Final Day Before Book Buying Spree!

Last day of theNo-New-Books Triple Dog Dare. So close! And yet it still seems pretty far.

Luckily, my entire family can't pick a basketball winner to save our lives, so our March Madness Pool is over and I can run to the bookstore with my meager winnings tomorrow! (Well, we'll probably make a ceremonial trip next weekend, but the pleasure is still there.) The adults chip into a pool, we indulge our math geekery by squabbling over how to count points, and then we award Barnes & Noble Gift Cards to everyone.

Now I'll sign in at Book Journey and Teach Mentor Texts since I want to see what everyone else is reading this month while I show off my recent reading path.

• The Lost Boy, Greg Ruth. Cybils Graphic Novel -- very dark and spooky.
• Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon & Little Hits, Matt Fraction. Comic books, because I am hip and with it. Clint seems to be making some poor life choices, though.
• The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater. NOOK. Very good, although I expected more stuff to be solved in this book rather than the sequel, which is waiting at the library for my son.
• Squish #5: Game On!, Jennifer L. Holm. Cybils Graphic Novel. As unlike Lost Boy as I can possibly imagine.
• The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place III: The Unseen Guest, Maryrose Wood. For my Reading My Library Quest -- a bit too cute for me.
• Hawkes Harbor, S.E. Hinton. A good read, although a bit incoherent. 
• Bluffton: My Summers with Buster Keaton, Matt Phelan. A soothing, gentle Cybils Graphic Novel that amused my son.

Also some picture books:

• The Pet Project: Cute and Cuddly Vicious Verses, Lisa Wheeler. Cybils poetry book. Sad.
• Limelight Larry, Leigh Hodgkinson. Snarky and vibrant, for sophisticated kids and their parents.
• Jazzy in the Jungle, Lucy Cousins. Bright colors, turnable pages, not much for adults.

What am I currently reading? I finished a few books, and I ALMOST finished a handful more. I've now got 3 audio books going in my car to accommodate various configurations of passengers -- this is exhausting! I'm hoping to finish two more of my books by the end of today, and then I can relax for a while.

• Poems to Learn By Heart, Caroline Kennedy (ed.). This is a Cybils poetry book. I've marked several poems as ones I might want to add to my mental collection.
• One Week Girlfriend, Monica Murphy. I'll probably finish this today -- the youth of today are exhausting.
• The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, Dorothy Gilman. AUDIO. As soon as we are all in the car this goes on.
• The City of Ember, Jeanne DuPrau. AUDIO. This is the March Sword and Laser Kids book. Xan and I listen to it so we don't get ahead of Paulos with Mrs Pollifax.
• War For the Oaks, Emma Bull. I'll probably finish this today -- I'm enjoying the romantic subplots and the adult way the protagonists handles her career, her fairy commitments, and her men.
• Long May She Reign, Ellen Emerson White. I hope my kids meet people like Meg when they go to college. I hope they are better behaved than Jack, though.
• Carter's Big Break, Brent Crawford. AUDIO for me to listen to when I'm alone. It's from the 2013 Best of the Best for teens list.
• The Golden Leopard, Lynn Kerstan. A book that's been waiting on my NOOK. I'm hoping for a fun romance.
• The Water Castle, Megan Frazer Blackmore. A Cybils pick with an interesting sibling dynamic.
• Final Sail, Elaine Viets. I got this last year as another North America book (it takes place in the Caribbean), but I'm not connecting much to the characters.

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

• Radio Fifth Grade, Gordon Korman. Transmission shenanigans with a powerful hair dryer.
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. The good mayor is back in the lead.
• A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis. How therapy and drugs can work together.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Pickwick in prison -- still dull.
• How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, Orson Scott Card. A good discussion of how to give background info, with Octavia Butler as a great example.

What's up next? We Are Not Eaten By Yaks is STILL up on top of my nightstand, with the library book The Night Circus now lurking hopefully in my bag. I need to start concentrating on my Reading My Library Quest books as they are due back soon. I've got some book club picks on my NOOK waiting for me.

2014 Challenge Progress:

1. TBR Triple Dog Dare: 22 +3. I will probably get to 24 before tomorrow.
2. Cybils: 38/77. Finished the Elementary Graphic Novels, working on poetry, and Elementary Speculative Fiction.
3. Where Am I Reading? 20/51. Checked off California, Delaware, and Virginia. My current reads are duplicates, though.
4. Alphabetically Inclined: 14/26. No change.
5. What's In a Name?: 4/7. Still need weather, school subject, and shape. I saw some library books that would plug these holes, but the Triple Dog Dare kept my hands off of them.
6. Book Bingo: 20 Squares. Still need a mystery, a lot of  New Releases, and a few more TBR.
7. Gentle Spectrum Challenge: 5/10, 7/10. The Harbor scored me a point.
8. Small Fry Safari: 4/8. No change. Still need furniture, time, pairs, and something precious.
9. PoC Speculative Fiction 1/5: No change.
10. Best of the Best 2012: 51/25.  I've started listening to the next audio, and the next book is in my reading bag.
11. Reading My Library:  Finished Maryrose Wood's book.