School's Out For a Week!

I didn't make a status post last week for the very sad reason that I didn't read anything. Nothing. Not even a picture book. Well, I didn't finish anything, although I picked up and put down a lot of books. So this week I settled myself down and actually finished a few things. It helped that the library called some things home, and I had to run a book club for my elementary school, so I had outside factors pushing me along.

I'll sign in at Book Journey and Teach Mentor Texts since I want to see what everyone else is reading this month. Despite spending the weekend talking and listening instead of reading, I managed to finish a few things:

• The Ghost's Grave, Peg Kehret. Kidlit. For my elementary school book club, which is picking from the books in this year's Battle of the Books.
• Blood Oranges, Kathleen Tierney. SF
• Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs. For my regular book club.
• The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere 3, Jacqueline West. Kidlit.
• Defender (Kris Longknife 11), Mike Shepherd. SF

I also read a handful of nonfiction picture books for my Cybils finalist challenge:

• Volcano Rising, Elizabeth Rusch. 
• How Big Were Dinosaurs?, Lita Judge. 
• Look Up!: Birdwatching In Your Own Backyard, 
• The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbably Life of Paul Erdos, Locomotive, Brian Floca. 
• Barbed Wire Baseball, Marissa Moss

What am I currently reading? Six books in my bag, plus an audio.

• Mirror, Mirror. Short stories with a fairy tale theme. I read the J.D. Robb one, and now I have to finish the others by my next library day.
• Shadows, Robin McKinley. Finally I get to read this!
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemison. Book club was a long time ago, but I'll just watch it late. And not finish the next book either, it looks like. Oops.
• Black Duck, Janet Lisle. Dead bodies come, and then they go.
• The Prize in the Game, Jo Walton. From my shelves, although I've read a library copy. I love the Sulien books.
• Fierce Reads Anthology. NOOK. Short stories still aren't giving me a sense of urgency.
• Rotters, Daniel Kraus. Audio. Nope, we both dislike it. And the boy just did something stupid because it was necessary to make the plot go that way, which annoys me more when I hear it than when I read it.

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly:

• Radio Fifth Grade, Gordon Korman. The teacher notices they all get the same answers wrong, but no one admits to copying. Which is fair, since they are just listening to the radio show.
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. It's a race to retire!
• Keep Me Forever, Rosemary Laurey. The werewolf lover must meet the clan.
• A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis. Experiments on happiness.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. I don't see why the March sisters liked this so much.
• How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, Orson Scott Card. Why even your space languages need vowels.

What's up next? From my bedside table, I'm hoping to pull Attitude by Robin Stevenson, which librarything was kind enough to send me for review. Then I have the library books from my Library Quest to start.

2014 Challenges:

1. TBR Triple Dog Dare: 8. Inching that count up -- I'm hope to get at least to ten.
2. Cybils: 15/77. One nonfiction left to go.
3. Where Am I Reading? 10/51. Added Washington and Rhode Island.
4. What's In a Name?: 1/6. I got one! The King's Name.
5. Book Bingo: 10 Squares. I absentmindedly put a series book from my TBR pile in with series, which is a tactical error.
6. Alphabetically Inclined: 6/26
7. Gentle Spectrums: 1/10, 1/10
8. Reading My Library:  Have the last stack of J fiction in my queue.
9. Best of the Best 2012: 49/25.  Onto next disc of Rotters. Wow, 13 discs is a lot.