Create a reading list!

SO... Tay and Rae went on vacation on Friday and they are staying there for two weeks! Lucky ducks! So that leaves me to post! I haven't gotten to really sit down and post anything good yet. I'm so busy! But now I have two weeks, just me and you, together, one on one. This will give us plenty of time to get aquainted. I'm not near as entertaining as Tay and Rae, but stay with me. Okay?

Now that I've kind of told you a little about the situation at hand, I can begin what this post is about. I don't know why, but I consider accomplishments really important. I like to set goals for myself, long term and short term. And most of all, I like to achieve those goals.

Now this was one of my easiest goals. Basically, I want to read at least one book per month, even during summer. This isn't a problem because I love to read. Around March of this year I started thinking, "Wow. I've read a lot already this year." I started thinking back to what I had read in March, February and January. I started a list to remember:

2012 Books I Read

January
- The Hunger Games

February
- Catching Fire

March
- Mockingjay
- Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie (Dear America series)
- The Help
- Water for Elephants

April
- The Notebook
- Three Weeks with my Brother
- At First Sight
- A Bend in the Road
- Versailles: A Biography of a Palace
- A Stolen Life: Jaycee Lee Dugard Memoir

May
- The Secret
- The Missing
- The Telling

June
- Eyes at the Window

(You can buy any of these books through http://www.amazon.com/.)

I started jotting all of these down in my notebook I use for writing purposes. I have several rules, though. I couldn't add a book to the list if I hadn't finished reading it yet. You don't know what will happen - you might not get to finish the whole thing. Also, when you actually do finish the book, and you've already written down that you read it (before you read the whole thing) it just sucks all of the fun of creating a list in the first place.

So I encourage you to go make your own list! Then while years pass and you keep writing down the books you've read you can flip through your little notebook and tell people, "Oh yes, I read that in May 2012." It'll come in handy. This is my first year making a reading list, so I'm excited to actually finish one whole year.

It doesn't even have to be about books. If you like to write, you can write down the titles of the new short stories you wrote in that month. If you like to draw, it could be of the titles of the paintings you made. It could be for anything, really! I love lists!

Have you ever made a list before? What for, and why? Do you find it useful, as time passes? Please comment your thoughts below.

Carpe diem,
Mad