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.”

  • FLOWER POWER TRIP by James J. Cudney: A Review

    Shalini, book-blog tour arranger, extraordinaire for Great Escapes Blog Tours is arranging a tour sponsoring Cudney’s third book in his Braxton Campus College Series, Flower Power Trip. I, the techie that I am not, have lost the pictures (don’t know how to attach them anyway) dates things are due, and all other vital information given in Shalini’s email. I vaguely remember this tour was supposed to take place around the end of March, so with apologies to both Jay and Shalini, here is my review:

    I had read and reviewed Jay’s first book in the series, Academic Curve Ball, on PWR when it was first published. I so enjoyed the main character, Kellan, his troubles with the women in his life, rather the two he wished were in his life, and his strained relationship with his father, president of Braxton College. The mystery of two murders at the college were adorned with humor, suspense, many suspects, and the twists and turns that I love to encounter when reading mysteries.

    I did not read the second in the series, Broken Heart Attack, but easily picked up the “further adventures of Kellan “when I read and signed on for the blog-tour of Flower Power Trip. This time around, Braxton College’s Memorial Library is holding a costumed fundraiser, where attendees are asked to come dressed as heroes or villains. A dead body dressed as the infamous Dr. Evil is discovered, and Kellan’s investigative skills are called into action once again. Unexplained messages on postcards arrive as well, which has us examining a mystery-within-a-mystery. I don’t want to give any spoilers in my review, but I can attest that this is an engaging mystery solved by a complex character (Cudney’s characterization and family relationship skills are the best aspects of his writing, as evidenced by Watching Glass Shatter, and Father Figure.)

    I give this a five out of five for being an enjoyable, satisfying read.

  • SATURDAY MORNINGS FOR KIDS

    Although I have used the following kid’s novel for a Tuesday Teaser and a First Line Fridays post, I failed to write a proper review on it when I finished reading it.  Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, children’s “classic,” Newberry Award Winner in 1977, ALA “Notable Book,” NY Times Book Review’s “Best of Children’s Books, 1970-1980, and nominee for the National Book Award deserves at least a full review on PWR.

    During the time this book was being talked about, discussed, and recommended, I was teaching junior high. I remembering typing up a list of recommended “Outstanding Books for Summer Reading,” and Thunder was included. BUT, I never read the book myself. I just went by the book back and blurbs on the paperback version to deem it “worthy.” About a month ago, someone donated the Penguin paperback version to my Little Free Library. I admonished myself that I really should read it, but what with library books due, book club “assignments,” and books friends told me I “just had to read–right away, Taylor’s awesome novel sat on my bedside table. I picked it up on a Friday and typed in its first lines. The following Tuesday, I had managed a couple of chapters while reading two other books, so I wrote my Tuesday Teaser. Once I began to care about Cassie and her family–poor, but land-owning Negroes in Depression-days Mississippi, I could not put it down and often read holding my breath because it was so tense (and dense).

    A coming-of-age story, the novel is set “in one turbulent year–the year of the night riders and the burnings, the year a white girl humiliates Cassie in public simply because she is black–”  As The New York Times Book Review  writes, It is a story written with “pride, strength, and respect for humanity.”

    I give this book a 5 out of 5 and highly recommend it to readers of all ages.

  • YOU HAVE ONE MORE DAY!

    Two important weeks end tomorrow.

    Return Borrowed Books Week (March 3-9)    I returned a borrowed library book and two (unread/un-listened to) audiobooks on Monday, the  4th.

    Read an E-Book Week (also March 3-9)    I am currently reading a book on my iPad and reading one on my laptop.

    I am doing my part! LOL

  • International Women’s Day 2019

    Cool sistahs’ who just happen to be writers!

  • TUESDAY THOUGHTS

    Rae Longest's avatarLiteracy and Me

    This week I have read/eaten/ingested/chewed on and digested several books. None has been more interesting or enjoyable as The Library Book, a 2018 publication by Susan Orlean. In part I chose it because I am trying to read more non-fiction, in part because I had read a review of it in The Houston Chronicle, in part because “people” were talking about it. I ordered it from my local library, and after a two or three week wait, it arrived. I had no idea what to expect except from the quote from Booklist, which described it as “…true crime, history, biography, and immersion journalism.”

    Once I began this book, all others I was reading were temporarily discarded, as I read as Annie Dillard once wrote, “She reads books as one breathes air to fill up and live.” Each chapter brought great gulps of thought, discovery, and pure emotion. My love…

    View original post 110 more words

  • tender mercy

    tender mercy

    Annette Rochelle Aben's avatarAnnette Rochelle Aben

    She needed sleep for her body to heal

    She needed to let go and be still

    As the tears flowed like driving rain

    She begged Spirit for release

    From unbearable pain

    Then she decided

    To let go of

    The struggle

    That blocked

    Peace

    And

    As if

    By magic

    She found stillness

    Drifting into sleep

    Feeling no pain at all

    Each time she woke, she’d let go

    Again, she’d be able to sleep

    Gratitude filled her as she wakened

    Her will to live was stronger than the pain

    ©2019 Annette Rochelle Aben

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  • SATURDAY MORNING FOR KIDS

    Mouse Soup, by Arnold Lobel, was published in 1977 and is a children’s version of Scherazade or A Thousand and One Nights.  In Lobel’s version, an adorable (I do not use the term loosely) little mouse is caught by a mean weasel who intends to make mouse soup. How this mouse saves himself is familiar to those who have read the earlier tales; he tells adventure stories. The delightfully illustrated Table of Contents lists the stories as “Bees and the Mud,” “Two Large Stones,” “The Crickets,” and “The Thorn Bush.”

    The mouse’s recipe for a perfect Mouse Soup involves the weasel gathering items from each story, and the reader supposes the mouse is doomed.  Read this book and see the way the mouse avoids becoming soup. It is best as a read-aloud first, then a book you and your children/grandchildren can read to each other. It is over fifty pages, but there is a stopping place, which often involves a cliff-hanger, at the end of each story/chapter.  Much of each page is taken up by the delightful illustrations.

    With assistance, first or second graders should be able to read this book.

  • THURSDAY THOUGHTS

    Recently, a friend asked for prayer after receiving bad news from her doctor. As I read through my “quotes notebook” for something appropriate to write in a note to her, I came across advice from Anne Lamott I had copied from one of her essays, “Wailing Wall,” which helped me write my own note and is helping me in my daily dealings with my friend.

    “What can you say when people call with a scary or heartbreaking prognosis? You say that we don’t have to live alone with our worries and losses, that all the people in their tide pool will be there for them. You say that it totally sucks, and that grace abounds.  You can’t say that things will be better down the road because that holds the spiritual authority of someone chirping, ‘No worries!’ at Starbucks, or my favorite, ‘It’s all good!’ at the market. It is so not all good. And I’m worried sick.

    It’s fine to know, but not to say, that in some inadequate and surprising ways, things will be semi-okay, the way wildflowers spring up at the rocky dirt-line where the open spaced meadow meets the road where the ground is so mean.  Just as it’s fine to know but not to say that anger is good, a bad attitude is excellent, and the medicinal powers of shouting and complaining cannot be overstated.”

    Some thoughts to think on this Thursday evening…

  • A-Z UPDATE

    The A-Z Challenge, one I resumed in January, starting with the letter “N,” continues. In January, I read Nightbird, a YA novel with Hoffman’s touch of the supernatural, and The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jamisin, described by Brainfluff’s blogger as a “mashup of both fantasy and sci-fi. Jamisin’s novel is the second in the “Broken Earth” series, which describes the “way the world ends …for the last time.”  The book begins with the ash falling, the sky darkening as the cold and darkness approach. “Essun–once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger–has found shelter” inside the earth. She has not, however, found her daughter Nassun, who was taken away by her father after he had bludgeoned to death her younger brother. The book alternates between mother and daughter, as each grows in power, each in her own setting. Alabaster’s life/spirit finally comes to an end, and Essun seeks revenge on those who take him away from her. Hoa is still faithful but hides secrets to his identity, which were hinted at in The Fifth Season, Book One.

    February brought “P,” a short inspiring book The Prayer of Jesus by Hank Hanegraff with an introduction by Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Christ. It is a description of Jesus’s prayer life. One of the most interesting points, which was new to me, was that the verse often translated, “Lord teach us how to pray” more accurately translated is “Lord teach us now to pray”, adding urgency to Peter’s request.

    Also in February, I used a Christmas Barnes and Noble gift certificate to buy a paperback copy of John Burley’s psychological thriller, The Quiet Child. It started out a bit slow, but in the last three or four chapters made up for that with several rapid-fire twists and turns. The author describes the book as “a story about the complexities of family…” and it also has a surprise ending that will curl your hair.”

    In three days March will roar in, and I will begin Reading with Patrick, a non-fiction book by Michelle Kuo, which has been sitting on my TBR shelf for at least a year. I do not know if I will make it by year’s end, but I am sure I will enjoy every moment of reading through the alphabet!

  • TUESDAY TEASER

    Tuesday Teaser is “a bookish tag hosted by The Purple Booker” which I found first on Brainfluff.  I do not post it every week, but this week I am posting a teaser from a wonderful book all bibliophiles will love: The Library Book by Susan Orlean, a new author to me. (You can be sure I will investigate her other books; she is an exceptional writer.)

    The book describes the historically catastrophic fire at the Los Angeles Public Library on April 28, 1986, but it is much, much more. It is a work of non-fiction, and the author put herself right in the story:

    Teaser: “On April 28,1986, the day the library burned, I was living in New York. While my romance with libraries had not been renewed yet, I cared a lot about books, and I am sure I would have noticed a story about a massive fire in a library, no matter where that library was. The Central Library fire was not a minor matter, not a cigarette smoldering in a trash can that would have gone without mention. It was a huge, furious fire that burned for more than seven hours and reached temperatures of 2000 degrees… More than one million books were burned or damaged.”

    I can’t wait to read further, intrigued by the cover teases that the fire was probably arson and that the author brings herself to burn a book (She chooses a paperback copy of Fahrenheit 451, then describes what it feels like to destroy a book. It is a perfect essay describing several emotions (I read this “chapter” first.)

    When Friday First Liners rolls around, I will copy the first line(s) of this amazing book.

    HAPPY READING!