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.”
  • Thanks Carole for the loan of your meme.

    ” ‘Books from the Backlog’ is a fun way to feature some of the neglected books sitting on your bookshelf unread.”

    “This week’s neglected book…” is one I purchased after reading a review by a fellow blogger the year it was published, 2019. I promptly ordered it through Amazon, then just as promptly put it on my TBR shelf. I used it sometime in the recent past for my “First Line Fridays” post, but never got beyond that first line until this past week. In an effort to read 22 books from my TBR shelves in 2022, I started Life and am now on page 164. (Use the search box to see the First Line Friday post that grabbed my attention after reading only the first line)

    The novel deals with a middle aged woman, Emma, and her sixteen-year-old daughter, who are told out of the blue that Emma’s mother, Genevieve, who threw Emma out of her house as a pregnant teenager. Genevieve announces that she has a brain tumor and is dying; she insists that Emma and Riley, her daughter come and spend the summer taking care of her in her “last days.” As the story unfolds, several subplots unfold, twisting and turning, and the reader is aware that Genevieve is “keeping secrets” and that Emma is still dealing with feelings for Riley’s father, who is married to a super-model and has two sons that Riley wishes to get to know.

    Families are complicated things, and this one is very much so.

    I have read Kristin Higgins before, and have enjoyed her light, breezy writing style. This book is definitely a calming, “comfort read.”

    Have you read this book? What did you think of it? Would you recommend it to me and to others?

    HAVE A GOOD WEEK, AND KEEP ON READING!

  • FIRST LINE FRIDAYS

    ONE IS ASKED TO COPY THE FIRST LINE OR TWO OF A CURRENT READ TO SEE IF OTHERS MAY WANT TO PUT THAT BOOK ON THEIR TBR.
    I try to read a classic every two months.

    This classic is in addition to the Classics Club challenge I gave myself in 2021. I am hoping in 2022 to finish a classic every other month, giving me two months to read what is sometimes a more difficult book.

    For January and February, I have begun Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. I have always been interested in this male author with a female name because Evelyn is my middle name. I have read at least two other books by him, Winds of War and another novel which was a satire of he funeral industry (If my beleaguered memory serves me right). After a lengthy introduction and information on the author, the Prologue begins as follows:

    “When I reached ‘C’ company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning. We were leaving that day.”

    An end, indeed to an encampment during wartime, but the beginning of a narrative one is not likely to forget for the reader. I look forward to this novel and suspect it will be a “darned good read.”

    Thank you Evin.

  • Listening Heart | #KindnessFriday

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  • TUESDAY TEASER

    THIS MEME ASKS YOU TO COPY A COUPLE OF SENTENCES TO “TEASE” SOMEONE INTO READING THE SAME BOOK.

    HERE is the choice for Tuesday, January 25th.

    A philosophical romance (if there is such a thing!)

    Rebecca is talking to her ex, about her new tenant in her “in-law apartment” off the garage,

    ” ‘Our new tenant downstairs, ‘ Rebecca said. ‘I finally got the in-law apartment in shape.’

    ‘He’s a monk’ , Mary Martha (Rebecca’s daughter) announced.

    ‘Wow, a monk, no kidding. Does he wear a robe and sandals?’

    She (Mary Martha) giggled, ‘No, silly’…

    ‘He’s very nice,’ Rebecca said, before this got out of hand. ‘Very ordinary. Just a guy. Makes his own coffee, keeps to himself.”

    And so the unusual relationship begins…

  • Sunday funnies

  • SUNDAY (EVENING) POST

    I haven’t written one of these in over a year. it’s high time I slipped one in. When I first started following blogs, I was intrigued by S.J. Higgins’ “Sunday Post” on Brainfluff. It was where I first learned to enjoy reading blogs. I wanted to do a Sunday update like hers, so when my mind went back to the 50s magazine, Saturday Evening Post, whose covers featured the paintings of Norman Rockwell, I decided to call my post “Sunday Evening Post.” It is an update on what you’ve read the past week, what you are continuing to read, and what you hope to read next. Here’s the “Saturday (Evening) Post” for Sunday, January 23, 2022.

    Because I read several books consecutively, I tend to finish several in the same week.

    A Page Turners Book Club selection for January, a book written in a unique format.

    I have been reading from this book daily passages since the week before Advent. It finally finished up this week.

    The last passage from The Risen Christ was part of the fine group of devotionals. “Christ does not change; the preparation for the coming of the Spirit is the same today as two thousand years ago, whether it be the rebirth of Christ in one soul that is in the hard of winter, or for the return from the grave of Christ, whose blood is shed again by the martyrs…[It is] quiet mind, acceptance, and remaining close to God…”

    What a nice thought to end my celebration of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with!

    A book that was more of a study, encased in the author’s story that kicked off my 2022 “study” of gratitude.

    This was a very helpful book that allowed me to grow in grace through gratitude. I reviewed it recently on this blog.

    A book read for three challenges, a classic, What’s in a Name, and Mt. TBR 2022
    A book that was published recently, read on my Kindle
    A debut novel borrowed from the local library

    Continuing to read…

    A daily devotional, Daily Wisdom for Women by Carol L.Fitzpatrick

    Hoda Kotb’s I Really Needed This Today, a secular “devotional”

    A science fantasy novel,

    By the author of the Broken Earth series

    I really hope to block out some time this week to read on this novel, so it will be…

    THIS SHOULD READ, WHAT I SHOULD READ NEXT. LOL

    Rain is predicted for Monday, so I plan to stay in, and READ! How about you? Reading plans for your new week are welcome in the Reply/Comments box below.

  • 2022 MOUNT TBR CHALLENGE

    THIS IS SOMETHING I DO INFORMALLY ALL THE TIME, BUT THIS YEAR I WILL JOIN THE CHALLENGE.

    Because I have participated for over a year in the Japanese practice of tsurdoku, buying books and then not getting around to reading them, my Mount TBR was very high.

    Then…the other day, Mt. TBR toppled…

    but barely

    It became time–to do something about the situation, so I am accepting the Mount TBR 2022 challenge. I am entering at level 2, Mount Blanc

    Pikes Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile

    Mount Blanc: Read 24 books

    Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books

    Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books

    Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books

    El Toro: Read 75 books

    Mt. Everest: Read 100 books

    Mount Olympus: Read 150 books

    Because I was doing this challenge for the first time, I thought I’d start at level one, Pike’s Peak, but then I realized I’d already committed to reading 22 books from my TBR pile for a challenge I’d made up on January 1st, “22 in 22,” so I rounded up two books and tackled Mount Blanc. The challenge runs from 1/1/22-12/31/22. The challenge’s rule is that “you may count books BEGUN prior to 1/1/22 provided you had 50% of the book left to finish when Jan. 1 rolled around.” Also, “You may count ‘Did Not Finish’ books provided they meet your own standard for such things.” ( I am setting a standard of three chapters read), and if “you do not plan to ever finish it, and you move it off your mountain[give it away, sell it, remove it from your ebooks, etc.]. ” The challenge host gives the book 100 pages to capture her interest. She adds, “No page limit–if it was published as a book, it counts. No single short stories–but collections of short stories do count.” Books being used for other challenges count for this challenge as well. So, here goes…

    I have already read a book since Jan 1, 2022 that counts for this challenge.
    This cautionary old-fashioned romance by Edith Wharton was one of the first books I finished in the New Year.

    This book will also count for the What’s in a Name Challenge, as a book with a season in its title. It is a classic and typically Edith Wharton.

    This is my first year to participate in this challenge as well.

    February is not even here and I am off to a good start in two challenges. If you are participating in, or would like to join me in either challenge, let me know in the comments below.

    HAPPY READING!

  • TUESDAY TEASER

    The Purple Booker instructs us to copy a few lines from where we are currently reading in order to tempt/tease another reader into reading our book.

    Today’s Teaser comes from N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became, a sci-fi thriller set in New York City.

    I am reading this slowly in order to savor all the heart-in-the-mouth moments.

    Bronca has just caught sight of one of the mysterious white tendrils people who have been “taken over” have emanating from them,

    “Bronca blinks, her attention caught…[Is that] “a loose shoelace? He’s wearing thong sandals, so that can’t be it…It looks like an especially long and wispy hair…at least six inches long…although as Bronca watches, it stretches upward as if trying to touch the crate [the man] is carrying. Nine inches. A foot, just shy of the crate’s wooden wall–and then it stops and contracts.”

    This vivid description its a characteristic of Jemisin’s beautifully worded, horrifying novel.

    Thanks, Evin

  • Stick with Love | #MotivationMonday | Martin Luther King, Jr Day

    Special words for a Special Day

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  • WAKE UP GRATEFUL by Kristi Nelson: A Review

    At the beginning of the new year, I began an informal “study” of gratefulness. My experience with illness and recuperation this past summer has left me with extreme gratefulness for life and living. Each morning, I wake up and say, “Good morning, Lord; thank you for another day.” The mug for my first cup of coffee says, “Renew/Restore/Refresh,” so I repeat the little mantra I’ve made up: ” ‘Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me;’ Restore me to health, please; and refresh my mind to where it can handle anything that might come my way today.” Then, I am ready to start my day. I believe I read in something by Brene Brown that Happiness does not cause gratitude, but gratitude causes happiness.

    Deb Nance, a blogging friend at Readerbuzz, sent me a whole list of books about gratitude available at our local library that she discovered in her recent study of happiness. Here is the first book from that list that I have read in 2022.

    A serious and very helpful book

    Nelson does not allow her reader to wistfully think, “I’ll be grateful when…,” but encourages her to be in the moment and grateful for what she already has. It is a “touching, powerful, real” read because she shares her own story as a survivor of Stage IV cancer. During her search for recovery, she met a Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast who helped found the Network for Grateful Living. This book articulates his teachings, which the author has put into practice in her daily life. Subtitled “The Transforming Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted, this book is full of inspiring quotes, which I often copied into my Quotes Notebook. I also began a gratitude journal during the time I read Wake Up.

    Nelson tells the reader, “Grateful living offers a path and a promise” and explains both. The book is full of practical guidelines and specific practices for the reader to carry out. These practices are: Stop. Look. Go, and each is given for every section of the book. I was spurred to put these practices into action and to continue doing so for some time now.

    To call Wake Up a self-help or self-improvement book is an understatement. it is a narrative by Nelson of her journey to a more positive, happy life, plus ways the reader can obtain this for herself.

    I highly recommend this book.

    Thanks to the Story Reading Ape blog for the use of this meme.