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.”
Friday Firstliners come from the first lines of a book one is reading or is about to read. Mine today comes from Cowgirl Smarts by Ellen Reid Smith.
The first paragraph of the introduction:
“When writing about the Wild West, both historians and Hollywood left out the cowgirl. Many historians would have you believe that pioneering women all stayed home close to their tea sets. (It’s my guess that most sold their tea sets in exchange for a good horse.) Dale Evans was riding to the cafe for sandwiches. You can bet that Dale never asked Roy to fetch some sandwiches. Ha! The truth is, that some women cowboyed on on ranches all over the West during the early 1800s. They took on the same chores as men and when they earned their spurs, they were accepted as cowboy equals.”
This has been an enjoyable read, one I have taken my time with, absorbing the advice and wisdom of strong women.
Usually I don’t set goals, but for the year coming up, I am setting a few:
2021 is bound to see me reading even more than 2020.
Continue last year’s goals of reading more non-fiction and poetry.
Work on TBR shelves.
Finish my “Celebration of Color” Challenge. I have only one book to go.
Continue to read everything Susan Vreeland has written.
Read all of Madeline L’Engles books.
Dedicate the month of March to reading about things set in New York City. (My trip arranged for last March was cancelled due to Covid, so I choose to take the trip through reading.)
Read some more Books about Books, some set in libraries or about librarians, or things “bookish.”
Continue The Classics Club
I will probably add some things as I finish some up. It looks to be an interesting year of reading.
The last book I reviewed was for PINK, Backwards and in Heels.
Since then I have read both PURPLE and BROWN.
A friend gifted me this on my Kindle because she knows I am fascinated with cats.
This purple cover introduced me to Klawde, the Evil Alien Warlord Cat. I don’t know which I enjoyed more, the zany adventure, Rob Mommaerts’ illustrations, or Johnny Marciano and Emily Chenoweth’s zippy dialog and lines. I’m sure it was written with kids in mind, but this old(er) woman enjoyed it a great deal.
This was a lovely book of poetry recommended by blogger friend Jee Wan of Hooked on Books.
I have done well on my efforts to read more poetry during 2020, but I have not reviewed most of the collections I’ve read. That said, let me highly recommend this outstanding collection by Rupi Kaur, who has become a phenomenon in her own right. I will review this book of poems here before long.
All that is left to finish this challenge is “a book with the word “color” in its title” and one by an author of color, which I have started. I am beginning to think I will have to reread The Color Purple, making it my third time to read it in addition to seeing the movie. Do any of you know of another book with the word “Color” in the title. PLEASE HELP!!!
Almost everyone has heard of Oskar Schindler, made famous by Steven Spielberg’s film, “Schindler’s List.” This, however sheds new light on his life, for it is written by his wife, Emilie Schindler, and it is her story.
Born in 1907, Emilie Schindler and her husband Oskar helped rescue thousands of Jews from the hands of the Nazis during WWII, but according to Emilie, it was her idea and she who set it in motion.She begins the prologue, thus: “Some of you will generously forgive me if this story is not precisely what you expected, but I trust that, in the end, you will thank me for not lying to you…the facts depict my husband as a hero for the century. This is not true. He was not a hero and neither was I. We only did what we had to do.”
Written at the end of 1994, the book at first seemed a rant against her dead husband. According to this memoir, the marriage was not a happy one. Oskar Schindler was a womanizer, and yet the love of Emilie’s life. Their marriage was full of passion and betrayal, and it was a hard life for her once Oskar had settled her on farmland in Argentina while he was luxuriously wining and dining contacts in Germany and Europe. Emilie states that it was she who kept them going and did so by the hardest work and most sacrifice of the couple.
No, the story was not “precisely what [I] expected,” but it was a fascinating read.
More than one unexpected revelation in this memoir…
Tuesday Teaser, hosted by The Purple Booker, asks that the reader choose a random few sentences in a current read to “tease” someone else into reading the book. My Tuesday Teaser for 12/29/2020 comes from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.
“One conclusion was blatantly clear from my happiness research: everyone from contemporary scientists to ancient philosophers agrees that having strong social bonds is probably the most meaningful contributor to happiness.”
This has been an interesting and enlightening read.
Lately, while reading, I noticed my thoughts often wandered away, even though the story is thrilling and I love the characters. I considered myself a bit tired and prepared a ‘brain-boost’ in form of a cup of coffee.
Picture courtesy of Google.com
Then I started thinking: I think I read somewhere, that the impact of caffeine on our organism is more illusional than physical. Finally, I started to do some research. After all, we writers are mostly working with our brains! And I consider that our ‘most important’ tool for our work – besides the fingers, computers, pen and paper, and a few other things, of course.
I’m not someone who likes to feed myself lab-produced over-the-counter vitamins and supplements. I try to eat balanced and healthy. But I tried to find out, what other nutrients my brain needs to keep focused. That’s what I found:
As the cover on the large print copy of this book advertised, it is “a story of courage and strength.” If anyone is courageous and strong, it is a Girl Scout, or Girl Guide as they were called in England. Their motto was “Be prepared,” which the teachers and students at the China Inland Mission School were not. Unprepared as they were for Japanese occupation after the attack on Pearl Harbor, both teachers and students made the best of a bad situation.
Alternating chapters from the point of view of Nancy, an eight year old student, and her teacher, Miss Elspeth, Gaynor describes the take-over of the school housing and teaching children of missionaries, ambassadors, and other workers in China, then their march to and confinement in an internment camp for six years. It is a story of the hardships the children and teachers faced and their relationships with their captors, some kindly like “Home Run,” and others vengeful and sadistic like” Trouble.” It is the story of the friendship between Nancy (“Plum”) and Joan (“Mouse”), as they become young women while under the watchful eyes of the Japanese soldiers. One of the girls’ many chores was to deliver and pick up books to readers who borrowed them from the “lending library” set up by Ms. Trevellyan, a woman of questionable reputation in the camp. The following highlights the girls’ love of books:
“We sometimes found corners of the pages turned down, and passages marked and underlined. Mrs. Trevellyan didn’t seem to mind, although I thought it spoiled the books.
‘I’d never write in a book,’ I said. ‘It makes the pages look messy.’
‘It does if you look at it one way,’ she clucked as she put some books on the shelves we couldn’t reach. ‘But it also makes them look loved. It means that someone stopped and thought about that sentence, or that paragraph. Books aren’t museum pieces to be admired from a distance. They’re meant to be lived in; messed up a little.’ “
This is a very well-written page-turner that should make us appreciate what we have today and the struggles our relatives went through during WWII. It’s a darned good read!
THIS REMINDED ME SO MUCH OF FUN WITH DICK AND JANE, MY FIRST READER, I GRABBED IT OFF THE INTERNET!
Today’s recommendation is from a very special series starring Alex, a special girl, who thinks about things like telling the truth, forgiveness, prayer, friendship, unselfishness, and obedience. In each book in the series, she faces another facet of her Christian teachings.
Popularity is one of the hardest things to attain, but is having it worth it?
Alex has always had trouble making friends with the “popular girls. “They just don’t seem to like her, and what’s worse, they make fun of her. Her dad’s boss’s daughter is one of these girls, and when Mr. Anderson invited his employee, her dad, and his family to his lake cottage, what promised to be a fun vacation almost turned into a disaster. Alex’s dad encourages her to turn to the fruits of the Spirit, but for a while Alex finds only the pits!
This book should appeal to 7-12 year olds, but it includes something for everyone in Alex’s older sister, younger brother, and understanding parents.
Over the past two years, I have read several that involved Buddhism. Three were told from the point of view of a cat, three involved road trips with a Buddhist monk, and this one gave me a new view of the life of a Buddhist priest/monk.
Seido Oda lived in rural Japan, given to the priesthood as a young boy, who dedicated his life to painting, poetry, and prayer. (Did you notice the order of the words?) Living in a monastery at the foot of majestic mountains, his priestly duties were such that he was an introvert, much more a poet than a “people person.” Unbeknownst to him, he was also judgmental, lacked empathy, and was very private and reserved. Imagine his shock when his supervisor sent him to open a temple in Brooklyn, New York.
Unsuited to his assignment, Seido underwent culture shock as well as depression over the state of his congregation’s spiritual condition. His assistant and housekeeper, Miss Jennifer, with her spiked hair and mini-skirts becomes his unlikely love interest (Yes, Buddhist monks can fall in love.) Mourning a dead fiancee, Miss Jennifer has problems of her own, but at the same time is perhaps the most promising acolyte/believer. All of the secondary characters are well-drawn and appealing for the most part. At times humorous, tragic and covering”a little bit of everything,” Morais teaches us that, “Home is where you find it.”
It is a darned good read! You can probably find it at your local library.
Picture courtesy of Google.com 
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