Reading Update

I haven't posted a reading update since August, and the reason, plain and simple, is that I haven't been reading much. Which makes me feel like a slug. I have so much grading every night and often fall asleep just a few pages into whatever I'm reading after I finally clear away all the student writing. I love Writer's Workshop, but someone rescue me from the huge stack to read every single evening.

Anyway, here goes...

Book #59 was a teacher book, The Nine Rights of Every Writer: A Guide for Teachers, by Vicki Spandel. It's mostly of the inspiration variety rather than the "here's what you can do in class" variety. Some very practical tips, though. Recommended.

Book #60: My Sister's Keeper. This was my first Jodi Picoult book and I liked it enough that I tried another one, Second Glance, but that one didn't grab me and I didn't finish it. My Sister's Keeper has a few too many neat coincidences, but overall I was fascinated by the premise and it kept me turning pages.

Book #61 was All American Girl, by Meg Cabot. This one was from my classroom library. It's a fun, quick read and quite popular with my seventh and eighth grade girls.

Books #62 and #63 were murder mysteries by Elizabeth George, In the Presence of the Enemy and For the Sake of Elena. I've commented before how amazing it is that Elizabeth George is American, because her British diction is just about perfect, at least to me it is, and remember that I haven't been in England in - ahem - well, just about twenty years now, but at one point I lived there for four years.

It truly is pitiful to me that I've only read that much since August, but right now I'm reading a couple of good books that perhaps I'll have something to say about: Kids Are Worth It (a reread - this is one of my favorite parenting books) and The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts (And They're All Hard Parts) (which I'm loving). I haven't started a new novel yet but I have a big stack of them waiting for me.