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.”
Today kickstarts The Week Before Blogmas – an event spanning 7 days from Nov 24 to Nov 30, where bloggers from various niches join you in prepping for Blogmas!
It’s D here and today Blogmas is exactly what we’re going to be talking about! Whatever is Blogmas but more importantly, why should you give it a go?
Blogmas is essentially Christmas in the blogosphere. Blogmas refers to a series of posts throughout the month of December in the days leading to Christmas. Most bloggers postevery day for 25 consecutive days while some go all out and post till December 31 (31 days)!
Blogmas often comprises posts including but not limited to Christmas themes and can be on varying ideas and in various formats. They can be lifestyle posts, entertainment writes, poems and stories, bookish, or even art!
Every other month I draw the name of a classic from a bowl and read that book in the next 60 days. There are other versions of The Classics Club on other blogs involving spinners, formal lists, and other exciting features.
For the October/November session, I drew the name of Don Quixote. (See post concerning my original dismay on choosing this book.) I finished it about a week ago, listening an audiobook version supplied by Hoopla. Cervantes wrote this seminal novel, often hailed as the prototype of the novel, and probably the first European novel. It is a book that contains a quest, or rather a series of misadventures.
The central character, Alonso Quixano, of noble birth, has such a passion for chivalry and especially books about it, that it drives him mad. He adopts the name of Don Quixote and the manners and values of a knight. As he stumbles and bumbles through the countryside seeking adventures and people to help or humble and bring to justice, he and his loyal squire, Sancho Panza philosophize about life as it should be, not as it is (reality). The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a glorious quest, and ourselves as noble individuals with the highest desires of helping others.
I FINALLY read (listened to) this classic novel.
The reader learns from Cervantes that “individuals can be right while society is wrong.” It discusses the concept of madness: “…who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams–this may be madness.” It discusses the passion and “madness” one can own for books and ideas. “There is no book so bad…that it does not have something good in it.”
Don Quixote is also supposed to be humorous, and often the character of Sancho Panza is. I found it dry, silly, and humorless by today’s standards. Perhaps readers were more easily amused than in Cervantes’ day.
I am not sorry I read the book, now I can “check off the box;” however, I would never label it a “darned good read.”
I need a friend, one who has a taste for urban fantasy and is a fan of NYC. Seriously, I have bought a signed copy of N.K Jemisin’s The City We Became, and need to MAKE time to read it. I first read this author in the Broken Earth series a few years ago when I bought the trilogy after its recommendation by blogging friend Sarah of Brainfluff. As a summer project, My Better Half and I took turns reading it aloud to each other. When fall schedules made an appearance again, we started Book Two, but soon he had less time to read than did I, so with his permission, I continued to read the book to the end, finishing my mid-semester. I put off reading Book Three for almost two years, making several false starts before finally finishing the trilogy during the Christmas Holidays that year.
The author is simply amazing, and when I saw that a Houston bookstore was offering a signed bookplate and a copy of the book as part of their online conversation with Jemisin, I jumped at the opportunity. So, now I have a copy of the book but do not have the self-discipline to begin the book and not be distracted by finishing library books first, finishing books for challenges first, etc. This is a book I want to read for myself, but I need someone to keep me accountable to reading x number of pages or chapters per day or week to check in with to assure that I stick to a schedule.
This “latest” promises to be a fabulous read!
Who will read this book with me and discuss it after we finish. I am open to how much or little we read at a time and how often we check in to keep each other updated on whether we are on track?
Here are its opening lines:
“PROLOGUE
See, What Happened Was
I sing the city.
F***ing city. I stand on the rooftop of a building I don’t live in and spread my arms and tighten my middle and yell nonsense ululations at the construction site that blocks my view. I’m really singing to the cityscape beyond. The city’ll figure it out.”
The book is described as “Glorious” on the cover by Neil Gaiman. It was a New York Times Bestseller and Jemisin is a four-time Hugo award-winning author. Interested yet? This 2020 publication is the first in The Great Cities Trilogy, but you don’t have to commit to all three books–just this one.
Anybody interested? Say so in the comments/reply box below.
Most of the books I mentioned on my Nonfiction November posts were books I had already read, but the Third Week, we were asked to list several books that might make us “experts” on a given subject. The subject I chose was “Gratitude.” This is an account of my progress on adding nonfiction books to my TBR shelves.
This year finds me more a reader of nonfiction than ever before in my life. Nonfiction November and your posts have given me suggestions for more nonfiction books I want to read in 2022.
Let’s deal with the books on week 3 that I thought would teach me about “gratitude.”
I am asking for The Little Book of Gratitude for Christmas. Would somebody put a bug in My Better Half’s ear, please?
Kaplan’s Gratitude Diaries is coming on interlibrary loan from a library in Houston.
I am going to search TONIGHT for a library that has or can get for me: Thanks! How the Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier and Works of Gratitude: Mind, Body and Soul.
I asked for recommendations for books on gratitude on that 3rd week post, and my “Little Sister,” Deb Nance of Readerbuzz came through for me. She listed four books that are available in our Alvin library and a long list of other books from her study of Happiness that have gratitude as part of their titles. These are books she has already read and enjoyed–an invaluable resource.
I wish Deb and I looked as good as these two do as we discuss books at one of our houses.
I even printed out the two lists and will take them with me on my trips to the libraries I plan to make this coming week. I had hoped to do this gratitude reading during December, and it l looks like things are right on schedule.
What books have you added to your TBR this month? Hopefully some nonfiction to celebrate Nonfiction November. This has been a “growth experience” for me and has changed my attitude toward reading nonfiction altogether.
Thanks, Evin.
This week we are asked to feature a nonfiction book that seems stranger than something from an author’s imagination.
A book that “almost didn’t seem real,” which was one of our book club selections, was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.
How this could be nonfiction is unbelievable to me.
The hero of this story goes through such physical and mental torment and torture that it makes the reader’s jaw drop to know he survived. Overcoming obstacles always makes a good story, but such massive, real ones makes this book my choice for nonfiction that “almost doesn’t seem real.”
I’ve enjoyed Nonfiction November so far. Here’s hoping I’ll finish some of the nonfiction books on my TBR shelves.Thanks, Evin for the sign off
MY AUTHOR-FRIEND, ALDA P. DOBBS’S BOOK IS A BLUEBONNET FINALIST
WHAT EXCITING NEWS! Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna has made the short list/master list for the prestigious Bluebonnet Award. Librarians and teachers across the state nominated worthy books this past year, and the candidates have been whittled down to the ones pictured above. Then, children all over the state (who have read the required amount of nominees) will vote on the Bluebonnet Book for 2021.
An excellent retelling of Alda’s grandmother’s experiences as a young girl during the hard times of the Texas Revolution.
A man was being tailgated by a woman. The light turns yellow, and he slams on his brakes, resulting in her rear-ending him. She honks, yells, and males rude gestures, while keeping up a stream of bad language. A nearby police car sees the whole thing.
Getting out of the police car, the cop arrests her, takes her to the station house, searches her, fingerprints her, and puts her in a cell. Later, he returns, issues her a ticket for following too close, hands her her personal effects, and apologizes for his mistake. “When we saw your actions at the scene of the accident, and also saw the WWJD bumper sticker, the Choose Life license plate frame, the Follow Me To Sunday school window decal, and the fish symbol on the trunk…we assumed you had stolen the car! (Paraphrased from John Ortberg’s When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box)
ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. Are you just a professing Christian or a practicing one?
It’s not often I get to kill two birds with one stone, but one came my way this week.
My Page Turners Book Club, which meets at the Freeman library in Houston selected a classic for a good, old-fashioned winter read.I love Edith Wharton but somehow never read this one.
The cover even looks appropriately wintery for our December book club selection for the Page Turners. And, since December 1st is the day to draw a classic title from the jar for that purpose, instead, I will substitute this classic, killing two birds with one stone.
What a clever girl, right? LOL
Thanks to google for the underline.
RAE
This meme was started by a blog I follow, and I first found it on Carla Loves Books.
I told Carla that I needed to do a Stacking the Shelves post soon, so here it is.
These books came in/showed up recently.
The green book in the middle was a book club selection I really enjoyed, and Ann More was a new author to me. Sadly, I missed the meeting to discuss it last night, feeling bad after a late afternoon CT scan yesterday, but Deb Nance of Readerbuzz brought me a delicious chunk of cake served at the book club meeting. The book directly below with the child in the center of a sun symbol is a book of Advent devotions which was in books discarded and donated by a neighbor to my LFL, and I am going to start it on December first. God’s Promises is also a devotional book I have already begun and was a “sickie present”/hand-me-down from a friend. It features brief passages from some of my favorite inspirational writers along with verses from scripture.
Across the top, left to right, is a novel from Half-Price Books by Edith Wharton, one of my favorite authors from grad school days; a novel that I ordered on line after reading a review of it on a blog, The Dependents; Book Girl, a gift from friend, Debbie Nance; and a non-fiction book (red) I bought from the Library League at my local library.
With these and my overflowing TBR shelves, I have plenty to keep me busy!
The idea is to copy a sentence or two where you are reading in your current read in hopes of teasing someone else to read the same book.I’m reading as fast as I can to finish my Third Tuesday Book Club selection by TONIGHT. We are having our first in-person meeting in a long time.
Today’s Tuesday Teaser comes from our November selection, Gracelin O’Malley, first book in a trilogy, by Ann Moore. The story takes place in the great potato famine in Ireland. Our character, Abban is taking a cart loaded with starving, dying men from Gracelin’s home on the orders of her cruel husband. .Gracelin had offered the manor’s tenants food and medical care during her husband’s absence. Now Abban must find another place of refuge for the dying men.
“The hour of midnight had come and gone, the wind had blown itself out, and the snow fell lightly again. He felt alone in the world, and was heartened to see , out in the bog, the flickering light of camp-fires shielded by the low, rough huts people had dug to make temporary shelter. So many had died, but there were others staying alive just as he was–day by day, night by night.”
I remember as a young girl my father telling me his people had come to America from Ireland during the great potato famine because there were no jobs to be had and very little food to eat. This book brings the conditions they must have lived through to life and so far is a darned good read.
powerfulwomenreaders 