Trying a Reading Program

I'm going to try keeping a regular reading program, something like an hour a day minimum or 100 pages a day. I would like to increase the amount of reading I do, and I've always done better if I set goals. Right now I am reading Johnathan Franzen's novel Freedom
In one hour, I read 31 pages. I don't know if that if particularly slow, but it seems like it is. I have been reading the novel off and on for a while, so part of my reason for setting a reading goal is that I might be able to read the novel before my 60th birthday, which is a year and 2 months away right now.

Following the Harvest

I just finished reading a novel by former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris entitled Following the Harvest. The novel is set in the summer of 1943 and follows the experience of a 16 year old boy named Will Haley as he works on a harvesting combine crew that goes from his home in southwestern Oklahoma up through the Texas Panhandle, eastern Oklahoma, Wyoming, finally ending up in North Dakota.

I have always enjoyed "coming of age" stories like this. Seeing a young protagonist go from youth and innocense to maturity and experience seems to me to be the very essense of our lives. The novel also has a real feeling for setting, of time and place. I grew up in or near many of the places described in the novel. Harris has a good "writer's eye" for geography. His description of the Caprock region in Texas matched my own feeling for the area's atmosphere and mood.

I would recommend this book for a pleasant reading experience.