Beginning to Look a Lot Like -- The Autumn

 
My reading choices lately are highly driven by library due dates, with a close second of Reading Challenge deadlines. More pleasantly, I've overlapped my reading with my kids a bit more lately, which is always a source of warm delight to me.

I'm also part of a committee looking at our school district report cards, so I have some reading for that. And this week I went to see Gravity, and was politely quiet for most of the movie even though I sat by my brother. It was well worth the ticket price, although actually I didn't pay it since I had a free pass.

I'll sign in at Book Journey or Teach Mentor Texts since I finished both adult and kidlit books this week.

This week I managed to finish:

• Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein. I loved this YA Cybils finalist and immediately handed it off to my 9th grader. I had avoided it for a while because it looked depressing but it was one of the few five-stars I've awarded this year.
• Dancers in the Dark, Charlaine Harris. NOOK. This actually came as part of two stories in Dead of Night, but the second story was so different in tone that I abandoned. I was reading the book because I was in the mood for some Harris or Harris-like stuff.
• Standing Bear of the Ponca, Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve. Kidlit. This present from librarything gives a good, nonfiction, elementary-aged view of the lawsuit Standing Bear used to establish Native Americans as legal entities before a court.
• Beswitched, Kate Saunders. Kidlit. A Cybils finalist that again surprised me with its pleasantness. I liked it better when I realized the protagonist was twelve -- she had been awfully immature and bratty when I thought she was fifteen.
• Senrid, Sherwood Smith. YA. More history from Smith's imaginary country. Sometimes I find her characterization jarring, but it feels more like clumsily described real people rather than poorly drawn fictional characters. I hope that is kind of a complement?
• Ichiro, Ryan Inzana. YA. Another Cybils finalist. I was the last in the family to read this, and boy did my kids get tired of my asking when the baseball stuff was going to start. (Hey, I'm from Seattle!)

What am I currently reading?  My book bag has a library book out too long to be renewed, my next Reading-My-Library selection, a book from my shelves, and my NOOK. When I finish these, I'll pick a book from my shelves that helps with a challenge, and the next book on the Best Books of 2012 list from last year.

• Chime, Franny Billingsley. Audio YA. The evil step-mother is back from the grave! I think secrets are about to spill.
• Bomb: The Race to Build (and Steal) the World's Most Dangerous Weapon, Steve Sheinkin. I was reading this Cybils finalist, but my high schooler stole it. Then he brought it back, and my middle schooler stole it.
• Native Star, M.K. Hobson. This is a several months old pick from Felicia Day's Vaginal Fantasy book club. I couldn't get into it the first time I tried, but I'm having better luck today.
• Listen!, Stephanie S. Talon. RML. To taunt me, this book takes place in North Caroline, a few miles from the South Carolina border.
• The Round House, Louise Erdrich. NOOK. A North Dakota book!
• The Shameless Diary of an Explorer, Robert Dunn. This is a warts-and-all story of a failed attempt to climb Mt. McKinley, which so far consists of a group of men swearing at each other as they struggle to find the dang mountain.
• Conspiracy, Lindsay Burokers. NOOK. Still not making progress, although it's almost time to execute their grand plan.
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Another book I'll inch through over the next few months. Set in North Carolina.
• Keep Me Forever, Rosemary Laurey. The were-wolf was wounded, so it's a good thing there was a flying doctor on the watch.
• A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis. The three different kinds of brain are explored.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Lots of dull lawyer stuff. Again.
• A Parent's Guide to Developmental Delays, Laurie Lecomer. What to expect from various therapists.

2013 Challenges:

1. Cybils: 58/74.  Code Name Verity was amazing. Finished Graphic Novels and knocked off another middle grade fantasy.
2. Where Am I Reading?: 37/51. Nebraska is checked off! Currently reading an Alaska story and a North Dakota book.
3. Crazy Quilt Colors: 6/9. Need patterns, green, and brown. I have a verde book out from the library -- I think that's green, right?
4. Reading My Library: Reading a Tolan book, set painfully close to, but not in, South Carolina.
5. Best of the Best 2012: 57/25.  Still slogging through CHIME. Have one waiting to start.