RAE’S READS

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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.”

  • FRIDAY FIRSTLINERS

    First Line Fridays was begun by Ms. B at Daily Rhythms and has been kept alive by several bloggers who carry on the tradition of recording the first line of a book they are ready to read.  Here’s mine from Rachel Caine’s Ink and Bone of The Great Library series:

    “Ephemera”

    “Text of a historical letter, the original signed of which is kept under glass in The Great Library of Alexandria and listed under the Core Collection.

    From the scribe of Pharoah Ptolemy 77 to his most excellent servant, Callimachus, Archivist of The Great Library in the third year of his glorious reign… Pharoah has also heard your words regarding the unaccompanied admission of females to this sacred space (The Great Library) of the Serapeam, and in his divine wisdom refuses this argument, for women must be instructed by the more developed minds of men to ensure they do not wrongly interpret the riches that the library offers. For a perversion of such things is surely worse than the lack of it.”

    Oh my, exclusion of women even back then! This is one of several books I am reading within the category of Books About Books. More on this at a later date.

    KEEP READING, and share with us your first lines this beautiful, sunny Friday.

  • TUESDAY TEASER

    Several of my blogging friends participate in this little game, “The Tuesday Teaser,” hosted by The Purple Booker. The idea is to open your current book either to where you are reading or at random and copy a line of two to “tease” others into investigating your book.  Reading other blogger’s Tuesday Teasers has increased my TBR list/folder/shelves a great deal. (Thanks a lot guys! (to be read sarcastically. LOL)).

    Todays TT comes from The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (Yes! The one “everyone’s” reading, and the film comes out this week.)

    This is where I start today, page 230.  These are the musings of Theo, a survivor of a museum bombing (His mother is killed.) on his until-now absent dad’s girlfriend. “I might have liked Xandra in other circumstances–which, I guess, is sort of like saying I might have liked the kid who beat me up if he hadn’t beat me up.  She was my first inkling that women over forty–women maybe not at all that great-looking to begin with–could be sexy.”

    The “voice”/narrative of the young protagonist who has the painting, The Goldfinch, rings true from the very beginning of the novel. I am really enjoying this novel and cannot put it down.

  • MONDAY MUSINGS

    “NOTHING CAN RESIST THE PERSON WHO SMILES AT LIFE.”

    Teilhard De Chardin

  • RISE AND SHINE by Anna Quindlen​: A Review

    This 2016 publication by New York Times columnist and novel writer, Anna Quindlen, demonstrates the timeliness of her topics. As the story opens, Bridget Fitzmaurice, younger sister to Megan Fitzmaurice, the early morning host of “Rise and Shine,” a “hit” TV show similar to the “Today Show” or “Goodmorning America,” with the difference being that Megan anchors her show singlehandedly.  Bridget hears second-hand that her sister has uttered the unthinkable, a horrific cursing, name-calling diatribe to the celebrity person she is interviewing. Since the show is live, “once the bell rings, you can’t unring it,” as my friend says. Unable to reach her sister, and fearful that her nephew, twenty-year-old college student, Theo, will see the repeated, bleeped-out performance on the TV news, Bridget is bombarded by people, including Megan’s husband, wanting to know how to reach Megan.

    With such an opening, Quindlen deals with “the ways the Fitzmaurice women adapt, survive, and manage to bring the whole teeming world of New York to heel…” There is and has always been a “strong connection” between the elder sister, a prominent TV personality and her younger, social-worker, single sister.

    Secondary characters–the women’s aunt, who helped them when their mother died; Theo; Irving, Bridget’s sometime-lover, a retired cop are also very well drawn. My interest and emotions were captured with the enormity of the on-the-air bloop and its consequences on everyone involved. It not only kept me turning pages as I rooted for the “good guys,” the story stayed with me when I had to lay the book down and go about my daily activities.

    I would assign this novel a 10 out of 10 and recommend it as a “darned good read.”

  • SATURDAY MORNINGS FOR KIDS

    Today’s recommendation is for teachers, parents, and kids who enjoy poetry and would like better access to it.

    Recently someone, a boy or young man, or the young man’s mother donated The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, poems selected by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Arnold Lobel to my Little Free Library.  I know a boy had once owned the book, for on the title page is a sticker (a very nice, padded one) of a baseball player rounding the bases, running for all he’s worth. Regardless of the reason, the young man gave up the book (You can see I have decided he outgrew it.), I was very happy to have it and am reading many of the poems in it.

    Using it, as parents and teachers will want to do is easy thanks to the subject index in the back. For example, I looked up the word “books” in the subject index and found three entries. In the first, “The Reason I like Chocolate” by Nikki Giovanni, books are mentioned as something else the narrator likes…”mostly ’cause they just make me happy/ and I really like being happy.” The second entry is a celebration of the library, described as…”Everything that books can bring/You’ll find within those walls./ A world is there for you to share/ When adventure calls.// You cannot tell its magic/By the way the building looks,/ But there’s a wonderment within it,/ The wonderment of books.” (“The Library” by Barbara A. Huff.) All of these poems could be used in a lesson asking students to write on the glories or friendship of B*O*O*K*S !

    Other helpful indexes are the one of first lines and titles, and the one of authors. This book is arranged so well for teachers and parents to use. Another nice feature is the arrangement of poems by themes, laid out in the Table of Contents. I am sure the young owner of the book first looked at “Nonsense! Nonsense!” or maybe opened first to “Dogs and Cats and Bears and Bats” or “I’m Hungry!”  Many delightful poems are found in these sections.

    Finally, a full-page thematic poem and illustration introduces each section. As two hedgehodge-or-bear-ladies, drawn by Arnold Nobel, stand in the wind, and we view their backs, bonnet-ribbons stirred by the breezes as they gaze out to sea, the poem on the next page, presumably written by Jack Perlutsky, “Nature Is,” introduces the inclusion of such favorites as William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” and “All Thingnders Bright and Beautiful” by Cecil Francis Alexander.  Nature is not only presented as beautiful, but also as cruel as in Christina Rossetti’s “Last Rights.” Just the first section alone is a splendid collection of poems!

    Everything about this book begs me to keep it as a reference, perhaps to look up a poem I remember the first line of, or a humorous poem for the opening of class, or for that children’s poetry class I dream of teaching to a homeschooled group, or for use in a poetry workshop. I will at least keep it until I have savored one section/unit at a time for my own appreciation and enjoyment.

  • Sister Shut In

    Sister Shut In

    Annette Rochelle Aben's avatarAnnette Rochelle Aben

    Holds

    Their hand

    And listens

    They need to talk

    And need to be heard

    The nun sits quiet

    Sending out the petitions

    Of those who feel they have lost hope

    In silent prayers to a higher source

    A heart is comforted and two souls blessed

    ©2019 Annette Rochelle Aben

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  • September 6th is “Read a Book Day” !

    September 6th is National “Read a Book Day.”  I decided to read a whole book in one day, but I cheated a bit and read, Who Was Jackie Kennedy? part of the New York Times, YA Series known as the “Who Was” books. These are basically aimed at middle school students or even high schoolers who are reluctant readers. Each volume is slim, so I knew I could read it in a day.

    I cheated a bit more in that this quick read was the “Wikipedia substitute” for background on my assignment for my Third Tuesday Book Club where each member chose a first lady to read a book about and present to the group. I had already read a biography on Jackie Bouvier Kennedy by a cousin, which ended on the day she married Jack Kennedy and intend to finish Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis The Untold Story by Barbara Leaming to get the complete story of her fascinating life.

    IMG_0459

    This book for “kids” covers her total life as well. In a tasteful way, appropriate to young preteens and teens, issues that pop up in Leaming’s book such as Jack Kennedy’s womanizing and Jackie’s marriage to Onassis for primarily security and monetary reasons are dealt with.

    Which brings me to the second reason for featuring this book on Friday, September 6th, “Read a Book Day,” I am recommending it as the post for Saturday Morning for Kids a day early.

    There you have it, friends, three posts for the price of one! DO READ A BOOK (Or at least start one ) today in honor of “Read a Book Day.”

  • SUNDAY (EVENING) POST

    I enjoyed reading Sarah at Brainfluff’s “Sunday Post” so much for so many years that several years back, I added my own Sunday Post, but named it “Sunday (Evening) Post because I never could seem to get to it until Sunday night and in honor of the old magazine, The Saturday Evening Post. It is my attempt to catch readers up on what I am reading now, what I have finished, and what I have just begun. I am a reader who reads multiple books at a time, often switching books for variety and because I have books stashed in different rooms of the house and in the car for times of “unavoidable delay.”

    What I am reading now

    I am still continuing Americanah by Ngozi Adichie on my laptop’s Kindle. My problem with finishing it is I forget it’s “on there.”

    I recently started and am now on chapter twenty-three of The Rosie Result by Graeme Simison, the final book in his Don Tillman Trilogy. It is as warm and funny as the first book, The Rosie Project, and even better than the second, The Rosie Effect. The entire series is one I often recommend to people who don’t enjoy reading, and almost always they are won over.

    In an effort to clear my TBR shelves (yes, plural) I am continuing to read The Mercy of the Tides by Keith Rosson. It has been a long time since I have read a police procedural, and so far this one is an enjoyable read.

    In order to support my church library, two weeks ago I checked out God Was Here and I Was Out to Lunch by James W. Moore. I am still reading, keeping this book in my guest bedroom for when I am wakeful, and My Better Half is blissfully snoring away.

    To supplement my Advanced Writing class, I bought This Is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for Young Writers in the Real World by Kerri Majors at Half Price Books, and I have read almost thirty pages at this point.

    On my iPad Kindle, I have downloaded a romance, something I rarely read, but this one is set in the fifties, a time when I was struggling with the “new-to-me” concept of dating, which makes for nostalgic reading. The book is Jaqueline L. Sullivan’s Lovesick, a book another blogger reviewed and recommended.

    Since July 29th, my last Sunday (Evening) Post (I can’t believe I completely skipped the month of August!), I have finished the following:

    The Sparrow by Mary Dorie Russell (to be reviewed soon/ Aftermath by Suzanne Morris(Reviewed recently )/ Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlin (to be reviewed soon)/ Who Was Jackie Kennedy? by Bonnie Bader/ and the Netflix series The Outlander

    I have just begun

    Barbara Leaming’s Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story   The two books on Jackie Kennedy are in preparation for my Third Tuesday book club at the Alvin Libary.  Each of us selected a First Lady to read about and present to the group.  It ought to be an interesting (and perhaps lengthy) meeting.

    HAPPY READING ALL!

  • SEPTEMBER IS LIBRARY CARD SIGN UP MONTH

    Rae Longest's avatarLiteracy and Me

    I feel like waving a banner and shouting, “Support Your Local Library! Get a Library Card Today”! Instead, I’ll post, “As soon as the Monday, Labor Day Holiday is over, get thee to your city or county library and sign up for a library card if you don’t already have one.” If you do, visit your library anyway (It wouldn’t hurt to go with goodies in hand for the library staff.), and hang out at the library, browsing to see what’s available, what book clubs meet, what is available for the kiddos, and what else is there besides books.

    We are blessed at our Alvin (Texas) library, which is a part of the Brazoria County Library System to have a congenial staff, administrators who will listen to needs and suggestions, and plenty of equipment and activities for the kids and teens. Sometimes when I am bored or at loose ends…

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  • FRIDAY FIRSTLINERS

    This meme asks that one copy the first line(s) of a current read in an attempt to “hook” others. With that in mind, here is the first line of The Rosie Result, the final book in the Don Tillman Trilogy.

    “I was standing on one leg shucking oysters when the problems began.”

    Weird? No weirder than the loveable main character of the Rosie series, Don Tillman. I loved the first book, The Rosie Project; enjoyed the second, The Rosie Effect; and am in for a good holiday-weekend read with The Rosie Result. I can hardly wait to begin!