It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 7/2/12

From Teach Mentor Texts:

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now…who knows, you might discover that next “must read” book!

After doing the meme for a couple of weeks, we realized this would be a fun meme to start up with a kidlit focus - anyone reading and reviewing books in children's literature - it can be picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, you name it in the world of kidlit and it's in! We have loved being a part of this meme and we hope you do too! We encourage everyone participating to go and visit the other kidlit book bloggers that link up and to comment on as many posts as you can. We love talking books and believe in sharing and discussing what we're reading. We hope you join us!

Last Week I Dived Into...
13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. This was a pleasant surprise. I hadn't planned on reading it, but got caught without a book. Thank goodness for my Kindle app on my phone! I got a good chunk of this read in the car and finished it after our trip. 
Smile by Raina Telgemeier is a graphic novel, one of just a handful I've read for middle readers. It's cute because it grew from the author's real life experiences struggling with teeth drama.

As for adult books, I got into Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn after seeing her at Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville. She rocked. Her book rocks. I also finished How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life by the Dalai Lama, The Walking Dead, Book One by Robert Kirkman, and some little book you've probably never heard of, I forget the title 75 Hues of Blue or something.

This Week I'm Diving Into...

Finishing The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson, Legend by Marie Lu (never got to last week with so many books from friends I needed to get back), and White Lilacs by Carolyn Meyer.

Adult reads include Labor Day by Joyce Maynard.

Top 10 of 2011 (Ok...top 20)

In no particular order....

Young Adult:
Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly
Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander
Everlost - Neal Shusterman
The Maze Runner - James Dashner
Tell Us We're Home - Marina Budhos
Across the Universe - Beth Revis
The Forest of Hands and Teeth - Carrie Ryan
Wither - Lauren DeStefano
The Rock and the River - Kekla Magoon
Wild Things - Clay Carmichael


Adult Fiction/NonFiction:
Snowman - Jo Nesbo
Mr. Peanut - Adam Ross
The Bells - Richard Harvell
Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
Columbine - Dave Cullen
Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
The Help - Kathryn Stockett
The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
The Leftovers - Tom Perotta

Books of 2011

1. Maze Runner by James Dashner
2. Scorch Trials by James Dashner
3. Hold Still by Nina Lacour
4. Columbine by Dave Cullen
5. Everlost by Neal Shusterman
6. Everwild by Neal Shusterman
7. XVI by Julia Karr
8. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
9. Tell Us We're Home by Marina Budhos
10. Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
11. Evil Star by Anthony Horowitz
12.

Columbine by Dave Cullen

Because of our snow day today, I was able to finish the book that some fellow teachers and I decided to read as a book club pick. Columbine by Dave Cullen. One teacher had recommended it because it revealed the truth behind what happened surrounding that tragedy.  The media portrayed a lot of myths and inflated a lot of errors.  The Cassie Bernall martyrdom was proven false.  This was a fascinating read.  Cullen was a reporter from day one (April 20, 1999), and stuck with the case for 10 years gathering research for what would become Columbine. The victims' stories were fascinating.  I couldn't stop reading and usually read past when I should have been going to sleep.  It cast light on an event that cast darkness on many people's (including my own) high school memories.  It forever changed how schools operate, and still has effects on my life today - in how I handle students and am required to perform as a job duty (practicing lockdown drills).  Sad.  The ultimate sadness that reading this book left with me is that the killers got what they wanted.  Not just victims' lives.  But to change the world.  They did.  I'm not usually a consumer of non-fiction literature, but because this subject hits so close to home (I can even recall exactly where I was when I heard about the shooting - in my own school cafeteria, getting ready for musical rehearsal) that I was deeply entrenched in the story.  I look forward to more non-fiction in the future!

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Product Details



Pub. Date: September 2010


Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux


Format: Hardcover , 562pp


Sales Rank: 22


Series: Oprah's Book Club Series


ISBN-13: 9780312600846


ISBN: 0312600844


Synopsis


One of the New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2010


Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world.

But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.


This book was a monster. I had to challenge myself to read an adult novel, and in recommitting to watching the Farewell season of the Oprah show, I wanted to tackle her first Book Club selection of the year. It happened to be this almost-600 page book with barely-there margins and a negative-size font. Or at least it seemed like that, compared to the young adult novels I'm used to reading. It was a difficult road to stay committed to reading this book and not giving up, given the number of other books I had slowly stacking their way towards the ceiling of my bedroom in my "To be read" pile of books. But I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did! It was a beautifully written novel.  The language and wordsmithing was a delight to read.  The amount of time it took to read this book seems trivial compared to the amount of time it must have taken to write it.  What a labor of love for him.  I hope to someday find that commitment to my own writing. 

REAL vampires

I'm about 30 pages into Interview with the Vampire, and I'm already seeing why all those vampire authors these days should be sending half of their paychecks to Anne Rice. It's so different from the YA books I read allll year long and guilt myself into reading all summer long too. I'm fighting deterioration (though I love YA books) of my brain by reading something meant for adult eyes only! Although, some of these YA books are scandalous! Anyways, I love how the words fill the page and the complex sentences. I can actually feel my brain pulsing with pleasure as I read this. It's so addicting. This was going to be a pool-side read only, but I can't seem to stop myself from going back to the bedside table where I keep my am- and must-reads piled up and ripping it open to read "just a few more pages".