Reading for a Goal

By Kimberley Chapman, Humanities Teacher

Hopefully, now that we are solidly in February, the good habits that you began on New Year’s Day have been put into practice and are beginning to be routine. This is certainly the case for Grade 12 prefect, Carter Z. (‘25), who has been working to read books more regularly. In setting this goal for himself, Carter has had a positive influence on the Senior School library, as we have started building a small collection of his favourite genre of books—self-help and motivation. He has just finished Atomic Habits by James Clear and has now moved onto Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.

Reading is beneficial no matter what your genre of choice is. If you, like Carter, want to develop the habit, there are some great apps to help you reflect on your reading.

• LibraryThing is a free, library quality catalogue to help you track your progress.

• GoodReads, an application connected with Amazon, has a large community of reviewers to rate books and set yearly goals.

• StoryGraph, which is my personal favourite, is an app that produces amazing graphics and monthly or yearly wrap ups to see your reading come to life. There are challenges and you can differentiate your reading between audiobooks, eBooks, and physical copies. There are a lot of options for review, and you can see if there are any content warnings that you would like to avoid when choosing your “to be read” (TBR) list.

Some people love to journal about their reading progress, and there are many exciting options for bullet journaling or keeping an agenda that would also be wonderful mindfulness practice.

Regardless of how you want to measure your reading, your librarians are excited to hear about your favourite (or not so favourite books) any day of the year! If you haven’t been convinced, the Senior School Library has a house points challenge. Gabe’s house is currently on par with last year’s winner, Hugh’s!