I cannot believe that it has been four years since I first started The Book Challenge blog. A lot has changed in that time. Books went from being my hobby to being my job – I now work as an English teacher – and as a strange result, I have stopped reading anywhere near as much as I used to. No you’re right, that doesn’t make sense, but it’s the way it is!
I guess it makes a little more sense when you consider just how tough doing teacher training is, and just how much of my life it took up. The blogs get thinner and thinner as my training picks up, and consists almost exclusively of books that I had read for school purposes. My quite shocking reading total for 2013 appears to be one. Whilst this doesn’t reflect exactly how many books I read, it says a lot about how much spare time I had that my blogging – something I have enjoyed thoroughly over the past few years – dropped off considerably. It didn’t disappear – I set up a blog with one of my classes at school and reviewed some books there – but that’s a story for another day.
Because today I restart. My NQT year (also known as “The hardest year of your career”. I concur.) is in full flight. I still have almost no time to myself. But I can’t be the kind of English teacher who doesn’t read, and my to be read pile is genuinely obscene (you would actually laugh at how many books I am waiting to read at the moment). So no target this year. No level to reach. No specific books that I am going to make sure I read to look more “well read”. And no shame if I only read kids books and wrestling autobiographies. I want to get back to reading because I love it, and blogging because I enjoy it.
Please keep reading and commenting. I would write this even if I thought that not a person ever read it, but hearing comments from you all truly makes this the special little thing that it is, so please do let me know what you think about the blogs, or far more importantly, what you think about any of the books that I have read.