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.”

  • SUNDAY (EVENING) POST

    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.

     

  • Bored of education

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  • TUESDAY TEASER

    The idea is to copy a sentence or so from what you’re reading currently to show friends what you are reading (and sometimes recommending). Mine is from Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple:

    “Bernadette (his wife), Bee (his daughter) and I (father in the story ) are scheduled to go to Antartica (for a family vacation!) in two weeks. Bernadette obviously does not want to go. I now think that it might be a better idea if Bee and I go to Antartica, just the two of us, while Bernadette checks into Madrona Hill (a “rest home”). I can’t imagine Bernadette will be too keen on the idea, but it’s clear to me she needs some supervised R & R. I am anxious to hear your thoughts.”

    The title’s question is, Where’d You Go Bernadette? Does this mean her disappearance begins with admission to a “facility”?  The letter’s end is signed by Bernadette’s husband/Bee’s father. Does she “go” somewhere unwillingly, or does she make an outrageous, voluntary “escape”? I have no idea what to expect, for Bernadette is totally eccentric and unpredictable this far into the story. It has been laugh-out-loud funny, and wherever Bernadette “went,” it is bound to be amusing. Has anyone else read this yet? Without giving the ending away, how did you like it?

  • Birdbrains?

    Birdbrains?

  • THE ALPHABET CHALLENGE: An Update

    Just because I haven’t mentioned the Alphabet Challenge in a while, doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on it. So far, I have reviewed A and B; today I wish to add C, D, and E–all of which I finished around the same time, this past weekend.

    Coming Home: The Soul’s Search for Intimacy with God by Joseph M. Stowell was published in 1998, and I came upon it in a bag of books donated by a friend to my LFL (Little Free Library) as she was clearing out her bookshelves. The book deals with the “heart’s restlessness” to “live in radical reliance on the God who wants us to enjoy the delight and security of his [constant] presence.” My own New Year’s resolution was to, “draw nearer to God” (and be nicer to My Better Half), and this book helps me attempt to do both. James 4:8 tells us that the reward for drawing near to God is that, “He will draw near to you.”

    One of the best parts of this book is its excellent explication of the 23rd Psalm.  I have heard many sermons and read many guide books to this passage, but even so, this book presented some new “angles” I hadn’t encountered before. The title reflects the journey of the Prodigal Son as he attempts to “come home” to his father from the “far country.” Chapters on “Aloneness” and “Connectedness” are extremely helpful in living our daily Christian walk, and the chapter titled, “Great Expectations” tells us just what we can expect at the end of our journey.

    Kate Morton’s novel, The Distant Hours, fulfilled letter “D.” It is beautifully written, the descriptions of the English countryside and the old castle receive an A+ from me, and the characterization, as well, is outstanding.  Interconnected families tell their interconnected stories across the decades from WWI through1997. Opening with the following words, “Hush…Can you hear him? The trees can. They are the first to know he is coming,” set the tone of the story of The Mud Man, both the book the father of the castle wrote and the nightmare that haunts its daughters’ dreams on into their senior years. The descriptions are excellent: “The night has slipped on a fine pair of leather gloves, shaken a black sheet across the land: a ruse, a disguise, a sleeping spell so that all beneath it slumbers sweet.” “The moat has begun to breathe. Deep, deep mired in the mud, the buried man’s heart kicks wetly…the girl hears [a low moan rising from the depths.] She hears it, that is she feels it, for the castle foundations are married to the mud, and the moan seeps up through the stones, up the walls, one story after another…” This is Milderhurst Castle, home to three old women, never married, childless, full of mystery, and it is up to Edie (in more modern times) to sort out the stories of these old women and their connection to her own mother. People gave it four stars, calling it, “A nuanced exploration of family secrets and betrayal…captivating.” It is, for sure a novel of “quiet dread,” as stated by The Washington Post, and one which is an example of  “gothic mysteries [with] layers of surprising secrets…” as claimed by the Library Journal. The ending has several twists and turns, but ends on a satisfying conclusion. It was a good read.

    A book I was picking up and putting down the whole time I read the other two was Jennifer Egan’s (author of Manhattan Beach) Emerald City, a book of short stories. Described by The New York Times Book Review, the narratives are “tales of displacement and blazing moments of truth” and are “Hitchcokian” in nature. Here are women (mostly) of all levels of life from models to schoolgirls. Each story deals with some form of self-discovery, sometimes flattering, sometimes not so.

    If I had to, I couldn’t pick a favorite.  Each story made me close the book and think, “Hmmmm.” Then I would reflect on it for the better part of a day.  Some were applicable to me or to people I knew, others were just “interesting.” I am glad I took the time to read this collection of stories.

    I just looked at my TBR shelves and have found three books beginning with the letter F.  I hope by the end of the day to have made a decision for the third book I am currently reading (besides Stephen King’s conclusion to “The Dark Tower” series, Book VII and my Third Tuesday Book Club’s selection for March, Where’d You Go Bernadette). Since the three books will be so different, I should have no problem reading them a little here, a little there from each. Wish me luck!

  • I don’t remember the title, but it’s Blue…

    I don’t remember the title, but it’s Blue…

  • FRIDAY SMILES

    Everyone has a “chair” like this in their bedroom.

  • BARKSKINS: A Review

    The most impressive thing about this massive novel by Annie Proulx is its size–717 pages.  And, I’m so glad I tackled this big book because it is a book I will continuously look back on and never forget. Prior to reading Barkskins, Proulx’s The Shipping News, first the book, then the film, was one of my all-time favorites. This novel has been described as “…epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic…” and it delivers on all counts.

    Barkskins narrates the story of two Frenchmen with nothing to their names and is set in Canada, then known as New France. We follow the Sel and Douquet families for several generations (the families’ charts at the end of the book will explain all the connections). Proulx is a wonderful storyteller, and the story she tells carries the reader along like the great rivers described in the story. Some parts are humorous, reminiscent of Mark Twain’s Roughing It. Her “enchanting descriptions” are poetic in themselves, and her characterization skills demonstrate that she understands the human heart. Characters’ motives are always clear, whether they be admirable or dastardly.

    It took me months, picking up and putting down this volume for periods of time to finish, but I am so glad I did. This book is not for everyone, but for those who are willing to be swept along by magnificent  narrative and captivated by the history of the barkskins (wood cutters) and their descendants, the undertaking is worth it!

  • TUESDAY TEASER

    The Tuesday Teaser is a meme hosted by the Purple Booker, which I discovered on the blog, Brainfluff.  Both are excellent blogs. The idea is to choose, at random, something from what you are currently reading that might convince someone to read the same book.  Mine today is from Ursela La Guin’s book of essays,Words Are My Matter.

    “All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guidelines to show us how. Without them, our lives will be made up for us by other people.”           Powerful words!

    Now, share your Tuesday Teaser in the Comments section below.  Be sure to give title and author.

  • Smorgasbord Laughter Lines – Headlines – Fact can be stranger than fiction.