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.”

  • TUESDAY TEASER

    This bookish meme is hosted by The Purple Booker, and I first discovered it on Brainfluff, a blog I enjoy immensely. The rules of the game are to choose a sentence or two, chosen randomly from a book you are reading, and copy them, giving the author and title of the book.  Here is my teaser for the last Tuesday in July (7/30/19).

    “The most thrilling moment of reaching full-fledged adulthood was the first time I slipped the key into the front door of the smaller side of a wood frame duplex at 4011-1/2 Rusk Street in Houston’s East End. This was in mid-July of 1945.”

    Because this is set in Houston, it has a special appeal to me. As a young bride, I lived in apartments near downtown Houston for three years before leaving the big city and moving to a smaller, more manageable town. The novel is titled Aftermath, was written by a friend of a friend, Suzanne Morris, and deals with the aftermath of the New London, Texas, school explosion where a town’s children were killed in huge numbers and every family was affected. This tragedy took place in 1937.

  • SOLD ON A MONDAY by Kristina McMorris: A Review

    The cover alone sells this novel. Two little boys dressed in 1930s knickers and caps sit dejected behind a sign that proclaims “For Sale.” The book is set during the 30s, a time of Great Depression in the US, and pointed out a fact I didn’t know. Some families, especially those with many children were desperate enough to sell their kids to needy infertile couples, both of whom were duped by unscrupulous adoption brokers. The scandal and crime involved were a fact of the most unsavory parts of American history.

    I particularly like stories about the thirties and forties journalists and newspapers. I was a fan of TMC (Turner Classic Movie Channel,) which showed black and white movies set in newsrooms starring Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart. Also, I had the pleasure of working with and hearing the stories of a communication professor who was a reporter during this era.  He was in his 90s when we were friends. This novel is based on the ethical premise of exploiting a photograph and later an article to sell papers and keep a job in the endangered world of journalism at that time. Lily, who has aspirations of being a real reporter instead of a receptionist and coffee-go for, is torn between her small-time reporter friend, Ellis, who took the photo, and Clayton, the established, well-to-do reporter who can offer a better life for Lily and her secret son. Child labor is another issue of the times that is explored and supported by the buying and selling of children.

    This book was a R.A.T (Reading All Together) Pack Book Club selection, and the consensus was that Sold on a Monday was a darned good read.

  • SUNDAY (EVENING) POST

    Since last Sunday, I have been spending most of my time working on my syllabus for fall and writing assignments and handouts for class. Other than making peanut butter and jam sandwiches to put in the bag lunches to be distributed to two low-income trailer parks locally by a friend’s church, I didn’t even get out much.

    However, I did a bit of reading:

    What I finished:

    Why They Can’t Write by John Warner/ Coffee Poems: Reflections on Life with Cofee, edited by Lorraine Healy/ Under My Hijab, a children’s book written by Hena Khan and illustrated by Aaliya Jaleel/ Butterfly Yellow, a YA novel by Thanhiha Lai/ and a play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide /When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

    What I am Continuing to Read:

    Americanah by Chimananda Nzozi Adichie/ The Sparrow by  Mary Doria Russell/ Aftermath by Suzanne Morris, and continuing to watch episodes of the second season of Netflix’s The Outlander

    Just Begun:

    Rise and Shine, a novel by Anna Quindlin.

    This week ahead promises to be full with an appointment to have the car worked on early tomorrow, a foot surgeon’s appointment Tuesday and a Grand Re-Opening to celebrate the fresh paint My Better Half put on my Little Free Library (complete with free books, cookies, small prizes, and a drawing to be held for a Barnes and Noble gift card) Wednesday morning for the neighborhood.

     

  • UNBECOMING by Rebecca Scherm: A Review

    This novel, published in 2015, opens in “a grubby antique shop in Paris, France, discussing the mysterious plight of Grace, the main character.  Whether she is the protagonist or not is up for grabs because all the way to the end of the book, I couldn’t decide if I liked her or was “on her side,” the traditional definition of the protagonist (the one we are “for” in the “struggle). She certainly isn’t an ordinary young woman, and she is petrified that her boyfriend and someone nicknamed “Alls” will soon be released from prison and come after her.  I vacillated between wondering if the boyfriend was abusive, and when I learned “Alls” was his best friend, or if the trio had been up to no good. Early on, we know a heist was carried out and that Grace is the only one who escaped to Paris under a false name and a false identity.

    Scherm’s themes of fake vs. real gems, paintings, and people keep popping up, leading the reader to be confused and bemused at many parts in the story as the author takes a harsh look at her rather unlikeable main character. Will this not-your-basically-good young woman succeed? Will the “bad-guys” win for a change? How in the world will the novel end? Scherm deals with all of these questions admirably, and although I kept waiting for Grace to change and redeem herself, she does not, and even so, I kept turning the pages to read more.

  • Bug off

  • The Unexpected Audience: Why Adults are Drawn to Reading YA

    The Unexpected Audience: Why Adults are Drawn to Reading YA

    Ari's avatarAuthor Ari Meghlen Official Website

    Today we welcome onto the blog, author E. E. Holmes who discusses why it’s not just Young Adults who are reading YA novels.

    Big thanks to Emily for being today’s guest poster, please make sure to check out her links and details at the end of this post. 

    DividerLine-Bold

    When I set out to write my first YA novel, I was working as a full-time high school English and theatre teacher.

    As nearly any English teacher will tell you, the dominant soundtrack in any of our classrooms is the collective existential groan of students forced to open whatever piece of literature we’ve decided to torture them with.

    As a huge book nerd myself, this sound always crushed my soul a little bit. Why can’t you delight in how exquisite the prose is in The Great Gatsby? How do you not fall in love with the misty gothic moors of Wuthering…

    View original post 1,091 more words

  • An Internet Fact…

    An Internet Fact…

  • TEASER TUESDAY

    This little game, hosted by The Purple Booker, asks participants to open a book they are currently reading and copy a line or two in hopes of teasing others into putting that book on their TBR list. Be sure to give titles and authors, and no spoilers, please.

    Mine for today is from Max Lucado’s Max on Life, a compellation of questions this famous inspirational writer has been asked and his unique, sometimes surprising answers to them.

    This from page 111 “I like Jesus, I just don’t like his followers. At least I don’t like the way they behave. All this ‘amen’ and ‘praise the Lord’ seem phony.”

    Max’s answer: “You aren’t alone. Hypocrisy turns people away from God. When God-hungry souls walk into a congregation of wannabe superstars, what happens? When God-seekers see singers strut like Las Vegas entertainers…When they hear the preacher–a man of slick words, dress, and hair–play to the crowd and exclude God…When other attendees dress to be seen and make much to-do over their gifts and offerings…When people enter a church to see God, yet can’t see Him because of the church, don’t think for a second that God doesn’t react…”

    “Bottom line: don’t make a theater production out of your faith.”

     

  • MONDAY MORNING MUSINGS

    Waking up to coffee–two cups, one accompanied by two fresh-baked cookies and half a power bar. Plenty of breakfast. As I sip, I read Coffee Poems, purchased recently after reading on Jen Payne’s blog that she’d had a poem published in this anthology. (Yes, all the poems are about, or at least mention, coffee.) Here is Jen’s poem:

    Measuring Water by Sound

    I want to know the color of your eyes, not just the browns

    and greens of them, but by the specific Pantone colors of

    their constellations.

     

    I want to know by rote how your tongue forms the syllables

    of my name, the way your lips make words in the dark.

     

    I want to know your skin like I know my favorite sweater,

    how it caresses my shoulders, hugs my hips…where it rests

    against my belly.

     

    I want to know you by sound, the way I know I’ve poured

    enough water for the pot of coffee we’ll drink by moonlight

    at 3.

     

    The book is divided into coffee “At the Cafe,” and the portraits of weary waitresses, both old and young, evokes an empathy for the silent servers of coffee;  “Home Grounds,” coffee as a comfort in the comfort of our own kitchens; “Literary Latte,” my favorite section; “Elegy of Coffee,” poems of celebration and fervor for coffee; and “The Coffee Between Us,” both love poems and break-up laments.

    It is an exceptional collection of poems, and it makes one want to attempt their own “Coffee Poem.”

    If you have one, PLEASE post your URL or put it in the reply box below.

  • SUNDAY (EVENING) POST

    Technically, my last Sunday (Evening) Post that gave an update on what I was reading was on June 30th. I skipped the next Sunday, the 7th because I had just given a detailed update on my July 4th Personal Readathon where I described what I had finished, was reading and what I was looking forward to reading as of that date. When the 14th came, I was a day late on Saturday Mornings for Kids, so I posted it on Sunday instead.

    And, here we are at another Sunday, the 21st, the next to the last Sunday in July.  Summer has been too long in some ways for me, too short in others.  I guess I fall into the category of, “You just can’t please some people”!

    Here is what I have finished since the end of June: Art for Dummies/ What the Wind Knows (No, I lacked a few pages of finishing by the book club meeting, but even though the participants discussed the ending, I was intrigued and did finish it that afternoon./ No Time to Spare (essays from Ursula Guin), Unbecoming, Book “U” of The Alphabet Soup Challenge, The Readaholics, A Gothic Celebration (a cozy, bookish mystery I picked up and put down while waiting on other things and other people), No Ordinary time (see July 4 post), and Peter Elbow’s classic, Writing with Power.

    Because I had spread myself very thin, I decided to postpone finishing Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind for Book “Z” until I had finished the other letters, and I also postponed starting Just Like Us by Helen Thorpe.

    For some reason, I did more reading on Kindle. I started and am continuing to read The Sparrow, classic sci-fi; Why They Can’t Write; Americanah; and I am continuing to watch the last episodes of season 2 of The Outlander.

    I haven’t been reading as much as usual, for I have been busy, but a good busy.We took birthday cakes and made visits to two Sunday School friends, another friend and I visited the local writer’s group’s meeting at the public library, I had two tutoring sessions with a great new pupil, I rounded up and mailed two big boxes of “stuff” to relatives I’ve been putting off since the middle of June, had time to blog and more importantly, enjoy friends’ blogs, and even went on “adventures” with My Better Half a couple of times, morning or afternoon errands/outings/retail therapy–eating out each time we did, of course. It has been hot here, but surprisingly not as hot as the rest of the country. The “feels like” temperatures in the afternoons hit 100-110 degrees, but looking at the national weather map, places that really aren’t used to this kind of heat are experiencing the same temperatures, an unusual phenomenon!

    That’s my past few weeks, and I am looking forward to some really good watching, reading, and good things coming up in the week ahead.