Cybils Poetry Books

Poetry is a tough category, because so many children's picture books rhyme. Are they all poems? When does a picture book become an illustrated poem? And it's hard for me to drag along the rest of my family -- a few years ago I'd sneak in a poem each night as part of our reading, but somehow the habit of reading with my kids at night has fallen away. We read in our separate beds, and make sure we overlap at least one book a month with our family book club (a good excuse to go out and eat sushi!).


So I'm glad I'm not a judge. I have almost no experience of kids liking poetry. I know the Cybils tries to pair kid appeal with adult assessments of quality, and on that basis I'd have have to give the nod to Follow Follow although my favorite read of these books was Poems to Learn By Heart. Both my kids vote for Follow Follow but I barely count that since they refused to read most of the other books.

I now peek at the winner and it was: Forest Has a Song.

1. Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems, Marilyn Singer. I read this last year when it came out -- my family is a big fan of Reverso poems. We liked it, but without the wild enthusiasm of the first book.
2. Forest Has a Song: Poems, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. Nice enough, but more a picture book than a poetry collection.
3. Poems to Learn by Heart, Caroline Kennedy. I like learning poems by heart, although sadly I've never convinced my kids to try it. In fact, they tend to recoil if I start to recite. But I enjoyed seeing some old favorites (some of which I know by heart) and I even added a few to my poetry notebook.
4. Pug: And Other Animal Poems, Valerie Worth. Picture book with nice illustrations.
5. The Pet Project: Cute and Cuddly Vicious Verses, Lisa Wheeler. A sa, almost tragic story of a girl afraid to love, frightened by the idea of imperfections. It ends with the child's commitment to loneliness and isolation. But I liked the kitten poem, except for the last line -- I say yes to the contradictions, and open my heart to joy and pain. The poet backs away.
6. What the Heart Knows: Chants, Charms, and Blessings, Joyce Sidman. I liked the idea, but none of the poems themselves spoke to me. I found nothing I wanted to commit to memory.
7. When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders, J. Patrick Lewis. This felt more like a picture book about the various leaders.

School Bells Warming Up

I actually made two trips to my library this week, due to an unexpected emergency. Well, for some definitions of emergency, in this case it means "mentioning to my nephew that his DVD had arrived." I tried to resist my hold shelf, but was unsuccessful. I know this is silly, because I can't read anything I just checked out because I'm going to be so busy reading the stuff that is almost due, but the books sang so sweetly...

Of course, I had to go back again on my regular library day, and by then I had another book on hold. And the display by the self-checkout was books about reading, which are irresistible to me. By the way, that picture is still my main library, but I actually went to my backup library, which has walls. And books.

Anyway, on my first trip to the library I got:

All three are Cybils books, but the first is a reread because our family book club picked it.

And on my second trip I got:

All just because they look like fun. The reading book is because I love reading about reading, and the next two are sequels to books I liked. Oh, that last one is an e-book, and the next Sword and Laser pick.

Also, I found myself with an hour to spare in a mall with a book store. So I got a couple of books, and then found the NOOKs on sale, so I replaced my older son's broken one. Which meant I had to buy some online books because it comes with a $5 credit. I have to say that their online gift certificate system is very annoying. It seems to go for the biggest card first, but only lets you have three in the system at a time, which means that it's easy to get stuck with several tiny amounts clogging up your account. I decided the only thing to do was to blow through all my current gift cards and start fresh.

I really wanted to buy an Elizabeth Bear book, but the silly store was out. So I got a book by her boyfriend instead. I think I'll make my kid read it to see if I'll like it. And Codex Born is a book about books, so I'm a natural.



This is the last week of my start-a-book-a-day summer fiesta. Just as well -- even if I read a book a day this week, I will still fall behind, since I brought home six seven library books and seven personal books.  I think I'll wean myself off next week by starting a book every other day, and then every third day, until finally I'm down to only reading ten or so books at once. That's what normal people do, right?

Friday: Quatrain (my book)
Saturday: Magic City (library book, for fun) My 10th grader liked these short stories.
Sunday:  Black Butler 2 (recommended by book club). Also enjoyed by 10th grader.
Monday: Boxers & Saints (Cybils)
Tuesday:  Growing Up Brave  (library book, for fun)
Wednesday: Anna of Byzantium (my book)
Thursday: Into the Forest (for book club, which I just realized I'm going to miss)


So I currently have 46 books out on my library card, which is actually a lot, right?

 I'll go sign in to Library Loot which is at The Captive Reader this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 

Just For Me

Reading Charlaine Harris's Midnight Crossroad was a delightful experience for me, but I'm not sure if everyone else could appreciate it. It shows off her usual strengths -- realistically drawn characters that clearly inhabit their settings, a pleasantly diverse group that provide interesting viewpoints on each other, and dialogue that works to advance the plot, illustrate character, and amuse the reader.

The mystery itself doesn't seem that important -- this is a book about exploring the small town Harris imagines on the crossroads of Texas state highways, with a group of people unexpectedly ready to band together both because of their similarities and against the bad guys. But there's not much action -- someone asked me what it was about when I was a good chunk in and I really had no answer yet.

But I didn't care, because the other thing this book had going for it was a huge reunion of characters from all across Harris's work.  We move into the town with Manfred Bernardo, the psychic who worked with Harper Connolly several times in her series. His landlord is Bobo Winthrop, young friend of Lily Bard in her mystery series. The cop who comes to deal with the mystery is Aurora Teagarden's old flame Arthur. It makes me want to tear through all her work to see if I'm missing any other links or characters. And it means I know lots of secret stuff about everyone -- I know what went wrong with Arthur's marriages. I know about Bobo's family, even his teen-age fantasies. I've seen Manfred with this grandmother.

I wish Harris had tipped this a bit more, because sometimes I wondered if I was supposed to know all this. Was she reusing names, or really reusing characters? Who did I miss from Sookie Stackhouse -- I'm sure there was someone. And all these worlds aren't really in the same place, are they? So it was a bit disconcerting. Overall, I really like the intersections, but I wonder how the book would read to someone new to this author, or even just someone who hadn't tracked down all her work over the past decade or so.

Rearranging and Hoarding

I have to say I'm really enjoying this idea of starting a new book every day -- no pressure to ever finish anything. It's very freeing. Of course it means that I haven't touched many of the books I'm currently reading, but I can tell you where I am in the stories!

It's just as well that I'm ending this when school starts on the 2nd. Then I should probably have a finish two before starting one policy to save me from having to buy a currently-reading bookcase.

Anyway, since I'm a heavy library user, due dates tend to focus my attention a bit. I keep an eye on books that the library will call home so they stay on the top of the book bag; sadly books I buy tend to float to the bottom even if they are the ones I really hunger for.

 I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists:

• The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, Ben Hatke. I've been a fan since the first one, and I was glad to see that the dark second installment is replaced with the action-packed final reel. I think these would be better read closer together because I had forgotten some of the people there for the big reunion scenes.
• World After, Susan Ee. Another sequel (boy, these Cybils sure add to my reading list, with the finalists every year and then the new authors added to my must-read list). 
• Bad Machinery Vol II: The Case of the Good Boy, John Allison. I wasn't sure if the Cybils nomination was for the first or second book, so I compromised by getting both. Fun reads.
• Games of Command, Linnea Sinclair. This was the alt-alt book for Vaginal Fantasy this month, and since it looked like a long wait to get the real books I tried it out. I liked the world building, but the romance didn't really work for me.
• Moonday, Adam Rex. Nicely surreal picture book about a family dealing with the moon parking itself in their backyard. My favorite page was the yawn that bounces around the block before returning to our narrator.

What am I currently reading?  Well, as I started another seven books last week and finished four, this list gets longer and longer. That's exactly what I said last week, by the way, so there's a definite delightfully insane trend. Almost half of my currently reading list is now on  GOODREADS.

• The Education of Madeline, Beth Williamson. The main characters seem to be lacking in common sense. p. 208.
• About That Night, Norah McClintock. This looks like a murder mystery, and I have high hopes from the author of the Dooley books. p. 53.
• Affliction, Laurell K. Hamilton. The first few chapters have a little bit of plot and a lot of very heavy handed exposition and review. Probably necessary, but it makes the dialogue hilariously unlikely. p.53.
• Clean Sweep, Ilona Andrews. Prologues and introductions always make for a slow start. p.1.
• Rogue, Michael Z. Williamson. Military SF. p. 154.
• The Missing, Shiloh Walker. Old book from my TBR list. p. 63.
• Protector, C.J. Cherryh. The first three chapters reminded me of where we are in the story. No change. p. 67
• Wildflower, Alecia Whitaker. Teenage girl becomes a singing sensation. No change. 16%
• The Invasion (Animorphs), Katherine Applegate. Right after I started this my kid stole it to review for the Sword and Laser Kids podcast. p.154
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt. I'm still on the first page, so this hardly counts.
• The 14 Fibs of Gregory K, Greg Pincus. Yes, this will be a very painful read for me, as the kid makes obvious mistakes and panics about failing. p.55
• Reading in the Wild, Donalyn Miller. A book about encouraging people to read independently. Re-inspiring me to try to start a book club at our local junior high. No change. p.1
• Breakfast on Mars, ed. Rebecca Stern. A Cybils finalist. This is a book of ESSAYS! I love it, and I bet I cannot get my boys to try it. I thought it was a cooking book. No change.  p.1
• The Fault in Our Stars, John Green. Not really in the mood for a death book. No change. p.64
• Serafina's Promise, Ann E. Berg. No change.  p.99
• Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo, Obert Skye. I believe we have assembled to imporatnat characters, and it is time to head for Foo.  No change. p.102
• Divergent, Veronica Roth. No change.  p.61
• Love, Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli. No change. p.52
• Gregor the Overlander, Suzanne Collins. No change. p.69
• The Lions of al-Rassan, Guy Gabriel Kay. Wow, history is sure mean, even when it's a fantasy history. p. 414.
• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Elgin. No change. p.113
• Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling. No change. p.35
• The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison. I really miss the hardback I had that mysteriously vanished. Still reading on my NOOK, but I have no idea how to track progress.
• Cathedral of the Wild, Boyd Varty. No change. p.107
• Tinker, Wen Spencer. Just got it back. Child is now reading the sequel. No change. p.310
• The Golden Leopard, Lynn Kerstan. The poor guy is really learning the lesson of the Boy Who Cried Wolf and how a reputation is more precious than gold. p. 153.
• Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. No change. p. 260
• The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan. p.256

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly. These never change much:

• The Jury, Stephen Adler. The book will show why juries are important but how we are doing them wrong. No change. p. 3.
• Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. Two views on introducing reading -- phonic based and immersion. p.14.
• Nerds, Michael Buckley. Our hero has gotten braces and lost his friends and his life. No change. p.34.
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Tiny sections means this one goes very slowly. A funeral and some reminiscing. No change. p.236.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Yay -- they will leave the prison. Very dull insightful commentary on the silliness of legal proceedings. No change. p. 737.

What's up next? I plan that on Thursdays, but mostly more library books. This will be so for several more weeks at least.

2014 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils: 52/77. No change. I haven't finished anything!  
2. Where Am I Reading? 30/51. Currently reading a Colorado, an Indiana, and I think an Alaska. 
3. Alphabetically Inclined: 18/26. OK, clearly I'm going to have to explicitly draw from my shelves.  I need an E, I, and J. Q, V, X, Y, and Z.
4. What's In a Name?: 7/7. Still have to review everything. Ha!
5. Book Bingo: Fifteen boxes into square 2.
6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge: Got all the colors. Need a punny book.
7. Small Fry Safari: 7/8. No change. Still need something precious.
8. PoC Speculative Fiction 13/5:  World After counts, and I decided to count Bad Machinery together as one, since it's an ensemble cast with a PoC member.
9. Big Books: 1. Never finishing things makes this hard.
10. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
11. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.

Cybils Elementary & Middle Grade Graphic Novel Finalists

I called to me all the Cybils Early Chapter Book finalists from my excellent library, which has almost everything anyone could want. King County Library System Rocks! And if occasionally I think of something they don't have, they either find it for me somewhere else or else get it for me because I'm special. Just like everyone else.

You wouldn't tell it from my reviews, but I'm actually doing fairly well on my Cybils Finalist Challenge -- I think I'm at 52 books (I don't do the apps). If I ever finish early I'll start a lifetime Challenge to catch up the years before I started doing this -- I think I started with the 2010 list but they started in 2006.

If I haven't messed them up, the book titles below should be Amazon links that benefit the Cybils, so if anyone wants to buy these books, use that.

Bluffton: My Summers with Buster Keaton, Matt Phelan. The water color illustrations give this a gentle, old-time feeling that suits the optimistic story of a small town boy intersecting with the exotic Buster Keaton. Even as we watch the boy struggling against the conformity of his life the love and affection his family and friends show him correctly predict that he'll find happiness. It held my middle school boy's attention.

 Hereville: How Mirka Met a Meteorite, Barry Deutsch. This felt a bit "lesson-y" to me -- Mirka must learn to conform more to her gender role but without giving up her dreams. Except when her dreams are foolish (and there are foolish dreams -- wanting to be great without wanting to work for it, for example). Mirka is saved by her clever siblings instead of by herself, but then she did save them all at the start of the book.

Both boys read it and seemed happy enough. X was more positive than me.

 March Book 1, John Lewis. This was very powerful, and also accessible to me. I don't know much about this part of history so I liked reading about a memoir that gave a feel for how people felt and acted.

X thought it was all right; P never picked it up.

 Monster on the Hill, Rob Harrell. This was jolly, a bit gory, and a lot of fun. The switches between sympathizing with the people and the monsters was well done, and the bright colors and active panel sizes matched the story and characters well. This was a lot of fun and unexpectedly emotionally powerful.

Both kids ate it up.

  Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Donner Dinner Party Nathan Hale. Both X and I enjoy the Nathan Hale books, swallowing the historical medicine easily with the spoonful of grim humor and careful drawings. This story is especially dark, with death piled upon death and no escape for the young or likable.

I think P skipped it; probably just as well. X was an enthusiast; in fact I just brought home one about WWI and he's gobbling it up.

Squish #5: Game On!,  Jennifer L. Holm. Fun, and I've been been meaning to try these. I don't think starting with #5 made me lose much -- the relationships seem pretty straightforward and the story likewise. Pleasant but not lingering.

Both boys zipped through this. I tried to interest the beginning reader but he didn't bite.

The Lost Boy, Greg Ruth. I was impressed by how spooky this story was -- I think it's right on the border between this category and the older one. The drawing was also impressive, although the darkness made it hard for my barely-graphically-literate eyes to keep track of the characters. This is all me -- I have a feeble visual memory and tend to have huge troubles distinguishing characters in comics, which my children find highly amusing.

I'm not sure if the junior high boy finished this, but the high schooler liked it.

Aiming For Sanity (But Missing)

My regular library continues to lack walls (and books) so I trundled along to the back-up library with the three boys. The girl is off hosting her Japanese exchange friend, so she's been busy seeing the sights of Seattle while I stay home with the boys and relax into the last weeks of summer vacation.

I have carefully scheduled as little as possible into these days, to ensure we have time to laze about reading, play too many hours of video games, and stare into the refrigerator hoping that something will inspire us into eating it.
Good times!

I had three books on my hold shelf, plus the missing House of Anubis DVD from last week. Taking its appearance as a Sign From Above, I brought it home and just hope the previous one shows up before this one comes due.



Book Thief was recommended by my elementary school book club. I'm slowly realizing that I'm not going to finish their list of summer recommendations, since I think there are about twenty left and summer for me ends on September 3rd. Oops. Well, being late has never particularly troubled me, so I shall continue on.  

Steadfast is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me; it's not Jack Campbell's best writing (those would be the Moon books he wrote as Jack Hemry) but I really like the story and the characters, so I just ignore the words and watch the movie in my head.

Nathan Hales' Treaties, Trenches, Mud and Blood is the next in his series of historical graphic novels, which I learned about through the Cybils and now continue to seek out on my own. It was immediately confiscated by the 10th grader, so he's doing something right.

The August pick for the Vaginal Fantasy is Marge Piercy's He, She, and It, so I'm glad my reserve of the ebook came in. Lucky for me the discussion is delayed until the first week of September, so I might have time to finish it.

Summer is still going, so I'm still doing my start-a-book-a-day. (I don't finish a book a day, so my currently-reading stack is ENORMOUS.)  I'm concentrating on my library books, hoping to bring it down to a reasonable pile by the end of September. I turned in more than I checked out today, so that's a good sign, right? I must say, planning this in advance makes me feel like I'm in control, and then I trip on the mountain that is my currently-reading bag, and I see what an illusion that is.

Friday: The Return of Zita the Spacegirl (library book, sequel)
Saturday: Rogue (my book)
Sunday:  Clean Sweep (library, for fun)
Monday: Captain Marvel : In Pursuit of Flight (library, Cybils)
Tuesday: Mrs Pollifax, Pursued  (library book, for fun)
Wednesday: Always Abigail, Nancy J. Cavanaugh (my book, because I WON IT)
Thursday: Growing Up Brave  (library book, for fun)

He, She, and It is waiting on my ebook for me, so at least one of these will get bumped.

So I currently have 43 books out on my library card, which is better than last week.

 I'll go sign in to Library Loot which is at Silly Little Mischief this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 

All About The Beginnings -- Forget the Endings

I have to say I'm really enjoying this idea of starting a new book every day -- no pressure to ever finish anything. It's very freeing. Of course it means that I haven't touched many of the books I'm currently reading, but I can tell you where I am in the stories!

It's just as well that I'm ending this when school starts on the 2nd. Then I should probably have a finish two before starting one policy to save me from having to buy a currently-reading bookcase.

Anyway, since I'm a heavy library user, due dates tend to focus my attention a bit. I keep an eye on books that the library will call home so they stay on the top of the book bag; sadly books I buy tend to float to the bottom even if they are the ones I really hunger for.

 I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists:

• Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold (reread) This is the Miles-deals-with death part of the Vorkosigan saga; obviously it had a lot more meaning to me just now.
• Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, Tony Cliff (YA graphic novel). A fun Cybils ride.  My 10th grader was offended that I was reading it as I apparently had not offered it to him loudly enough when I brought it home.
• Midnight Crossroad, Charlaine Harris. This was a lot of fun. I believe Harris wrote it for me especially, so I enjoy crossovers between her various series so much.
• Indigo Springs, A.M. Dellamonica. I found the unpleasantness of the main characters a bit distancing -- loving someone is not an excuse for helping them destroy the world.
• Tall, Jez Alborough. I read this fun picture book in the library with my nephew -- he was scandalized that I was wandering in the children's section by myself when I am clearly not a child. So I made him help me read the book to get me out faster. I liked the expressions and how much got said with so few words.

What am I currently reading?  Well, as I started another seven books last week and finished four, this list gets longer and longer. To hide the scope of my insanity, I've decided to move my currently reading list from SHELFARI to GOODREADS because the latter has much better searching tools as well as cutting down the places I record my reading. Currently goodreads only knows when I finish I book I've been planning to read, which is probably only about half of my current list.

• Protector, C.J. Cherryh. The first three chapters reminded me of where we are in the story. p. 67
• Wildflower, Alecia Whitaker. Teenage girl becomes a singing sensation. 16%
• World After, Susan Ee. The flashbacks with the telepathic sword help remind me of the previous book but at the cost of really slowly down the plot. 25%
• The Invasion (Animorphs), Katherine Applegate. Right after I started this my kid stole to review for the Sword and Laser Kids podcast. 
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt. I'm still on the first page, so this hardly counts.
• The 14 Fibs of Gregory K, Greg Pincus. Yes, this will be a very painful read for me, as the kid makes obvious mistakes and panics about failing. p.55
• Games of Command, Linnea Sinclair. NOOK. Hey, they did have sex! I like the cyborg couple better than the telepaths. p.300
• Reading in the Wild, Donalyn Miller. A book about encouraging people to read independently. Re-inspiring me to try to start a book club at our local junior high. No change. p.1
• Breakfast on Mars, ed. Rebecca Stern. A Cybils finalist. This is a book of ESSAYS! I love it, and I bet I cannot get my boys to try it. I thought it was a cooking book. No change.  p.1
• The Fault in Our Stars, John Green. Not really in the mood for a death book. No change. p.64
• Serafina's Promise, Ann E. Berg. No change.  p.99
• Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo, Obert Skye. I believe we have assembled to imporatnat characters, and it is time to head for Foo.  No change. p.102
• Divergent, Veronica Roth. No change.  p.61
• Love, Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli. No change. p.52
• Gregor the Overlander, Suzanne Collins. No change. p.69
• The Lions of al-Rassan, Guy Gabriel Kay. No change. p.113
• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Elgin. No change. p.113
• Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling. No change. p.35
• The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison. I really miss the hardback I had that mysteriously vanished. 
• Cathedral of the Wild, Boyd Varty. No change. p.107
• Tinker, Wen Spencer. My kid stole this -- hooray! I still want it back. No change. p.310
• The Golden Leopard, Lynn Kerstan. No change. p.136
• Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. No change. p. 260
• The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan. p.256

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly. These never change much:

• The Jury, Stephen Adler. The book will show why juries are important but how we are doing them wrong. p. 3
• Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. Two views on introducing reading -- phonic based and immersion. p.13
• Nerds, Michael Buckley. Our hero has gotten braces and lost his friends and his life. p.34
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Tiny sections means this one goes very slowly. A funeral and some reminiscing. No change. p.226
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Yay -- they will leave the prison. Very dull insightful commentary on the silliness of legal proceedings.  p. 737

What's up next? I plan that on Thursdays, but mostly more library books.

2014 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils: 52/77. I'm started three more, and still have three on deck. 
2. Where Am I Reading? 30/51. Go Texas! Hooray for Charlaine Harris!  Also, the John Green book is in Indiana, and the Riordan should end up in Alaska. 
3. Alphabetically Inclined: 18/26. OK, clearly I'm going to have to explicitly draw from my shelves.  I need an E, I, and J.
4. What's In a Name?: 7/7. Still have to review everything.
5. Book Bingo: Eleven boxes into square 2.
6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge: Who would have thought I read so few cheesy titles? Unless Love, Stargirl counts, since Stargirl is written as a rhebus.
7. Small Fry Safari: 7/8. No change. Still need something precious.
8. PoC Speculative Fiction 11/5:  I'm counting Delilah Dirk.
9. Big Books: 1. 
10. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
11. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.

The Visibility Is Good

This is my regular library. I think they are not quite finished with the remodel yet. So I went back to my temporary one.

This week's drama centered around the House of Anubis marathon my nephew has embarked upon. Good News -- 2nd half of Season 2 came in last week. Bad News -- the discs were so scratched they couldn't be played. Good News -- 1st Half of Season 3 came in this week! Bad News: Well, they thought it came in, but somehow it disappeared from the hold shelf. Good News: Nephew refuses to watch out of order anyway! Bad News: We have put a new hold on Season 2, Part II. Good News: The librarian thought he was cute and moved him to the front of the list, since he had shown them the damage on the one they gave him. So, happy nephew, although I'm really hoping we get through this before school starts since he doesn't really need extra distractions.

I had a book on my hold shelf that wasn't mysteriously missing, and I picked up one delicious looking book from the Temptations shelf out front. Also I found a fun looking picture book:


Summer is still going, so I'm still doing my start-a-book-a-day. (I don't finish a book a day, so my currently-reading stack is ENORMOUS.)  I'm going to make a real effort to read down my library shelf, maybe get it below ten books waiting for me. So this week again is mostly library books:

Friday: Animorphs: The Invasion (for Sword & Laser Kids book club)
Saturday: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant (library book, Cybils)
Sunday:  Protector (library book, for fun)
Monday: About That Night (my book -- ARC)
Tuesday: The Missing, (library book, for fun)
Wednesday: Rogue (my book)
Thursday: Affliction (library book, for fun)

But really I won't get that far because when I finish Games of Command on my NOOK I'll start the next-due library ebook the next day, so Games of Command will push some of these choices down a day.

So I currently have 42 books out on my library card, which is better than last week. And one is a picture book!

 I'll go sign in to Library Loot which is at The Captive Reader this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 

Monday Goes On

This week was a bit of a blur, and I didn't actually get much reading done. On the plus side, I finished a lot of levels of Frozen Free Fall and spent a lot of time with my family in very soul-satisfying ways.

I'm also continuing my plan of starting a new book every day, which has the effect of my rarely finishing anything. But it makes me happy, so I shall indulge myself until summer vacation is over. I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists:

• Bad Machinery: The Case of the Team Spirit, John Allison. A Cybils finalist YA graphic novel. Actually, I wasn't sure if this one of the next one was the Cybils pick, so I have them both. It was fun -- I could mostly tell the kids apart, the English setting was gently exotic for me, and the solid grounding in real school drama made the ghost appearance even more fun.
• The Marriage Bureau for Rich People, Farahad Zama. This was my book club's pick for this month, and it was a wonderfully cosy, happy choice for a stressful time. It was fun to see another culture -- I haven't read much about middle class life in India, and the book's tone assured me that things would turn out OK, something that I appreciated. Also, it inspired us to head out to an Indian restaurant for the meeting (usually we are a pizza-at-home kind of club) which was delicious.
• Concealed in Death, J.D. Robb. I liked this installment, which involved deaths that happened in the book's distant past, so the gruesome factor was limited, as well as the urgency in catching the killer. Again, a good choice for me this week, when I wasn't in the mood for grimdark.

What am I currently reading?  Well, as I started another seven eight books last week and finished three, this list gets longer and longer. I do tend to focus heavily on the books the library demands back, so some page counts haven't moved since last Monday. To hide the scope of my insanity, I've decided to move my currently reading list from SHELFARI to GOODREADS because the latter has much better searching tools as well as cutting down the places I record my reading. Currently goodreads only knows when I finish I book I've been planning to read, which is probably only about half of my current list.

• The 14 Fibs of Gregory K, Greg Pincus. This Cybils books looks like it will make me very anxious. p.23
• Games of Command, Linnea Sinclair. NOOK. A fun SF romance. p.38
• Reading in the Wild, Donalyn Miller. A book about encouraging people to read independently. Re-inspiring me to try to start a book club at our local junior high.  p.1
• Breakfast on Mars, ed. Rebecca Stern. A Cybils finalist. This is a book of ESSAYS! I love it, and I bet I cannot get my boys to try it. I thought it was a cooking book.  p.1
• The Fault in Our Stars, John Green. I've been avoiding this because I hear sad things happen, but if anyone had told me it takes place in Indiana I would have been reading it months ago. p.64
• Serafina's Promise, Ann E. Berg. No change.  p.99
• Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo, Obert Skye. I believe we have assembled to imporatnat characters, and it is time to head for Foo.  p.102
• Divergent, Veronica Roth. No change.  p.61
• Love, Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli. No change. p.52
• Indigo Springs, A.M. Dellamonica. I like the two timelines, and I'm amazingly happy with the less likable major characters, which is often a problem for me. Big government does not seem to be my friend. p.203
• Gregor the Overlander, Suzanne Collins. Gregor is an amazing big brother. Kudos to him.  p.69
• The Lions of al-Rassan, Guy Gabriel Kay. Massacres, politics, and more characters. Good stuff. p.113
• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Elgin. There are some strange continuity jumps, and the alien habit of speaking in ALL CAPS is distracting. I want to keep reading, though. p.113
• Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling. No change. p.35
• The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison. I read a bit more waiting for Guardians of the Galaxy to start.
• Cathedral of the Wild, Boyd Varty. No change. p.107
• Tinker, Wen Spencer. No change. p.310
• The Golden Leopard, Lynn Kerstan. OK, the stakes are higher but the pair are working together. p.136
• Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. No change. p. 260
• The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan. Frank is killing a basilisk so they can go to Alaska. p.256

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly. These never change much:

• The Jury, Stephen Adler. This is nonfiction. p. ix
• Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. Two views on introducing reading -- phonic based and immersion. p.10
• Nerds, Michael Buckley. No change. p.1
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Tiny sections means this one goes very slowly. A funeral and some reminiscing. p.226
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Stil quite dull. No change. p. 710

What's up next? More library books and a few ARCS that I need to read. Also need to get some book club reading in.

2014 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils: 51/77. I'm currently reading two more, and I have several out from the library (I hope my sons are reading them).
2. Where Am I Reading? 29/51. Still stuck. However, I'm currently reading an Indiana book and (I hope) an Alaska one.  I've got that Connecticut book out from the library, and I think another library book takes place in Colorado. 
3. Alphabetically Inclined: 18/26. Since I'm only counting books from my shelves, and I've only been reading library books, this is stalled.
4. What's In a Name?: 7/7. Still have to review everything.
5. Book Bingo: Eleven boxes into square 2.
6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge: Who would have thought I read so few cheesy titles? Unless Love, Stargirl counts, since Stargirl is written as a rhebus.
7. Small Fry Safari: 7/8. No change. Still need something precious.
8. PoC Speculative Fiction 9/5: Three books this week would qualify. Maybe four, but I forget how dark the protagonist of Skin Heat was.
9. Big Books: 1. 
10. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
11. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.

Looted Library

This is my temporary library. This is my nephew posing in front of the library. This is an emotional picture for me because we went from the library to visit my dad and show off our loot, and that was the last time I saw my father because he died in his sleep that night.

So.

I'm really glad we took the time to go see him that day. This week he saw several of his grandkids, had a good dinner with his three local children, and he seemed alert and confident.

This week I'll probably read a lot, since that's the way I deal with emotional storms, and I'll probably read nonproductively and in scattered bits across dozens of books, so it's probably just as well that, as usual, I took home too many books. My hold shelf only had three books, including the next Black Butler which my fifteen year old has already marched off with:


It also had the next House of Anubis CD, which is why nephew up there was so chuffed that day. Anyway, then I remembered that I'm falling behind on my books-from-fifty-states challenge, so I browsed around and found three more books, of which two are set in useful places and one is just an English book I've been meaning to read:



And I should mention the ebooks I checked onto my NOOK, one for a state fix and one for fun:


Obviously I cannot start as many library books as I check out, since I've got eight books up there. At this rate, I'm doomed. So I'll put two of my personal books on my plan for this week and then five library books:

Friday: Reading in the Wild (library book, for fun)
Saturday: The Fourteen Fibs of Gregory K. (library book, Cybils)
Sunday: World After (library book, for fun)
Monday: Wildflower (my book -- ARC)
Tuesday: Midnight Crossroad, (library book, for fun)
Wednesday: Tell the Wolves I'm Home (my book)
Thursday: Protector (library book, for fun)

But really I won't get that far because when I finish Concealed in Death on my NOOK I'll start the next-due library book the next day, so Games of Command will push some of these choices down a day.

So I currently have 46 books out on my library card, which is a lot.

 I'll go sign in to Library Loot which is at Silly Little Mischief this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week.