The American Cancer Society posted about a “Reading Everyday During the Month of May Challenge” at the end of April on Facebook. I decided to join and not because you would receive a t-shirt with your first donation. I joined because I have several family members that are cancer survivors. My late great-grandmother was also diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and she passed before I was born. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer around Christmas in 2017. She became cancer free in March 2018 after two surgeries and radiation treatment. I know of a few other relatives who have survived cancer as well. I decided to do this challenge for them.

This blog will be a way for me to hold myself accountable for reading everyday. I will list below the day I read, what book I read or how many pages I read, and for how long I read (between 1 and 3 hours, selected using a spinner). I will not spin the spinner on a new day if I failed to finish the time given on the previous day (i.e., Day 1 I read for 1hr 30mins out of 3hrs, Day 2 will be the remaining 1hr 30mins). Unless noted otherwise, I will be skipping Saturdays and Sundays as those days are spent running errands. I will also give my thoughts below the day I finish a book. Let’s get started.

May 1: Continue reading The Night Portrait by Laura Morelli; I read 37 pages for 1 hour and 3 minutes

May 2: For 24 minutes, I read 12 pages

May 3: For 33 minutes, I read 22 pages

May 5: For 2 hours, I read 52 pages

May 6: For 1 hour, I read 27 pages

May 7: For 1 hour, I read 36 pages

May 9: For 2 hours, I read 71 pages

May 10: For 1 hour, I read 35 pages

May 14: I planned to read for 3 hours; for 2 hours 29 minutes and 27 seconds, I read 100 pages and finished The Night Portrait

This was a great book that provided an in-depth look into the taking of famous art pieces belonging to various families and the return of those same pieces. While some characters were indeed fictional, the story of the Monuments Men was fascinating. If anyone has ever seen the Movie Monuments Men, this book gives the other side of the story and more. Did the curators, art directors, etc. really agree with stealing other people’s belongings? This book sheds some light on that question.

I gave it 4.85 stars as I felt having four different viewpoints was a bit much. I liked having the point of view of Cecilia, the lady in Da Vinci’s painting. However, I don’t know if it was necessary to have Da Vinci’s point of view. Although, it was fascinating to think that Da Vinci had dreamt of various war machines and possibly a world war. I just don’t know if his point of view was even necessary. Other than that, the storyline was one of the best I have read for historical fiction.

May 24: For the remaining 30 minutes and 33 seconds from May 14, I started Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow; I read 30 pages

May 30: I soon became stressed with personal things, so I took a six-day break and eventually chose to just read until I decided to stop. I read 28 pages for about 45 minutes.

May 31: I read 56 pages for about 1 hour and 24 minutes

To summarize, this challenge was fun. I wasn’t able to donate and as expected there were no donations made to my Facebook page (this blog was made available to the public months after the challenge ended). I will try this challenge again in the future as this was motivating to get me to read as many books as I could during the month of May. I also failed to read everyday as weekends are spent running errands and as I mentioned briefly, I was becoming stressed with personal things.

As per usual, feel free to send me book recs, ideas for reading challenges, and ideas for future reading blogs at blueoceans.sanddollar@gmail.com or comment down below.

See you next blog.