My concerns with how reading is going

Another month between posts.  I will regret this someday when I am looking back and trying to look for clues.

JT continues to make progress with his reading, however I have noticed a few things that nag me.  One is that I feel that his method of reading is one where he now shies away from sounding out words and instead relies on his bank of sight words.  For example, we were reading and came to the word "skin" and he said "snack" (this happened two times in a row on separate reading). This leads me to think that his thought process is: "OK, I don't know this word 100% but it has 's', 'k' and 'n' in it, and so does 'snack' so that is probably it".

Furthermore, he is resistant to trying to sound out words with me, but when I sound them out for him, even if I put a lot of space between the individual sounds, he rapidly can say the word.  Isolating the problem, it seems that he has some new resistance or doesn't trust himself to sound out the letters.  I don't know why this is the case or if it is really new. IIRC, in the past I was complaining that with the flash cards he would ONLY sound out the words and not memorize them.  Still haven't done any flash cards for months, and maybe it would be beneficial to try them again to introduce more word grouping and sounds.  I feel like maybe with the introduction of 'ee' and 'oo' words he is starting to feel less secure about the 'basic' vowel sounds.  He was really upset when we read a book and I tried explaining the 'ph' in phone didn't make the 'p' sound.  What are you trying to pull Dad? He doesn't seem to have any problem reading the word "know", however.

The number of books he reads on his own continues to grow. I would estimate that he can read any GRL C book by himself on the first try now, and most of GRL D books.  Almost all of these books are library books so we have to return them after he has "memorized" them.  I do wonder if it would be better if we kept some longer because the books he seems to like to read the most on his own spontaneously are the ones he can read easily on his own and have mastered.  That way, he would have more opportunities to spontaneously read on his own.  I haven't yet seen him independently pick up a book that challenges his reading capabilities.  If I saw him do this, it would allay some of my fears that I'm conditioning him to read as work, not as fun.

Recently I've taken to reading him a book with no pictures to help him go to bed (which has worked miraculously well, probably helped by the sad fact that naps have not been working out since his little sister joined us in June).  It is one of my childhood favorites: Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising".  Earlier in the year we did make it through "The Hobbit" as our night/nap book, but it was an edition with illustrations, so it was often interrupted with him asking me if there was a picture.   I regret not starting him on non-picture books earlier.