Foolish Reading Decisions As School Opens

School started this week! I almost wrote opened, but of course they didn't open. We're all distance learning in Renton School District, after a summer of climbing COVID numbers. My nephew is a senior this year and felt he didn't really do a good job with online learning last spring, so I agree to sit with him to start with.

This year they actually show up for each class, sometimes to do work for the whole period and sometimes just to check in and get an assignment. I think this will work better than last year, where they had occasional check ins and the kids were supposed to work through all their assignments on their own. That would be heaven for some but a disaster for the less organized. So I bring over some books and my computer and get work and reading done while helping with technical difficulties and such. There were a lot of games this week as the teachers were mostly making sure that everything worked, so I got a chance to shine by feeding my nephew lots of trivia answers.

I'm also still running on my own, although I've pushed off the interval to have two days of rest in between since I'm old and creaky. Runkeeper, my running app, has a beginner to 5K program that I'm doing, although I'm doing slow jogs for the walking bits and slightly less slow jogs for the running bits in an attempt to get my pace up a bit.

All my reading plans were derailed by noticing that I was only five or so books short of a black out on the Seattle Library Book Bingo challenge. So I rounded up the books and am making a stab at it. Then I'll deal with the overdue library books and the book club meetings next weekend... Oh look, I have a newish K J Charles!

I made it to the library and the farmer's market on Tuesday, as well as swinging by my friend Linda's retirement home for a visit. We have to chat through the glass wall where they've installed an intercom so that no germs can pass. Mostly we talk about all the movies we aren't going to see. Next week I could tell about the movie I did see, though, since my sister bought Mulan from Disney and invited me over for a watch party. My liberal arts son was invited as well, although he watched from Oregon and we texted impressions. I made myself a ginormous bowl of popcorn and happily chomped my way through the film, which we enjoyed but we thought needed more songs.

On Sunday I hosted the usual Family Zoom call and we were delighted when the third generation showed up. My mom and aunt are regulars, and my siblings show up most of the time, but both sons dialed in from college and a nephew made an appearance on his dad's screen. Three rows in my Zoom gallery -- I think that's a record.

Cooking wise I managed to make my two meals. On Wednesday I had a craving for my pasta with a sausage cream sauce, and I served that with two tomato salads -- an Italian one with mozzarella and basil and a Greek one with feta and cucumber. I don't have my son's hand with dressings though; he's got a better eye for the vinegar. And on Friday I made an egg and bagel bake that my kids had turned their noses up at (waste of good bagels was their opinions) but which my sister and BIL appreciated. And even my nephew came over to eat since I had bought pineapple, watermelon, and cantaloupe tubs and those are his favorite. So I felt pleased with myself but I'm exhausted at the idea of doing it all again this week. I think I'm doing a pizza night this coming Friday!

My currently reading has lurched back up to 25 with all the books I'm racing to finish to complete my Bingo card. To make it worse, I started some, liked them but realized they were moving too slow so I started easier options but still want to finish the original choices. 

The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called "It's Monday! What Are You Reading" so I'll sign up there. Ditto for the children's lit version at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers. I've got a picture book section this week so I'm eligible.

Started

Rare Encounters With Ordinary Birds, Lyanda Lynn Haupt. My nature book for my SPL Summer bingo card.

Jubilee, Margaret Walker. Debut over 50 for SPL Summer bingo.

The Secret of Chimneys, Agatha Christie. 1920s book for SPL Summer bingo.

Books For Living, Will Schwalbe. Uplifting book for SPL Summer bingo

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong. Epistolary for SPL Summer bingo.

The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein, Farah Mendelson. Hugo finalist. 

Elysium, Jennifer Marie Brissert. For Sword & Laser club.

Kristy's Great Idea, Raina Telgemeier. Cybils finalist. 

A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, Ellen Oh (editor). Retellings for SPL Summer bingo.

Completed

Polaris Rising, Jessie Mihalik. For my Cloudy book club. Much more light-hearted and fun that I was expecting, so I had a great time. It's a light hearted space romance between a high ranking woman on the run from her family over a proposed marriage and an enhanced soldier on the run from just about everyone. Together they take on her fiance and his family, her dad, and the universe. Lots of fun characters, heroic loyalty, and only a few moments to pause for foolish reflection. I'm going off to chase down the rest of the series.

The Bill Martin Jr. Big Book of Poetry, ed. Bill Martin Jr. 2009 Cybils poetry finalist. This was a pleasant anthology, with bright cheerful illustrations and bright cheerful poems. I'm not a big fan of some of the illustrators, but then I have terrible taste in art. I really liked the poem "Let There Be Pizza On Earth" and will have to recite it over my next pizza night. But I know I would have been unable to get this past my children when they were young; it's a bit tragic how scarred I am by having such poetry-phobes as offspring. Clearly I need some revenge grandkids.

The Secret of Chimneys, Agatha Christie. 1920s book for SPL Summer bingo. After a jarring start where the hero threw around various racist and anti-Semitic slurs and expressed his general contempt for non-British people, I pushed on to get to smart women, goofy aristocrats with goofier nicknames, a murder mystery in an old stately house, and laconic detective who shows up to be clever but then leaves so our hero can bustle about, and a cosy feeling of solving part of the mystery (very rare for me, but this is clearly an early Christie). So I had fun, but it would have been better if someone cut out the slurs.

Rare Encounters With Ordinary Birds, Lyanda Lynn Haupt. My nature book for my SPL Summer bingo card. This was a balm to my soul. I have some books on American birds, and I feebly try to identify the ones I manage to see. I'm terrible at it. But this book by a naturalist who is an avid birder both affirms the pleasure of birdwatching but also gives respect to even the people who can barely differentiate a heron from a goose. I got enormous pleasure from it and I'm back to trying to tell a junco from a Stellar Jay.

Books For Living, Will Schwalbe. Uplifting book for SPL Summer bingo. Another huge winner. Schwalbe writes essay chapters about books that affected his life, either because of when he read them or what he associated them with or what they said, and also talks about the importance of one's reading life and the dialogue between reader and book and it was all life affirming and delicious. And then in his acknowledgements he praises my cousin Alice Truax who I knew was an editor but now I like the book even more.

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, Stacy McAnulty. 2018 Cybils middle grade fiction finalist. Another strong entry! I'm always a bit leery of stories about homeschooled kids discovering that it's better to be bullied than to learn because school is their only hope for friendship, but in Lucy's class she desperately needs to get out of her apartment. I do hope she doesn't stay at the middle school, but the friends that she makes and the awareness of her emotions and capabilities that she gets during the book were great.

Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:

Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan. 10/10 discs. Go Bransa! But I'm pausing to listen to the CD from last week's The Tree that Time Built, where I can hear a selection of the poems.

Uncompromising Honor 28/??, David Weber. Baen Free Radio Hour's serial. Still stuck in a battle.

Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling. I'm listening to celebrities read this to me. 

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James. Sword and Laser pick. Finally picked it up again!

A Long Time Until Now, Michael Z Williamson. Those feminists -- wondering if rape counts as abuse. Who has time for that stuff? There's porn to enjoy!

The Illustrated Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking. For my Tuesday book club. Marching along through the chapters.

Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Finally getting back to this but I'd better hurry -- the library wants it returned.

Cities in Layers, Philip Steele. This is going slowly because I'm terrible at Where's Waldo things and each page is a slow search for all the landmarks. But it's fun and I'm enjoying the cut-outs.

Picture Books / Short Stories:

 

Αλφαβητάρι με γλωσσοδέτες, Eugene Trivizas. I'm in the extra letters -- the digraphs and special blends. Or maybe they are all digraphs and my pronunciation is terrible.

I Love My Hair, Natasha Tarpley. Well, I didn't exactly read this one, but I'm watching the Netflix series Bookmarks which is people reading picture books. They show the art but not the real pages, so I'm not going to count the all. But this one felt like it was being read to me, and I liked the cadence and the energy of the pictures. I was a complete failure at hair as a parent (and really, as a person with hair) so I always like books where it's a success.

Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow, Joyce Sidman. 2006 Cybils poetry finalist. A great picture book, combining poems and riddles and science. I think I could have gotten my kids to sit for this one, and even without an audience I enjoyed the pages with their quiet illustrations of the animals and plants that the poems describe.

Snow Bear, Lindsay Moore. 2019 Cybils Elementary Nonfiction finalist. A lovely picture book, colored for bedtime with soft blues and poised illustrations of the bear and the other northern animals. As a bonus, it's also an accurate description of the polar bear's environment and response, with added information at the back.

Nine Months: Before a Baby Is Born, Miranda Paul. 2019 Cybils Elementary Nonfiction finalist. This is squarely in the genre of "So You're Going to Have a New Sibling" but it's a good entry. It's also a good science book about the development from egg to baby, which a poem celebrating both this growth as well as the lives of the family awaiting this baby, including the soon to be big sister. Another book that would work to read in someone's lap or shared in a classroom.

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; I use them as palate cleansers between books I'm actually reading.

The Educated Child, William Bennett. 

Give All to Love, Patricia Veryan. 

Wool, Hugh Howey. A barrier has been breached! 

The Wind Gourd of La'amaomao, Moses Nakuima. 

Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho.

Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca. This is interesting to be reading alongside the Cybils elementary nonfiction finalists. It's a good time to learn about how children learn to process facts from books.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2017. None. I just need 3 YA books to be done.
2. Cybils 2018. Finished Lightning Girl. Have the next one on deck.
3. Cybils 2019. I picked up the last picture book! And I'm reading the elementary nonfiction, which are also picture books.
4. Early Cybils: Read a bunch of poetry.
5. Reading My Library. Haven't started the next one yet. 
6. Ten to Try. At 9/10. Haven't read it yet, but I've got #10 on my tablet. It's also here in paper. 
7. Where Am I Reading: 20/51 states. 23 Countries. Picked up Washington, Oklahoma, New Hampshire and Sweden.  I clearly lost some data since I know that's not my first Washington book.
8. Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. Got Indigenous author! I'm technically done, although a few of my entries are pretty feeble. I'll keep looking to see how often I hit the categories.
9. SPL Summer bingo card. Somehow I'm suddenly determined to finish this. Wish me luck -- it's due tomorrow!