This has been a great year for reading for me. After many years with not enough time, I have taken advantage of quiet weekend days and weekday evenings and all those little snippets of time waiting in line and in the morning when I drink my coffee and I have read a ton of books-80 so far this year to be exact. Here are some of my favorites:and also these:

and these:

I have written before: here, here and here about what a huge impact the podcast What Should I Read Next? has had on my reading life. As the format is quite simple, I often imagine what I would answer to this question Anne asks her guests: What would you like to be different about your reading life? And generally I would answer, nothing. I am really happy with my reading life right now. But then, as I thought about it, I did have one nagging thought: there are a lot of books I feel I should have read and haven’t. Particularly since I am the daughter of an English professor. Yikes!

During the years I was in graduate school and busy with kids, I didn’t dwell on it because I had so little time to read that I wanted to just read what I liked-which was often a chick-lit or mystery book that would not require much of me. But now, with all the books I have found time for this year, I feel as though there is no excuse. And I am sure that if I make the time, I will be glad I did. They are classics for a reason right?

So I decided to create a little challenge for myself. I am going to devote one month, the month of August, to reading as many of the classics on my To Be Read list as I can fit in. I am preparing for this by downloading them onto my kindle because I find that when I read on my kindle, I read faster and I also toggle back and forth between my kindle and my phone so all those little extra 5 and 10 minutes waiting in lines etc become reading opportunities. Luckily, most classics are less than $1 and many are free on kindle. I bought all of Jane Austen earlier this year for 99 cents.

I will probably listen to at least one book on audio and I may splurge for an audible version to be able to toggle back and forth from written to audio using whispersync-something I learned about from Anne Bogel which seems genius to me. I am thinking Middlemarch might be the one, given its length.

I have started several of the books on my list multiple times and it is frustrating to feel as though I need to start over again but I think I will need to just do it to be able to get into the flow of the stories. I think that by not being tempted by library books, mysteries and beach reads, I will be more likely to make progress. Although I usually have about 5 different books going at once, I am going to try to read sequentially and see if that works better for me since I find I lose the thread of 19th century fiction when I don’t read the same book consistently.

I have six books on my list but I will just start with Persuasion on August 1st and will report back on how far down the list I get by the end of the month and what I loved/didn’t love about the books and the project.

I like the idea of having a defined time frame. It is sort of a whole30, only for books. Deciding to only read classics will take the guesswork out of book choices and will eliminate the temptation to pick something up from the new books section at the library. Knowing that I was able to make so much time for reading this year makes me confident that I will not be missing out on the the opportunity to read other books-I will just save them for September. Knowing that I plan to start this in three weeks is giving me the impetus to finish the books I am currently reading, including this one which is quite long but excellent so far.

How about you? Do you have books you are secretly embarrassed that you haven’t read? What would you put on your list for a month-long classics power-read? I would love to hear your thoughts.