This past week was a busy one with doctor’s appointments, a couple of tests (hoops to jump through for insurance coverage of a back procedure I badly need), and readying my Advanced Writing class for Spring Break and the Argument/Research papers that are due on the 21st of March. Therefore, I had a minimum amount of time to read until Friday.  Since then, I have made up for time.

What I finished this past week:

“If you do not like the past, change it”: The Reel Civil Rights Revolution, Historical Memory, and The Making of Utopian Pasts a dissertation for the PhD degree by Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda, my grandson   I started this when it was presented to me back in December and have just now finished it. I must admit that it changed my thinking that all dissertations had to be stuffy and rhetorically “stiff.” I am very glad I took on this huge 8″x11″ page-size book as a labor of love, for I learned a great deal about the Civil Rights era and about the films made that represented it.

Speak by Louise Halse Anderson, a YA novel mentioned by several of my students.  I highly recommend this novel.

Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser This 2000 “classic” is a fictional probe into the mind and motivation of a school shooter, which is “vivid, distressing, and all too real.” (Kirkus Review) The stats and facts peppered across the bottoms of the pages are real and should be alarming to us all.

What I quit reading this past week:

Where’d You Go, Bernadette  I rarely give up on a book, but give up I did on this Third Tuesday Book Club selection for March. I had a copy of the book already, and I voted to read it. I gave it a fair try, reading to page 97 before I hollered “Enough!” and put it down.

Continuing to read this past week:

The Dark Tower by Stephen King the seventh and last book in the series  It just keeps getting better and better.

Started and continuing to read this past week:

The Fortelling by Alice Hoffman Hoffman is one of my favorite authors and she is not disappointing in this magical, mythical tale.

Both The Fortelling and Give a Boy a Gun will count as “F” and “G” in my current “Alphabet Challenge” which is an on-going project. (see earlier post, search “Alphabet Challenge”)

I guess I read more than I realized I did this past week, stealing a precious moment and a resting half-hour here and there. This coming week is Spring Break for us, so maybe I’ll have another week of reading accomplishments. Hope you’ll have many reading accomplishments too.