To me, it’s important to challenge myself to read. Though I love to read, if I don’t take some time to sit down and balance my reading, I’ll find that I’m reading a whole lot more novels than non-fiction books and that I’m reading a lot of books from the same author. That’s what these quarterly sit-downs are all about for me.

Part of balancing my reading is a reading a book from each of the following categories each month. This works for me. It basically entails me reading 10 pages of each of 5 books each night, though I often read more of at least one of them, usually a novel.

Here are my categories:

Recent novels
Classic novels
Biographies
Spiritual growth/theology
Culture/History/Politics

And here is what I want to read before March 20th, 2009, sorted by category:

Recent novels:
Waiting by Ha Jin
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (hey, it was published in 1957, that’s “recent,” right?)
A couple of other selections from my book club

Classic novels:
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac

Biographies:
A Chance to Die (Amy Carmichael) by Elisabeth Eliot
My Heart is in His Hands (Ann Judson) by Sharon James
Between Two Worlds by Zainab Salbi

Spiritual growth/theology:
The God Who is There by Francis Shaeffer
Radical Womanhood by Carolyn McCulley
Life Together by Deitrich Bonhoeffer

Culture/History/Politics:
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell
Worlds at War by Anthony Pagden

I’m sure my actually-read list will look much different, but this gives me a jumping off point. I just don’t know what my first semester not keeping track of semesters will look like!