23-Week Update on My 2024 Reading Goals

Plus one decluttering tip and one packing tip.

Twenty-six days till we move.

I’m returning the last of my library books and relying more on audiobooks as we pack up our life from the past six years.

Decluttering Tip

If you get rid of something, make a note of it. As I packed up our art supplies, I spent forty-five minutes searching my small house for eight containers of tempera paint. I can only assume I decluttered them a few weeks ago, but I can’t be sure. I have a nagging suspicion they’ll turn up after I tape up this box.

Packing Tip

Number the boxes as you go and keep track of their contents in a small notebook. If the move is complicated, you can also color-code the boxes with different shades of duct tape. That way, on moving day, you can tell everyone, “pink goes to the kitchen, and green goes to the attic,” and if you need to find something quickly, you’ll know that “pink box #3” has the frying pan.

Am I the Drama?

1. The Complete Works of Shakespeare:

   1. Sonnets 1-12, King John, Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, Henry V

   2. Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, Henry VI, Part 3:

      1. What is there to say? The Plantagenets are still struggling. There are some great moments from these plays, but really, there’s a reason no one knows much about them.

2. The Complete Plays of Chekhov

3. The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder:

4. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams:

   1. Having read A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and now Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, my main lesson from Tennessee Williams is how unbearable life in the American South was before air conditioning. Also, people are miserable.

5. A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

6. Becket by Jean Anouilh:

   1. Chef’s kiss. This has some of the best speeches and characters that I’ve read this year. Also, I don’t know why I love wicked, selfish, unhappy characters in Becket or The Lion in Winter but hate them in A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Someone please explain this to me.

7. Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles

8. Medea by Euripides

Next Steps

1. Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles

2. Medea by Euripides

Other Things I Finished

• Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

• Crosswicks: A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle

• Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier

• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

• Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

• The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (I read aloud this favorite childhood book to my daughter, and it was a precious time that I’ve been looking forward to since before she was born)

Currently Reading

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

• A Bad Place to Be a Hero by Jerry F. Westinger

• Baby-led Weaning by Gill Rapley

• The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789 by Robert Middlekauff

• Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton

• Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

A Favorite Quote

“It all comes,” said Rabbit sternly, “of eating too much. I thought at the time,” said Rabbit, “only I didn’t like to say anything,” said Rabbit, “that one of us was eating too much,” said Rabbit, “and I knew it wasn’t me,” he said.

“In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place,” from Winnie-the-Pooh

Book Reviews from My Daughters

she did not really want to participate today