book list: the game

In a previous post, must reads, I wrote about how I was challenged to read more books to better my reading score on the "1001 books to read before you die" list. I was bitten by the competitive bug, and it reminded me of the single-minded determination I see on the faces of teens as they struggle to beat a level of a video game. I suggested that we create a list of books recommended by high schoolers, and set it up in a spreadsheet so that they can keep their own score of how many books they've read, competing with themselves, against the list.

Voila: the completed reading list: High School Recommended Reads. It's been compiled into a Google spreadsheet that contains the tracking formulas. For your own use, make a copy of the spreadsheet and give it a whirl. Enter in an "R" for the books you've read and watch the yellow row formulate your total and the percentage of books you've read. Here's a picture of what the spreadsheet looks like:
Once you've played around with it a bit, you can delete these books, and enter the books and authors that your students recommend. Better yet, you can let your students make the entries themselves using a Google form:

It might be too late to use for this semester, but perhaps you could suggest a summer reading list?