Catching up on reading lists

This week I am doing some catch-up on what happened with my various reading lists. 

I have written about how my mother requiring more care affected my music listening and reviewing. In fact, the care giving had an impact on almost every aspect on my life, including reading. 

Beyond that, the pandemic interrupted library service for a time. Even after it restarted, I guess they were willing to process inter-library loans sooner than I felt comfortable asking. That doesn't affect everything, but often the books I plan to read are somewhat obscure, possibly for being academic in nature, or having been printed in Canada, or something like that.

I did some panic buying. It was only on discounted books, but it was mostly wasted because I haven't read the majority of those buys yet. For some it will help.

This week -- as I sort out some other things -- I am going to go over the months that have gone by, what I have managed, and what is next.

Prior to the bottom dropping out of everything, I had expanded my ambitions. It felt like I was always behind. I decided to read everything on the existing lists, regardless of how long that took. Then in the future I could look for newer things. 

I mean, I did know it wouldn't go as planned, but I didn't know how badly.

And yet, what I find is that I did still read things, and I did keep track, and I have kind of been heading in the intended direction.

I have notes on books that would relate to Black History Month (February), Native American Heritage Month (November), and Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month (May). The next few posts will go over the books that were read, and also the future direction, which is sometimes more complicated than others.

I do not appear to have read any additional books for Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15th through October 15th; I had initially thought it was just September), but that time period for 2021 has not happened yet, and I did keep it pretty well in 2019. 

As it was, I read almost everything that I meant to, plus a few extra things that came up. The book I didn't get to was one that had not been officially published yet, but was floating around as an academic paper. It should actually be out now for September 2021.

I added some books of course, and then I still have a lot of names of both writers and musicians from reading Sandra Cisneros that I do want to explore more.

So the plan starting this September 15th is to read that one that had not been published, plus four new books that I have learned about in the time since, and I want to find some good biographies for Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. I will probably read Caramelo by Cisneros, but save the rest of her writing and the long list of her inspirations for 2022. Perhaps I am not quite caught up, but it feels manageable.

Separately, on my project to look at all of the Caldecott medalists, I only have about fifteen left. Some of the honors books were also pretty popular.. I have noticed and learned a lot going through the medalists, so I have thought about going through the honors books as well. The problem is that some of the medalists have been so badly written (even with good art) and so racist that I can't quite summon the enthusiasm for it.

I wrote once about a list of various awards and organizations promoting diverse books. I have explored some of those resources, but did not come close to finishing, so I think I will be turning my attention there again.

There are still about 16 post 2016 election books, and 8 economics books plus a movie.

It is all still being worked on.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2019.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2019_14.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2019_15.html