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.”

  • RUNNING OUT OF SPACE, First book in “SUNBLINDED series”:A Review

    This 2017 sci fi publication by author and popular blogger, S.J. Higbee (“Brainfluff”) begins on board the starship “Hawking”. No braver more enterprising protagonist exists than Elizabeth (aka Lizzy), whose domineering father known as “The Cap,” rules with an iron fist–both his ship of command and his daughter’s life.

    On a forbidden foray into the strange underworld which opens the novel, Lizzy encounters Wynn (aka “Blondie” to the sneering gang members who pursue Lizzy and her friends).  This blonde-haired, blue-eyed heartthrob is more than “just a pretty face.” He is a worthy, intelligent “opponent” to Lizzy’s dismissive first impression, only to have Wynn save her, then have to turn around and save Wynn in the fight that ensues. The young people end up recuperating  on the neighboring starship, “Star,” where its leader, General Norman takes an unusual, unwelcome interest in Lizzy herself, and who also seems to have a strong interest in keeping Lizzy and Wynn apart.

    With many twists and turns, the plot unrolls, providing a fast paced adventure covering many planets, wars, and battles. The book contains much action, never drags, and the reader is never bored.  Just when things begin to slow down a bit–heads up!–something new happens. The characters are well-drawn, presented as young lovers the reader comes to care about, and they conduct themselves with wit and cleverness when called upon by the unexpected twists of the plot.

    This book, Running Out of Space, was so good, I immediately ordered Book Two in the series, Dying for Space. Higbee, the author, will not let you down.

  • Why do I Whine, when the World is Mine……….

    boundlessblessingsblog's avatarBoundless Blessings by Kamal

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    – Today, upon a bus, I saw a very beautiful woman, and I wished I were as beautiful as her. When suddenly, she rose to leave as her stop had come, I saw her hobble down the aisle. She had one leg and wore a crutch. But as she passed, she gave me such a broad smile.  Oh! Dear God, forgive me when I whine.  I have such beautiful two legs; the world is mine.

    -I stopped to buy some candy at a store nearby. The lad who sold it had such charm and a wonderful expression.  I talked with him and he seemed so glad to chat with me.  It was so nice to be pleasant with people even though they are strangers. And as I left, he said to me, ‘I thank you, you have been so kind. It is so nice to talk with folks like you…

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  • Friday Funnies!

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    A little something to make you smile! I’ve had a couple setbacks the last couple of days so fingers crossed that today goes smoothly, with little pain, and no falling down😔 I’ll post about that later!

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  • Flashback Friday

    Several bloggers are participating in a meme that allows them to feature a previously posted article on the last Friday of each month.  For January’s flashback post, I am going to make you work a bit.

    Go to the search box and type in “Thursday Thoughts”.  When it/they come up, read the one giving thoughts on literacy.  You will recognize it by the little blue figure, reading in a chair.

    I hope you will take the alarming statistics presented seriously.

  • Neil Gaiman’s THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS: A Review

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    Gaiman, a British citizen living in the US is perhaps best known for his graphic novel, The Sandman, or his huge fantasy novel, Everywheres. Both are captivating reads.  In his introduction to “Cheap Seats,” he says this is not a collected works of his non-fiction, but that is precisely what it is. College commencement speeches, acceptance speeches for rewards, musings and thoughts presented to different academies join book reviews and introductions and other written pieces by the versatile Gaiman.  I began with something I knew, the “Make Art” address to the University of Arts in Philadelphia, which went viral in 2012. It was as stirring as I remembered it when I showed it to my university students that year.

    He points out that just as like doctors are approached with, “I have a pain on the left side of my right hip…” and teachers are approached with, “My child has…

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  • OVERLAPPING CHALLENGES UPDATE

    Recently in an attempt to lower the number of books on my TBR shelf, I challenged myself to read six books by the end of February; then, a few days later, I saw an interesting challenge to read a title starting with each letter of the alphabet, choosing first from the TBR shelf, then hunting down letters as needed.  There was no time limit for that challenge, just to read all 26 books.  I took on both challenges at once and am proud to report that here it is a week before the month is all gone, and I have one book to read to meet my six book challenge. Also, as soon as I became aware of the “alphabet factor,” I diligently searched my books available at home to start that challenge as well.

    So far, I have read All the Missing Girls (from my TBR shelf), a book written backwards; (The) Beekeepers Daughter, which sat on the living room, table  that indicates, “hurry and read–this is due at the library soon”; and, jumping many letters in the alphabet, Morningstar (A book about books) from the same table. All three were enjoyable reads and will be reviewed soon. One more checked-out-book sits on the “to-be-returned” table, a slender volume of letters written by a librarian to books she stacks, titled Dear Fahrenheit 451; it shall be my next attempt and should finish my first challenge.

    Is anyone else out there interested in books-about-books? I recently purchased My Life With Bob, Bob being a young girl’s journal, her Book of Books,but I’ll save it for later–I’m looking for a “C,” preferably a book I already own. One of DebNance’s posts on her outstanding blog, Readerbuzz, dealt with “Books About Books,”and it prompted this specialized reading interest and opened a whole new genre for me. Who would like to read through the alphabet with me?  My intentions are to start with titles, then MAYBE move on to authors. Those 26 letters so often arrange things well, don’t they? Let me know if you are working on any challenges just now, and let’s GET BUSY AND READ!

  • Caturday funnies

  • Wonderland #midnighthaiku

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  • HILLBILLY ELEGY by J.D. Vance: A Review

    This 2016 memoir/sociological analysis of the “Hillbilly culture, mind and attitude” was selected by my Third Tuesday Book Club as its January selection.  I had read about this book before, but did not read it because it sounded “depressing.” Instead, I found a young man who OVERCAME every obstacle thrown his way.  If anything, Hillbilly Elegy is inspiring. I wish I had looked at the author’s picture inside the back cover first, for it caused me to gain respect that one so young could be so philosophical about how hard his life could have been (and the scars and holdovers from that life that still plague him) then give his story and his conclusions about what it means to have been “raised hillbilly,”in order to make Americans take a hard look at Hillbilly culture.

    Raised in the “Rust Belt” of Middletown, Ohio, and shuttled back and forth between Middletown and Appalachian Jackson, Kentucky, Vance’s affections are forcibly switched between his “low-class” mother and his hillbilly-crude, but fiercely-loving, grandparents.

    Now a graduate of Yale Law School, Vance has written “…a compassionate,discerning, sociological, analysis…” of the “hillbilly problem” that will make every reader stop, think, and wonder, “How can I help?” This surely was the purpose the author had in mind as he wrote the book. He mourns the demise of the “American Dream” and sees it from close-up since he inherited this “legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma.”

    The book includes some humor, much sadness, and many uplifting moments, gathered together in the final chapters. It is a good read, an important book that every American should be exposed to.

  • BEARTOWN by Fredrik Backman, a 2017 publication

    Those of us on the Texas Gulf Coast (I am located 30 miles south of Houston and 30 miles north of Galveston) are not used to waking up to 19 degrees with “feels-like” numbers of 9. We have shut everything down for the past two days since we are not equipped for sleet, snow, and frozen precipitation of any kind. Upon waking up, I thought I must be in Northern Beartown (a fictional town) deep in the forest where ice hockey is equivalent to life. Everything in Beartown revolves around hockey, and the high school Junior Ice Hockey team are the stars of the town, approaching a state championship. The players are celebrities, envied by students and adults( some former ice hockey stars themselves) alike. These young men are taking on their shoulders the hopes and dreams of their beloved Beartown.

    As the team approaches the finals, there is a shocking act of violence.  Was it rape? Is the reader to believe Kevin, the superstar, or Amhed, the janitor’s gifted son, who is a recent addition to the team? What happens to an individual who dares to “go against the grain” and challenge the superstar hockey team? “…like ripples on a pond, [events] travel through all of Baytown, leaving no resident unaffected.”

    This novel was reviewed and recommended by blogger friend, James J. Cudney, author of Watching Glass Shatter and the blog, “This Is My Truth Now.” I listened to it on CD’s (11 discs/418 pages) and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  The one drawback, which may have been accentuated because I listened to it, was the rough language. However as a veteran of junior high school teaching, the language was appropriate because it is exactly what high school young men would use.

    You will be as caught up in Beartown’s story: its inhabitants, its team, its school administration and local government, and most of all, its high schoolers and their families, as I was.