Waiting…with clocks.

What a wonderful feeling to know when the anticipation for something has an end-date in sight!

How much cooler is it when you can have a countdown clock to show you exactly how long you have to wait?

I thought this when I saw this Hunger Games site - an elaborate countdown to the release of the movie. (Be prepared to jump a little when it gets started…there’s a delay.)   You can get your ID card there and follow along at your District’s Facebook pages as the tributes are chosen, mayors are elected, and we all wait until the movie comes out.

Yep, I’m psyched. For sure. But it’s old news that it’s coming and when and I still have 73 days to WAIT.

So I am excited to have something else to wait for also.

The release of Insurgent, the sequel to Veronica Roth’s Divergent.

Oh, I have a long time to wait, but I love that HarperTeen decided to release a clock so I know EXACTLY how long I have to wait.

It’s good to know I won’t have to wait forever…

Only 111 days, 2 hours, 5 minutes…

(Check out the awesome countdown widget  here. I would embed it here, but it doesn’t work on my site…)

Reading Challenge 2012

I resolved last January to read 111 books by the end of the year. It seemed completely reasonable, especially since I planned to count what my son and I read together.

I even signed up for the GoodReads challenge to keep track of my reading.

Except when I checked last week, I was disappointed to see I’d somehow only read 82 books on what I believed was my best reading year ever.

In looking at my list, I *know* there are holes in it. I went for weeks here and there without logging what I’d read.

So I’m resolving to do this right this time. And the goal is 112 books in 2012. I’m adding a few additional challenges in there – reading Anna Karenina, reading the Printz award books, as well as the continued reading for myself and with my son.

What are your reading goals for this year?

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

“Is it okay to hate a dead kid? Even if I loved him once? Even if he was my best friend? Is it okay to hate him for being dead?”

These words are on the first page of this book and I couldn’t help but wonder why in the world Vera, our protagonist, would hate Charlie so much. Something has clearly gone very wrong between them before the book begins, but what hooked me even more is the fact that she lets on to the reader that she knows more about what happened to Charlie than she’s telling her father or anyone else in the story for that matter.

I love how the narrator shifts sometimes from chapter to chapter. Most of the time it is Vera telling the story, but occasionally her dad jumps in and ends his thoughts with flowcharts, Charlie (who’s apparently observing all of this and trying to get her to speak up), and even the Pagoda (an actual PLACE) weigh in with more information to augment Vera’s story.

I understand why Vera just wants to lay low, why she wants to avoid confrontation, why she wants to stay out of the way of the scary kids who are in her hallways with her in high school (she’s finishing up her senior year). It doesn’t change the fact that I spend most of the book urging her to stand up and shout to the mountain tops (or at least tell ONE person who can do something) about what has happened…

Oh? You want to know what Vera knows? You want to know what happened to Charlie?

I guess you’ll have to find the book…

GoodReads Reviews on Please Ignore Vera Dieta

Suggested Other Reads:

Silent to the Bone by E.L. Konigsburg – A mystery that leaves someone unwilling to speak (literally) about what has happened…leaving his friend to dig for the truth with only minimal clues to uncover the truth.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson – A powerful story in which the narrator Melinda stops speaking to lay low after an incident occurs over the summer that puts her on the lowest rung of the high school social ladder. If only they all knew why she had to call 911…

Feynman by Jim Ottaviani (Author), Leland Myrick (Illustrator)

I remember first hearing about Feynman in college. I can’t remember if I just happened across his autobiographies when I was reshelving books at the science library where I worked or if a professor happened to mention his name.

It doesn’t much matter.

There were few books I read during the academic months of those four years – one of the dark periods of my reading life – but I read both Surely, You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? over and over. In fact, if you go back to F&M and look for it, one of those books has a name plate in the front that has my name on it – a gift from the library to me when I graduated.

Years have passed and his inquisitive ways of looking at the world are renewed in my life as I have been watching the world through my son’s eyes.

So is it any surprise that I jumped at the chance to read this graphical biography on Feynman? I saw it on the school librarian’s desk and I was worse than the kids, begging for her to let me borrow it. She smiled and handed it to me and off I went to class, knowing I had something really excellent to look forward to later.

And I was right. The artwork compliments the text, they both illustrate a complicated figure and a complex subject, showing both him and his visual representations of his work.There were parts where I felt like everything made sense and all was right in the world, but there was a section explaining his later work, the ideas he struggled to figure out how to explain to a friend, where my head felt swimmy. I could read it, but I really didn’t understand it.

Lest you think it’s all math and theorums, there are plenty of personal side-stories going on that keep this read movie for those of us who are not physicists by training

All in all, this book is beautiful, well-told, and completely worth the read!

Check out this book trailer to get an idea of what this book is like:

Feynman Trailer

The Fox Inheritance by Mary E. Pearson

What do you need to be human? A body made of flesh and blood? Ten percent flesh and blood? Your memories? Your senses? Hopes and dreams? The ability to live our to desire revenge? A sense of mercy?

Locke is struggling with his new reality, new body, new sensations of a second chance at life 260 years after that fateful night where he and his two best friends Jenna and Kara were hurled into a terrible nightmare after a car accident. For 260 years, Locke has been trapped in the darkness of a black box holding the backup of his memories. Now a scientist named Gatsbro has created bodies for Kara and Locke to hold their thoughts, memories, personalities. The world has changed – more than Locke can imagine, but when circumstances change, he has to learn who he can trust. Even whether he can trust himself.

This book is the sequel to The Adoration of Jenna Fox. While you don’t need to read the first book to enjoy this one, you may find reading then in order will make the second make more sense.

Related Recommended Reads:
* The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
* Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (The basis for the movie Bladerunner - classic science fiction – ponders many of the same questions posed here.)
* Across the Universe by Beth Revis

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

I bought this book in December when I heard so much buzz about it that I had to have it.

And then it sat on my bedside table untouched until last week.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read it, but I have noticed that Nick Hornby was onto something with his Polysyllabic Spree columns – I have a tendency to collect more than I can reasonably read at any given time.

That aside, the timing was perfect for this book.  My son participated in the Young Writers Academy last week and worked with his fellow students of writing to create fractured fairy tales. So I felt like I had read more Grimm in the week leading up than I had ever read before at one time. We scrambled up a two volume set of fairy tales (many of them Grimm’s) and set to work.

I was surprised at how bloody some of them were.

You don’t notice this when you read them the first time for yourself. You notice it when you are reading them to a five-year-old.

Cut off fingers.Cut off toes.  Decapitated children. Murder after murder.

Yep. This is the stuff bedtime stories are made of.

EXCEPT…he loved them and asked for more.

Apparently Mr. Gidwitz found the same experience when his principal came to read one of Grimm’s tales to his second grade class. He was far more bent out of shape about the whole thing than the students were.

This led him to read a few more. And a few more. And realize, after all this research, that they are really just parts of the same story. Just Grimm mixes up the names in some.

But Mr. Gidwitz sets us straight. They are clearly all about Hansel and Gretel. And to make sure we understand it, he walks us through their lives from the time their father is warned by Faithful Johannes NOT to go into one particular room, NOT to go meet this beautiful woman in the picture in this room. But, of course, he does and Faithful Johannes does what he can to allow them to be together – a decision that allows our Hansel and Gretel to be born but also puts this frightening tale into motion.

And to make sure that WE don’t have nightmares, the narrator barges in at key moments to warn us to get small children out of the room or to avoid this part altogether: just too scary.

Glad I had it around when I was ready.

Related Reading:
* Grimm’s Fairy Tales
* Grimm’s Grimmest by Maria Tatar
* Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley and Peter Ferguson
* Nursery Crimes series by Jasper Fforde (yes, I know nursery rhymes & fairy tales are NOT the same, but trust me on this)
* Gregory Maguire’s retellings like Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

As I remember more, I’ll add them.

What I hope will follow…

This is just the first post.

In fact, I’m not even reviewing anything here.

I’m just trying to get myself ready.

I have read more in the past year than I ever thought I could squeeze in. I have just made it a priority to do so. I always have at least a couple of books with me just in case I have some downtime – digital copies on my Nook or phone, audio copies on my phone or mp3 player, and good old-fashioned paper copies. I’m not in any kind of race. I just don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to read something great – or to miss a chance to share a title that would be perfect to recommend for someone by not having any knowledge of it.

To encourage others to make reading a priority, I have done what I have always done and shared what I could with the students in my building, whether or not they are my students. I have begun most of my conversations with, “What are you reading now?” or “What have you read lately?”

What I haven’t had the opportunity to do (besides to my friends on GoodReads) is to find a good place to post trailers, my reviews, and my recommendations to share with students.

That being said, you won’t need to be one of my students (future, current, or former) to follow what’s here.

My plan is to share what I have been reading, what I think about it, as well as links to reviews from other places, trailers, and suggested next reads if you have already read it and liked it.

But I also know that reading is not just limited to books.

I am hoping to offer some links to some other great writing as I come across it – from blogs, from newspapers, from magazines.

My goal is to share anything that might improve or expand not only your TBR (to be read) list, but also your reading life beyond what it is right now.

I don’t think it’s a lofty goal. It’s just what I hope will follow…