Sunday Salon, October 5

Weather: Chilly this morning when I stepped outside to go to early church.  Lovely right now.

Faith-in-Action afterglow: Last week-end our whole church did service projects on Saturday and Sunday rather than attending a church service. I am still basking in the afterglow of the event and the wonderful time I had with other members of the church while we served our community and world. Honestly, if you want to feel better, volunteer.

A "helluva" week (warning whine ahead): my library clerk has been absent from work due to a family emergency for over a week, leaving me to man the library by myself. Last year I was alone for over 8 weeks, so this is not unfamiliar territory, but for some reason this past week was just super stressful. I had meetings two days after school, classes coming in and out of the library, at one point there were four classes in at the same time, and administrators who wanted/needed my help. Thursday evening was Back-to-school night for parents. That is always an additional stressor for teachers and myself. At one point a during the week a teacher came in to chat with me and when I told him what was going on he said, "well, at least you are very calm about it." That was a nice comment but it wasn't true. I was majorly stressed on the inside. Then, to top it all off, my UO Duck football team lost their game against Arizona on Thursday night. Sigh. Fortunately my clerk is due back this week and my schedule is a bit clearer, so I am hoping for a reduction in my stress level.

Hair issue: I need your help. For the past 6 months I have been losing tons of hair. A worrisome amount of hair loss. I've gone to the dermatologist, a cosmetologist, and my regular doctor. I've had my thyroid checked. I am taking daily doses of biotin and other B-vitamins. I've added more green leafy vegetables to my diet. Nothing is working, I am still losing too much hair every day.  Do any of you readers out there in the blogosphere have any suggestions of what I can do to help diminish my hair loss.  Any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

Mock Printz list selection is tomorrow: the other high school librarians in my district and I will meet tomorrow to select our Mock Printz reading list for the year. I have read more books than usual in preparation for the selection but unfortunately I don't think I have read the winner. There are lots of good YA books this year but, in my opinion, nothing great. I am looking for something super fantastic like Looking for Alaska, The Book Thief, or Scorpio Races (past winner or honor books) and I just haven't found it. The closest I've come is Crossover by Alexander but I wonder/worry that the book will be considered more for the Newbery Award than the Printz Award because the main characters are middle school students. I'll post our reading list tomorrow or Tuesday, at the latest. Look for it.

Books completed this week:

• Eyes Wide Open: Going Behind the Environmental Headlines by Paul Fleischman...I am going to suggest we select this book for our Mock Printz list not because it is the best book in the world but because it is such an important topic and I want as many kids as possible to read it.
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson..written in verse, this book is Ms. Woodsen's autobiography of her early years, which coincided with the Civil Rights actions in the 1960s.
• The Crossover by Kwame Alexander...also written in verse, including some concrete poems. It is a coming-of-age story using the parts of a basketball game to define the rising and falling action. Very clever. It took me less than an hour to read.

Books I'm working on:

• The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd...themes-slavery and abolition. I'm on disc 8 or 11.
• 50-page project:
• Otherbound by Corrine Duyvis---is it fantasy or science fiction? I can't tell yet but I just got to the exciting part and I want to read on. I'm on 60 of 300+ pages.
• The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton---magical realism. I am mesmerized so far and grateful that I just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude so that the magical realism elements wouldn't shock me so much. I'm on page 72 of 300.
• 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith...I was ready to abandon this book until I saw it was on the National Book Award Long-list for the youth category. I think I'd better finish it. I'm on 100 of 300+ pages.
• Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour and I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson are two more books I hope to crack open and read at least fifty pages before the meeting tomorrow.

“History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.” ― Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

All YA books read in 2014 (so far), with ratings

On Monday I meet with my high school librarian colleagues to select our Mock Printz reading list. To qualify books must be published in the USA in 2014 and geared toward the Young Adult audience.

This list is all the books I have read this year that meet the qualifications with my Goodreads rating given at the time of completion. (5 stars---best.)

 Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

(Nancy Paulsen Books, Aug. 28, 2014)

***

Cress by Marissa Meyer

(Feiwel and Friends, Feb 4, 2014)

***

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

(Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt and Company, March 18, 2014)

***

Eyes Wide Open: Going Behind the Environmental Headlines by Paul Fleischman

(Candlewick Press, Sept. 23, 2014)

***

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

(Dutton Juvenile, Feb. 11, 2014)

***

Never Ending by Martyn Bedford

(Wendy Lamb Books, March 11, 2014)

***

Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern

(HarperTeen, June 3, 2014)

***

She is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick

(Orion Children's Books, October 3, 2013)

***

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

(Margaret K. McElderry Books, July 15, 2014)

***

The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy by Kate Hattemer

(Knopf Books for Young Readers, April 8, 2014)

***

Always Emily by Michaela MacColl

(Chronicle Books, April 8, 2014)

***

Complicit by Stephanie Kuehn

(St. Martins Griffins, June 14, 2014)

***

Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

(Little, Brown and Company, April 8, 2014)

***

The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming

(Schwartz and Wade, July 8, 2014) 

***

Gandhi: My Life Is My Message by Jason Quinn

(Campfire Books, March 4, 2014)

***

Girls Like Us by Gail Giles

(Candlewick Press, May 27, 2014)

***

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

(Delacorte Press, April 1, 2014)

***

A Matter of Souls by Denise Lewis Patrick

(Carolrhoda Books, April 1, 2014)

***

The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin 

(Roaring Book Press, Jan. 21, 2014)

***

Red Madness: How a Medical Mystery Changed What We Eat by Gail Jarrow

(Calkins Creek Books, April 1, 2014)

***

The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim #1 by EK Johnston

(Carolrhoda Books, March 1, 2014)

***

The Tyrant's Daughter by JC Carleson

(Knopf Books for Young Readers, Feb. 11, 2014)

***

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

(Delacorte Press, May 13, 2014)

***

Going Over by Beth Kephart

(Chronicle Books, April 1, 2014)

***

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson

(Viking Juvenile, Jan. 2, 2014)

***

Noggin by John Corey Whaley

(Atheneum Books for Young Readers, April 8, 2014)

***

Shackleton: Antarctic Odyssey by Nick Bertozzi

(First Second, June 11, 2014)

***

The Sound of Letting Go by Stasia Ward Kehoe

(Viking Children's Books, Feb. 6, 2014)

***   

The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely

(Margaret K. McElderry Books, Jan. 21, 2014)

I am always struck by my fluid memory. As I typed up this list and looked back on my Goodreads reviews I was tempted to change a few of the ratings because time has altered my view of the book as the memory and subsequent events have altered my impressions. But I held true. The ratings I listed are the ratings I gave the books the day I ranked them.

You may also wonder how objective I am when more than 3/4th of my ratings are 4 or 5. Keep in mind that I do a lot of homework before I choose a book. Most of the books listed here already had lots of star ratings from professional reviewing sites and I chose to read them based on those reviews. It actually should be more shocking there are any 2 or 3 ratings at all.

Friday, er, Saturday Quotes, October 4th

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. 
The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. 

Check out the links for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Participants don't select their favorite, coolest or most intellectual books, they just use the one they are currently reading.

I'm reading....

Book: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

Book Beginning:

PROLOGUE. To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything.

Friday 56:

I've been told things happen as they should: my grandmother fell in love three times before her nineteenth birthday. My mother found love with the neighbor boy when she was six. And I was born with wings, a misfit who didn't dare to expect something as grandiose as love. It's our fate, our destiny, that determines such things, isn't it?

My thoughts/comments: Another YA book being considered for our Mock Printz list. I have only just started it. I'm only five pages in but so far I am hooked by the voice of the narrator.

2014 LONGLIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

• Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory (Viking/ Penguin Group (USA))
• Gail Giles, Girls Like Us (Candlewick Press)
• Carl Hiaasen, Skink—No Surrender (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers/ Random House)
• Kate Milford, Greenglass House (Clarion Books/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Eliot Schrefer, Threatened (Scholastic Press)
• Steve Sheinkin, The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights
  (Roaring Brook Press/ Macmillan Publishers)
• Andrew Smith, 100 Sideways Miles (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers/ Simon & Schuster)
• John Corey Whaley, Noggin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/ Simon & Schuster)
• Deborah Wiles, Revolution: The Sixties Trilogy, Book Two (Scholastic Press)
• Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books/ Penguin Group (USA))

October 15th- The finalists will be announced.
November 19th- The winners will be announced.

My favorite of the list: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson,

I've read six of the books. The three of the other four, by Hiaasen, Milford, and Wiles, have a target audience of middle grade students.

Do you have a favorite on the list?

TTT: Books that were difficult to read

Today TTT is about books that were hard for me to read (because difficulty of book, subject matter, cringeworthy, or bad audiobook production.)

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez---Half the battle was the self-talk required to start the book. Once I did start it I realized that I needed help to understand it. This required that I do extra research and talking to others about the book. Eventually it was a very satisfying but it was difficult to read, admittedly.

2. True Sisters by Sandra Dallas---this was a recent book club selection so I felt I must finish it but I was so irritated by the book which is about people who traveled the Mormon Trail pushing handcarts across the American prairie. At first I thought the author was just trying to make an editorial statement about the Mormon faith and i just didn't want to be that mad at them as it seemed the author wanted me to be.

3. Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan---I tried to stay open-minded in the beginning but I read on I found it harder and more difficult to remain so. Aslan dismantles just about every tenet of the Christian faith describing Jesus as an illiterate man with little truth about his life actually reported in the Bible. I finished the book but was pretty shook up afterwards.

4. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn---it is hard to want to read a book when neither of the characters are likeable. I finally conquered the book because my husband was willing to listen to the audiobook with me

5. Room by Emma Donoghue---this book was difficult to read on two fronts. The first was the subject matter...a woman is abducted and held for years and years, has a child with her abductor, etc.  Yuck! Secondly, the actress that read the audiobook had a very irritating voice.

6. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell---I can't believe I finished this book. It was something like a billion pages long and had all kinds of words in other languages which made it even harder to read.

7. Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta---ultimately I ended up liking the book but it took me forever to read this book and to get any traction while doing it. Students by and large love this book so I'm sure it was something to do with what was going on with me at the time.

8. The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean telt by Hisself by David Almond---the book is written in vernacular. I was only able to read about ten pages before I gave up. It was too difficult to decipher the words without reading it out loud to myself. I wasn't willing to work that hard.

9.  The Tyrant's Daughter by JC Carlson---I liked the storyline but the narrator of this audiobook had a fake Middle Eastern accent which was quite off-putting.

10. White Teeth by Zadie Smith---I read 100 pages of this book in one sitting then couldn't make myself go back to it because I couldn't keep the characters straight in my mind. 

Sunday Salon...End of September

Frozen corn ready for bagging at the Emergency Food Network

Weather: Blue skies with wispy white clouds, comfortably warm outside.

Faith-in-Action weekend: this is the weekend that folks at my church participate in service projects rather than go to church, we are the church in the community. I helped out at the Emergency Food Network warehouse yesterday bagging up frozen corn. The twelve volunteers and myself dealt with almost 5000 pounds of corn. The photo above was taken by our project manager prior to getting started. Today my daughter and I turned into seamstresses making the component parts of the Days for Girls bags. These are homemade sanitary napkins that girls in developing countries can reuse.  If you have a sewing group and would like a very worthwhile project check out their website for details how to sew these projects. Days for Girls. We had over eighteen projects at a variety of skill levels to involve even our youngest and oldest members. It has been a wonderful blessing to all our church, and hopefully for our community.

Cookies: Carly worked with a group of kids as one of our Faith-in-Action projects to make cookies for firefighters. They made chocolate chip and gingerbread cookies then delivered them and got to climb around on the truck and try on the boots. Fun project.

Books completed this past week:

• True Sisters by Sandra Dallas---a book club selection about the Mormon Trail. I didn't especially like the book but we did have a good discussion.
• The Tyrant's Daughter by JC Carlson--- written by a former CIA officer. In it's entirety, which includes the essay at the end, it is very thought-provoking.
• The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming---Murder, rebellion, and the end of Imperial Russia.
• Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern---two unlikely friends, one with C.P. and the other with OCD. They help each other in surprising ways.

Currently reading:

• The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd---my audiobook selection, on disc 3 of 11.

50-page project:

• Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon---100 pages read. Though I may finish this book some day I won't recommend this book for our project.
• A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman---150 pages read. A young dancer in India loses her leg in an accident. I think we should consider it as a book for our project.
• 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith---37 pages read so far. It is another potential Mock Printz selection but I fear it suffers from the same problem as The Grasshopper Jungle by Smith...too crass.
• Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis---upcoming
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson---upcoming
• The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton---upcoming

Prayers for: Betty who lost her husband of 67 years; for Sharon whose sister-in-law was just diagnosed with stage-4 lung cancer.

Batman Evolution, The Piano Guys:

Enjoy!

Through the Woods ... I'm still scared

"It came from the woods. Most strange things do."

Into the Woods is a collection of five short stories in a graphic novel format by Emily Carroll. The illustrations and the dialogue combine for spine-chilling, often terrifying spin-offs of the Red Riding Hood story. The moral is always the same, watch out the the woods because no good thing happens there.

While on Goodreads I was struck by the reviews from other readers. All reviewers comment on the perfection of the illustrations and the outright creepy nature of the stories.

This book scared the shit out of me. Not just a fun, spine-tingling chill, but an I-must-now-sleep-with-the-light-on kind of scared. These would be great to read to older kids for Halloween, but you'd have to show the pictures! They are as frightening as the stories. My rating: 10/10. A perfect blend of words and pictures. This is true talent. ---Katy, at Goodreads

Oh. My. Goodness. Holymolyholymolyholymolyholymoley. This is the most hauntingly beautiful book I have ever read! ...The writing and dialogue both have a way of whispering something right into your ear, giving chills and everlasting goosebumps. I don't think I will ever be able to explain in words how absolutely brilliant and freaking creepy and unique this graphic novel is. ---Staley, at Goodreads

SO GOOD. SO CREEPY.  Short enough to read in one sitting, but good enough to re-read many times over. Carroll excels at letting your mind fill in the worst of the scares, although her artwork is absolutely stunning and perfectly suited to these stories ---Stewart, at Goodreads 

I read the book in one sitting while at work, or rather, I read the book in one day in between a lot of interruptions while at work. Because I wasn't in bed while I read it the thought of nightmares didn't enter my head.  After reading all these reviews, I am glad the impersonal nature of the work setting helped buffer the fear-factor for me.

Take a look at Emily Carroll's webpage for samples of her artwork and an introduction to her personality.

I guarantee this book will be popular in my library. And, if you can cope with scary stories, with you!


 

Snapshot Saturday, September 27

Back in the early 1950s my parents lived in Boston. My dad was in seminary at Boston University. My mother worked as a new nurse at Boston Floating Hospital. They lived in a tiny studio apartment near Fenway Park. They became Red Sox fans during their time in Beantown but they couldn't often afford tickets to the games. Instead they would sit on their stoop, listen to the game on the radio, and hear the noise from Fenway.  Since that time they have wanted to go back.  This week they met up with my brother in Boston and went to a game at Fenway Park.  Isn't this a cute, happy photo?

Photo by Tony Kingsbury

Snapshot Saturday is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads.

Friday Quotes....September 26

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. 
The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. 

Check out the links for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Participants don't select their favorite, coolest or most intellectual books, they just use the one they are currently reading.

I'm reading---

Book: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Book Beginnings:

"There was  a time in Africa the people could fly. Mauma told me this one night when I was ten years old."

Friday 56:

"One morning while Charleston turned miserably on the brazier of summer, Hetty and I lay flat on our stomachs on the rug in my room while I read aloud from Don Quixote."

My thoughts: Sue Monk Kidd is back!!!! I loved The Secret Life of Bees so much and have waited for years for another gem from her. This book about slavery and feminism is shaping up to me a good one. I especially like the quote from page 56. I just can picture it...being so hot that it feels like being on the BBQ rotisserie. That is not a good hot!

This cracks me up...

Today I visited Amazon.com looking for an audio CD of Bless Me, Ultima. Look what I found. It is available but at a not-affordable price.  I think it is funny that someone thinks that they will sell it for this amount. Take a look.

Update: Here is another funny thing. I was looking through my school library catalog and noticed we have the audio CD set for Bless Me, Ultima. I'm sure I was the one who purchased it, too!  Silly me. Why was I looking to buy an audiobook when I can just check it out from my own library?