The big idea
The book progress report is a way of letting me know what you're reading, and, at the same time, forcing you to do things like summarize, remember what you read, and think about what makes a book good or not. It's so short that it is almost painless.
Before you begin
Be sure you have read enough of a book to be able to say something intelligent about it--three or four chapters, at least.
How to do it
This is simplicity itself. For whatever book you are currently reading silently, you should give the following information:
The title of the book (underlined or italicized, of course)
The author of the book
A brief summary of the story so far. This can be as short as a couple of sentences, and shouldn't exceed one well-written paragraph. The point here is brevity and clarity.
An evaluation--how is the book so far? Is it good or bad? Most importantly, why is it good or bad? Be specific.
An illustration of a scene from the book.
. . . .
Some examples
Killdeer Mountain
by Dee Brown
Brown tells the tale of a newspaper reporter traveling up the Missouri River right after the Civil War. He is on his way to the dedication of a fort in honor of a soldier who died fighting the native Americans. He slowly learns, however, that the man may not, in fact, be dead at all, and that there may be a sinister story behind the whole charade.
I'm giving the book the benefit of the doubt based on the fact that I've read and liked Dee Brown's stuff in the past, and I like historicals. I find the dialogue to be really stilted, however, and the tale is going nowhere fast. Maybe it'll pick up.
Captain Blood
by Rafael Sabatini
This is an old-fashioned adventure story about Peter Blood, an English doctor who gets wrongfully accused of treason. He is sentenced to 10 years of slavery in the West Indies, and has to fight to earn his freedom--as a pirate.
So far, I'm giving this book the thumbs-up. I like the old-fashioned use of language, and the character of Blood is a tough, smart, self-sufficient guy.