Summer of 100,000 Pages

In the summer of 2007, the Lyndon Ricks Family undertook a reading program:

Summer of 100 Books

Our goal was to log 100 books during the months of June, July, and August. 

We did well.  Not only did we meet our goal of 100 books, we far exceeded it.  We read 187 books (136 titles) and a total of 57,966 pages.  We did this with basically seven readers—Lyndon, Elizabeth, Andrea, Platte, Heather, Whitney, and Amanda.  There were nine of us in the family at that time, but Daniel was in law school and Adam was on a mission.

The most popular book of that summer was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Six of us read it.  The longest book was Kristin Lavransdatter, which I am still trying to get my daughters to read.  We read fiction and nonfiction; secular books and church books—the Book of Mormon in two languages; mysteries, histories, classics, true crime, tragedies, comedies, children’s books, and even a romance or two because Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility are romances as well as classics.  Being that it was the summer of 2007, the Twilight books even made our list. 

Now eight years later we are embarking on an even more ambitious summer reading program: 

Summer of 100,000 Pages

Since 2007 we have more than doubled the size of our family.  We have added Kristina and Ben as well as grandchildren Belle, Olivia, Platte, Madison, Asher, Hazel, Atticus, and Alta Rose.  We look forward to adding Violet this week.  Additionally, Jared Smith will be reading with us!  Hooray for lots of readers. 

The primary goal of Summer of 100,000 Pages is to encourage our four oldest grandchildren to read.  We expect that Belle and Olivia (both 6 years old) and Platte and Madi (both 4 years old) will do the lion’s share of the reading.  But we expect that we will all have a wonderful time turning pages and entering the wonderful world of books