Ok … so I am now 9 months into my Presidential Reading Challenge and I thought it would be a good time to update you on how I am doing. I am still working on George Washington … yep, 9 months in and I’m still on President #1. Oops?! I knew this would not be a fast venture, but I expected to at least get through Washington & Adams this year.
So I have just started my 5th Washington book. I’m on book 4 of James Thomas Flexner’s 4-book series. The books are quite long and in some spots, quite dry. So it is definitely slow going. But slow and steady wins the race … right?
I technically have 2 more Washington books on my shelf. I have the Ron Chernow book and I also have recently acquired Henry Wiencek’s An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. I’m a little on the fence about whether or not I really want to tackle the Chernow book to be completely honest. I hate to skip it, but at the same time I’m not really excited to take on nearly 1000 pages in one book. If it reads like these last few books have read, it will take me a year just to get through that one. So the verdict is still out on that one. The Wiencek book was an impulse purchase because I’ve been quite intrigued about Washington’s entire view on slavery and am eager to dig more into that aspect of his life.
I have also recently been thinking about adding on a book about each President’s wife after I finish with the President. I just ordered a Martha Washington biography, so I will probably incorporate that into this challenge as well.
I probably need to make a list of other things I’d like to explore in the future, because there have been numerous people mentioned in these biographies that I’ve read that I would like to learn more about at some point. I’ve also considered hitting the pause button, so to speak, to read a book or two about the early years of our government. There’s been so much not mentioned in these biographies of Washington that I feel like I should buff up on my history a little bit more. But again … that just adds more to my load. I’m making this wayyyyyyy too complicated!
So yeah … I’m still chugging along. And of course I want to make this so much harder than it really needs to be. I probably should have just kept it to one book per President … but nope, I had to go and purchase a 6 book series on Thomas Jefferson….
But I’m still having fun, so I suppose that’s the most important part!
Tales of a Book Addict 