чтение лестницa (reading ladder)
February 2018
From least recent to most recent:
1.) Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier Pages: 258 Rating: 3/5
2.) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Pages: 272/769 Rating: 5/5
Total pages read: 530/4= 132.5 pages/7= 18.9 pages read per day
As I reflect on my reading rate, I’m not unhappy nor am I happy with it. I am simply satisfied with it. After coming back from exams, personal issues, and gearing up for a new semester, I believe that I’ve made plenty of progress. I read Girl with a Pearl Earring as a segway into reading. It was short, romantic, and historical. I’d say it was a just right novel for me and I had a lot of fun reading it. In fact, I read it in like a couple of days so it was great motivation to keep it up. As I reflect on my progress with Anna Karenina, I ‘m really proud of myself. However, I know I could have definitely done a little more but ideals v.s. reality, right? I’m enjoying this book immensely and it’s everything I desire in a 19th century piece. It’s truly a masterpiece and I’m not even half way through. My plan for this book is to be finished by, hopefully, the end of the month.
The plan of action after Anna Karenina:
- Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Idiot by Fyodor Dosoevsky
March 2018
From least recent to most recent:
1.) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Pages: 258+ 192= 450/769 Rating: 5/5
2.) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Pages: 50/ 214 Rating: 4.5/5
3.) Irena’s Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo Pages: 70/317 Rating: 4/5
Total pages read: 312/5=62.4/7 pages=9 pages a day.
Wow. I’m impressed with how terrible my reading ladder looks this month. Although, it’s not like I purposefully neglected my reading or anything, but I also don’t have a very valid excuse other than: I got incredibly busy. I was on vacation and I made it my goal to see every museum, sighting, park, and street. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not proud of my reading ladder this month at all but it comforts me to know that I didn’t waste any of my time doing something unproductive. When I wasn’t squeezing in as much reading as I could during flights, I was with relatives I haven’t seen in 6 years, seeing Amsterdam and Munich, going to a concentration camp, spending days in museums studying art and history, and catching up on sleep. I know that that number does not represent my reading identity or my worth as a reader; therefore, I’m going to brush it off and do better next month.
Onto the books: I am still finishing Anna Karenina and I’m loving every second of it. It’s a perfect mixture of science, history. Romanticism, politics, language, religion, economics, social studies, romance, scandal, feminism, and philosophy. It’s basically the Leonardo Da Vinci of novels and fulfills all my interests as a person, writer, and reader. My goal is to read 35 pages of it everyday for the next 9-10 days in order to finish it.
Over the break I picked up Lolita at a local bookshop in Amsterdam and was blown away. I didn’t 
get through all of it because I wanted to focus on Anna Karenina. If you know what Lolita is about then you know that it’s an incredibly “risky” book(it’s considered a “banned book” in many places around the world)that sends shivers down your shine out of pure disgust and intrigue. As I was reading this book, I noticed that my style of writing is very similar to Vladimir Nabokov’s and it was comforting to see that sort of writing in a popular, published work. I plan to set it down for April since I have other “research” books to read for upcoming writing projects.
Finally, Irena’s Children was a book I picked up since it related to the One Act play I’m in this year called, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. The book is a non-fiction piece about a woman named Irena Sendler who is famously labeled as “the female Oskar Schindler.” She 
saved 2500 children during the Holocaust: putting herself, her loved ones, and those her assisted her in grave danger. Despite this, she still persevered and went through any means necessary to save these innocent children and take a stand against Nazism and antisemitism. In I Never Saw Another Butterfly, I play a school teacher named Irena Synkova who resembles Irena Sendler in many ways. I thought that picking up this biography would help me get in touch with my character more and help increase my knowledge about what it meant to be a defiant woman during this period in history. My goal for this book is to have it done before April 23rd; that is when One Act performances start.
The plan of action after Anna Karenina and for April so far is:
- Irena’s Children by Tilar J. Mazzeo
- Terezin: Voices from the Holocaust by Ruth Thompson
- The Girls of Room 28 by Hannelore Brenner
- What was it like in the concentration camp at Dachau? by Dr. Johannes Neuhausler
April 2018
1.) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Pages: 450+161= 511/ 817
2.) The Girls of Room 28 by Hannelore Brenner J.E. Wood Pages:168/336
3.) Terezin: Voices from the Holocaust by Ruth Thompson Pages: 64
Total pages read: 393/4.5=87.3/7=12 pages per day.
This month isn’t ideal but at least it was better than last month. I’ve honestly accepted that second semester is always a rough time of the year when it comes to my reading and I just hope that I’m able to redeem myself in May and June.
First things first. let’s talk about Anna Karenina: The Never Ending Novel. Don’t get me wrong, I love this book dearly, it’s just been difficult to finish and carry around, haha. It will be done before the end of the year.
In order to prepare for my performance of Irena in I Never Saw Another Butterfly, I picked up The Girls of Room 28. It described the accounts of 10 
women who survived the Holocaust, specifically in a camp called Terezin (where my play is it). It wasn’t my intention to finish this book, but to only catch a glimpse into the lives of these young girls for resource purposes.
Finally, I picked up a short, little book on Terezin, explaining the conditions 
and lifestyles of the children and other residence that were forced to live there.
My goals for May are:
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstory
- Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
May-June 2018
1.) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Pages: 511+ 139= 650/817
2.) Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah Pages: 177/391
3.) Invisible Monster by Chuck Palahniuk Pages: 122/297
4.) The Power by Naomi Alderman Pages: 115/297
5.) Bent by Martin Sherman Pages: 80
Total pages: 13 pages per day
I made a huge effort over the last two months to put in as much reading as I could. However, I found myself jumping from book to book, leaving me feeling a little overwhelmed. In the beginning 
of May, I was really set on finishing Anna Karenina, but I’m pretty sure I ended up leaving it at the library by mistake and so I ended up picking up Winter’s Garden. It was a complete shift from Tolstoy, yet still has a Russian flare which I really enjoy and I can’t wait to finish it.
Chuck Palahniuk has always intrigued me as a writer, so I spontaneously decided to pick up his novel, Invisible Monster, and I love it. Not gonna lie, it’s incredibly disturbing in a way but his writing makes it so worth it. At the last minute, I decided to read the play Bent to help me with my short story I was writing about homosexuals in World War 2, and this play left me in tears. It always made me really angry that these stories aren’t recognized and talked about more around the world so Bent really motivated me to do more research and continue to write my story. 
I’ve had The Power by Naomi Alderman on hold from the library for about a year
and once I got my hands on it, I couldn’t put it down. It’s honestly one of the best books I’ve read all year and one of the best sci-fi novels I’ve read in my entire life. I recommend everyone to look up the synopsis and start reading it because it has honestly changed my life as a reader and person.
My goals for the summer:
- All the AP books assigned for next semester
- And finishing all the incomplete books I haven’t finished from May/June