I love making reading plans. I like lists of books, books in categories, reading challenges, lots of reading plans. And I do follow through to some extent. However, I always get more ideas for books to read, both inside and outside the plans’ parameters, than I have time to read them all. So, my success a reading lots of books is good, but my success at reading strictly what I planned to read is bad.

Nevertheless, I have lots of reading plans for 2022. First of all my Facebook (private) page, Cultivating Beauty and Truth, which boasts 64 members, did a fall feast Charlotte Mason-style study including literature, poetry, art, music, hymns, Bible study, and psalms, and it was well received. So, I am planning a “Spring Picnic” of the same kind of study, and if you would like to join the group on Facebook, you can request to do so with this link.

For Cultivating Beauty and Truth, we will be reading The Hobbit, studying Romans and the first eighteen chapters of Exodus, looking at the art of Vincent van Gogh, reading poetry by Longfellow and Poe, and more, beginning in late January and lasting over the course of twelve weeks. I’ll try to remember to post the schedule here on Semicolon for those of you who are not on Facebook and who would like to join in. But most of the discussion will take place on Facebook or in person here in southeast Houston.

I also have a reading challenge for every one at Cultivating Beauty and Truth: 12 books for 2022. I’m challenging those who want to participate to read at least 12 books in 2022, in the following categories:

• Read a book of the Bible, any book, as long as Genesis or as short as III John. I’m looking at either Exodus or Romans for our Spring Picnic, or maybe parts of both. Read it slowly and carefully and prayerfully, and it might be the best book you read in 2022.
• Read one book that encourages you to pray. There are many books about prayer, but not all of them actually get a person praying. Suggestions anyone?
• Read one book that makes you laugh. I think we all need to laugh.
• Read one biography of an inspiring person. If you need suggestions, I can certainly give you some.
• Read one book meant for children: a picture book, a fiction book for older children, or even a Young Adult novel, or a nonfiction book for children. There are so many good children’s books, both classics and recently published.
• Read one book of poetry. Read it slowly, one poem a day or read it all in one day. I’ll be posting, and soliciting, suggestions for this category. We need more poetry in our lives.
• Read one book about art or music. Read about an artist (our Spring Picnic artist is probably going to be Van Gogh) or a musician, or read about how music works or how to draw or how to look at paintings or whatever fits into this category.
• Read one book about the Bible or commentary on a portion of the BIble or Bible study book. 
• Read one book that challenges your thinking, one well written book that has ideas that you disagree with or think you disagree with. Try to understand the opposing point of view thoroughly before you discount it.
• Read one classic book, fiction or nonfiction, that was published over 100 years ago. Get out of the rut chronological snobbery, and listen carefully to what someone from another time period had to say.
• Read one book that your spouse or friend wants you to read.
• Read one Christmas book.

If you’re interested in joining my reading challenge, you can sign up here or at the Cultivating Facebook page.

I’m also participating in the Literary Life (podcast) Reading Challenge: Two for 2022. I’ve already started reading Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth for my “book about an Inkling” category in this challenge. It’s a bit dry starting out, but I have learned some things about Tolkien that I didn’t know or had forgotten. For instance, I had forgotten that Tolkien was orphaned at the age of twelve when his mother died after having lost his father when Tolkien was very young, three or four years old.

One more reading challenge that I’m taking is the Spread the Feast Challenge from my new friend Crystin Morris at Delightfully Feasting who also does seminars on Charlotte Mason homeschooling and philosophy and has lots of online and print resources for CM educators. I plan to begin reading The Children’s Own Longfellow for my poetry book for this challenge, and it will fit into the Cultivating challenge and the Literary Life challenge, too.

I also have a Big Plan to do a century of reading, one book published in each year from 1851-1950. This will necessitate reading a couple of books a week on the list I’ve made, if I’m going to finish reading all 100 books by the end of 2022. So, for January, I have the following lined up:

• 1851: The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin.
• 1852: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
• 1853: Ruth by Mrs. Gaskell.
• 1854: Hard Times by Charles Dickens.
• 1855: The Warden by Anthony Trollope.
• 1856:
• 1857:
• 1858: The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• 1859: Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy.
• 1860: The Professor at the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

As you can see, I don’t have anything for 1856 or 1857. It had better be something short for both of those years since the other books are mostly rather long and dense. If you have suggestions for something good and short, published in ether 1856 or 1857, please comment.

If you think I’m crazy to make all of these reading plans, in addition to my regular impulse reading, you’re right. But crazy is fun. What are your crazy reading plans? Happy reading to all in 2022!

• The Ark by Margot Benary-Isbert. Set in post WW2 Germany and published first in 1954, The Ark tells the story of and the Lechow family and how they began to rebuild their lives two freezing attic rooms in Mrs. Verduz’s house on Parsley Street.
• At the Seven Stars by John L. Beatty.
• A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus (published in 2021).
• The Alley by Eleanor Estes.
• Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell. This British author was recommended to me when I was in Ireland a couple of years ago, and this book , set partly in Zimbabwe and partly in England, is about a girl who grows up wild and free on a farm with very few rules and very little “civilization”. However, about one third of the way through the book Wilhelmina’s life changes drastically when she is sent to boarding school in England.
• 365 Days to Alaska by Cathy Carr (published in 2021)
• Across the Pond by Joy McCullough (published in 2021)
• The Elephant in the Room by Holly Goldberg Sloan (published in 2021). Sila’s mom has been in Turkey trying to resolve her immigration issues for a whole year, and although Sila’s dad is great, both Sila and her dad miss her mom a lot. Sila makes a couple of new friends, an old man named Gio who lives in an old house with high walls around it and a boy named Mateo, who is autistic and very interesting. Then the new friendships and the advent of an elephant named Veda help Sila to deal with the absence of her mom.
• The Clay Marble by Minfong Ho. “Fleeing war-torn Cambodia in 1980, Dara, her mother, and her older brother find sanctuary in a refugee settlement on the Thailand border, but when fighting erupts, Dara finds herself separated from everyone and everything she loves.”
• The Swallow’s Flight by Hilary McKay. Another World War II book, the story takes place in several different threads with characters, both German and British, who all come together in the final chapters of the book. The characters, two German boys, two British girls, and their families, are all well drawn, quirky, and full of life.

I read a total of 48 middle grade fiction books this year. 35 of those were middle grade realistic fiction. 13 were fantasy or science fiction.

With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.

p. 19

White privilege or black privilege? The privilege of suffering? Booker T. Washington, American educator, orator, and author, has been lauded for his leadership and vision for the Black community after the Civil War and during the days of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. He has also been criticized and even vilified for his “accommodationism” to white power and supremacy. In reading his autobiography, I came to the conclusion that he was both intelligent and wise, choosing to do the work that could be done in the time and cultural milieu in which he was placed. He did much to improve the status and education of Black people in a time and place (late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Deep South, U.S.) when such a movement was not only discouraged but oppressed and disallowed.

Historian C. Van Woodward in 1951 wrote of Washington, “The businessman’s gospel of free enterprise, competition, and laissez faire never had a more loyal exponent.” And indeed, isn’t the basis of today’s Critical Race Theory partly the idea that the structures of business and education must be changed to end discrimination against and oppression of Black people. Isn’t that what Mr. Washington was attempting to do as he encouraged Black citizens to gain skills, build wealth, and create their own businesses and educational institutions, free of the racism embedded in the institutions they were barred from attending, supporting, or owning.

Booker T. Washington is indeed somewhat self-aggrandizing over the course of his autobiography, always talking about the speeches he was asked to make in grand places, the money he was able to induce others to contribute, the numbers of students he taught, the schools he built. And yet, success breeds success. Up From Slavery is partly a sales pitch for more people to contribute time and money to the vision that Washington had for the advancement of his people. And it is a successful sales pitch.

“People called Washington the “Wizard of Tuskegee” because of his highly developed political skills, and his creation of a nationwide political machine based on the black middle class, white philanthropy, and Republican Party support.” I would like to see his detractors do more, considering the time and place in which he worked. And his idea that Black people can and should use the suffering and adversity to which they were subjected to make themselves stronger and more confident applies to all of us who face difficulties in our lives.

In a somewhat Harry Potter-ish premise, Barclay, orphan and apprentice mushroom farmer in the rule-bound village of Dullshire, accidentally breaks the most important rule: never, ever, ever go into the Wild Woods. For in the Wild Woods there are beasts and danger . . . and adventure, with no rules.

Barclay somehow manages to bond with a Beast and thereby gets himself run out out of Dullshire and forced into the company of the Lore Keepers, those who live in the Woods and have bonded (on purpose) with the magical and deadly Beasts who live there. All Barclay wants is to get rid of his beast-bonding Mark and go back to Dullshire. However, it isn’t a simple matter to remove a Mark or get rid of a Beast, and Barclay must ask for help from the very people he most wants to avoid, the Lore Keepers.

The world-building in this novel is well done. The book could have used a map showing the six regions of Wilderlands and the Elsewheres, including Dullshire and Humdrum. A list of some of the most important Beasts and their characteristics is included as an appendix in the back of the book. I was engaged enough in the story itself that I didn’t miss either the nonexistent map or the list of Beasts until I finished the book. Maybe a sequel will include other helps and appendices.

I do indeed think there will be a sequel. The story leaves some questions unanswered. Two characters sort of disappear near the end of the story, maybe dead, maybe trapped somewhere, but we’re not told what happened to them. Viola, another main character, has a fraught relationship with her father that is mostly left unexplored. The villain of the piece is defeated, but still alive and left in the custody of a less than trustworthy guardian. So my guess is that there is more Wilderlore to come. (Ah, yes, I see that Book 2 in the series is due out in February of 2022, with books 3 and 4 scheduled for successive years.)