Checked Out-Checking In

Our library checks out books for 3 weeks at a time, so on Oct 4, I checked out 3 books, determined to read one each week and actually get them turned in on time. (Luckily, our library doesn't do fines for overdue books!)
I met my goal!! All 3 books have been finished and are ready to be returned tomorrow. (Hopefully the library will have a new issue of Runner's World on the shelf tomorrow too!)
I checked out (and will be checking in tomorrow):

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume. Lately, I've been interested in  re-reading a few of the books that I remember reading when I was a kid... maybe since I'm almost 30?!?!?!?!  Earlier this year I re-read Island of the Blue Dolphins, and I think maybe this might be a project for next year???

Dating Hamlet, by Lisa Fielder. This one caught my eye while I was browsing in the teen section. I have found some of my favorite books in the teen section, and it's usually a sure bet for a quick, easy read! This story was fun & makes me want to ask my dad to send me my big ol' Shakespeare anthology. The story is written in Ophelia's point of view, and I just saw that the author also has another similar story, Romeo's Ex. Will have to see if that one's there tomorrow.  Or maybe I'll stick with Hamlet and see if "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein is available.

How to Be an American Housewife, by Margaret Dilloway. I read books for grown-ups, too! The endpaper summary had me hooked-- this is the story of a Japanese woman who married an American military man after WWII and tried to assimilate to an American lifestyle. I loved that the descriptions, words and names in the book took me back to Okinawa! I loved the writing style, the characters, and the story.

I'll let you know what I check out tomorrow!

My Latest Obsession

At the library last week, I checked out The Book Thief (Markus Zusak). It had been on my list for a while, but was checked out last time I was there. I read about it on a blog somewhere a long time ago, and by the time I got around to checking it out, I couldn't even remember what it was supposed to be about!
First of all, the book is 550 pages long...and I'm usually reading 3 books at a time, so it takes me a while to get through a long one. I thought ahead and renewed my book early. Totally unnecessary! I devoured that book in 7 days, only reading it before bed at night and before getting out of bed in the morning.
It's a Young Adult book, but don't let that deter you...

The book takes place in a town near Munich between 1939 and 1943...so you know what much of the plot revolves around. The story is narrated by death and follows a young girl as she moves in with a new foster family, learns to read and write, befriends a Jewish man, hides in air-raid shelters, and becomes a book thief. 
You can read more about it here

I find books/movies about this time period fascinating and heartbreaking...and now I have a renewed obsession! Sometimes, I watch a tv show, read a book, or do a project and when it's over, it's over. But sometimes, that tv show, book or project will spark a new obsession. Like how I have now watched every episode of Glee twice (and beginning my 3rd go-through) and listen to the soundtracks on my iPod almost exclusively. Or how I count down the days to Survivor and spend about 4 hours a week on Survivor-related media--the show, extra video on cbs.com, a twice-weekly podcast). Or like the time that I became obsessed with cooking and cookbooks and made 100 different recipes during the year (a great failure as my goal was 265). And since July, spending a great deal of my time thinking of the baby shower that was supposed to be last weekend...I can tell you details of baby shower planning timelines, diaper raffles, the difference between a shower and a sprinkle, the price of renting folding chairs, and rattle off long lists of baby shower themes. It's not entirely my fault... I realized last month that my obsessive nature is being fueled by my own mother and aunt, who sent me an apron-making project for my birthday! Super-fun, right? I got 3 pre-made aprons and enough fabric to make 10 or 12 more for different themes & holidays. Someone looked at me like I was crazy and asked, "Why would you need so many aprons?" and I looked at her like she was even crazier for not understanding that if one likes aprons, one *NEEDS* one for every event and or holiday imaginable. Right???
Anyway, so the latest obsession has been inspired by The Book Thief, (which was probably lingering from reading Sarah's Key over the summer). Even though it's really heartwrenching (if you read it, have your Kleenex ready!), even though there's a certain level of discomfort when you read a book or watch a movie about the Holocaust... now I just have to read more, watch more...and begin planning a trip to Auschwitz. It's not everybody's vacation cup-of-tea, but I just feel like I *need* to go there, like it's a really important thing for me to experience. Don't know when we'll go in the next year or two, but David has agreed that it's a trip worth taking... so it's on the books!

Oh, the book I checked out to follow the Book Thief is Elie Wiesel's A Mad Desire to Dance. I've tried to check out Night a million times at Kadena and it was always out...I'll either pick that one up next or The Kindly Ones (Littel)--but that one is almost 1,000 pages!!

Reading Rainbow

I came across a reading challenge today that I might try. Nothing *crazy* like 100 books in 2010 or anything like that! :)
It's the Lost in Books Colorful Reading Challenge.
When I go to the library, I often have no idea what book I want, I just pick something colorful. So this is an interesting twist to my "choose a book with a colorful cover" strategy...it's "choose a book with a colorful title" instead!
I'm not exactly sure that I'll do the full challenge, 9 books in 9 different colors, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for colorful titles.
Some books I might consider are:
White
White Oleander
Snow: A Retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Black Stars in a White Night Sky (a book of poems)
Black
Paint it Black (the sequel to White Oleander)
Black Star, Bright Dawn
The Black Pearl
Bitter is the New Black
Blue
Gathering Blue
Island of the Blue Dolphins (one of my favorites from my elementary school days)
13 Little Blue Envelopes (I checked this out before, but didn't get to it before returning it!)
Something Blue (I read the first book, Something Borrowed, but haven't come across this one yet)
Once in a Blue Moon
Green
Before Green Gables
Little Green Men
How Green Was My Valley
Purple
Purple Heart
Purple Hibiscus
Yellow
Half of a Yellow Sun
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Orange
Five Quarters of the Orange
Code Orange
Blood Orange  
Pink
My Life in Pink and Green
Little Pink Slips
Pink Palace
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit  
Red
Where the Red Fern Grows (If I'm in the mood to cry!)
Red Hook Road
Woman in Red
Red Dress Walking
Red Glass
The Red Umbrella  


That's 9 colors...but maybe there's books with color names that come from the Crayola 64 box instead of the crayola 8 box! I might look up some of those later. I think I've got a pretty good starting point for now though!

Feeling Lucky?

I have mixed feelings about the Kindle/Sony Reader/Nook.
In my last post, I was talking about how much I love libraries. I love that they just give you a book, for free, and you get to take it home and enjoy it for a while. Three weeks at my library. I love that if you pick a book and don't really like it or find another book that you want to read first, you just take it back. No money wasted. I love that if you want to read a book that your library doesn't have, they might be able to borrow it from another library for you! No running all over the place looking for a book.

So, even though I love getting my free books from a big selection at my library, I couldn't resist entering this giveaway for a Kindle! Because I like reading. And I like winning things. So it is a perfect contest for me. Click the link and try to win one too. Because if you enter using my link, I get an extra entry. And if you're not going to win, don't you want me, your internet friend, to be the one to win? If I don't win, I hope it's you!

Now, I don't have a Kindle---yet. After my name gets drawn in the Kindle giveaway, I will!---so I can't say for sure how much I would love it or when I would use it. But I like to think that even with a Kindle, curling up on the couch with a book will still be something I want to do. Partly because I love these little magnetic bookmarks that I have, and I would miss using those if I used the Kindle exclusively. Plus the whole paying-for-books vs. getting-them-free-at-the-library thing. (My friend and I were talking a few weeks ago about how we think there should be a some kind of library license, where the library purchases the Kindle file or whatever and you check it out onto your Kindle...and then just have it expire or drop off when the three weeks or whatever is up. Maybe they already do this. Or maybe we just invented it because we are geniuses.)
Right now, I am packing for a trip. At least that's what I'm supposed to be doing. I think trips would be the #1 reason to have a Kindle. Besides the super cute Kindle cases, of course.  When I go on a trip, I need to have plenty of stuff to keep me busy. Even if I'm never going to get around to it. I need a knitting project. I need a book. For the airport, maybe the plane, for waiting in the hotel for the other people to wake up or shower. But what if the plane is delayed? What if the flight takes longer than expected? What if the other people sleep really late or take long showers? What if I finish the only book and knitting project I brought with me? So, I must bring extra. It's the only solution. But what if both of the books I bring are real page-turners? And I can't put them down and I finish before I've even gotten there?  Do you see where this is going? If you had a Kindle, you could load that puppy up and put a thousand books into your carry on bag, and take up less space than a single paperback. So, try and win a Kindle!
My trip is only 4 days, and is a see-stuff kind of trip. I'm packing 2 books. Imagine what I would "need" to pack if I were going on a week-long lay-by-the-pool and relax trip instead! But at least that kind of trip would require fewer and smaller clothes in the suitcase! 

One of my favorite places in the world...

I've been lots of places, and I feel grateful and lucky for that. But one of my very favorite places in the whole wide world is not faraway or fancy, and I feel grateful and lucky for that too! It can be found almost everywhere and it's FREE!! It's the library!
I've always loved the library. I remember my mom taking me to the "little library" down the street from my house. I mostly remember doing puzzles there. When we moved, we ended up getting a bigger library!
One of the first things I did when I got here was to get a base library card. I was so excited to see that the library here has a McNaughton collection. The library at Kadena had this collection (newer books) but then lost the grant/funding for it, so there was this big chunk of empty shelves that practically shouted (or whispered very loudly, it's a library after all) "Remember that best-seller with the pretty shiny cover that you wanted to read? It's not here anymore!! Go pick one of the old stinky books."

Today, I went to the library to return a book (House of Mirth, Edith Wharton) and print something out (boarding pass to Dublin) and ended up spending nearly an hour browsing. That's one problem with the library. It's very hard to "just run in to return a book". Because, you see, there are hundreds...no, probably THOUSANDS of other books whispering, "I'm good. Pick me. Take me home." Almost like puppies in a pet shop! The other problem with the library is that it's very hard to choose a book. That's why I normally choose 2 or 3. There's not a limit at this library...I could check out 63 books if I wanted to---but I wouldn't be able to read them all within 3 weeks. And when I renew too many times, I feel like I'm being judged.
So today I saw a whole bunch of books that I would like to read, and I didn't have a little notebook with me to write down the titles. So now I'm sad! This library doesn't have tiny pencils and index cards or paper scraps near the "card catalog" computers, so I had to try and remember which books were interesting (I only checked out two today...I already have 2 Ireland travel guide books checked out from the other base's library.) I've already forgotten...which means that next time I go to the library, I'll be there at least an hour perusing and choosing. Good thing it's one of my very favorite places!

Last Day of September...already??

1. RUN. Goal: 18 runs. Current progress: 18 runs. 138 miles. I'm happy with myself!

2. Read. Goal: 3 books. Current progress: bust! Halfway done with The Know-It-All, and about 1/4 the way done with "Twisted". Need to do more reading next month!

3. Knit. Goal: 3 FOS. Current FO count: 2. Current *almost* FO count: 1...still need to do that last darn cuff on the Curly Purly soaker! I finished Bella's Mittens which will be a gift for a friend (but I had to finish them because I wanted to borrow them and wear them on Saturday before sending them out!) Also finished a pair of fingerless gloves, which I was "commissioned" to make for a good friend who moved away (today)...I work best with a deadline! I'm saying it now...TONIGHT I will carve out some time to finish that cuff and meet this goal.

4. Cook/Bake. Goal: 6 new recipes. Current progress: 2 new recipes. I'm pretty sure I am still stuck at 2 new recipes. I've been really busy helping out and going to functions for the friend that moved, and when I haven't been busy with that, I was busy making 7 dozen muffins (but a well-loved recipe, not a new one) Maybe this afternoon I'll make some new-to-me cookies, Pumpkin-Cranberry-Oatmeal cookies. Maybe.

5. Get a job. Progress: Well, one day I DID dress in "teacher clothes" because I had planned to go pick up a substitute teaching application...but I never quite made it there.

Things you never wondered about my reading habits.

The September goal that I am seriously slacking on is the one about reading 3 books. Today I came across a "book blogger" who answered this survey/meme, and I figured maybe if I act like a book blogger and answer questions about reading books, I might be a little more motivated to do some reading. (Plus, I need a break from trying to find the missing layer styles in PSE 5 before I gently place the laptop on my driveway and crush it into smithereens by running my car over it 300 times...although maybe not having a computer in the house would give me more time for reading.)

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Not usually, because I'm usually reading before bed or first thing when I wake up. When I am reading on the couch during normal snacking hours, I tend to prefer popcorn!

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
No, I don't write in my books... I was taught from a very young age that you're not supposed to do that! If I'm taking notes about something (for a book discussion, or just because) I'll do so on a post-it and flag the page.



How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?Laying the book flat open?
Bookmark. My favoritest bookmarks are these little magnet ones that fold over the top of the page and stick in place. My friend Britt sent me my first ones (monkeys) and they are still my favorites. I have a new set (monsters)that I like a little bit less because they cover up more of the page than the monkey ones, so I have to slide them up to read the first 2 or 3 lines of most books.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Fiction. A little non-fiction here and there, but I'm sad to say, it usually bores me.

Hard copy or audiobooks?
Hard copy. I've tried audiobooks, but my mind wanders too much. I always wonder if that's what my students minds are doing when I read aloud to them!

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
I almost always read to the end of a chapter or another place that I have deemed a logical stopping place. If a book has really long chapters, but has those little breaks with a big empty space or a little row of asterisks, I will stop there. Or, I will stop when a sentence ends at the end of a page.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
No, I use context clues (just like I teach my 1st graders!) If the word is really tricky or interesting, I'll write it down on a post-it or slip of paper and look them all up later. I include the page number so I can go back and reread the sentence.

What are you currently reading?
The Know-It-All (A.J. Jacobs) and Cross Country (James Patterson... haven't been actively reading that one though)

What is the last book you bought?
I bought 5 books all at once, I think. Since I don't know which one rang up last, I'll list them all: Dewey, Firefly Lane, The Summer I Turned Pretty, I Before E Except After C: Old School Ways to Remember Stuff, and The Know-It-All.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
I can read more than one at a time. I go through phases where I stick to one book and then go through another phase where I read multiples. Usually when I am working, I read 2 books at a time, one to leave in the classroom for lunchbreak, and one to leave at home.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
First thing in the morning, still snuggled and toasty under the covers!

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Hmm... I like both. Series books are fun but take a lot of commitment, so I also like reading a book and being "done" with it.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
Jodi Picoult, Sophie Kinsella. I haven't read it in a while, but the book I've probably read the most is The Promise by Danielle Steele.


How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
Organize my books? I shove them wherever they will fit on the shelf, and when I get the urge to straighten up my shelf, I organize them by color. I like the way that looks, and usually when I'm thinking of a book I want to find, I can remember the cover and find it by color! My closet is organized by color too.

Goal Check-Up #2.

September is halfway over now, so I'm going to check up on my goals again. I should also add "do things that result in more interesting blog content" to my list of goals. Maybe in October.

1. RUN. Goal: 18 runs. Current progress: 9 runs. OMG... I'm halfway through my goal and halfway through the month! Hooray! I've been running a whole lot because I've been working with a friend who wants to get started running. We meet about 3 times a week and mostly walk with some running thrown in. But I have to run to her house and back so usually I get in 4-5 miles in addition to the mileage we cover in our walk/runs. Plus, I found a running group that meets 3 days a week. I've only gone twice so far, but I have good intentions to go tomorrow!

2. Read. Goal: 3 books. Current progress: STILL about 1/4 way through the first book, "The Know-It-All" by AJ Jacobs...it really is good, I swear. I just haven't carved out much time for reading lately.

3. Knit. Goal: 3 FOS. Current FO count: still 0. Current *almost* FO count: 2...one more cuff to finish off on the soaker (I really don't know why I don't just take 20 minutes and knock this one out!) and about 30 rounds left to go on my 2nd mitten. I've also chosen the third project, so that's a start, right?!

4. Cook/Bake. Goal: 6 new recipes. Current progress: 2 new recipes. Chicken Corn Tortilla Soup from my new Robin Rescues Dinner cookbook, and Chocolate Zucchini Bread (recipe here)

5. Get a job. Progress: Putting this off...need to focus on my other, more enjoyable goals.

Goal Check-Up

One week of September is over...so I thought I'd try to keep myself on track with the goals I set last week. Turns out, I'm not making a whole lot of progress just yet! Oops!
1. RUN. Goal: 18 runs. Current progress: 3 runs. 15 to go in the next 22 days.

2. Read. Goal: 3 books. Current progress: about 1/4 way through the first book, "The Know-It-All" by AJ Jacobs...it is really enjoyable so far!

3. Knit. Goal: 3 FOS. Current FO count: 0. Current *almost* FO count: 1...just about 4 inches of ribbing left on the Curly Purly Soaker. I also started some Bella's Mittens and picked up my Sugar Maple socks again. I highly doubt that I'll finish the socks this month because they're tedious.

4. Cook/Bake. Goal: 6 new recipes. Current progress: Does ordering Chinese count?

5. Get a job. Goal: Well, I had pushed this to October anyway... and a good thing too, because I still don't have that magical paper!

Marley & Me

One of the books I read this weekend was Marley & Me.
If you haven't read the book or seen the movie (or heard the ending), stop reading now! Spoilers will follow...







Oh my goodness...I don't know why I read this book! I saw the movie and I was prepared for what would happen at the end. Before we went to see it, David said, "Baby, you know the dog might die, right?" and I thought, now why in the world would they make the dog die? Movies are supposed to make you feel good! And I said, "How could you say such a thing? The dog is NOT going to die!" and he said, "I just want you to be prepared, just in case..." Then my friend in my running group who had seen the movie the day before said, "Take tissues" and I knew that David was right. But that didn't make it any easier. I cried through the end of the movie. I cried on the way out of the theater. I cried all the way home and didn't stop until I fell asleep. I swear I cried for 3 days after that movie.
And yet for some reason, I still wanted to read the book, which was EVEN SADDER than the movie! So sad, in fact, that I am willing to abandon proper grammatical structure. The first time I cried in the book was on page 48. There were 288 pages. Probably around page 170 the tears just came in an endless stream. I was lounging on the "floor bed"--the bed that I didn't think the frame/headboard (which I didn't like anyway) would fit in the house so it's just a mattress on the floor. I like to read there because I like reading on the floor, but this is more comfortable, plus there's a nice sunny window in the room. I kept walking to my bedroom to get more and more Kleenex. I thought, "I could just bring the box in here", but I decided that walking to get new Kleenex was a good way to give myself a break from reading this sad, sad book (and clear my nasal passages).
David didn't cry during the movie. I couldn't believe he wasn't crying, and he said that, in addition to being naturally more hyper-sensitive than he, it probably had something to do with the fact that I had gone through this with my own treasured pets. While reading the end of the book, I realized that I was sitting and crying on the same bed that I sat and cried on when my mom called to tell me that my cat Dusky had died. And that just made me cry even harder. Then I started thinking about other people losing their pets... Ami's Mandy and how sad she was when I got to her house right after I heard, Ms. Kobe's Rocky-dog and how hard it was for her to make the decision to let him have a peaceful good-bye instead of a difficult ending, my first boyfriend's Casey and how he cried on the bench outside of the dorm when his parents came to tell him...and I lost it even more.
Until we watched Marley & Me, I had been begging for a puppy. But when we came home, I had a lot of second thoughts. Not because of all the hard work it would be to train a dog, care for a dog, and make whatever repairs would be needed after the dog ransacked the house, but because of how hard it would be to say goodbye to a dog. If you're a pet person, you know...

48 Hour Book Challenge: Sort of Completed

Well, my computer did not cooperate this weekend. It used to just take forever to turn on. Now it won't turn on at all!
At least it gave me plenty of time for reading. 15 hours and 55 minutes, to be exact! I read The Tenth Circle, Thirteen Reasons Why, Three Willows, and, the only one without a # in the title, Marley & Me.
Gotta go...I'm at a friend's house!

48 Hour Book Club: first update

I've read for 2 hours and 50 minutes now, and spent 4 minutes blogging about it.
I finished The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult (the last 166 pages or so). The book kept me guessing and I like that in a book. It wasn't my favorite Picoult book...actually of the ones I've read I think it was my least favorite, but still a decent read. A teen date-rape story with a few twists.

Now I'm starting Thirteen Reasons Why. I started reading during the 2 times my computer restarted while typing this blog entry... this is really getting annoying! But this book seems like it's going to be a quick & captivating read. It's a series of audio messages left behind by a girl who committed suicide. I like books with short chapters or little symbols like asterisks separating parts of the text, because it makes me feel like I get to accomplish a lot. This book looks to have quite a few of those.

I already get to add 23 minutes of read/blog time, although this time around I can't distinguish between reading and blogging...because I started reading during each of the THREE times that the computer restarted itself while I was writing this! This is just getting annoying! Can't wait for my replacement computer to arrive (David mailed the laptop a week ago). Okay...enough with this unreliable computer. I'm going to go read!

48 Hour Book Challenge...the beginning

I'm beginning my personal read-athon at 1830 Friday evening. That's right now...
I'm back from the library and the commissary, and I've got a big stack of books to get through. I really don't think I'll get through them all this weekend, but check-out length is 3 weeks, so I've got some time. Most of the books I checked out are Young Adult Fiction, and I got recommendations from ALA award lists.
The books I have checked out are (in no particular order):
The Tenth Circle-Jodi Picoult
Marley & Me-John Grogan
Chasing Windmills-Chatherine Ryan Hyde
Memoirs of a Geisha-Arthur Golden
Thirteen Reasons-Jay Asher
Twisted-Laurie Halse Anderson
As Simple as Snow-Gregory Galloway
3 Willows-Ann Brashares
Dragon's Keep-Janet Lee Carvey
Notes from the Midnight Driver-Jordan Sonnenblick
A Time for Dancing-Davida Wills Hurwin
The Book Thief-Markus Zusak
The Lightning Thief-Rick Riordan
13 Little Blue Envelopes-Maureen Johnson
Avalon High-Meg Cabot
Before I Die-Jenny Downham

All I know at this point is that I'm finishing up The Tenth Circle first... we'll see what I'm in the mood for after that.

More reading...

I haven't gotten that much further in The Tenth Circle since I last posted (just about 130 pages to go), but here I go with another post about reading...to warn you that I'll probably be making only reading-related posts from now until Monday.
My GoogleReader (blog subscribey-thing) is full of folders... blogs about scrapbooking, blogs about fashion, recipe blogs, home decorating blogs, travel blogs, teacher blogs (Is it any wonder that after my internet hiatus, I have thousands of blog posts to catch up on?) One of the teacher blogs I read, TheReadingZone, discusses a lot of young adult books, and recently she mentioned a special reading challenge going on at MotherReader. It is the 48 Hour Book Challenge, or 48HBC.
Basically, you choose a consecutive 48 hour period between Friday at 7am and Monday at 7am and read your heart out! You can take breaks, do your chores, socialize, etc., and you tally up the number of hours you spent reading. Or blogging about reading. And...there's prizes! I love reading, I love prizes, therefore, I am sure that I will love the 48HBC!
MotherReader is adding another (optional) twist to the Challenge--a giving twist. I'm deciding how I'll work that out...more information when I officially begin reading.
I'm going to start my 48 hour read-athon this evening, after I get back from a run and errands on base...including a stop at the library! I have 2 functions (or maybe 1... the details are a little foggy) to drop in on on Saturday, but I think I'll be able to get quite a bit of reading done by Sunday evening.

Good Reads

Before I had my tv hooked up, I got a lot of reading done! Now that I have a car, a tv, internet, and knitting needles, and a few friends, I'm reading less, but still making sure that I read every day, at the very least first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Since my arrival in England on March 31, I've read:

How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls (Zoey Dean)- This was a fast & fun read. Fairly predictable, but I was almost surprised by the ending.

Julie and Julia (Julie Powell)- They are making this into a movie, and I have NO IDEA WHY. Forcing myself through this book was comparable to forcing myself to wash dishes after Thanksgiving dinner. It took me forever to read this book because I swear I could only read 3 paragraphs at a time before the words on the page were like nails on a chalkboard.

Stargirl (Jerry Spinelli)- After slogging my way through the last book, I decided I needed something lighter, so I headed for the Young Adult section. Jerry Spinelli wrote Maniac Magee, one of my elementary school faves, and this book had a pretty color cover, so I decided to give it a try. LOVED it!

Love, Stargirl (Jerry Spinelli)- The sequel to Stargirl, I actually checked this one out before Stargirl, but realized early on that I would enjoy it more if I read Stargirl first. Another good one!

I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)- My friend Britt's favorite book. She sent it to me at least over a year ago, and I pushed myself through the first 60 pages before I just gave up. Couldn't get into it. Then I picked it up again, mostly because it was almost 900 pages long and I wanted something that would occupy my time for a while (I'm loving the library, but I still am trying to fight the temptation to purchase books!). The first 57 pages had fallen out of the book and were tucked in the bookshelf. But I didn't bother with those, because I hadn't really liked them anyway. So, I just started at page 58 and what do you know... I enjoyed the book! I don't think it makes it to my list of favorite books, but I'm really glad I read it.

The Quilter's Kitchen (Jennifer Chiaverini)- This is one of the books on the list for the book club over at ScrapVillage. This was also a super-fast read, even though I felt like there wasn't much of a plot. Maybe it would've been more enjoyable had I read other books in the series first? Elm Creek Quilters or something like that. I might have to re-check it out, because I meant to copy down some of the recipes and didn't!

Remember Me? (Sophie Kinsella)- If you know me, you know I love the Shopaholic books by this author. I've read her other novels too, Can You Keep a Secret? and Undomestic Goddess and they were alright, but not Shopaholic-good. This one was the same...can't come close to Shopaholic for me. Even so, I finished this in 2 mornings and 2 before-bedtimes.

The Tenth Circle (Jodi Picoult)- Another one of my go-to authors. If you haven't read My Sister's Keeper, GO TO THE LIBRARY RIGHT NOW!!! And pick up a box of tissues on your way home, because you'll need it! She has a pretty obvious "author's fingerprint", but I enjoy the writing style. All of her books that I've read have been thought-provoking while still being leisurely reads. I'm about halfway through the book now, and I think that soon I'll be at the point of the book where my interest in the book trumps my interest in tv (especially since I have Sky+ and can record my shows!) or internet.

There might be one or two that I checked out from the library and already forgotten about (which isn't really a sign of a good book, so I guess it's alright that I forgot!)
I currently have Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden), Chasing Windmills (Catherine Ryan Hyde...another SV book club pick) and Marley and Me (John Grogan...I cried for 3 days after watching the movie, I wonder how I'll make it through the book!) checked out to start after I finish The Tenth Circle.
New on my bookshelf and waiting to be picked up are: Change of Heart (another Picoult) and The Last Summer of You and Me (Ann Brashares), or something like that. I also finally found my own copy of Eclipse... I had to borrow from the school nurse when I was reading the Twilight series because the BX didn't have it. I'll probably re-read that series soon. Then it will be almost time to re-read Half Blood Prince before the movie comes out!

Feel free to recommend a book or two... I need to start thinking about airplane and pool chair reading!

Friday's Favorite: 2 kinds of reading

Remember last week, I said that Friday would be a day to share some of my favorite things? Well this week my life got...easier? more entertaining? more efficient?...thanks to Google Reader.

Oh my goodness do I love Google Reader! Maybe you can click on the picture to read more about it, or maybe you can just google Google Reader. I've now said Google so many times in the past few that it sounds weird. Which makes me think of how just a few years ago saying google just once would've sounded kind of weird.
Anyway, here's why I love Google Reader:
Sometimes on the weekends (when I was working and my main free time was on weekends) I would get the idea to check out the blogs in my bookmarks. Well, sometimes people had posted so many times since the last time I checked that I had a bunch to catch up on. Sometimes people hadn't posted at all. Both scenarios were equally irritating. I would try to remember which people updated often and which people didn't. Sometimes I would hear about a contest on someone's blog and totally miss it because that particular blog was maybe lost under a billion other bookmarks. So last weekend I started loading the blogs I visit in Google Reader. And life is good. Now I just go in my e-mail, click "Reader" and see all the new things people have posted since the night (or two hours) before. If somebody didn't post anything, it doesn't bother me, because I didn't click on that link and wait forever for my crummy internet to open the page up for nothing. Looooove it!

In more traditional reading, I've joined the rest of the world and read the Twilight Saga. I'm actually finishing up the 4th book still. I've enjoyed the books, but I haven't devoured them the way I've heard/read about some people doing!
When I was reading the first book, I was really worried that there was something wrong with me, because I just didn't love it the way other people made it seem that I should. I ended up deciding that that was because I already knew too much about the storyline to be too excited about turning each page. Once I got to page 250 or so though, I couldn't put it down. I finished the first book on a Saturday and put my shoes on and grabbed my keys to go to the BX for the 2nd. Of course, the BX didn't have the 2nd! We went to the PX at Camp Foster on Sunday evening, and I finished the 2nd book by Tuesday evening...and went to work on Monday and Tuesday! The 2nd book was my favorite I think. Had to borrow the 3rd book from the school nurse (because neither the BX nor the PX had that one!). The 3rd book was my least favorite... I was frankly just getting quite sick of Bella by this time. First of all, I was irritated by the whole Bella/Edward/Jacob thing by this point, and second of all, I think maybe I was just spending too much time "with" Bella. I can only spend so much time with anyone before I start to get antsy. I kept myself from starting the 4th book right away, because I had a lot of work to do to move out of my classroom, prepare for Thanksgiving, and make 19 days worth of lesson plans. So I just started that last week. I think I don't want to finish it, because I don't want it to be over!

In the 36 days since I've blogged...

I have:
-passed out Halloween candy
-sat through 16 parent-teacher conferences
-made 10 dozen chocolate chip pumpkin muffins
-read the first 3 books in the Twilight saga
-started 3 knitting projects and finished 0
-decided to teach myself to crochet a blanket, but stopped at a dishcloth
-planned, cooked and eaten a Thanksgiving dinner
-received a "Port Call" date for when we're leaving
-passed my first housing inspection
-done 2 loads of laundry *blush*
-turned in my letter of resignation at work
-packed my classroom into 14 Rubbermaid bins
-bought some Christmas presents
-opened one Christmas present
-put out a few Christmas decorations
-remembered to take my vitamins 3 times
-written 5 days worth of sub plans
-made 5 cards and 0 scrapbook pages
-attempted to blog ate least 3 times to no avail
-been waiting (and still am) for the USAF to tell me what my future holds
-been to the BX way more than the commissary
-watched an embarrassing number of movies on Lifetime and ABC Family
-procrastinated packing, sorting, purging, cleaning... I guess that's what my month+ off work is for!

Hooray for mail!

Yesterday we had 3 package slips! But David didn't want to stand in the looooooong line at the post office to pick them up (I would have- packages are what I live for!)
He went and picked them up today and hooray--they were all for me!
Here's what I got: 1- a package of stickers/pencils/bookmarks that I had ordered for my class. Conveniently, this package that I've been waiting for for over a month arrived just one day after I wrote an "I'm very disappointed" e-mail to customer service. Oops...
2- The other half of 2 bathing suits. I received the top halves a few weeks ago and was beginning to worry about what I would do with them if the bottoms never arrived. Unfortunately, one of the bottoms doesn't match the top anyway, so I'm back to square one on that!
3- Britt sent me a book! And just in the nick of time too, because I finished the book (The Men I Didn't Marry- quite entertaining and a super-fast read) that I checked out on Sunday just this afternoon. Britt gave "Middlesex" her stamp of approval, labeling it seemingly odd, but "really very good". I'm on page 2. So I have no real opinions yet.