place for you" or just a shelf of books saying simply "Get Lost in a Book" was probably the best. I entered into the Summer Reading Club and won every year, usually just getting my name on the wall or maybe a free ice cream cone. But I read. Then highschool and boys happened and the reading slowed down a bit. Who am I kidding, it slowed down a lot. In college I was honored to be chosen to be an initial participant in a program that was going to be geared like Saint John's College in Annapolis, MD. I could not keep up with the reading. (Saint John's reading list is here: https://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs...). Today, I stand before you having read maybe 10 books last year. My Aunt introduced me to this challenge in 2016 and while I have printed out the lists and kept track of what I read I have not finished one yet. I am hoping to break that with 2019 and maybe, just maybe, I will tackle the list from Saint John's College.

1) Book Published Posthumously: The Trial
2) A book of True Crime: Practice to Deceive
3) A classic of genre fiction
4) Comic written and illustrated by the same person: Ghost World
5) A book set in or about one of the 5 Bric Countries
6) A book about nature
7) A Western
8) A comic written or illustrated by a person of color
9) A book of colonial or post colonial lit
10) A romance novel by or about a person of color
11) A Children's classic published before 1980: A Wrinkle in Time Barnes & Noble Exclusive Collector's Edition
12) A Celebrity Memoir
13) An Oprah Book Club Selection: The Deep End of the Ocean
14) A book of social science: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
15) A One sitting book: If taking a water break approximately every 50 pages counts then I read this one today: A Little Princess. If not then I read this one months ago: Last Week Tonight: with John Oliver Presents a Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo
16) The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle grade series
17) A Sci-fil novel with a female protagonist by a female author
18) A comic that isn't published by Marvel, DC or Image: Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who: Assimilation2, Volume 1
19) A book of genre fiction in translation
20) A book with a cover you hate
21) A mystery by a person of color or LBBTQ+ author
22) An essay anothology
23) A book with a female protagonist over age 60
24) An assigned book you hated or never finished: I started to read And Quiet Flows the Don; A Novel but it was so tedious, my copy fell apart before I could finish and I cannot find a copy at the library.