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.”

  • THE FIRE BY NIGHT: A REVIEW OF A WWII NOVEL

    Teresa Messineo’s debut novel, The Fire By Night, is a “once in a lifetime story of war, love, loss, and the enduring grace of the human spirit” (Lauren Willig, NY Times bestselling author). It chronicles the war experiences of Jo McMahon working in field hospitals at and sometimes behind the front in occupied France and Kay Elliott, an army nurse as well, held captive in a squalid POW camp in Manila.  The author spent seven years researching her setting and topic, often interviewing military survivors of WWII, who were eager to have their stories told–accurately.

    The book is both historically and medically accurate, and appeals to the emotions of the reader without becoming maudlin or “sappy.” The author deals with the women’s “place” and lack of status in the war, as well as the raw emotion brought out by their experiences, some of them told in rather graphic and gory detail.

    Both women find out that life goes on after war, loss, emotional trauma, and discrimination and misunderstanding by those who “mean well.” It is a fast read that kept this reader turning pages and up late to “see how it all comes out.”

  • Sunday (Evening) Post

    This has been a busy, event-filled week, complete with visits with and from friends, school planning and grading which took up a good part of the week, and a few pensive, quiet moments–some provided by reading blogs from the friends I am following.

    And still I managed to do some reading.

    Finished last week: Girl Stolen by April Henry, an action-packed YA novel provided by a student who had purchased the book and recommended it to me. It is now in my LFL (Little Free Library) waiting to be read by yet another reader. Also The Fire by Night by Teresa Messino, a gripping, sometimes graphic novel about the horrors of WWII and the nurses who saved lives at, and sometimes behind, the front.  It will be reviewed here in the next few days.

     

    Continuing to read: Who Said I Was Up for Adoption? by Colin Chappell, a blogging friend who has made his excellent book available on Kindle.  The more books I attempt on Kindle, the more I enjoy reading in this medium. I am so close to finishing that I am sure I will be reviewing the book sometime this coming week.  Feeling I hadn’t read any non-fiction in a long time, and feeling the need to do so, I…

    …began this week: Beyond Human Nature:  How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind.  At first it was heavy going, but once I “got into it” and reminded myself I had once studied the basic philosophers reviewed in the first chapter and that I had read many a student paper on “Nature vs. Nurture,” I found my way and can honestly say I’m enjoying stretching my mind a bit and finding it good reading.  It is by Jesse J Prinz. Heads up, Dr. P , when this one is finished, I will donate it to the “AJP Library.” I also began Big Magic, by the author of Eat, Pray, Love  which reminds me somewhat of Brene Brown’s books.  I like that I am able to apply what I read to my daily life.

    I am still looking forward to my friends’ books, Joyful Journey, an autobiography, and Who is Human?, friend Gary Pegoda’s exploration into artificial intelligence and sci fi at its best.  Surely I’ll find time this coming week to start them both.

    What I have watched:  In a word, lots of “mindless TV,” but it was most enjoyable.  I  viewed the finale of “Victoria” on PBS, which was superb as well as “Superior Doughnuts,” a delightful sitcom and the ever-popular, ever-entertaining “Big Bang”.  “Shots Fired”, the pilot of a series promises to be a serious, deep drama, which includes a role for Helen Hunt of “Closer” fame. Last week “Rick Steves’ Europe” took us to Paris; this week we toured Provence. IF I finish grading essays today, I hope to watch a movie.  It feels like it has been a long time, and several people have recommended ones I think I would really enjoy.

    Today is almost gone, but I am trying to schedule lightly tomorrow and for the coming days, so I can get some reading done.  Wish me luck!

  • Now is the time to start again…

    I came across this in a little Hallmark gift book I was reading, and it’s too good not to share:

    “Now is the time…(Book title is Now is the Time:170 Ways to Seize the Moment)

    …to start again.

    Look at nature: nothing stays the same.

    Use change to your advantage.

    Keep the things that matter.

    Change the things that don’t.

    Like a sporting champion, change a losing game.

    Then start again.

    ‘Go out as far as you can go and start from there.’    Albert Einstein ”

     

  • Sunday (Evening) Post

    I missed posting the Sunday Evening Post last week, so this week’s post will reflect two weeks worth of reading and watching.

    What I finished since last post:  Freeks by Amanda Hocking and The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, both reviewed under “Recent Reads” a short time ago. Both Sunday editions of The Houston Chronicle (practically cover to cover).

    Continuing to Read: Who Said I Was Up for Adoption?  by Colin Chappell, a blogging friend, told in alternate chapters from dog owner’s/dog’s point of view. Also The Fire by Night by Teresa Messineo, a story of allied nurses in WWII.

    Have begun Ayn Rand’s Anthem, a novel of the future written while she was writing The Fountainhead.          

    Watched on TV:  Two excellent episodes of PBS’s “Victoria,” two episodes of “Bull,” two episodes of “Superior Doughnuts” a really funny 30 min. comedy (new this season), Rick Steve’s visit to Paris on “The Best of Rick Steve’s Europe” on PBS,and one episode of “Gray’s Anatomy.”

    I am really looking forward to starting: Joyful Journey, a friend’s autobiography which she signed and gave away to about forty friends yesterday, complete with coffee and dessert–a lovely afternoon, and Who Is Human? a novel about a computer that attempts to answer that question, available on Kindle, by Gary Pegoda, a long-time friend.

  • A PLACE TO BEGIN

    Somewhere near the beginning of the semester, I tell my students the story of Don Marquis, a newspaper journalist who came into his office one morning to find a strange letter in his typewriter. The letter was from archy, a cockroach who claimed  he was the reincarnated soul of a Roman poet who writes in free verse. I pass out copies of the letter and ask for reactions.  Of course, the students say there are no capital letters or punctuation, and I explain the laborious way in which archy composes his poems.  He stands on the space bar and dives headlong into the keys to make them work.  Since he can’t be in two places at once, he can’t operate the shift key, and he leaves out punctuation as one less key to have to manipulate.

    A few students have insisted, like the walrus-mustached Oral Interpretation professor I once had, “This is not poetry!” Sometimes I have trouble myself concocting a defense. Several of Mehetibel’s (a cat who was Cleopatra once in a former life) poems do have a definite rhythm and sound qualities.  These are fairly dependable poetry-appreciation-starters, although for youngest audiences, I censor out some of the passages when Mehitebel hitchhikes to Hollywood and takes up with a coyote along the way who is so tough, the resulting kittens are born wearing spiked collars.  I received a parent call once about Mehitibel’s poem that ended with Mehitibel’s motto: “Toujours gay,  toujours gay, what the hell, what the hell.” I also received a call from a mother who said her son had told her he had read poems written by a cockroach at school today…she wanted to know, “what the hell kind of crap I was ‘feeding’ her kid.”

    Granted this method is gimmicky, but it is a “grabber” and a painless place to start. Students discover that poetry does not have to rhyme, that it does not have  to use “highfalutin” language, and it doesn’t have to be about a “pie-in-the-sky” subject.  Along the route, they gain insights into the historical and sociological occurrences of the thirties and forties as I explain archy’s comments on what were current concerns when the “poems” were written.  I do not encourage by the use of The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitibel, a disrespect for poetry, but a familiarity with it. Hopefully as students read poetry from a cockroach about a mundane subject like what goes on after hours in a newspaper office, they will view poetry as something accessible.  Later in the semester, I make  a concentrated effort to elevate the students to an appreciation of the “specialness” of poetry and to introduce them to recognized and acclaimed poets. The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitibel, however is one place to begin.

  • THURSDAY THOUGHTS: TEACHING POETRY TO 5TH GRADERS

    Shel Silverstein is a staple in 5th grade.  Many years ago, while teaching 5th grade, I received Light in the Attic for my birthday.  I brought it and Where the Sidewalk Ends, its companion, in to class where I shared it with small groups.  I let them find their favorite funny pictures and accompanying poems and mark them with bookmarks they had designed themselves.  I read a few favorites aloud in class, showing the drawings on the video camera.  We did this in the few minutes before lunch or after PE for a “settle down” effect.

    To integrate poetry with a grammar lesson later, students were asked to supply a noun for each blank in Richard Armor’s poem, “Money.” Then we compared our answers with the original which follows:

    Money

    __________earn it.

    __________burn it.

    __________lend it.

    __________spend it.

    __________fake it.

    __________take it.

    ___________leave it.

    __________receive it.

    __________save it.

    __________crave it.

    __________seize it.

    __________increase it.

    __________lose it.

    I could use it.

    Not only did we talk about why a word that fit the blank was a noun (Was it a person, place or thing?  Did it form its plural by adding “s” or “es”? ) but also why Armour chose the particular word he did.

    Here were Armor’s choices:

    Money

    Workers earn it.

    Spendthrifts burn it.

    Bankers lend it.

    Women spend it.

    Forgers fake it.

    Taxes take it.

    Dying leave it.

    Heirs receive it.

    Thrifty save it.

    Misers crave it.

    Robbers seize it.

    Rich increase it.

    Gamblers lose it.

    I could use it.

    Just look at the new words to be added to the students’ vocabulary list!

    These little “tips” using poetry in the classroom lend fun to the tedium of the Language Arts Bloc and brighten up both the students’ and the teacher’s day while “getting the job done.”

     

     

  • RECENT READS

    This weekend I finished two books I started what seems like ages ago. Because of library books due and other reasons, I put each of them aside more than one time, and I promised myself I’d continue to stay off my feet and finish at least one of them this weekend.

    The first was a YA paranormal romance (a genre I didn’t even know existed) reviewed by a blogging friend in the UK, Amanda Hocking’s Freeks.  This 2016 publication kept my interest throughout, and although I had little in common with the young characters, the ending was so exciting I was mentally yelling for the good guys to “Get it! Kill it!” I was not sure of the outcome until the last few “seconds” of the climax, an extraordinary feat for any author hoping to sustain my interest through the last chapters.

    Maura, a carnival kid, was my favorite character.  She is just growing into her “gift”, necromancy, speaking with dead spirits, which she has inherited from her mother and her grandmother. Gabe, the love interest, is so handsome, cool, with just the touch of “danger” reflected in his golden eyes, who wouldn’t like him?  The relationships in the story are well drawn: Maura and Gabe, Maura and her mother, her mother and the “boss” of the carnival,  “freaks” with other “normals” in the carnival,  and the “carnies” and the “townies”. The setting is intriguing:  the carnival background against the eerie, something-is-just-not-right feeling of the small town in the South. The cover invited the reader to “Step inside a wondrous, strange, new world…,” and if the reader can suspend reality and believe for a brief moment, he/she will enjoy doing just that.

     

    The Art of Racing In the Rain has been circling the track for me since before Christmas, and it brought relief as well as satisfaction to finish it today. Garth Stein’s philosophical, sad, sad novel is told from Enslow’s (the dog’s!) point of view, and he is the best narrator I’ve followed in a long, long time. It was published back in 2009, but since it was on the subject of death and my mother died that year, I didn’t even attempt to read it then. It is heart wrenching, at times funny, and endears the reader to the three main characters: Denny, a race car driver who specializes in racing in the rain or on a wet track; and his wife, Eve, who first displaces Enzo, then finally  entrusts her husband and their daughter, Zoe, to him. The circle of life and all of its philosophical tenets, as well as its absurdities, comes into play and develops during this 321 page novel.  Be sure you buy kleenex in preparation for reading this one.

     

  • Reading a Classic, Slaughter House Five: A Review

    I was sure I had read this book back in 1969 when it was first published; in fact, I told someone I had.  This was not true.  I have read so many things about it, that I thought I’d read it.  Kurt Vonnegut’s semi-autobiographical, satirical novel deals with time travel and experiences during WWII.  It is strange, but strangely appealing.

    Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist is not an appealing person.  In his PSTD and mental state, he thinks and recalls vividly that he had been abducted by the Tralfmadorians, beings from another planet. Pilgrim’s life journey, reflective of Pilgrim’s Progress, journeys through life and through time and recounts his experiences to the reader.  Some are quite believable, like living through the bombing of Dresden, others are not. Seeing a great many deaths of both friends and enemies and relatives, Billy Pilgrim accepts the philosophy of, “so it goes.”  He applies this to deaths of thousands as he does to those individuals ( like his wife) who are close to him . He is not actually pathetic, but neither is he charismatic…merely mundane .

    One can not say he/she “enjoyed reading” the book, but it is a literary experience that I would recommend.

  • A FEW MORE QUOTES ABOUT BOOKS

    Recently I blogged giving some of my favorite quotes about books.  Here are a few more I didn’t have room for:

    “There are worse things than burning books; one of them is not reading them.”  Poet Joseph Bradsky

    “A  classic is a book people have heard of, but never read.”  Mark Twain

    “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Italo Calvino

    “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who can not read.” Mark Twain

    ” A great book should leave you many experiences, and slightly exhausted.  You should lead several lives while reading.” William Styron

  • Sunday Evening Post

    This should be the end of an almost month long confinement with plantar fasciitis, for I must return to school this coming Wednesday, and I plan to give a Birthday coffee for a friend turning 83 as well as attend the Third Tuesday Book Club on Tuesday. Monday will be the last day of taking it easy, and probably next week will not be as generous with the amount of reading time offered.

    That said, here is what I finished last week: Chasing Vermeer a middle school mystery by Blue Balliett which I listened to on an audio book from the library; Freeks, a YA paranormal romance (I didn’t know such a genre existed!) which I bought in hardback after reading a review of it on Brainfluff; and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, which I read so much ABOUT, I thought I had read it, but I was wrong.

    Here is what I am continuing to read:  The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahata, and The big, fat Sunday edition of today’s Houston Chronicle.  Reading the Sunday paper on Sunday afternoon is one thing I do each week for pleasure.

    Started this week: A nice “escape read” that was left anonymously at my back door (along with donations to my Little Free Library) that had the word “Good” written on the price label entitled The Friends We Keep by Susan Mallery; and a Kindle version of Who Said I Was Up For Adoption by Colin Chappell, whose blog I follow faithfully.

    Temporarily Parked:  Racing in the Rain, written also from the dog’s point of view.  I am sure I will have to re-read a considerable portion of this Garth Stein paperback, but the excellent writing will make this a pleasure, not a chore.

    Watched:  A terrific movie Guardians of the Galaxy which had me yelling at the TV  because it was so exciting…and the soundtrack! The Valentine’s episode of “Speechless” was well done, as was another twisty-turny episode of “Bull”.  I am one episode short of being up to date on my favorite TV soap-opera, Gray’s anatomy, and I began the series on young queen Victoria on PBS, Victoria, as well as watched a PBS documentary on the cousins: Victoria, Alexander, Tzar of Russia and Frederick Wilheim  of Germany.  It gave a whole new slant to the causes of WWI and the relationships and alliances made during that war, totally fascinating. I also watched the “Today Show” on NBC every morning this past week.

    I feel so totally up-to-date on TV viewing and have made a dent in my TBR list as well.  It has been a good week.