December 3 - December 9

One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories  by B.J. Novak
I don't remember when I stumbled upon this, but it's been a while since I first heard of it and my interest was piqued. Of course I wanted to read what the actor who played the ambitious-but-useless-hipster-of-pretention character from The Office was actually capable of doing. And my conclusion is DAMN is he capable! This just makes it that much more hilarious that he's actually a fantastic and imaginative writer when his best known acting role is for someone who couldn't write (or do) anything. I don't often read short stories or collections, but I'm glad I made an exception for this! His style varies widely so you get a different experience every time. This was good because I always got something new and exciting, but sometimes I loved what I'd been given that I wanted to get more of it and see how it would work in other ways. Definitely highly recommended though, and especially for people who aren't really interested in reading. These are varying lengths for when you have time, keep you from getting too bored, and cover a huge range of topics to give enough choices that there should be at least one that catches someones eye.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Okay, so it's a little weird that I went for this. I was honestly looking for a short audiobook on youtube that I could listen to while I had a fairly repetitive and lengthy task to accomplish at work. I ended up with my trusty Librivox version of The Art of War. I honestly didn't know what to expect, but the book is exactly what it says it is: a description of wars and how to win them. I definitely did NOT expect it to be so literal.

This is popular as a business-person high-risk-career book, and I'm not really sure why. Sure, some of the advice you can sort of translate to a fast-paced modern-day workplace, but when it starts discussing the best way to organize your carriages and what exact provisions to take to certain climates... well, maybe that's not so applicable anymore.

What irked me most was the startling naivete or ignorance of external factors. There are multiple statements made that I feel are unfair in their expectations and deliberately ignore the uncontrollable aspects of this world. For example, there was an aphorism that was, as closely as I can recall, "Do not make any mistakes and you will win the war." WELL... yeah. Obviously that's the goal. But if mistakes were that simple to avoid, they would never happen! Additional pieces of advice like "Don't let yourself get into an unfavorable position" are, again, really not that helpful and kind of annoyingly simple. No shit, Sun Tzu. If I do everything right, then I'll win. Definitely merits writing that down.

China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
The followup to the first book nominated for a 2017 Goodreads best book award, this book was a delight! I was impressed with the author's ability to parallel the first book comfortably while not just rewriting the same plot in a slightly different manner. The author gave us some issues that I was genuinely surprised by, but not because they weren't believable, but rather that they weren't predictable, which is super appreciated. All in all, very satisfying! I'll have to be patient until I can get the next one!

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic by Meghan Ciana Doidge
I'm pretty sure I picked this book up for free in one of the weekly deals I receive, and it just kind of sat around waiting for a day when I ran out of all my other books. Well, I recently had to really hit the gas on what I was reading to meet my yearly goal and I figured this would be a quick, if not terribly great, read. I was definitely surprised by what I got, but that's probably because my expectations were pretty low. The morals in this book were perfectly gray, and I really appreciated that. There were some interesting new dynamics added to the usual lore characteristics of the supernatural (zombies are super strong and can pretty well take out a vampire? that's a new one to me). I just kind of plodded along with this, and while it was okay, I got to the end and thought "You know, I could just stop here." I wasn't really that excited to continue with these characters. And yet...

Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic by Meghan Ciana Doidge
I still picked up the next book pretty quickly for two main reasons: it was available at the library, and I was trying to meet my reading goal for the year. Not the best motivation, but whatever. It did take me a while to start this one though, too. There were some SERIOUSLY predictable moments that I was deflated by. Some standard cliches used. I really love when authors have the balls to kill a character and make them stay dead. But nope. Anyway, by the very end this actually did surprise me once, but the turn it took made me think that the next book will be radically different from what we've had... which doesn't really excite me. It's probably for the best, since what I've had hasn't really excited me either, but I have no idea if I'll ever actually continue this series. Maybe next December when I hit crunch time again.

November 1 - 7

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Maaaaaan, I have been so unexcited by this book. A cancer book. With a character named "Hazel Grace." PUKE. A character who is 16 and gets into cars with boys who have been checking her out blatantly all evening and who she just met ten seconds ago. Man, that is... stupid. Maybe she doesn't care about death because she expects to die, but ugh. Also, calling the boy character GUS? YUUUUCK. Augustus is good; Gus is horrid.

I like it more than I thought I would, and there have been a few moments that made me chuckle a bit or smile. Still though, ugh. I'm not super feeling this book. I feel like I should read it though, since it is / was so popular with my students. I should try to understand why.

---

Finished it, and ugh. Personally, I did not like this book. I think I just do not like John Green. He makes me think of Nicholas Sparks, whose books I also tend not to like. The protagonists feel really fake and lofty, and I also just hate their names. The plotline of the jerk author disappointed me in so many ways. It just felt... poorly handled. I'd be fine with him being a jerk, but the reactions of the girl to him later on were so awful, I just did not like it. Not to mention that the snippets from his imagined book grated on me with the feeling that they were trying to be really deep by being really vague and insisting that the reader knows so much less than the author. In a word: hipster.

However. I can see how so many younger readers loved this book. Since they have most likely not read the breadth that I have, this could very well have been the first time they encountered such devices. A book stopping midsentence? A character who actually dies? Unfair life? A brilliant author who's actually a horrible person? WOW! These would probably be quite a change from a lot of other popular Y.A. books that are out there (I know because I read them). I have read a lot in my lifetime, however. And so this does not bring to light new things for me as it does for readers who have not yet read as much, regardless of their age. And so, I can see the value of having this book available for my students, as it can expose them to a somewhat different style for the first time in a very accessible and fairly easy way. 

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Well, like I said, I read this again for Shakespeare class and man, I love it! I feel like I missed so much! I'll probably feel like this every time I read one of his plays, but man, I feel like I could just go on and on and ON about all the interesting things in this book! I won't do that here, though. I'll save it for my final project on Shakespearean conspiracies!

October 25 - 31

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld
I FINALLY FINISHED THIS! And you know, I'm okay with the ending. I didn't think it was spectacular or anything, to either of the endings, but it was certainly okay. What I really liked best about this book was the interesting duality of getting two books in one. If you got sucked in to the one that "Darcy" wrote for her NaNoWriMo (which is about to start for real!!) you would be disappointed by the next chapter when she's talking with Imogen about writing the ending and what things happen. It's weird to read a book where one character is spoiling the plot of another book for you all the way through. It's not all explicit, but when you hear things like "I killed one of my favorite characters" you're gut wrenches and you're dreading who it will be all the way through the next chapter. 

I would be REALLY interested in seeing how people interpreted this book or even just felt about it if they read it differently than just straight through from page 1 to 499. For example, what if they read the Lizzie story first? They would lose the bit of suspense from when Darcy is worried about writing the ending because they'd know what she got. The spoilers would not longer be spoilers. If they read the Darcy story first, then they'd know more or less exactly what to expect when reading the Lizzie story. It's neat to have so many different ways to read this book (these two, or even three?! books). 

Also, out of curiosity... how many words is the Lizzie story? If it's supposed to be for NaNoWriMo, then it should be probably 50-60,000 words. I'm curious as to what the count would actually be. 

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
This book is solidly okay. It's kind of intriguing, but it's nothing that I haven't heard before. Similar to a young adult version of George Orwell's 1984. Many people have made that comparison, but that's because it's pretty accurate. I'm at least happy with the ending because it's open and does not give the reader exactly what might be wanted. I really appreciate that. The language was awesome, and there were lots of lines that I wrote little hearts next too, but I'm still just sort of feeling meh about this one. I don't know that it'll be one I remember forever.

Also, the pictures were gross and seemed unnecessary. Like really? The maggots had to explode out of the dead rat's stomach? No, I didn't need that. It was really distracting from the book itself because I'd keep thinking "Ugh, DON'T LOOK AT IT..." and having to position my hand so that it wasn't touching that part of the page when I was holding the book. YUCK.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare
I've read this before several times, but as I am reading it again I wanted to include it in here. I especially wanted to do so because of how much more I'm picking up in this play than any other time I've read it. In the very first scene, for example, one of the captains raves about how Macbeth scorned Fate as he plowed through a field of enemies and managed to win the day and survive as well. Yet the entire book is a question of Fate and whether Macbeth is subject to Fate or if he made his own Fate. So interesting! Also, fear is a huge thing. The word fear is in here in so many different situations. I love it! Right after they carry out their plot, the randomly exclaim "Hark!" and I only now realize that's them being startled at some small noise, like an owl's hooting or the wind, because of their guilty consciences! Awesome.

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow
I don't know why I had it in my mind that this is a young adult book, because after reading the first 100 or so pages, I definitely don't think it is anymore. I'm having some trouble with this one, and I'm honestly thinking of just stopping for now. Maybe I'll read it another time, but I don't think right now is that time. It's strange because the writing itself is interesting and beautiful a lot of the time, but the plot the words talk about, the characters... man, I just don't care. And that's not a great feeling to have about a book. I have others waiting right now, and I don't think I'm going to bother with this at the moment. I want my reading to be fun!

Bomb! The race to build--and steal-- the world's most dangerous weapon by Steve Sheinkin
WOW, this book is really blowing me away. Haha! Get it? Anyway. It's amazing that Steven Sheinkin is able to write about the very sciency technical side of splitting atoms and fission and all these very high-level sciency things and not only make it understandable to the average person, but interesting! I found myself sucked right in. I love the different people whose perspectives he writes from because they come from all walks of life. Hearing from the side of the Soviet Union and actual KGB spies in America is super cool. Hearing about how Albert Einstein himself was like "Oh no, this is bad!" and wrote letters to the president is super cool. I'm not very far in yet (maybe about 60 pages) but it's awesome! I love the way it looks too. The chapter headings and font and even just the weight and feel of the book are all excellent. I can see why this won a nonfiction award! I can also totally imagine my kids getting into this book.

October 18 - 24

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
I can't believe how much I'm actually enjoying this! My experience in the past with A Room of One's Own had me cursing the name of Virginia Woolf, and when I saw her name on one of my class's reading lists, I groaned and moaned like a... person who doesn't like Virginia Woolf. This second part, Time Passes, was kind of difficult to get through since it's narrating a house changing over years of being empty. It was surprisingly awkward since there was no real narrator and no characters. Just shadows and dust. Apparently, Woolf herself didn't even know what to do with that section and was happy anybody even liked it. Well, I plowed through it. I actually just finished the book, and what has stuck with me most throughout the whole thing is the interaction of characters with isolation, loneliness, and being alone. They are not considered to be all the same thing in this novel, and this is probably what I'm going to focus my thesis on for this year. Last time I had to read Woolf, I wouldn't even write the 5-page paper assigned, which was the first time I had ever refused to do an assignment and something that has never happened since. Now, I'm planning to write a 20+ page paper on her, and feel like I might even blow past that page length. How things have changed.

Teaching Hope by the Freedom Writer Teachers & Erin Gruwell
You know, I finally finished this, and it's a good thing. I was getting really tired of it for some reason. I've read it in sections over the course of a month or so now for my philosophy of education class, and man, it just dragged on for me. I think my issue was that it was organized by category of the story, so I would be bombarded with sixty pages of depressing stories about teaching at once. Then another sixty pages of great moments in teaching. Then another sixty about getting ready to teach. The stories sort of lost their impact when read en masse like that, and I started being unfazed and even annoyed with it by the end. (See this reflection on the final chapter where I'm straight-up annoyed.) Also in that link are my reflections on each section, which is why I hadn't been including it in these; I've already been writing about it.

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
I'm only 58 pages in to this book, and yet also 20 chapters! It's one of those books. It's intriguing, though. I'm feeling aspects of other books creeping into it, which is a little unimpressive, but I'm still curious to see where this next dystopian-based book heads. To the moon, apparently. (Also, how is it possible that the Google Chrome dictionary doesn't have dystopian in it?)

King Lear by William Shakespeare
You know, I'm pretty unimpressed with this one. It could be because we're reading it right after Othello which is probably my favorite Shakespeare play, but King Lear is just sort of boring to me. He's a father who makes his kids play the "who loves me most" game until they get what they want, get sick of him, and decide to kill him. Now, I think their decision to kill him is disturbingly extreme and sudden, but he's also been super childish in his dealings with them (not to mention sort of an idiot, as is expected from our tragic figure of the play's title). Oddly enough, I kept feeling like I had read this already and then I realized it's because Mr. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse is just as needy and childish towards Mrs. Ramsay (and basically every other woman in the novel).

February 22 - 28

What a conveniently square month February is: exactly four weeks with a nice start on Sunday.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
I admit, I didn't do a lot of reading this week. Only about 50 pages of this one book. I'm not sure why. Perhaps the marathon of reading for classes has worn me out a bit at this point in the year. This book is also not terribly interesting... but I'll get through it.

February 15 - 21

Break this week! And a book I've had on hold for a while had the extreme good fortune to become available this week, while I actually had time to read it!

The Young Elites by Marie Lu
This is the book I had been waiting for. It was a nice splash of YA in the midst of my 400-level English kind of readings. I powered through it in a night, and was surprised by it. It has the pretty standard lines of YA through it, but there were some aspects that had me go, "Oh! That's new!" The protagonist was abused horribly as a young girl, which isn't terribly surprising. However, she's also pretty much established as a horrifying murderer, and her magic is powered by hate and fear, both her own and others'. THAT'S pretty... grisly, I suppose, for a nice little young-adult novel. But definitely the most surprising part---

 **HUGE SPOILERS** 

was that the prince, the man they were all fighting to put back in power, the love interest even, DIES. And not in any way that lets you imagine, "Oh, maybe he's not really dead and he's just pretending for the sake of the duel!" No. This guy is gutted with a sword straight through his body, guts hanging out and everything. And not only that, but it's the main girl's fault. She attacked him in a blind terror and then his opponent totally gutted him. So... she's not doing so hot in this novel. There was an epilogue in another country though, that suggested we might see him reanimated like a zombie, albeit with some unknown yet creepy complications...I think we'll see....


Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Well, this one was for school. I thought I would really hate it, and I kind of did for a while. As I pushed through, I developed a better understanding of it though. This book is an interesting hybrid told in an unusual way. The narrator is the friend of a poet who was murdered. The friend takes it upon himself to provide explanatory notes to his friend's poem so that he can publish it posthumously. However, the narrator just turns everything into a story about his homeland and his king there, like some kind of absurdly patriotic guy who's so upset that his friend didn't write the poem about the stories the narrator told him about his homeland that he's using the poem and established author's fame to hijack it and tell his own story.

That's all true. However, it makes a little more sense when you learn through the process of the egotistical narrator's notes that

**HUGE SPOILERS**

(well, maybe not... but still.)

he's actually the king he knows so much about. It becomes obvious pretty early on, but he never actually gets to the point of expressly admitting it until the last twenty pages or so, when he finally shifts from "The king thought this" to "I couldn't believe how..." (shifts from a clearly false third-person to a more honest first-person). The ending was... odd. The parallel stories were interestingly woven though, and by the end I had a more invested interest and respect for the narrator, the story, and the actual author, Nabokov, for weaving such contrasting threads into a complementary tapestry.


The Gate Thief by Orson Scott Card
I didn't actually get much farther in this, but I did listen to some of it so I wanted to include it in here. Clearly, as you can tell from the VOLUMES I had to say about the other two books this week, I had a lot of other things on my mind. :)

December 28 - January 3

It's a new year!
And yet, I managed to cram in one last book before it ended. I'm going to tag this only with 2014 because I did read this last book in 2014.

Teaching Will by Mel Ryane
There is a story behind this book. I entered a giveaway contest for it on Goodreads probably sometime in early November 2014. Totally forgot about it. Never heard from it again. Then one day I stopped to pick up the mail and had an unexpected pacakge, containing a signed copy of the book and a letter saying I had won the contest! AWESOME?! So I sat down in read it in two days (although a span of three because one day in the middle I couldn't read because of other obligations). It was absolutely wonderful!
Now to the actual book. I think the fact that I plowed through it in just two days says a lot. It's easy to read, and it keeps you wanting to read. The pacing is done really well, and you get through a year of time in just a couple hundred pages. There's always something new happening, some new issue arising that has you feeling right there with the author, "Oh no, what to do about this?!" Ryane captured the craziness and struggles of teaching very well, and has so many of the same issues as all early teachers do, and also ended up at the same conclusion: it was hell, and there's no way I'd give it up. Despite the struggles, Ryane ends the book mentioning her next year with a new group. This book was insightful and terribly funny, with just the right amount of painful cringing moments. I highly suggest it, especially to any other teachers who will recognize themselves in so many moments of Ryane's early struggles, despite their subject area.