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.