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

    After many months of posting Every Other Sunday (Evening), school and life has calmed down enough to where I’m ready to go back to posting a catch up each Sunday evening. School is not out yet, but Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and the big assignments are basically behind us in both Freshman Composition at the local college and in Advanced Writing at the university. I even find myself reading more and enjoying a few stress free days in a row at times. Now isn’t that nice!

    Here’s what I finished since the last Every-Other Sunday (Evening) Post:

    The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, an outstanding debut novel (reviewed in the post prior to this one on PWR); Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls a novel based on the unique life of the author’s grandmother, which will be reviewed later this week; A Man Called Ove, our Third Tuesday Book Club’s selection for November and Twice Upon a Time, a children’s book, both of which will be reviewed soon on this blog.

    Still continuing to read:

    The Grouchy Grammarian, a grammar handbook which illustrates the most common errors in print, enough to make any grammar-lover grouchy, and my “grandson’s” dissertation which I put down to get on with my “Color Coded Challenge,” which I will report on and update in another post.

    What I began this past week:

    The Boston Girl, a 2014 fast read by Anita Diamond, the selection for November in my second reading group which I shall participate in for the first time this coming Thursday. No worries, I have about one hundred pages to go, and the story is so captivating that it will be a pleasant “chore” to finish.

    So, I have a fine week of reading and teaching ahead with doctor’s check-ins and appointments behind me for a while, and a great deal to look ahead to. The Holidays are rapidly approaching, and already my house is decorated for Thanksgiving with my favorite kind of cooking and celebrating to come. It is indeed a time to be grateful and to give thanks for so, so many blessings!

  • THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY: A Review

    This 2017 debut novel by Cherise Wolas is “a stunning debut–because there is nothing debut about it.” (A.M. Holmes, NY Times bestselling author).  I agree with this statement one hundred percent. This is one of the smoothest, most professionally-written, insightful novels I have ever read.  Every character is beautifully developed, every plot twist and turn is unexpected, and even shattering in one instance. The story explores, and maybe exploits, the thoughts and inner life of a writer in its main character, Joan Ashby.

    The plot Wolas develops stems from “sacrifice” that is demanded with the onset of motherhood and the profound effect it can have on a gifted writer. Although originally unapologetic about her ambition, when the time comes Joan, our protagonist, makes the selfless choice, not once but twice with entirely different and even difficult outcomes. Excerpts from Ashby’s “dark and singular stories ” as one of her critics describes them are interspersed throughout the novel, and I must confess that I would love to read more than one of those imaginary short stories in its entirety.

    Her struggles to set her two precocious sons on the road to success and happiness demand time and attention she must steal from her writing. Towards the end, with the plot developments that occur, Joan comes to question every decision she has made in her life, and as she travels to India to examine her accomplishments and failures, to evaluate her life and her life’s work, and there she makes the only decisions she CAN make to satisfy the intelligent reader.  The article from a fictional literary magazine, which serves as an epilogue adds to the reader’s sense of closure and satisfaction with “the way things work out at the end.”

    I highly recommend this book and rank it “right up there” with A Gentleman in Moscow as the best book I’ve read this year.

     

  • 7 Unexpected Benefits of Being a Bookworm

  • When I’m almost done reading a good book…

    Chris The Story Reading Ape's avatarChris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

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  • Trick or treat

  • 15 Fall Decorating Ideas for Hardcore Book Lovers

  • Caturday funnies

  • 14 Things You’ll Relate to If You Have an Endless To-Read Pile

  • Flashback Friday

    Flashback Friday, originally started by Michael D’Agostino, and continued recently by Jemima Pett, is a meme where the blogger flashes back to a post previously done. One posts this on the last Friday of the month. My Flashback Friday was the second post I ever did:

    My Little Free Library

    This past week in the Community Section of the Houston Chronicle (Yes, I still have the Chronicle delivered to my home each day; we’ve got to “do our part” to keep print newspapers going.) there was an article on Little Free Libraries in the area. Two of my friends were mentioned, and Alvin received some much overdue positive attention.We are working for literacy down here, one LFL at a time.

    Nan Self ,a long time friend from previous AAUW membership, fellow member of the Alvin Historical Society and too numerous connections since the late sixties in Alvin to mention, was featured on the cover of the section with her red-white-and blue, two-shelf library.  It was a lovely article, and it also quoted Debbie Nance, librarian at Robert Louis Stevenson school across the street from my sub-division, who has written and received a grant to promote literacy by building and maintaining LFL’s in underserved Alvin neighborhoods. It was she who introduced me to the concept of Little Free Libraries and the international movement. She has a lovely LFL outside her home on a well-travelled road, “just up from” Alvin High School. Hers sits under a shaded tree, and there is e even  a bench installed for weary walkers to rest and browse, sampling before selecting a book to take with them. It provides a moment away from the continuous traffic and the hustle and bustle of the area.

    My LFL is all about location, location, location–to quote a realtor friend. We are on the “main drag” into the subdivision between a primary school and an elementary school, two blocks down from the bus stop where the jr. high and high school students are dropped. We are on the side of the street that has sidewalks; our sidewalk is parallel to and within reachable distance from our LFL. My LFL was a 69th birthday gift, paid for by my husband and built of scraps from our house–shingles from the last time we had the roof done, scrap lumber from various projects, painted with leftover paint since our last painting adventure, and designed and executed by Robert Hockin of Alvin, a man of good will who does an amazing amount of good things for our church and for the community. (South Park Baptist Church, located at the corner of Johnson and South Streets in Alvin–sorry had to get in a plug; we have been members there since 1968 and continue active membership today–as active as people our age can be.)  Robert and my husband set the post in concrete and let it “set” for a couple of days before attaching the little “house” that is my LFL and matches my house. A hurricane may wipe out my house, but the LFL in our side yard will stand!

    For my seventieth birthday, my Monday class at UHCL gave me a birthday party, and gifts were books for my LFL “Christmas Giveaway.” You have not celebrated until you have celebrated with 25, 20-30+ year olds! It took me a full day to recover, but many books were distributed throughout my neighborhood thanks to my students that semester. I don’t think anyone, especially me, would forget that party or the lovely moments that caused my LFL to be the “gift that kept on giving.”

    We have done trick-or-treat outside our back drive, introducing parents and kids to the LFL, and often heard questions of, “How much does it cost?” “We can keep the books?” and, best of all, “Can I put the books my kids have outgrown in it?”  Several young women keep paperbacks by Debbie McComer, Nicholas Sparks and other escape/when-I-have-a minute-to-read-books in plentiful supply at my LFL. There are evidently reading men in my neighborhood because detective novels like one I discovered in my own LFL, the Alex Cross series, a really good read either in series or as individual books. Fathers and mothers bring their little ones, lift them up to unhook the latch and help them select the books Mom and Dad will read to them. We are in the middle of our Spring Break push, offering the entire Treehouse series as well as the Magic Schoolbus books and at least three or four of the “Little House: series. Recently a dear friend gave me her son’s childhood books now that he is off to college. As she said, “Books should be in readers’ hands, not packed in boxes.” Good old Nancy Drew is making an appearance as are the Hardy Boys and the Boxcar Children. Even Spiderman, Batman, and Superman are making guest appearances in the form of Scholastic versions of their adventures in “reluctant reader” form.

    As I said, the Little Free Library is in its third[fourthor fifth] year of giving and giving. My hairdresser and chiropractor here in Alvin have had bookshelves and space for free books for a long time, before the movement ever started.

    Yes, we are doing our part to promote literacy and distribute books here in Alvin.

     

  • Tuesday Teaser

    “Tuesday Teaser is a bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker.” I take this directly from my blogger friend who writes Brainfluff, a really great blog to follow with something for every taste in reading and anyone interested in life in the UK.  It is always fresh, sometimes funny, and her updates on what she has accomplished are amazing. The idea is to open your current read, pick a couple of sentences at random, being careful not to include any spoilers, and copy them here, giving the title and author as well.

    I started reading Jeannette Walls’ Half Broke Horses during the Dewey’s marathon and was instantly hooked.  My Teaser comes from page 135 where I currently am reading.  It begins with the first sentences of the chapter:

    “The following morning, as Rooster was getting ready to head back to Red Lake, he caught me alone in the kitchen…He looked at me a moment, ‘You know I always been carrying a torch for you’…He paused and then asked, ‘You think I’ll ever get married?’” The woman he is addressing, the author, is already married.

    ” ‘I do,’ I said.  I had just been being polite, but suddenly I saw it clearly…’You just got to look in unexpected places.”

    This has been an attention grabber, interest keeper from the get-go, and I am hoping to steal some time from today’s demands to read a little more.  OR, is that what I just did? LOL