The winner of the Amazon.com gift certificates for Spring Reading Thing 2012 are:

$20 Gift Certificate: Wrap-Up Entry #22 — Jill Hoke @ Days at Home

$10 Gift Certificate: Wrap-Up Entry #9 — Katherine @ KatenRead

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who submitted a wrap-up post and took part in Spring Reading Thing 2012! Have a great summer!

Whew! Summer is definitely moving in. Evidence: Yesterday was really hot and muggy and I readily admit that I spent most of it indoors, enjoying the air conditioning. But on the not-quite-so-hot days, we’ve been grilling out, riding bikes, and enjoying the sunshine. Spring is gone; summer has arrived.

As spring moves on out, so does Spring Reading Thing 2012. I want to thank all of those who participated. We ended up with 90 participants, and I thank each one of you for sharing your love of books with the rest of us, and for reading along with me this spring.

I’d love to hear how the challenge went for each of you. I hope you’ll take the time to write a wrap-up post and link to it using the Mr. Linky below.

Feel free to work from the questions I listed in this post, or just write about your experiences, thoughts, and results in any way you please. Once your post is up, come back here and sign up on the Mr. Linky below. Don’t forget — include the URL to your wrap-up post, not just your general blog web address, to make it easy for people to find your post.

Also, there are still two Amazon.com gift certificates up for grabs — one for $20 and one for $10. To be eligible, please post your wrap-up post (and put it on the Mr. Linky) by midnight EST on June 24th to get your name in the drawing. I’ll announce the winners next week.

Thanks again to all the participants. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading with you!

Despite the fact that I gave myself a fairly short list this spring, I still surprised myself by actually finishing all of the books on it.

Oh, the fiction was fine — I breezed through all of that by the end of April. But the nonfiction…well, there’s nothing else to say except that I was a real nonfiction slacker this spring. But over the past two weeks, I didn’t allow myself to read any fiction at all, simply so that I would actually finish my Spring Reading Thing nonfiction. And I did! Hooray!

I have to say, I enjoyed all of the books on my list. No book was boring, no book made me want to put it down and never pick it up again (as, admittedly, sometimes happens). I honestly just enjoyed a very pleasant spring of reading, and I hope you did the same!

One thing that stood out to me was that I read more than half of my SRT books on my Kindle. I still love (love!) “real books,” but the convenience, portability, price, and ease of reading on my Kindle has definitely swayed my overall reading more in that direction. I love having 10 or 20 books in my purse at once — all on the Kindle. And while I spent four weeks this spring at physical therapy, working on my elbow, I took my Kindle with me each time. I spent every heating and icing period — and a good part of the time in between — reading.

One of the most “quotable” books I read this spring was Wordsmithy by Douglas Wilson. It’s a book for writers (primarily Christian writers, though there’s plenty there for any and all writers), and Wilson has a knack for pithy sayings and memorable phrases. Some of the things I noted:

Writing ability is a developed and honed skill, and the more you develop and hone it, the more of it you will have. Writing as well as you can in every setting is the way to have reserves to draw on when it comes to writing for publication.

When you write a page and delete the whole thing, there is a sense in which it is not deleted. The better writer who remained behind is still there.

Reading lousy books is occasionally edifying, but do not make a practice of it. Life is short.

Productivity is more a matter of diligent, long-distance hiking than it is one hundred- yard dashing. Doing a little bit now is far better than hoping to do a lot on the morrow. So redeem the fifteen minute spaces. Chip away at it.

Go for total tonnage, and read like someone who will forget most of it. You have my permission to forget most of it, which may or may not be reassuring, but you will forget most of it in either case…The fact that you can’t remember things doesn’t mean that you haven’t been shaped by them.

Good stuff.

So, in summary: I read (or completed) the original nine books on my Spring Reading Thing 2012 list. I also read another four or five novels while I was busy ignoring my nonfiction. All in all, a good spring!

Don’t forget to visit the official wrap-up list to see how other participants did.

This is it. You have today and the next two days to finish up your Spring Reading Thing list! I’ll keep this post short and sweet so you can get back to your reading.

I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone did on their personal goals! I hope you will take time to write a post letting us all know how Spring Reading thing 2012 went for you. Once you have your post written and posted on your blog, you can come here on Thursday and add your link to the Mr. Linky I’ll have ready.

I don’t have any specific requirements for your wrap-up post. Feel free to just ramble about your spring reading experiences — that works for me! (And I admit, I tend to ramble, too.) But if you like a little more structure or direction, here are some questions that can help guide your post. (Remember — these are just suggestions and are optional. You can approach your wrap-up post in whatever way works for you!)

• Did you finish reading all the books on your spring reading list? If not, why not?
• Did you stick to your original goals or did you change your list as you went along?
• What was your favorite book that you read this spring? Least favorite? Why?
• Did you discover a new author or genre this spring? Did you love them? Not love them?
• Did you learn something new because of Spring Reading Thing 2012 – something about reading, about yourself, or about a topic you read about?
• What was your favorite thing about the challenge?

The official wrap-up post and Mr. Linky will go live this Thursday at 10:00 a.m. EST.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

And don’t forget — you only have a few days left to see if you can finish your Spring Reading Thing books!

I’m not sure when June snuck up on us, but here we are, a week into June already! Which means that we are in the home stretch of Spring Reading Thing 2012. We have less than two weeks to cram in as many pages as we can and finish our lists…or admit that it’s just not going to happen.

How are things going on your end? Are you ready to sprint to the finish line? Are you going to make it?

I’ll confess: I’ve been horrible about nonfiction during this challenge. I’ve been picking up novel after novel — novels that are not on my SRT list! — rather than being disciplined about finishing up my last two nonfiction books. At this point, I predict that by the end of June 20, I’ll finish one, but not quite finish the other. We’ll see…

I’ll put up a post next week to remind you about your end-of-challenge post and provide a few questions to guide you (answering them is optional, of course). And then the final Mr. Linky will go live on June 21st.

In the meantime — keep reading! And if you have a second to comment, let me know if you think you’ll finish all your challenge books…or not.