Planned Reading

I came across one of my friend's facebook notes regarding her Summer Reading List. It made me stop and consider such a thing. A summer reading list? I thought that was only for kids in school - you know, a program put on by the local school or library where they offer incentives for the number of books they'll read over the summer. I think these are wonderful programs and agree that summer reading is a worthy time filler. If you know anything about the Ortlieb house, you know we've got plenty of books on our shelves to fill every bit of our time. If only! {sigh} I'm a constant reader, and I love books. It can be quite the addiction for us actually - a couple clicks on amazon.com and voila! But the thought of actually compiling a reading list for the summer had never occurred to me. I'm a whim-reader - someone who picks up books based on one's whims and reads the next best thing that looks interesting or valuable. So besides being part of a book club or something, the idea of planning what I would be reading was very foreign to me. But since I've got a book or two (or twenty) on my bookshelf that I have yet to read, I thought it might be a good chance to sit down and plan on reading the books I actually have rather than buying or borrowing more books that I don't have. So here's my list so far:

Helen of Troy by Margaret George (one of my favorite authors)
What's So Amazing about Grace? by Philip Yancey
So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality by Debra Rienstra (finish reading)*
The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
Ya-Yas in Bloom by Rebecca Wells
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Midwife's Song by Brenda Ray
SexGod by Rob Bell (finish reading)
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis (read again)
The Shack by William P. Young (finish reading)
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (one of my all-time favorite movies)
Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens by Paul David Tripp
Jesus for President:Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw (finish reading & summer book club book)

This list is only after I actually finish reading the library books I've recently checked out which are: My Jesus Year by Benyamin Cohen, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Bjorn Lomborg, How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel and Other Misadventures Traveling with Kids edited by Sarah Franklin, Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst, MD and The Art of Conversation: A Guided Tour of a Neglected Pleasure by Catherine Blyth . I don't have high hopes about completing these books, but so far I've enjoyed My Jesus Year and The Art of Conversation. I guess I'll be renewing some of these if I have half a chance at reading them.

I may have been a bit ambitious with my list; this may actually be my entire 2009 reading list as opposed to just summer. I'm not sure if I can stick to a list, but I'm certainly going to try. Wish me luck!

Do you have a reading list? Have I inspired you to do some planned reading for the summer? If so, please share! What's on your list??


*You'll notice I've marked some as "finish reading" since they're actually books I've started but for one reason or another never finished.