Member Review Book reading goals for 2024

[Jamieva]

Do you have a certain number of books you want to read on the war this year? Focising on a certain subject? Any must reads on your list for the year?

 

[bdtex]

My goal is to read books this year. My reading really fell off during Covid and I don't think I read one book last year. I started one a few days ago and I am 85 pages into it.

 

[Library Lady]

My goal is to continue to work through the piles of Civil War books on the floor and in the bookcase so I can either decide to keep them or price and pack them for sale at my Round Table's book sale for battlefield preservation. Some I read, but I try to find the matching E-audiobooks on my libraries' digital services. That combo is a read-along for adults. It makes things a bit easier when vision could be better. I need to pick up the pace, though, because my "enablers" keep showing me things they think/know I'll want to buy.

Since a work goal is to become my library's Civil War specialist for reader advisory (for various reasons that's not going to happen in real life, but my manager is fine with the idea of it), I'm also looking to read or to listen to more works for young adults and kids. Despite some worries I've seen expressed here, they are out there!

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

My goal every year is 50 books. Ideally, I should be going through one 300-350 page book per week, or two 150-page books. I almost always fall short of that target. 2021 and 2022 I read less than 30 books both years, which is the least amount of reading I'd done in at least 15 years. Last year was much better at 35 books.

This year I'm off to a decent start, as by the end of the week I'll have two books down, one of which is a 700-page behemoth (but thankfully excellent).

I have a large stack of books that I really want to drawn down by the end of the year. To mix things up, most months I'm going to try to read 1 Civil War book, 1 Florida history book, and 1-2 other books (mostly lighthouses or random stuff from my local public library's new nonfiction shelf). I don't tend to read many newly-released books so there's not much I'm looking forward to coming out, unless Jeffrey William Hunt announces his Mine Run Campaign book is coming out or Rick Atkinson announces the second part of his Revolutionary War trilogy is done. The book I am looking forward to most is finishing my own languishing manuscript (not Civil War related).

 

[gjpratt]

First I have 9 books on my bedstead queue, mostly offshoots from my study of the 1864 Valley Campaigns for the Muster. Add to that 2 books by @Philip Leigh i bought from him at the Lee Jackson Day symposium in Lexington. I had a long wish list of Savas Beatie books. Normally, I order one or two at a time as my bedside stack shortens. But I cleared it out in one order to help out Eric Wittenberg. This order included several books by authors featured on CWT Presents. The only book left on the S-B wish list is Dave Powell's first volume on the Atlanta Campaign which has not yet been released. I am not sure what kind of a dent I will be able to make on this pile until mid- to late spring. I doubt that I will read them all this year. I am presenting an expanded version of the Carrington and Turner Ashby sword stories at a CWRT in April and my priority now is reading and researching to support that talk. I finished the S-B reprint of Noel Carpenter's Detour to Disaster last night. It filled a gap for me on Hood's Tennessee Campaign.

I don't keep up with the number of books I read annually. Probably 30-50, depending on my professional workload.

 

[Pete Longstreet]

My goal is to read more books, but read them over the spring/summer time. I tend to only read during the winter and fall time. I also don't log into CWT much during the summer, so I'm trying to change that as well. I'm very active during the nice weather, and tend to hibernate during the winter lol. So my goal is to read more all year long.

 

[Pima]

I must at least read some books (1-3) about the ACW. I usually read lots and lots of stuff from many different eras (Ancient Greece and China, Medieval and Modern Europe) but I always fail to learn more about the Civil War. I almost feel like I am stuck for this period of History. Usually my interest is very very high for a month or so and then it magically disappears in the shadows ahaha.

Another problem is that I always borrow books from my library but there are not many books about the ACW. There is the one by Luraghi but it has more than 1.400 pages and I can't read it in a single month before having to return it to the library.