2019 Goals Quarterly Check-in 2

1. Read 52 Books - Progress: 14 > 20 / 52 +6
   Lots of long books this month that didn't fully inspire me to read. I'm a little behind schedule, but I think some of my upcoming books should be quicker reads.
2. Finish my Lord of the Rings in Chronological Order project - Progress: 41%
   Thoughts:  I'm finally at a point where I'm pretty much just reading long swathes of text without switching out of books. It's really lovely. I'm enjoying the books more this time around, so I'm looking forward to how it all finishes. I am, however, about a month behind where I should be if I want to finish.
3. Back to the Classics - Progress: 2 > 6 / 12 +4
   Thoughts: I'm on target for this challenge. I enjoyed my picks this quarter much more than last quarter, the Dickens most of all. I'm excited to start Eliot in July. Two of the books I read for this challenge made their way to my top 3 for the quarter.
4. To Be Read Challenge - Progress: 0 > 1 / 12 +1
   Thoughts: Hahaha! The order I've been reading my books means these books have been pushed further down than usual. But a number of them are going to pop up in the next quarter.
5. Newford Part 1 - Progress: 2 > 3 / 12 +1
   Thoughts: The book I read for this one was super disturbing, but still ended up in my top 3 for the quarter. 
6. Austen Challenge - Progress: 1 / 7 +0
   Thoughts: I'm sad I didn't get anything read for this, but my classics took up a particular amount of energy.
7. Year of Wonder - Progress: 179 / 365
   Thoughts: I'm a couple days behind here, but nothing too bad or that's not to easy to just take a half hour to listen to music! I really enjoy listening to these pieces! The curator has picked some that are super out of my comfort zone, and others that I've never heard of but that are clearly a part of me. This is really a neat exercise.
8. Other Books Read: 8 or more. I'm not keeping careful track of these as most are Middle Grade Novels for work.

Top 3 Books This Quarter

Dickens, Charles - Barnaby Rudge
De Lint, Charles - From a Whisper to a Scream
Márquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude

Top 3 Books This Year

Austen, Jane - Sense and Sensibility
de Lint, Charles - Dreams Underfoot
Arden, Katherine - The Winter of the Witch

Nothing this quarter knocked the first quarter books off their pedestal for favorites for the year.

Things are plugging along. As of right now, I am about a month behind where I should be in the Lord of the Rings challenge. So for next quarter, I'm going to prioritize my LOTR reading as the first thing to do every month. Back to the Classics should be fine. The next two I have lined up are 600+ page books, so I think I'll do with them like I did for Dickens and just read a chapter a day. Which leaves space in the month to fill in with other books. I think I'll just rotate between my other challenge books in whatever space I have left. I'm looking forward to the rest of the books on my various challenge lists.

I also instituted "Quiet Time" in our house. My four-year-old takes an hour to play quietly by herself in her room. That's my time to do what I want, which means meditation and reading. Or administrative house duties... But it's been really great for reading those LONG books that I'm reading only chapter by chapter. Then I can focus my bedtime reading on my other books!

I've been reading the books in a weird order. It's vaguely alphabetical with my goals prioritized, but then I also ordered the books in descending page number order. I can't really describe it easily, but the effect is that I don't end up putting off books until the end. I just read the next one down on the list. Or the next two - one chunky book from the descending pages list and one not-so-chunky book from the mostly alphabetical order list. Looking at what's up next, I'm most excited for the following:

Daniel Deronda
Deep Work
Emma
The King of Elfland's Daughter.

Hoping for a good quarter of reading coming up!