Number 98 -- Hourglass

Hourglass by Claudia Gray, is the third in the Evernight series. Though it is "another vampire book," the story is different than what you might have read before. I'm impressed by the characters and by the way Gray is able to take me completely by surprise.

I read for pleasure, and don't try to figure things out ahead of time. Usually, I understand the direction a story is going, but in the first two books of this series (Evernight and Stargazer), there was a point in the novel where I had a "what just happened?!" moment and was startled by what I had just read.

If you like vampire stories, you'll like this one, but it also has lots of twists, turns, action, and drama. I will have to go and find out where I can get the next installment (Afterlife). We don't have it yet in our library, so I'll have to make sure it finds it's way to our list of new books to buy for next year!

Number 97 -- The Book Whisperer

Just finished The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. A truly outstanding book on "teaching" reading. Unlike any other professional book I've read in a long time and worth every moment. Wish I'd had it when I was still in the classroom! If you love books, reading, and kids, READ this book! I just found out it has it's own Facebook page! How cool is that!?

A couple of my favorite quotes from the book:

"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance." -- Atwood H. Townsend (p. 47)

"I can never express who I really am in my own words as powerfully as my books can." (p. 173)

The second quote scares me a little because it makes me wonder what my book choices say about me! I will confess that I am not a lover of classics (though I do have a few favorites) and have not read as many as some of my colleagues; nor do I intend to. I'm not a fan of fantasy (as a whole) or science fiction. I like love stories, but not mushy romance. What I do enjoy is mystery/suspense! I often joke that if the book has a cop and a dead body, I'll read it. However, I am not a slave to any one genre, and will try any new book. After much pain and frustration over the years I have given myself permission to abandon a book that does not interest me. It wasn't easy to release the guilt of it, but once I did, I felt free to make choices I might not have in the past. And I certainly wouldn't be reading 100 books in a year if I was bogged down in a novel that bored me and stalled my progress.

New Start BEFORE the New Year!

I've said it before, but this time I MEAN it!

I'm going to change a lot of things in the New Year, but I'm using the holidays as my spring board. One of the changes I'm going to make is adding blogging to my reading goal this year. No, I'm not going to read more blogs (I already have a long list I subscribe to), but rather blog ABOUT what I'm reading.

The suggestion came from several people who heard about my goal of reading 100 books in 2010. At this moment, I am about to finish #97, am half way through #98, and am 2/3 the way into #99. Having said that, I talk about the number of books I've read, but rarely have the time to discuss WHAT I'm reading. That is what I plan to use my blog for from now on.

So, if you want to go along on this ride with me, and possibly find something YOU might like to read, check back and see what's next.

Photo by moriza, and used under the Creative Commons license.

Working Late

It's nice to keep the library open late some nights so students can get their work done. They come in, get down to business and work quietly. I even got some work done as well. Makes for a nice end to the day.

Back to School....

Just created this Glog for the library's front page, but I don't know if I'll be able to post it there or not because of embedding issues. We've got a blog for the library, too, but it has so many ads on it, we may change it this year. I don't like having links put in for me that I didn't choose to add. (Of course the other blog is not with Blogger.)