Nightstand, 3/17/14

I'm late with these posts, and hoping to catch up tomorrow with current ones. I ended up finishing one of these books, which I will write about with my next "Books Read" post.

Books Read, Week of 3/10/14

I wasn't sure what I'd think of Longbourn, and I really enjoyed it! It's the story of the servants at Longbourn, the Bennets' residence in Pride & Prejudice. It has a very different feel from Austen, and I think this helps it to work.

Felix and I read the second Humphrey the classroom hamster book, and he loved this one as much as the first. I think we'll have to continue this series together.

Nightstand, 3/10/14

The photo is dark since I took it early this evening. Can you see which book I started after finishing the Austen? It's not the same, but it's fun.

Many of these will be on my nightstand next week, too. I don't expect even to start all of them this week. You'll have to wait and see which ones I get to first.

Book Read, Week of 3/3/14

I finally read Jane Austen's Persuasion. I think I was saving it; I've read her other five novels, and this was my last Austen to experience for the first time. I know I still have her juvenilia and a few other things to read, but it was bittersweet to finish up her Big Six.

And I loved it. I read it for my book club, and had only five days to do it, but it was such a pleasure. I wish I could have lingered with it a bit longer, but it was also fun to be so immersed in Austen's world for a week.

And I cried when I got to the end. Very sweet! (No spoilers here. Read it!)

Nightstand, 3/3/14

Ah, so much more manageable! Can you guess which book I need to finish this week for my book club?

Books Read, Week of 2/24/14

I had a great week of reading! Most exciting thing was meeting Rainbow Rowell at some library events. In anticipation of her visit, I re-read Eleanor & Park via the audiobook, and also read Fangirl. Two great books! One fantastic author! (I'll write more about her later.)

I also finished up my re-read of Life of Pi. I think I liked it even better the second time. Maybe that's because I loved discussing it with Skye, who read it for her English class; they watched the movie, too. I got it from the library and we both watched it together this weekend.

Felix and I finished up Cinderella Smith, one of this year's Maud Hart Lovelace nominees. If we get him through one more, he'll be eligible to vote later this month!

And I loved Daily Rituals: How Artists Work so much that I bought myself a copy on the last day of my birth month. I expect it will be a book I'll enjoy peeking into every now and then.

Nightstand, 2/24/14

They are shuffled a bit, but yes, this is the same stack as last week. Hope to finish up four of them this week. We'll see.

Books Read, Week of 2/17/14

Hooray! Finished reading #4 in the Warriors Cats series aloud to the kids! I noticed that it takes us a full month to get through one of these books together, so that means we'll be ready to read something new by May... but they are both loving them, so I will enjoy the (long!) process of doing this first set of books with them.

Felix brought Dewey: There's a Cat in the Library! home from school last week, and was very excited to read it to me after reading it on his own. He usually isn't very interested in sharing his school library books; they are generally picture books, and I think he just reads them on his own once and then is done with them. My theory is that this one included one of his current loves (cats!) and one of Mom's loves (libraries!), and so he wanted to enjoy it with me.

Birthday Books

My parents always get me books for my birthday, specifically some of the ALA award winners and honor books. The announcement for these awards comes in late January, perfect timing for my mid-February birthday. They started by getting me the Newbery and Caldecott winners each year, thinking they'd be fun for me to collect. Now they've expanded to picking out even more for me; we have a discussion about the books after the winners are announced, and they pay close attention to the ones that I sound most interested in and excited about. I never know exactly which ones they will choose, which makes it a lot of fun.

Last fall, my mom gave me this year's Newbery winner, Flora and Ulysses. I can't wait to read it with my kids (once we're done with this first Warriors cats series of six books)! Above, you can see the beautiful packages I picked up at our local bookstore; I think they look forward to the order as much as I do! Aren't they lovely? Okay, ready for the Big Reveal? And the winners are...

Knock Knock: My Dad's Dream for Me

by Daniel Beaty, illustrated by Bryan Collier

Winner of the Coretta Scott King (Illustrator) Book Award

Niño Wrestles the World

written and illustrated by Yuyi Morales

Winner of the Pura Belpré (Illustrator) Award

P.S. Be Eleven

by Rita Williams-Garcia

Winner of the Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

by Meg Medina

Winner of the Pura Belpré (Author) Award

Handbook for Dragon Slayers

by Merrie Haskell

Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award

Midwinterblood

by Marcus Sedgwick

Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award

And coming soon:

Locomotive

written and illustrated by Brian Floca

Winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal

Nightstand, 2/17/14

Here it is! Very similar to last week's stack, with a few removed. Hoping there will be more movement next week, but many of these will probably remain for at least a couple more weeks.

Books Read, Week of 2/10/14

Three books completed last week:

I've been looking through Mark Bittman's Food Matters for awhile, and finally decided to compile a list of recipes I'd like to try, and then call it "read." (The first half of the book explains why and how we can and should start eating more consciously and responsibly; the second half is the practical application of the book, with lots of wonderful recipes.)

Reading more poetry is one of my goals for 2014. I started with this book of love poems in honor of February holidays: Valentine's Day, of course, and our anniversary. This book was a wedding gift.

Felix and I finished the first Humphrey book! I had a feeling he'd love these, and indeed, when we finished the last chapter, he suggested, "Let's start the next one now!"

Books on My Nightstand, 2/10/14

I'm ambitious this week. I've been looking forward to so many of these! I know I will finish at least two of them, but I'd like to get through a third, and start some of those other goodies.

I read Eleanor & Park last fall before meeting Rainbow Rowell; she's coming again later this month, so now I'm re-reading it by listening to the audiobook, which won an Odyssey Award honor this year. You can read Rowell's comments about it here.

And look at those other lovelies: Life of Pi (a re-read for me; Skye is reading it in school, and I want to discuss with her), Persuasion (this will conclude my reading of Austen's six major novels), Few Eggs and No Oranges (gorgeous Persephone edition), Daily Rituals (about artists' creative routines), and Fangirl (hopefully before Rowell's visit). Their color schemes all look beautiful together, too, don't they?

Time for some reading....

Books Read, Week of 2/3/14

I did it. I finished reading the whole Divergent series. Am I glad I did? Well, my curiosity is satisfied, and I can now discuss them with my friend who lent them to me as well as the teens I work with at the library and in our mother-daughter book club.

I finally finished The Perfect Storm, which I started last fall when Skye was reading it for school. I really liked it at first, but then got bored with the details of ships and navigation and such.

Turtle in Paradise: My favorite in this stack. Loved it. I can see why it won a Newbery Honor, and was one of this year's Maud Hart Lovelace award nominees.

Kids and I read these Valentines books in honor of the holiday coming up -- one of my favorites. We'd never read A Village Full of Valentines before, and it was pretty cute. I'm not sure how long it's been in our collection, but I'm glad we got to it. The Valentine Holiday Grab Bag book has inspired Skye to want to try making fortune cookies to give her class on Friday. We'll see how that works out!

Books on My Nightstand, 2/3/14

Lots of the same ones as last week. I expect to finish at least two of these this week, and I'm hoping to finish at least four of them.

Looking forward to our mother-daughter book club discussion about Divergent this weekend. I'd love to finish the whole trilogy by then, as I think at least a couple of the girls have read them all. Skye says she's not interested in reading the others, but will happily hear what happens next once she's done with the first.

Book Read, Week of 1/27/14

Just one this week.  Here it is!  When we got done, Felix said, "Let's choose another book now. Where's the next Littles book?" I had to break the news that I only have four of these. I'll have to search for more!

Books on My Nightstand, 1/27/14

This is what my nightstand looked like at noon today:

And then I saw a friend this evening who offered to loan me these:

How could I refuse?!  So, add those to the pile, too.

Books Read, Week of 1/20/14

I read quite a few books this week!  Look at them all in this photo -- mostly kid lit and YA, which is why I could get through so many.  Let's start with the YA:

~ More Than This by Patrick Ness.  As I read, I kept changing my mind on what kind of book this was.  An "issues" book?  A coming-of-age story?  A dystopian novel?  Science fiction?  In the end, I decided it was any and all of these.  Loved it.

~ The Littles Have a Wedding by John Peterson.  With Felix. Three down, one to go!

~ May B. by Caroline Starr Rose.  I think the author was inspired by the Little House books.  A wilderness survival story with a blizzard and dyslexia to boot!  And it's written in verse.  May B. is a great heroine.

~ A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.  How have I not read this before?  How have I never read any Woolf before?  How can I admit to being an English major?  Well, now I can.  I was worried; I've always been intimidated by Woolf, thinking she wouldn't be accessible to me.  I learned that yes, she is as smart as I assumed, but she's also a hoot, and I had a blast hanging out with her.

~ The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida. He's a winner.  I marked a few of his quotes.  Insightful and sweet.

~ Divergent by Veronica Roth.  With Skye, for mother-daughter book club.  Easy to get swept up in the story.  I liked Hunger Games better, but this one also has momentum.  Skye is about 1/3 of the way in and she isn't yet sold.

More winter favorites

We also read more picture books!  We love Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport with pictures by Bryan Collier.  And we each picked out another winter-themed book to read together.  Again, can you guess who picked each of them?

Books on My Nightstand, 1/20/14

Here they are!  I took off A Reader's Book of Days because I thought it would be dull to see that on my nightstand every week this year, but imagine that Nissley's book is always there, too.  I took a few out that I haven't finished in order to (hopefully) focus my reading a bit more.  It's interesting to see what books actually get read in these piles!  I always wish I could read them all in one week, but alas...

Books Read, Week of 1/13/14

 This week, I finished listening to The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen on audio.  I ended up really liking the reader for this book.  She sounded like a teenage girl to me, and her growth was evident in the changes to her voice.  Really nice story.  The Running Dream is one of this year's Maud Hart Lovelace Award nominees.  We read these with our Kids and Teen Book Clubs at the library, and every year, I attempt to read as many as I can.  So many great picks this year.

Felix and I finished reading the next Littles book, which means there are now two left to read of my four old Scholastic copies from when I was a kid.  He immediately grabbed the next book and demanded we read it, so these are a hit with him.

We've been immersed in the Warrior Cats books for our nighttime read-alouds.  The kids love 'em, which makes it hard to talk them into something else.  So, I've promised to read the first series with them -- six books -- and then we will move into something else.  We are now halfway there, as we completed #3: Forest of Secrets this week!

We also read a few picture books together.  Felix is studying the solar system in school, so I checked out some nonfiction books at the library.  He saw Boy, Were We Wrong About the Solar System! in the pile, and wanted to read it right away.  He liked it -- was very engaged and asked lots of questions.

I also got out our winter picture books.  Wow, do these bring back memories!  I had them each pick a favorite, and I picked one, also, and then we read them aloud together.  Can you guess who picked each one?

I think I'm going to try to keep track of the picture books we read together this year.

Books on My Nightstand, 1/13/14

I'm finally catching up with these posts!  Hopefully now, I'm on a roll and can continue these on time.

Here's what my nightstand looked like on Monday this week. Lots of the same ones, but there are two or three that haven't been here before.  Let's see which ones I can finish this week.  It's Friday evening, so I have a couple more days/nights of reading.  I believe at least one of these will move off of my nightstand.

Okay, I'm off to read right now!