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.”

  • No One Ever Died From Reading Too Much…

    islandeditions's avatarBooks: Publishing, Reading, Writing

    At least, not that I know. It’s a phrase I repeat to myself with each new book I begin reading. Just to put the amount of reading I do into perspective …

    Last summer, someone who shall remain nameless and who does not really know me at all, told me that my problem is I read too much and need to find myself a new hobby. You can imagine how that made me feel. (In case you’re wondering, my snappy comeback was that I thought I wasn’t reading near enough as I could be reading … That was met with a blank stare.)

    So, instead of heeding her suggestion, I began to read even more than I had up until then. My entire life has been about books and reading: studying them, selling them, representing them to bookstores and libraries, promoting them, and now even writing them myself.
    It’s…

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  • Fighting Illiteracy ~ WorldReader

    Alexander M Zoltai's avatarNotes from An Alien

    WorldReader Image Courtesy of WorldReader ~ https://www.worldreader.org/about-us/mediaroom/photos/

    This will be the 17th post I’ve done about WorldReader—if you put its name in the search bar up there, you’ll find this post and 16 others…

    They sent me an email the other day with this exciting headline: Our Read To Kids Partnership Reaches 200,000!

    from WorldReader:

    “Two years ago, we asked ourselves a question: could we use mobile phones, local digital books, and local partnerships to get entire communities to read with their kids?

    “Today, we’re incredibly proud to announce that over the course of our Read to Kids pilot program, co-created with Pearson, we’ve reached 200,000 families in and around Delhi, India with the life-changing power of reading.”

    If you’re pressed for time and not able to take that last link, do, please, watch at least the first short video at the end of this post…

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  • EVERY-OTHER SUNDAY (EVENING) POST

    A quick listing,catch-up is all I have time for tonight, for I still have six, five page Argument/Research papers to grade before tomorrow’s 8:00 am class.

    What I finished: The Address, a superb second novel by Fiona Davis, which I will review tomorrow or the next day.

    Daughter of Time, reviewed recently on this site.

    Today’s Sunday Edition of The Houston Chronicle, a reward for all the hard work I’ve done this weekend.

    What I am continuing to read:

    A wonderful book of poetry, Poetic Rituals, by a blogging friend.  I have shared several of these poems with  my students in those “settling-down-and-getting-ready-to-start-class-for-real” times. (These occur frequently with an 8 o’clock class!)

    Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, which I confess I haven’t touched or opened this week.  High hopes for next week.

    What I have begun:

    The Leavers (see excerpt on Tuesday’s Teaser) by Lisa Ko

    I have spent my time grading each evening, into the night, doing some much needed grocery shopping and some fine meal planning and cooking (and freezing in preparation for the end of the semester (6 days to go!) when I KNOW I won’t have time to cook and will just want to “warm up something.” My Better Half bought a lovely cheese and fruit tray home today.  We added potato salad from the deli and pan-grilled chicken hot dogs, complimented by pita chips, and we had a light, healthy lunch.  We are trying to eat our main meal at noon which is easier on senior citizen digestions and nocturnal early bedtimes.  Five thirty or six o’clock comes mighty early in the mornings.

  • How to Help an Author …

    islandeditions's avatarBooks: Publishing, Reading, Writing

    Buy/Borrow, Read, Promote to other readers
    … those books you enjoy.

    Repeat.

    Never expect the author to give you a free copy. But, if they offer to do so, you shouldn’t feel you are under any obligation to either read the book or give it a rave review. Unless you truly enjoyed reading that book. (As far as I’m concerned, I’m always thrilled to death with the thought that someone else may be reading my book!)

    Buying or borrowing a copy from the library is the best show of support. (And if your local library does not have the book in their collection or the bookstore doesn’t have it in stock then this is a good time to mention the book to them. Did you know that most libraries encourage their patrons to recommend books that may be added to their collections? Both print and eBooks in most cases ……

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  • TAGGED AGAIN: Who Am I?

    The most interesting bloggers tag James Cudney at his blog, This Is My Truth Now, and his answers are equally as interesting and quite revealing to the point where I now feel I know him well and count him as a friend. His latest answers to a tag, Who Am I? sounded like a lot of fun, and after taking a whole bank of quizzes (links available on his site–search for the post “Tag-Who Am I? and click away.  I guarantee you will learn things about yourself you didn’t know), I will now share who I evidently am. If you would like to answer this tag, I recommend you do it from his site, or just answer a few of the questions in the comments section here.

    1. What does my name mean? My English grandmother emigrated to the US at the age of twenty, and when she came through Ellis Island as Rachel Figgenboam, the officer told her that her name was too long to fit the blank and she’d have to shorten it.  Since she thought he meant both names, she became Rae Figgins. My middle name, Evelyn was the name of both my father’s mother and his wife.  How Freudian is that? Mason is a very respectable Scottish name of the Cambell clan.  In fact, my grandfather on my father’s side was Angus Marion Mason.  Longest is a strictly English name which I married into.
    2. What is my Myers-Briggs personality type? (see link) I am a “Counsul” 88% extrovert, 12% introvert, which would not surprise any of my friends!
    3. What is my sign?  For years I have described myself as a Scorpio, which never seemed to really fit.  Today, I learned I was “born on the cusp” of the sign (My   birthday is on the 21st of November, and Sagittarius begins on the 22nd. Incidentally, I was born at 8:00 p.m. so I really was almost born on the 22nd.)
    4. What is my Hogwarts House? Hufflepuff, according to the quiz, which would label me as loyal, dependable, and hard working.
    5. What is my learning style? These quizzes were quite revealing and sometimes the opposite of what I assumed about myself. Visual 0/Aural 5/ Read-Write 8/ Kinesthetic 3.  I  also have left brained dominance, 75% left brained.
    6. What career am I meant to have? Of course, I answered, teacher.  Interestingly enough, the quiz said I would be a good judge! It said, “You were meant to bring this world a little justice.”
    7. Another personality quiz lumped me in the Candor category: honest  I think many times I carry this to a fault.
    8. What is my birth order?  Firstborn, and all the labels fit.

    Have fun with this one, if you don’t have the time to take the quizzes or simply can’t find them, think about yourself and how some of these tag questions apply. Please reply either to James’ tag or in the comments box at the end of this post.

     

  • This Little Girl is the Hero Bookmobiles Need

    Kristen Twardowski's avatarKristen Twardowski

    Orange_County_Public_Library_Bookmobile,_circa_1965.jpg Photo courtesy of Orange County Archives, “Orange County Public Library Bookmobile,” ca. 1965, via Wikimedia.

    I was lucky. Growing up, two local libraries that were just a short drive away. But not all kids have access to that many books.

    In recent years, the town of Wellington in Carbon County, Utah has had a tight budget. Coal revenues have been falling, so the county commission has had to scramble to find enough money to continue operating local government services. In order to balance finances, the county commission voted to cut funding for the bookmobile and other programs. If this budget was implemented, the people of Wellington would have had their chances to find and read new books drastically cut.

    This horrified one local book lover, 10-year-old October Hamilton, who leapt into action.

    “We don’t have a library,” October told KSL reporters. “And the bookmobile is the only book…

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  • Smorgasbord Laughter Academy – Expect the Unexpected

  • TUESDAY TEASER

    As per instructions from the Purple Booker, shared on Brainfluff, grab your current read.  Copy a couple of sentences at random and tempt us to read what you are enjoying now. No spoilers or plot give-aways, please.

    Today, I quote from The Leavers by Lisa Ko, a 2017 publication:

    “Unable to decide whether to hate Vivian or be grateful to her, Daniel had only been able to take the envelope and say ‘Thank you.’

    He dug his heels into the dirt and walked slowly downhill, down the park’s curved side, slow at first, getting faster, a grace note as his legs bounced upwards.

    He would go home. He would call Leon. Propelled, he was almost in flight.”   (Can’t you just feel him accelerating, picking up speed as he left? Such marvelous skill with words.)

    Daniel is a young Asian boy, placed in foster care by his mother’s friend Vivian, many years ago who has just been told as a young adult that Leon, his mother’s then boyfriend knew the whereabouts of his missing mother and the answer to why she had mysteriously left him all those years ago.  After this follows part two of the book. I can hardly wait to get back to it!

  • I Regret to Say…

    …that the on-line book club, Powerful Women Readers (PWR) is folding due to busy schedules and work obligations on the part of many of its members. THIS BLOGGING SITE, however, WILL CONTINUE. To be sure you get posts, reviews and other cool stuff included here, be sure to click “follow” if you haven’t already done so.

    The last few get-togethers of the PWR book club were sparsely attended, and although the food and fellowship has been great, sadly many of our members simply do not have the time to read or at least to read “assigned” books.

    It is with a sad heart that I bring to a close the book club originally established back so many years ago as an offshoot of the Alvin Chapter of AAUW, but I hope you, dear friends, will keep in touch through e-mail and perhaps through following this blog at https://powerfulwomenreaders.wordpress.com.

    KEEP ON READING!

    Rae

  • THE DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey: A Review

    An old Proverb states that “Truth is the Daughter of Time,” and it is a search for truth that is the premise for this novel. We find Alan Grant, Scotland Yard detective recuperating in an extended hospital stay from a freak accident. When the book opens, he has been inactive for a period of time, and is B O R E D.  Marta, an actress friend, brings photos of faces to distract him, for studying faces and having a knack of determining whether a face is that of a “good guy” or a “bad guy” is his prime talent, earning him a reputation at the Yard. He becomes fascinated by a portrait of Richard the Third, the “unscrupulous murderer of the Little Princes”–or not!

    Carradine, Marta’s “wooly lamb,” called this because of his ungainly tall and curly-haired blonde looks, becomes Grant’s researcher and is soon caught up in the legwork Grant cannot do himself. Together they uncover Tudor cover ups and despair at the unreliability of traditionally “accepted” untruths and “facts.” The New York times calls this novel “one of the permanent classics in the detective field.” Here is Grant’s first entry as he pursues the mystery involved in the “case”:

    “CASE: Disappearance of 2 boys (Edward, Prince of Wales;Richard, Duke of York) from the Tower of London, 1485 or thereabouts.”

    Unlikely as it may seem at first glance, the book is a lively read, definitely intellectually stimulating, and even humorous at times. I thoroughly enjoyed this deliberate, yet fast-moving read.