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.”

  • SATURDAY MORNING FOR KIDS ON SUNDAY

    Just like the Saturday mornings during the 50s and 60s, when I was a kid, when cartoons were the only programming on TV, this post is aimed at kids. I’m favoring one of my personal favorite writers and illustrators, Bill Peet.

    Doofus the Dragon finds himself in a tight spot, hounded by the knights and citizens of a kingdom he has wandered into. Not knowing that he is a friendly dragon, the king has literally placed a bounty on his head, wanting to mount it on the castle wall, and the hunt is on. In his attempts to flee, Doofus meets a farmer boy and his parents who care for him in return for Doofus’s assistance on the farm. With his spectacular dragon strength, Doofus hauls rocks, harvests hay, and generally helps out.

    One day the king arrives with the hundred golden quadruples, the reward offered for the dragon’s head, telling the boy and his parents to stand aside in spite of their protests that Doofus is “as tame as a kitten…”and even sleeps with the boy each night. Will the boy come up with a compromise that will save Doofus’s head? Read this Scholastic publication and find out.

  • #istandwithfauci

    #istandwithfauci

  • BACK TO POETRY

    In April, National Poetry Month, I read poetry daily, and like all times when I read poetry, I thought to myself, “I ought to read poetry more often.” In an effort to do just that, and to add to the 20 books recommended by fellow bloggers I set for a goal in 2020, I finished a poetry collection yesterday.

    Kaur’s unusual and sometimes disquieting poetry is something a bit out of my comfort zone, but am I ever glad I bought this one to read! It certainly kept my attention as the poems connected and transitioned into each other. Also, in the middle of the book, there was a poetically worded prose section which told a story, a convicting, disturbing story.

    The entire book is one the reader experiences, not just reads. The poet’s thoughts and talents are outstanding, and I will be on the lookout for other collections by her, for sure. A shout-out to blogging friend, Khyati Gautam for this recommendation.

  • “The Challenge of Lifelong Learning”

    Rae Longest's avatarLiteracy and Me

    “Many people give up on learning after they leave school because thirteen or twenty years of extrinsically motivated education is still a source of unpleasant memories. Their attention has been manipulated long enough from the outside by textbooks and teachers, and they have counted graduation as the first day of freedom.

    But a person who forgoes the use of his symbolic skills his never really free. His thinking will be directed by the opinions of his neighbors, by the editorials in the paper and by the appeals of television. He will be at the mercy of “experts.” Ideally the end of an extrinsically applied education should be the start of an education that is motivated intrinsically. At that point the goal of studying is no longer to make the grade, earn a diploma and find a good job. Rather, it is to understand what is happening around one, to develop…

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  • ADJUSTING MY THINKING

    When I was in sixth grade, my teacher impressed on me that once you started reading a book, you had a “moral obligation” to finish it. One evening, after I was married, I was struggling to finish a 500 page book I was definitely not enjoying. My Better Half advised me to “Go ahead and quit!” When I told him I had to finish it, he said,” There are too many good books ‘out there’ to waste your time on one you don’t like.” Those words of wisdom led to my fifty page rule: If an author doesn’t capture my attention in the first fifty pages, I can categorize it a DNF (did not finish) and toss it aside.

    This year (2020) I began the 2020 Alphabet Challenge, Author Edition

    I had successfully completed (in a year) the same challenge, only the Titles Edition in 2019, that I thought this one would be a piece of cake. Sadly, I have completed “M” and am so “done.” Perhaps I shall resurrect the rest of this challenge in 2021, but for now, I am bidding it farewell. It was a lot of fun, but for now, I’ll take a break. The thing that encouraged me to take this step is that more than one of you mentioned on your blog or a reply to one of our posts that sometimes you didn’t finish a challenge, that reading the books you chose for the challenge was enough, that the challenge had “served its purpose.” Thank you, sweet blogging friends, for letting me off the hook. Knowing me, I will finish the challenge at a later date, but for now I am set free to adopt another challenge if I feel like it.

    Keep on reading!

  • too cool

    too cool

    Annette Rochelle Aben's avatarAnnette Rochelle Aben

    The two girls giggled

    Slurping on the popsicles

    That were melting fast

    Summer days are like that too

    We giggle, they melt away

    ©2020 Annette Rochelle Aben

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  • TOP TEN TUESDAY

    This meme is sponsored by That Artsy Reader Girl where she gives a prompt for making a top ten list on different subjects. Today’s theme is “Top Ten Authors I’ve Read the Most Books by. Here is my list:

    5 or 6 books

    1. Anna Quindlen
    2. Erik Larson
    3. Stephen King

    4 books

    1. Alice Hoffman
    2. Bill Bryson
    3. John Green

    3 books

    1. Susan Vreeland
    2. Sue Monk Kidd
    3. Max Lucado
    4. Benjamin Saenz

    All of these writers have given me hours of reading enjoyment.

  • Goodbye to an Old Friend

    Where the book came from or how I came to own it is a mystery to me. My first memory of it was when I was teaching 7th graders back in the early 70s. I had read the book of short stories titled Read with Me myself and had read Daymon Runyans “Johnny One Eye” aloud to the kids after lunch, making some of the football boys tear up and put their heads down on the desk.

    I then put the book in my classroom library where many students checked it out and took it home, only to return it a little worse for the wear. (Note old-fashioned envelope pocket that the “check out card” was placed in.)

    Recently I dug it out of the back of the office closet and said to myself, “It’s time.” However, first I read a few of the stories I hadn’t read yet before placing it first on the classroom bookshelf and later on a shelf to be dealt with “later. However, its deplorable condition (not to mention its smell) called for stern measures.

    This book brought good literature and much pleasure to both me and my students. Farewell, old friend, you’ve done your job and done it well.

  • 2020 CHALLENGES UPDATE

    I tried to keep my challenges for 2020 simple, never dreaming that the year would become anything but simple.

    Basically, I had two goals: whittle down my TBRs and Dollycas’s 2020 Alphabet Soup Challenge. I have just completed the author whose name begins with “M,”so I guess I am on track since M is sort of half way through the alphabet. Recently I photographed myself with what remained of several shelves of TBRs (Search Wednesday To-Dos to see the pile), which I had intended to show how terribly many books I had left to read. Most comments on that pile, however, said it was “manageable” and no big deal, so I am encouraged that maybe I’m doing ok on that goal as well!

    Another goal I set for 2020 was to read 20 books recommended by other bloggers in 2020, and since I have read ten books, again, I am right on schedule!

    I feel so good about being “up to date” on accomplishing my goals that I am going back to a 2019 goal and reading a Book about Books, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. Has anyone else read it? I have just begun, so is it worth investing my valuable reading time in? I am also reading the third book in a series I have enjoyed immensely, Breakfast with Buddha, Lunch with Buddha, and Dinner with Buddha. It has been an enlightening reading experience, has inspired me to download some guided meditation materials, and given me a whole new outlook on how to live one’s life slowly, enjoying being “in the moment” every moment. All this and following a humorous, fun, darned good story. The “action” is picking up in the third book, and I can hardly wait to get back to it.

    By the middle of July I will have to get back on the challenge track and re-start the drive to accomplish my 2020 goals. In the meantime, I am enjoying my little “break” from reading for goals and enjoying whatever sendipitous reading experiences come my way.

  • Three Strange Books That I Found in My TBR Pile during These Strange COVID Times

    I have spent my time in isolation moving things around, getting rid of things, and reading. Three books I found in my TBR pile are ones which I started or continued reading this week.

    Ok, so I don’t know how to photograph a book and turn the image around. Sigh…I have so much to learn. Thanks to Deb Nance of Readerbuzz for offering to help me out.

    In the meantime, I am continuing to read Nepo’s book, but it is so rich (a collection of poems, musings, and dreams) that one section a day is all I have managed. It is one of those books that must be chewed, swallowed and then digested.

    I haven’t started Conversations yet, but it sure does look promising. I didn’t even know I had the book and have no idea where it came from!

    The Bedside Baccalaureate was a real find. It offers mini-lesson courses as a review of things you learned while taking your BA or BS, or some courses you never had time for. I have completed a mini-course on The Armory Show (in NY, Chicago and Boston from the Art History section, and I am currently trying to fill in the ignorance in my understanding of the Internet with another section. This book has great future possibilities.

    What have you read during the “lockdown” that you might not have read otherwise? Look at your TBRs and get busy.