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.”

  • WWW WEDNESDAYS

    img_1384-0WWW Wednesdays originally started by MizB at Daily Rhythm is now hosted by Taking on a World of Words. It answers the following W questions:

    WHAT are you currently reading?

    WHAT have you finished recently?

    WHAT will you read next?

    I will add, WHAT have you watched?

    I am currently reading The Splendid and the Vile shopping-1.jpeg by Erik Larson. I am pretty sure it will have to be returned to the library by May 4th, so I may have to request it again. It has been great, Brazoria County Library System, to have this book for so long, but grading final papers has arrived, so I may have to let someone else have their turn before finishing it.

    I am re-reading Bob Goff’s Everybody Always and finding good advice I totally missed the first time. Also I am still savoring the quotable “pieces” in Mark Nepo’s Things That Join the Earth and the Sea. I have used some of the more poetic sections as the day’s poem (on PWR and Literacy and Me) during April, National Poetry Month.

    I have finished shopping.jpeg  as well as my “I” selection for the 2020 Alphabet Soup Challenge, Robert Inman’s Old Dogs and Children, which will be reviewed on this site shortly. I have also finished blogging friend, Ritu Bhathal”s Marriage Unarranged, which I will also review soon.

    Carla at Carla Loves to Read recommended a new author with whom I have fallen in love,  Kristan Higgins, and I have just finished her Good Luck with That. I am scrambling to meet my goal of reading 20 books recommended by fellow bloggers in 2020.

    I am so far behind on grading (This happens at the end of the semester every time because I am a soft touch when it comes to granting extensions on due dates.) and behind on reading (There simply are not enough hours in the day!) that I have no expectations on what to read next.

    I am adding the category of what I have watched to recommend the film, The Zookeeper’s Wife and the PBS series A World on Fire. Both are outstanding entertainment.

    Until next time, HAPPY READING!

     

  • NATIONAL GREAT POETRY READING DAY: Today’s Poem

    Rae Longest's avatarLiteracy and Me

    Today, April 28th, is National Great Poetry Reading Day during National Poetry Month. To celebrate I read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s great poem, “Song.”

    “Song”

    Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;

    Home-keeping hearts are happiest.

    For those that wander they know not where

    Are full of trouble and full of care;

    To stay at home is best.

    Weary and homesick and distressed,

    They wander east, they wander west,

    And are baffled and beaten and blown about

    By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;

    To stay at home is best.

    Then stay at home, my heart and rest,

    The bird is safest in its nest;

    O’re all that flutter their wings and fly

    A hawk is hovering in the sky;

    To stay at home is best.

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  • It is never too late to shine; never – George Eliot QUOTES FOR WRITERS

    It is never too late to shine; never – George Eliot QUOTES FOR WRITERS

    bridget whelan's avatarBRIDGET WHELAN writer

    It is never too late, no matter how old you get because anytime or any point in your life you can always have a chance to make a difference. You can always make a change for the better no matter what background you derived from. You can always do your best and be all that you can be because you will always be uniquely you. It is why it is always wise to listen to your eternal heart, your eternal instincts, and what it had always strove for and/or to do because really anybody can make a difference not only in their own lives but in the lives of others. It is never too late to shine; never.
    George Eliot

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  • Continuing 2020 ALPHABET CHALLENGE, Author Edition: Letter “H”

    Naoki Higashda, the author I picked for the letter “H” is thirteen years old and autistic. His best-selling memoir, The Reason Why I Jump, is an enlightening, beautifully written and explained peek into the autistic mind. His autism, however, is not what makes this writer special, however; it is his always patient, sometimes poetic style of writing.ALPHABET-SOUP-2020-AUTHOR-EDITION-BE-820

    One of my Advanced Writing students chose this book for her Memoir Project Assignment this semester, and she recommended the book so highly, I bought it to read for April, National Autism Awareness Month. I’m so glad I did.

    I reviewed this book on “Powerful Women Readers” (Put the title in the search box and it will give you a link to “Literacy and Me,” my “other” blog.) earlier this month. If you are searching for an excellent non-fiction read, I highly recommend this one.

  • Letter “G” of the 2020 Alphabet Soup Challenge, author version

    ALPHABET-SOUP-2020-AUTHOR-EDITION-BE-820e

    Elizabeth Gilbert is an author whose books I have always found pleasing. After reading her non-fiction offerings, I was intrigued as to what her novel would be like.Unknown.jpeg

    City of Girls, which deals with life in New York City over several decades, held a special spot in my heart at this time because my  girlfriends’ trip to New York, scheduled for March 19th through 23rd, was cancelled thanks to COVID-19. Sighing as I read about landmarks and all things New York that I wouldn’t be seeing any time soon, I was soon caught up in the story of Vivian who tell of the “one true love of her life.”

    To me, characterization is more important than plot, resolution of conflict, or anything else. To read of the personal growth of a character and the resulting actions (which of course have consequences) that character takes, makes for a fascinating read. Using questions suggested by a fellow blogger many years ago, I’d like to write this review in terms of characterization.

    1. Who was your favorite character? Definitely Aunt Peg, Vivian’s eccentric aunt who owns and runs the Lily Theater, and who has a hit on her hands, along with drama queens and complex social and sexual situations of her off-Broadway “family.”
    2. Who was your second favorite character? The primary character, Vivian is my second favorite character. Surely no one was ever so innocent or has ever undergone such change (and gained in knowledge) as this character was. She reminds me of myself and several other people who “just don’t think.”
    3. Would you want to follow these characters in future books? Because Vivian is an old woman as she begins to tell her story, a sequel would be unlikely, and Aunt Peg would be long deceased if a sequel were to occur, my answer would be no.
    4. What about the relationships between the characters in the book? That is exactly what made this novel a page-turner and a delight. The author never had her characters act out of character or in a way that wasn’t believable based on what the reader had been told about that character’s backstory.  

    During the story, Vivian’s loss of innocence but lack of maturity cause her to “make a personal mistake that results in a professional scandal.” As a critic for The New Yorker wrote, this novel is “by turns flinty, funny, and incandescent.”What Vivian learned about life, in general, was “You don’t have to be a good girl to be a good person.”                                               

  • FRIDAY FIRSTLINERS

    First Line Fridays, hosted by Hoarding Books, encourages us to copy the first line of a book to see if it immediately “grabs” the reader.

    Here is the first few lines of a book I hope to read soon, Bob Goff’s Everybody Always:

    Chapter One, “Creepy People”

    “My friends and I finished what we were doing at the restaurant and took the windowless van back to the airport.”

    While they were in the restaurant, someone broke into the van and stole everything. A few minutes later, when they went to catch their plane, the author “reached into my pockets and turned them inside out. I had nothing…’Man, it all got stolen. My luggage, my wallet, everything.”

    What a predicament to be in. I will be looking forward to finding out how Goff got out of it!

    Have you ever read this author? He blends practical advice with a touch of humor and comes up with an engaging read every time.

     

  • 23 – Love thy neighbor as thyself

    23 – Love thy neighbor as thyself

    Today’s poem

    Jen Payne's avatar

    She worries most, she says
    about salvation
    — afterlife, eternal life —
    rarely this one
    this precious one,
    except about her
    rights and wrongs,
    her delicate walk
    inside the lines;
    says she worries
    about me, too,
    my wayward path,
    its final stop,
    but we agree
    most days
    to disagree,
    find comfort in
    our common path
    of grade school steps
    and wonderings,
    of nature and of art,
    of familiar faces
    that look the same —
    but probably don’t
    now 40 years gone by —
    these are the things
    that just won’t change
    come what may
    and never mind.

    Poem ©2020, Jen Payne, for Rhonda. National #NaPoWriMo. National Poetry Writing Month. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.

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  • TUESDAY TEASER

    Grab the book you’re currently reading and type in a few lines to give us the “flavor” of your book. You may need a few lines to explain the context of those lines, but no spoilers, please. Here’s my “teaser” for 4/21/2020:

    After the first huge attack on London, “Beaverbrook saw grave warning in the September 7 attack. Upon his return to London, he convened an emergency meeting of his top men, his council, and ordered a tectonic change in the structure of the nation’s [England’s] aircraft industry… [he] grew concerned about how his newly built aircraft were stored before being transferred to combat squadrons.”

    Prior to this time, the RAF planes had been stored in private barns, large storage buildings and anywhere they would fit. At this point in WWII Churchill and his cabinet are frantically scurrying making changes and assuming power/measures never before seen to make an effort to win the war in the air.

    This is from Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile, a non-fiction look at the Blitz that reads like a detailed novel. I must say I have not been bored at any point.

  • quarantine ballad

    Sunday’s Poem for National Poetry Month

    Tony Single's avatarunbolt me

    an orange lays on the table
    juicy and fresh
    the apple is feeling rotten
    much less than blessed
    a radio on the wall
    forecasts a storm
    the tv near the window
    declares the day too warm

    two ants near my feet
    fight for a crumb
    a chaffinch takes flight
    escapes the mortal thumb
    life all around me
    is full of small wonders
    evolution’s more than
    stray, successive blunders

    that gives rise to hope
    no, i’m not a mistake
    forged in the heart of stars
    you plus me, we equal awake
    even if sometimes
    i feel like a rotten apple
    i’m an orange soul
    warm beneath the leafy dapple

    by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
    © All rights reserved 2020

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  • 17 – Moonshadow

    17 – Moonshadow

    Jen Payne's avatar

    Goddess eye winks from
    a 6am sky, says
    you’re not ready to see
    what I have to tell you    ,
    hides herself behind
    spring-bare branches,
    laughs at the folly
    of technology which can
    only see her as a white something
    against the grainy dark,
    hardly refelctive at all of
    her otherworldly glow,
    her unseen strength,
    her surprising grace
    this morning while I drink coffee,
    or yesterday above the Sound,
    while I washed dishes,
    gazed unthinking to the south.

    She, a cloud almost
    against the midday sky,
    translucent as if vapor,
    winking then too or
    lid half closed in prayer
    for what she sees before her,
    this sweet, lonely sphere
    grown silent in a shadow
    not of her making,
    but eclipsed instead
    by its sick and dying self.
    Yes, yes, now I am sure
    she was praying…
    for us and for you,
    and for me, too,
    watching her from a window

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