Our January Reading Goal

Well, even though we have a few days left until January, the girls and I were ready to begin our January reading goal. The category we decided upon for January is "A Book that Challenges You." We really felt that reading "A Book that Intimidates You" last year was good for us, so we decided to do something similar again. What is interesting is that a couple of the books chosen were books read by a parent or sibling before. For most of us, we chose an older classic since the older language, depth of thought, and length are often more challenging.
I chose "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I chose this for the aforementioned reasons but also for one of my own. I loved Tolstoy last year, and Dostoyevsky is apparently the other highly esteemed writer of great Russian literature from the same time period. We'll see if I like him as much.
Faith chose "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee. She has just decided to get back into reading more than school assignments, comics and fan fiction to better prepare herself for college. Landree highly recommended this book to her (it was her favorite read from last year and one of her favorite books).
Savannah chose "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte because Landree and I agree it is probably one of our all time favorites, and since Savannah loves things from that time period, we thought she would like it.
Landree chose the monstrous book "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy. She is my literature lover, so she really wanted to challenge herself. She saw how much I liked it, and she watched part of the History Channel's special "War and Peace" series (which was really well done and true to the book, by the way). This is one reason she pushed for a head start at the end of December to begin reading, although I bet my fast reader finished in less than the three months it took me!
Katriel chose "White Fang" by Jack London because she loves animals, and the book came highly recommended by Faith. Her and Faith have similar interests, so she took Faith's recommendation to heart. Faith is not much into literature, but is a big fan of Jack London's books "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang."
Arwen is still learning to read, so she chose one of Landree's childhood chapter book favorites "Clementine." It is a funny and cute book that we both think Arwen will love with her fun sense of humor.

Hopefully, we are all up for the challenge and finish our books for January! I enjoy seeing my daughters share books with each other and have the privilege of observing a sibling read a beloved book. Not only that, but it is so exciting for me to see my child pick up one of my cherished reads and read it for themselves.