Reading Reflection

Reading Ladder

Twilight Stephenie Meyer

Breaking Dawn Stephenie Meyer

Grave Mercy Robin LaFevers

Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller

If I Die Young Talia Jager

A Fault in Our Stars John Green

Tradition Brendan Kiely

Soon the Light Will Be Perfect Dave Patterson

Make Lemonade Virginia Euwer Wolff

Identical Ellen Hopkins

Lucky Alice Sebold

A Stolen Life Jaycee Dugard

I gained a new appreciation for different genres of books and the different ways that

authors write. This list was challenging for me at times because I couldn’t decide if I was going

to go on links rather than the actual difficulty of the components inside of the book. I decided to

go on the subject for me because I knew rest of these books were real life situations with very

hard endings. The list starts out with the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer because those were

books that I have re-read but love so dearly. I continue this with Grave Mercy then Death of a

Salesman then If I Die Young and then A Fault in Our Stars. All of these books for me were just

little reads that didn’t have a lot of difficulty but did have a great story. Thus I put these books in
the middle. From Tradition on these books started to get a little bit harder to read. I would have

to take breaks in the story because some parts of the stories were just so jarring to me in my life

that I would need to sit down and contemplate what really just happened to this person. For me A

Stolen Life is epitome of all of those different horrors in a person’s life.

Reading Rate

I read 4,208 pages this year. I read 13 books this year. Looking at these amounts I find

them very impressive. I think that for my life, these are very good numbers. The assignment for

the year was something that I had never experienced before and at times was hard to keep up

with. This is because it was so easy to let it just slide to the side. Although when I did keep up

with it, I truly loved reading the books!

Overall Reflection

My reading habits from last year to this year have changed drastically. Instead of just

reading for school I begin reading for fun and reading books that I truly enjoyed. I did enjoy

reading different genres than my favorite but I do like my favorites for a reason. I believe that

my habits will continue but it will be challenging in college. It was a lot easier this year to just

read books because we didn’t have a lot of books assigned to us.

The conferences went well every time I had one. But towards the end of the year I had

problems with scheduling my conferences. I will admit that is my fault and I take complete

responsibility for that. But I did have some family issues complicating my life throughout this

year. Issues that I have never had to deal with before in my life which caused undue stress to me.
Overall the conferences made me a more confident reader because it was just affirming what I

thought the reasoning of the books were in my mind. It was nice to be able to communicate to

another reader about different books because most of the time I feel as though I just read a book

and write it off.

Some of my favorite books have been Educated and Lucky. These were both books based

on true stories of real people. Both of these women had very different lives than me and it was

very interesting to see the contrast of the major points in life to my major points in life. These

books made me realize how lucky I have it in my life and to have my problems just be so little

compared to what they have gone through. These books made me put my life into a whole

different perspective. I really enjoyed that part of reading those books.

I have grown as a reader in numerous ways. I have changed the different books that I

enjoy. This has been the most drastic change because I was forced to read books outside of my

comfort zone. These books made me more open to other genres that I have not looked at before. I

also rediscovered my love for reading. When I was a kid I used to read almost 50 books every

summer. This love of reading has been gone for quite a while because of school and I just did not

prioritize reading in my life. This year has made me think of all the different ways that I can

incorporate just a little bit a reading in my life to make my day even better. Reading educate you

on the different circumstances of other people and truly helps develop your mind.

I don’t believe that you can define yourself as a reader. But if I were to try and give

myself a label I would say that I read it to try and further my education on other peoples

circumstances to become more cultured and less ignorant as a person. This is because the books I

generally read are based upon real peoples lives and real peoples problems. Even though I do
like the odd book about just something simple or a silly romance. The books I truly enjoy and

truly remember are the ones that impact my life.

I completed my goal of reading more books than I did last year. I read different books

that challenged me and different books from outside the norm. For instance, I would never

normally read a poetry book, but I read two different ones this year and fell in love with the way

that the authors wrote these books. I really enjoyed taking time out of my day to spend on

something that I love and hold so dear to my heart like reading. These habits of taking time for

something that I enjoy doing and want to do but thought that I didn’t have time for will stay with

me for a long time.

I would say to make no changes. Depending on ones lives the goals are absolutely

attainable. Also the goals are really self motivated and centered towards that one person. This

makes it up to par with everyone’s different abilities in the class.