As a youngster I spent a whole bunch of time, especially during the summer, at the public library. Libraries, actually, plural – my mom would take me to several in the area though my favorite was always “the library with the flying saucer.” I’m pretty sure she even had a job there for a while; I seem to remember her showing me the switchboard she worked.
One great thing that Public libraries do every summer to encourage kids to read more is to host a Summer Reading Club. They weren’t really “clubs” per se, there were no meetings or anything like that, but it was a fun way to track how many books I read through the summer months. That’s probably at least partially what lead me, as an adult, to join Goodreads. Of course, there were incentives – prizes of about the Cracker-Jack box variety, but they were prizes – if you read at least some number of books or were the kid who read the most. Once our children got reading on their own, my wife and I signed our sons up as well.
As an adult though you were pretty much out of luck until recently. Goodreads is great for tracking, and even has had a yearly reading challenge for the past several years.
Today I just learned that our friends at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library (twitter: @AFPLS) have a treat for adults – a summer reading program just for us. Yup, the Adult Summer Reading Program! We get to sign up and then write a review for each of the books we read during the months of June and July… and there are prizes! There’s nothing about it that I can find about it on their website, and you’ve got to fill out forms using paper and pen for each book you read, but if you’re in the Atlanta area be sure to stop by your local branch and check it out.
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some of the books I’ve submitted:
Thanks for spreading the word about Adult Summer Reading at Milton Library! Not all branches have it for adults, which may be why it isn’t explicitly stated on the AFPLS.org site, but we do here. And congrats on being on of our 1st week’s winners!!