RAE’S READS

recent posts

about

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.”

  • BEAT STREET SERIES for teens

    Jenna Zark’s newest novel in the Beat Street Series shines a light on San Francisco’s “Beat Scene” A must read for middle schoolers.

    I can’t believe that as a book seller, I was unaware of this series until now. The author provides the proverbial “something for everyone.” I jumped right into the third book in the series because I was interested in something for middle schoolers. North Beat Christmas , continues Ruby’s story, and features Nell-Mom, her mother; Gary Daddy-o, her father; her brother Ray; and a new character, Marty, whom she meets in North Beach when she decides to visit her father for Christmas. Nell-Mom has deep reservations about Ruby’s request for her and Ray to spend Christmas in California. Ruby, however, can tell from unanswered phone calls her dad is in trouble and needs help, something she cannot tell her mother.

    Ruby and Ray’s adventures, or perhaps I should say misadventures, on the trip and in San Francisco are something they hide from their mom as they try to help their dad with his alcohol abuse. As dark as this sounds, it is my experience that often a middle school student feels responsible for and tries to help out when a parent has problems. This book helps the struggling reader to work through his/her situation. The most important lesson the book presents is to enlist adult help and not try to take on the full burden oneself.

    In the meantime, there are many happy, even humorous, parts of the book as Ruby meets Marty, a young man her age who is on the spectrum . They become friends and Marty shows her his special parts of North Beach. Ruby’s love of books and her job at a special bookstore are what brings Marty and Ruby together.

    It is a fine book. It kept me turning pages, as I grew to really care about Ruby as I turned them. There are so many readers who will identify with Ruby for one reason or another, and the author, Jenna Zark meets the needs of each reader in her target audience.

    I highly recommend this book.

    RAE 2/17/25

  • WHEW! It has been a couple of busy weeks for this blogger. I went back to my teaching job at Apogee Gulf Coast School on January 20th after the Martin Luther King Holiday and our unexpected snow day (I am only required to be there on Mondays and Wednesdays, but it’s so interesting and fun that I sometimes “drop by” on other days.

    Lunar New Year came and went without my posting about it, which in the past I have done. I did order a special New Year’s tea for a former student at the university who now lives in Boston. She was at a conference in Austin, Texas, and drove down the weekend of the 31st. She rented a car and drove down to spend Friday night. What a catch-up visit we had! We didn’t stop talking and hugging from the time she arrived until she left Saturday afternoon.

    February slipped up on me, and my teaching week this week went especially well. I am learning about Project Based Learning, something we had very little of back in the 70s and 80s when I taught in public school, and I am slowly but surely implementing it into my teaching plans and thinking. I am really inspired by a book I’m reading, Project Based Learning: An Integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Approach, edited by Caprano and Slough. I didn’t expect to find much helpful for a Language Arts classroom, but with a bit of imagination, I found several things (“assists” from the STEM disciplines) that I could hardly wait to incorporate into my lesson plans. Plus, some ideas from the book made learning in general more fun for both my students and me.

    I made a couple of new friends at the bookstore on Thursday of customers who were referred by mutual friends, and reconnected with an old neighbor from where I lived before moving into the bookstore. Her kids were about 10 and 6 when they used to visit my Little Free Library at my old house. I moved that LFL to the bookstore yard when I moved a year and a half ago, and this morning as she was taking her kids to high school, she was visiting that same LFL just in a different location after dropping them off. Needless to say, I saw her and invited her in for coffee.

    It reminds me of an old Girl Scout song:

    “Make new friends, but keep the old; / One is silver and the other gold.”

    If you have a chance and can open a Facebook account, Look up RAE’S READS, and see what’s happening at the bookstore!

    RAE 2/7/25

  • Even though I am wearing my reading glasses, something I usually don’t have to do until evening, my eyes are growing weary. I’m obviously not going to set any records, much less match my “personal best” in a Readathon–19 hours. I think I will take a break from continuous reading and do some shelving and rearranging of books before customers show up tomorrow afternoon. I have some “big marketing/clearing-out-slow-movers ideas.” LOL

    These aren’t my actual shelves. I have even forgotten where I found the image.

    5:00 p.m. Continued reading on Follett’s Pillars of Earth.

    5:45 Visited a couple of blogs, read their latest posts, and commented on them.

    6:20 Supper break

    6:30 Tried to go back to Pillars, but I’m reading the paperback, and the print is just too small. I had the identical problem with Dr. King’s book, not to mention the print in Sunday’s paper.

    7:00 p.m. OK, THAT’S IT! I Give up! This READATHON is officially over!

    One final word…

    RAE 1/21/25

  • IT’S SNOWING!

    Sooo unusual for the Texas Gulf Coast, the bookstore cat and I woke up to snow this morning–and it’s sticking ! What a perfect day to stay in, stay warm, and READ.

    READATHON LOG:

    8:00 a.m. Listened to the rest of an audiobook, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

    8:40 Started on p. 59, ended on 69 of Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community by Martin Luther King.

    Snack Break and watched the neighborhood kids outside playing in the. snow.

    9:15 Started Part 5 of Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth , which I had put down/aside when school started after Labor Day. It was good to follow the familiar characters.

    11:00 Lunch Break–Ate and went out to “play” in the snow.

    11:40 Brrrrr. Warmed up and read to p.79 in Dr. King’s book.

  • READATHON (Continued)

    The MLK/Cold Weather Readathon–2025, officially begins at 8 a.m. Central Standard Time tomorrow, Tuesday, January 21st.

    When I went through my TBR piles and baskets this afternoon, I discovered I had begun six different books and had not finished any of them. Most were “just started a little .” My goal then is to finish at least three of them.

    In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.,one I will finish is his important book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? This book will count towards the 25 nonfiction books I want to read in 2025, plus I have made it one of the selections for the Online Book Club (currently unnamed) that my bookstore, RAE’S READS is starting, (For details, place your requests in the comments section below.)

    I have saved the “Sunday Paper,” aka The Houston Chronicle, for the Readathon; it is still in its plastic wrapper. I will read it from cover to cover, my usual Sunday afternoon “guilty pleasure.”

    Also I plan to spend some of my reading time reacquainting myself with your blogs. I am soooooo looking forward to doing this.

    Rae, the pilot trying to “get people off their laptops and reading books.”

    1/20/25 RAE

  • MLK HOLDAY READATHON 2025

    This is a personal Readathon that takes advantage of the school holiday and pending bad weather. Monday (Martin Luther King holiday) and Tuesday are supposed to remain 32 degrees and below, a rare occurrence for us on the Texas Gulf Coast. “They” are even saying we may have snow (a really rare phenomena here). Since I will not be going out, this presents the perfect opportunity to stay in my pajamas all day and read, read, read.

    I have been cooking ever since I got home from church–a Mexican casserole I can heat up for a quick meal and plenty of chocolate chip cookies for snacks. As soon as I finish covering my plants, I’ll set some goals and decide which books I’ll read. If you’d like to join me and have a suggestion for a start date/time, let me know in the comments below.

    RAE 1/19/25 3:15 pm CST

  • 25 in ’25

    I never make New Year’s resolutions because I know I won’t keep them. But, after listening to a Gretchen Rubin (author of The Happiness Project and Happier at Home) podcast (Happier), I decided to set some 25 in ’25 goals she described.

    First, I know I will read more than 25 books in 2025, so I am going to read 25 nonfiction books in 2025. I chose nonfiction because it is the genre I most often neglect, tending more towards literary fiction and novels. I am off to a good start, for I have already read two since January 1st.

    Secondly, I am good at “collecting” recipes and reading interesting recipe books, but not so good at actually trying new ones. I tend to stick to the “same ole’-same ole’” ones. I will try 25 new recipes in 2025.

    Then, there are the 25 minutes a day goals:

    READ 25 minutes a day

    SPEND 25 minutes a day outside–At first, I thought of 25 minutes a day exercising or 25 minutes a day walking…but I knew that wasn’t gonna’ happen! This way it counts if I sit on the chair on my front porch and listen to the rain on the tin carport roof.

    SPEND 25 minutes a day reading the Bible and being in prayer or going through some kind of guided meditation while thinking life-affirming thoughts.

    SPEND 25 minutes a day doing schoolwork or tutoring work–Hopefully, by organizing this work into “little chunks,” I can limit my lesson planning and grading to this amount of time.

    There are many other 25s I could try, but I’m going to limit myself to these in hopes of actually carrying them out.

    Think about the year 2025. Maybe you will want to work on that novel or memoir you have tucked away in a drawer for 25 minutes a day or practice ballet for 25 minutes a day…there are no limits. Start establishing your 25 in ’25 goals now, and we’ll compare notes in 2026!

    Rae

  • IIII’MMM BAAACCCCKKKK!

    Like the Poltergeists in the movie of the same name, I’m back. It’s been a while (a couple of years), and a great deal of water has gone under the bridge. But today, January 4th, 2025, I’m back to blogging.

    I’ve missed it. “Rae’s Reads” on Facebook did not allow me to review the many books I’ve read since I’ve last “visited” with you, nor participate in any Readathons or visit other bloggers’ sites. That can now all be remedied. One of the first things I want to share is my new-found love of podcasts and the challenges in reading and other areas I am taking on in 2025. Another is the blessings in my new teaching job–more on that in another post. There’s so much I want to tell you, and although I unsubscribed from your blogs, I have intentions of following you once more, dear blogging friends.

    Let me hear from you. Catch me up on what is going on in your life, and let’s be blogging friends again!

    RAE

  • BLOGGIVERSARY

    TODAY marks 8 years since Powerful Women Readers was born. I had had foot surgery (which had to have more of January 18th of this year) and I was starting an online book club to while away the boredom of recuperation inactivity. The plan was to meet quarterly only and read only one book from a list of five books provided. I held a contest to name the group, and my wonderful friend, Felicia, came up with a wonderful name, Powerful Women Readers, aka PWR.

    Some of you know I have recently shut down my other two blogs due to responsibilities at the bookstore I now own and live in, RAE’s READS. Alas, I must do the same with PWR.

    If you have Facebook, you can follow on either “Rae Longest” or “Rae’s Reads”. The latter tells about all the bookstore’s doins’, and my book reviews will appear on the former . I hope to see some of you there. If you need me, reach out to raelongest300@msn.com, and if you are ever near Houston, come on down to Lil’ Ole’ Alvin, Texas, and visit me at Rae’s Reads. We serve free coffee and cookies every day. We are located at 1303 College Drive / Alvin, TX 77511. (We are near the high school, not near the college…) but that’s story for another time.

    Fondly,

    RAE 3/4/24

  • FROM THE STARRY NIGHT ELF blog

    Our Heart 💙