Happy Last Day of July!!!!

Hello everyone :)

Yes today is the last day of July, it is kind of like the last day of summer for me, because once we get into August, I start back into school mode. So yeahhhhhh July, 31st!!!!!!

Sorry for being soooo absent on the blog, in fact I think this is my first entry. Well anyway, good work Kaati on kickin' it and getting some major reading done and posting your book conquests for others to take in. Sorry that I can't respond to any of your blog requests, but I will try to pick up the next book in the Great and Terrible Beauty Series and post some comments about it.

And thank you Miss Bee for the suggestions and the thought provoking questions. Hmmmm when I'm at home, my favorite place to read is my kitchen table, with cereal or a good snack handy. My second favorite place to read is my lazyboy recliner, but then I run the risk of my grandpa syndrome catching up with me and taking a good long snoozer.

I've been teaching ESL this summer to mostly Koreans, a couple of Latin Americans and one man from Africa at UW- Eau Claire, and we're reading Holes, so I've been working a lot with that book which is always a blast because I really like it. For fun, I read Ender's Shadow and I just started the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but our ESL group went to Chicago this last weekend and I forgot the book in the hotel room (oooooooooooooh nooooooooo!) So I will be going to Borders (there's no Barnes and Noble in Eau Claire) to pick up a copy to replace the one I lost from the library. Speaking of libraries, one of best perks of my summer job here is that the university library is just a hop skip and jump away from my room, so a good read is never far away :)

Well, when I finish the Sisterhood I'll definitely post something, and then I'll try out the new one from Great and Terrible Beauty series. Enjoy what is left of summer!

K-Dog.... er... er Atticuspicard.... er...Mr. Krueger;)

Literary vs. Classics

I receive emails from yahoo group called adbooks. They discuss young adult books, it is acutally pretty interesting when I have time to read it. This is their website http://www.adbooks.org/ if anyone is interested.

Anyways, this was in one of the emails...
"I think award winners are literary and classics are popular."--Jonathan Hunt (used by permission)

What do you think of this statement? What would you consider a classic by this definition? Literary?

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

I read this one at home last night. I really liked it!! Yet again, I found myself really liking Dessen's male characters. I kept thinking to myself, "Sa-woooon!!!" (It's from the book.)Actually, I loved all the characters in the book, except the mother, which I guess was supposed to be the point.
So anyways, a synopsis.
The main character, Macy, is facing a grand and boring summer. Her brainiac yet distant boyfriend is going off to "Brain Camp" and she's taking over his super fun job at the library! (truthfully, i would love to work at a library, but not the one in this book, with these girls....jeez!) She's got not one single friend to keep her busy outside of work, which only highlights the fact that she and her mother are having problems. And that she's still reeling from her father's death a year and a half before. Everything changes though, when Macy meets a catoring group, Wish. The five people working for Wish are so different from any Macy has ever met. She starts working with them and before long, her world is changing in a wonderful way...
I loved a lot of the material from this book. The crazy catorers (sounds like so much fun!), the high school age group, Wes's junk metal welded sculptures (I have a cousin who does the same thing), heck, even the thought of running was great in this book! I really want to discuss this book with someone. "Please God I'm begging you" read this book, "okay"???
-Kaati

Another cool reading tool...

I discovered this and thought you all might enjoy it as well. It is a free service that allows you to rate books that you have read by answering a few questions. It recommends books based on these ratings of everyone who has "coded" the book. So the more people that use it the better. Anyways, it looks interesting.

http://www.storycode.com/index.php

Upstate by K. Buckhanon

I went to the Barnes and Nobles in Evansville yesteday and I read this book. I didn't think it was worthy of my five hours at B&N! The book was interesting (it was interesting to see things through a prisoner's perspective) and it wasn't really boring, but it just wasn't exciting enough for me! I guess I just didn't like that it was written in a letter style. I mean, it doesn't really seem as exciting as first person because by the time the person gets to writing a letter, all the real feelings are gone, all the adrenaline and things like that. I don't know! I may need to discuss this with someone....
-Kaati

i made it to the library

I made it to the library in Madisonville on Tuesday!!! YES!!!!

The library in Madisonville doesn't have it's own Young Adults section! Therefore, Kaati couldn't easily find her booklist books... NO!!!

So, I had to resort to just browsing the stacks. I came away with Unspeakable, The Witness, and The Switch all by Sandra Brown, Obsessed by Ted Decker, and my "comfort book" Polgara the Sorceress by David Eddings.

I started with Unspeakable. It must've been good cuz I stayed up until 6 in the morning reading it! I would describe it as a romantic/murder mystery (my favorite genre!). A widowed young mother, Anna Corbett, is trying to keep the family farm away from industrial developers. Jack, a mysterious drifter, shows up at the farm and volunteers himself for the job of a much-needed farmhand. And Carl Herbold, a murderer who just escaped from prison, is headed towards the Corbett farm to have his revenge against Anna's father-in-law. The twist is, Anna was born deaf and is rather unsafe alone in her own house. Jack (a supposed stranger) takes it upon himself to be Anna's protecter. I really liked that this book dealt with a deaf woman. It was educational! It showed me that deaf people process their thoughts differently than hearing people. It wasn't a quick read, but it held my attention the entire night!!

Ten o'clock on Wednesday night and I started The Witness. Again, I did not go to bed until after the sunrise (it's summer, I can keep bad hours if I want!). This was another romantic/murder mystery, like all the Sandra Brown books I read. This one's really hard to explain... Kendall is on the run with her three month old baby and her "husband"(who conviently got amnesia during a car crash in the beginning of the book). You immediately know that she's not married to the man, but you have no clue who he is. Further into the story, you're introduced to the horrific part of human society; a "Brotherhood" much worse than the Klu Klux Klan. This book had so many questions and twists that I just couldn't put it down!!

I also started The Switch last night, but I'm not far enough into it to describe any of it. I hope it's good! The other book I got, Obsessed, is not one that I'll be reading in the middle of the night... the inside cover made it seem really scary... Stephan Friedman is an ordinary man. Until he inheirits a "clue" and an incredible fortune from the grave of a Holocaust survivor. "... a clue that only he and one other man can possibly understand. That man is Roth Braun, a serial killer who has been waiting for Stephan for thirty years. Roth was stopped once before. This time nothing will get in his way." And of course, I probably won't read Polgara straight through... as my "comfort book", I just read through all my favorite parts.... :-)

My mom and I have made plans to spend tomorrow or Sunday at the Barnes and Noble in Evansville, so hopefully I'll be able to get another discussion book to read!!

Well, I best be going!!
Later,
Kaati

Favorite place to read

Where is your favorite place to read this summer? Why?

I'll post mine after some of you share first. If you have a photo feel free to share that too!

Happy reading!

Library Thing

Something cool I discovered this spring. It is a website where you can catalog your own library or keep track of what you have read. I am having fun adding the books I have read over the last couple of years (since about 2002 when I started keeping track consistently of what I had read). If you want a peak at my collectiong her is my link:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/SheReads

Some people use it only for the books they own, while I use it for everything I've read.

Happy reading!!

Keeping the Moon

I finished Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen last week. I loved it! Kaati I think you would love this one as well. Especially since you liked This Lullaby and are living somewhere else for the summer.

Colie (short for Nicole, I think this a really creative nickname for Nicole) used to be overweight along with her mom who started doing aerobics and is not a Richard Simmons type selling work out videos and being healthy. Colie lost a lot of weight, but still feels like an outsider. She is spending the summer with her aunt who is overweight and a little on the wierd side while her mother tours Europe to promote a new video or book or something. I loved Colie's voice and perspective on life.

Has anyone else read this one? I read it while on a short vacation to Niagara Falls, NY and Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. It was so good I couldn't put it down and my husband didn't understand why I wanted to finish it while sitting at our campsite enjoying a fire (he thought I should be talking to him).

has anyone read...

has anyone read anything by Janet Evanovich!?!?! O.M.G. her Stephanie Plum books are hilarious!!!!!!! I love them so much and would like to talk w/ someone about them!!! (but I haven't read Twelve Sharp yet, so if you have, don't bring that up!).

i'm just really in need of some social chat and/or a library.........

Til later!
-Kaati

other books i'd have no problem discussing... Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, A Great and Terrible Beauty/Rebel Angels by Libba Bray, and anything by David and Leigh Eddings.

:-)

i haven't read much!!

well, i've been in kentucky since the 28th, but i haven't made it to the great madisonville library yet.... i did manage to go to the onalaska library sometime in june. they didn't have any of our reading list books!! i was shocked!! they truly do have a small selection! on a better note, i did get to go to a barnes and noble in evansville, id (the BEST b&n i've ever been in.... two stories, a seperate music shop, a starbucks, escalators, lots and lots of comfy chairs.... i was in heaven!!! lol). there i got This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

I read This Lullaby the other night and I really like it!! I'm positive it's the first book I've ever read about that specific age group (just graduated high school-20). And of course, I just love "love" stories, but the fact that the main girl Remy pretended she didn't believe in love at all made it better... she was so stubborn about her beliefs. And the deal with her mother and marriage, yet her mother still had a positive attitude towards love. I just really wanted to hit Remy and knock some sense into her by the end of the book!! Of course, the main male character, Dexter, had my heart the entire book! He was perfect (in my mind!). If anyone else had read this book yet, let me know!!

I started Pride and Prejudice yesterday. I'm only on chapter 5, so I think I'll go sit out in the gorgeous weather! I'll probably be done with this book before I check the blog again, so if you wanna talk about this one too, it's fine by me!!! :-)

Adios! Kaati