NONFICTION NOVEMBER: Week II, Part 3

RAE’S READS

about

This year (2025) finds me with 53 years of teaching “under my belt.” I have taught all levels from pre-K “(library lady” or “book lady”–volunteer) to juniors, seniors, and graduate students enrolled in my Advanced Writing class at the university where I have just completed 34 years. My first paying teaching job was junior high, and I spent 13 years with ages 12-13, the “difficult years.” I had some of the “funnest” experiences with this age group. When I was no longer the “young, fun teacher,” I taught in an elementary school setting before sixth graders went on to junior high, teaching language arts blocs, an assignment that was a “dream-fit” for me. After completing graduate school in my 40s, I went on to community college, then university teaching. This past fall I accepted a part-time teaching job at Apogee Gulf Coast Schools in its first year at the Alvin campus. After my Better Half died n 2022, I achieved a lifelong dream: opening a bookstore of my own, Rae’s Reads. A year later, I sold the house we had lived in for 47 years and moved into the bookstore. My goal is to circulate and repurpose books. Just as teaching is “in my blood,” so is a passion for reading, writing, libraries, and everything bookish. This blog will be open to anyone who loves books, promotes literacy and wants to “come out and play.”

NONFICTION NOVEMBER: Week II, Part 3

November 12, 2021

This second week of nonfiction celebrated in November asks the blogger, once again, to pair books.

The third pairing of books I shall do this second week of November is to assure you, my reader, that if you like book x, you will surely enjoy book y. The books that will be paired are both inspirational and both from the category of self-help. Also, they both deal with the theme of trying to be perfect and learning to accept one’s imperfections.

A very helpful book I purchased on line.

The first of the pair, Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection, was reviewed earlier here on PWR. My takeaway from it was that being uncool is ok. Brown published this book back in 2010, but I just got around to reading it this year.

Pairing Gifts with this next book by Shauna Niequist, one might wonder if the author had read Brown’s book before she published her own in 2016, for she subtitles it, “Leaving Behind Frantic for a More Soulful Way of Living. “

I am reading this now.It was donated to my LFL (Little Free Library).

More memoir, and filled with many anecdotes, more so than Gifts, this second book is both helpful and subtle, as Niequist allows the reader to make her own conclusions and acquire her own life lessons as she reads. Like Niequest in this respect, Brown also tends to “teach” through gentle, thoughtful “conversations” with her readers rather than relating as many stories from her past.

Both books are darned good reads, and thus, make a likely pair to select for related reading objectives.