Reading challenges – Peaceful Reader

Favorite Reads of 2014

2014 was a good year for reading for me. I read 67 books, 3 away from my goal of 70. Not bad considering I don’t spend hours lounging around my house reading. Out of my 67 books I found 30 to be great reads. Hopefully my list will inspire you to read one that you hadn’t heard of before or that might be languishing on your to-read pile. I only read two nonfiction books this year; I’m much more adept at reading fun and interesting fiction but both nonfiction were noteworthy (The Book Whisperer and Here and Now)

My three lists are in random order.

Adult:

1. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
2. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
3. Belong to me by Marisa de los Santos
4. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
5. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
6. We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
7. Sweetgrass by Mary Alice Monroe
8. The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
9. Landline by Rainbow Rowell
10. The cuckoo’s calling by Robert Galbraith

Young Adult:

1. All rivers flow to the sea by Alison Mcghee
2. Counting by 7’s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
3. The scorpio races by Maggie Stiefvater
4. Where’d you go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
5. Mark of the dragonfly by Jaleigh Johnson
6. The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
7. The Fault in our stars by John Green
8. Never Ending by Martyn Bedford
9. The mirk and the midnight hour by Jane Nickerson
10. Hush Puppy by Lisa Cresswell

Chapter books:

1. Ophelia and the marvelous boy by Karen Foxlee
2. Here Lies Linc by Delia Ray
3. Fortunetely the milk by Neil Gaiman
4. Doll Bones by Holly Black
5. Curse of the warmbloods by Suzanne Collins
6. Secret Hum of a daisy by Tracy Holczer
7. Winterling by Sarah Prineas
8. Palace Beautiful by Sarah Deford Williams
9. Laugh at the moon by Shana Burg
10. The mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Curtis

I have a hard time choosing each year and can never get it down to just a few. Enjoy!

Four days into September already…My challenge.

I’ve planned this for awhile and can’t believe we are four days into the month! Thanks to Zoe at Little, Brown and Company I receive several beautiful packages a month of ARC’s. Thank you Zoe for keeping me on this list! Sometime at the end of the school year I started to get really behind on reading these lovely new books. Time to change that.

I’m dedicating September to reading as many ARC’s from this pile as I can and reviewing them. I still have a half-done review of The Queen of Kentucky by Alecia Whitaker to finish and share. While this stack of books is not cluttering my house per se it does clutter my conscience. Time to get many of them read and spread the word. I started reading Ask the passengers by A.S. King yesterday and I love it.

My friend Tina might join me in reading a few of her stacked-up ARC’s also. If you have a small or large stack of Advanced Readers maybe you want to join us as well.

I’m not going to set a number and set myself up for failure but I’d like to read at least this stack and review them before them become dusty antiques in the corner.

Reducing Your Foodprint; Farming, Cooking, and Eating for a Healthy Planet

by Ellen Rodger
(2010)
Energy Revolution Series from Crabtree Publishing

My husband loves bananas and I love pineapple! Both fruits require a lot of shipping miles and too many chemicals to grow. As this book explains, our foodprint is calculated by how farming practices and how far food has to travel to get to our table. Knowing this I choose pineapple as a delelicate treat to be savored and not purchased often. My husband, as a runner, eats bananas everyday. We do purchase organic when we can but even those have to travel miles and miles to arrive in our fruit bowl in Iowa. It’s tough to consider how we can decrease our foodprint and become more earth-minded with our grocery money. This book helps to raise awareness.

From the publishers website:
Reducing Your Foodprint teaches children that what they eat and how they eat is important to the environment. Most of the food served in restaurants and stocked on grocery store shelves travels many thousands of miles by airplane and truck. The further food travels, the more harm to the environment. This enlightening new book explains how to eat locally and responsibly. Special case study sections highlight how others have reduced both their carbon foodprints and footprints just by making changes in their diets.

Topics covered include Eco-Awareness, History of Cultivation, Food from Afar, Being an Ecovore, Eating Local, Green Cooking, and Fair Trade Food. Ecovore, a new term to me, is described as” someone who shops , cooks, and eats with the environment in mind. It is a term first used by cookbook author Kate Heyhoe to describe someone who makes sustainable food choices that are as environmentally friendly as possible.” (14) I’m going to add it to my vocabulary and find out more about Kate Keyhoe.

This book could be a great teaching tool but more likely will be used by eco-minded parents to open more awareness. It would make a great Earth Day gift for a child. I checked this one out from the library and will look for the other books in the series, Energy Revolution, for my school library. Crabtree has lesson plans for the series.

To purchase a copy of this perfect book for Earth Day, click on the the title…

Reducing Your Foodprint; Farming, Cooking, and Eating for a Healthy Planet

Which one should I read first??

This challenge hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea struck a chord with me today because after dinner (eggplant lasagna) I started sorting through my tbr piles-you know the real piles…not the long-ass list I keep on Good Reads. I’ve now compiled “The List” and I have to say it felt good just picking out the ones that really need to be read! Like it is a crime I haven’t read a few of these in a more timely manner! Each book I held reminded me of the story behind why I have the book in the first place making it a little book trip down memory lane. Here is “The List” then I’ll explain some of my memories!

1. ~~The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson~~
2. The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice
3. The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
4. I don’t want to be crazy by Samantha Schutz
5. Home to Italy by Peter Pezzelli
6. Every Sunday by Peter Pezzelli
7. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
8. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
9. One year to an organized life by Regina Leeds
10. Never Change by Elizabeth Berg
11. The Omnivore’s Dilemma; A natural history of four meals by Michael Pollan
12. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
13. Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
14. Inheritance by Natalie Danford
15. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing; Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson
16. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
17. The Reluctant Tuscan; How I Discovered my Inner Italian by Phil Doran
18. Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
19. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
20. Gilead by Marilyn Robinson
21. The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins
22. The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by e.l. konigsburg
23. I Don’t Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson
24. Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska
25. Oh. My. Gods. by Tera Lynn Childs
26. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull
27. The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie
28. ~~Dreamland by Sarah Dessen~~
29. Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
30. Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
31. Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
32. A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce
33. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
34. Austenland by Shannon Hale
35. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
36. ~~The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson~~
37. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (gasp!!)
38. We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg
39. Red Scarf Girl by Ji Li Jiang
40. The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman
41. The Sorceress; The secrets of the immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott
42. Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass
43. ~~Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix~~
44. A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
45. Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes
46. Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix
47. Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson
48. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
49. Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
50. The Snipesville Chronicles; Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When by Annette Laing (gift from author)

A few of these were passed on to me (#’s 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 11), quite a few are from my school library and should be back at school instead of on my reading table (#2, #43-47) and a few like the Picoult and Berg books were purchased second hand and shuffled aside for newer choices. The Sarah Dessen choices are all my step-daughter, Kaylee’s and will be passed pack to her as I finish. A few of the books, like The Shadow Catcher, I bought because I enjoyed something else the author had written (Evidence of things unseen).#24 and #39 were both purchased at the Holocaust Museum two years ago when we visited D.C.-why didn’t I read them on the car ride home??

I feel giddy with the idea of making some much needed room on my book cases-the key will be not to just add books back in. I could have added a few more but I like a nice round number like 50-and when I get these read I’ll be closer to the +100 plus challenge. Please leave a comment as to which one you think I should begin with come January 1st!!

Another useful reading challenge

I found out about this challenge while reading Jenners post over at Find Your Next Book Here, which sent me over to Bibliophile By the Sea.

This challenge is about reading books that you already have on your bookshelves (I’ve got plenty of those!) and then passing them on to someone else (great recycling). It runs from January 1, 2010 until December 31, 2010.

If so, feel free to join in:

grab the button
decide how many books you want to read from your shelves (minimum of 20 – no maximum)
find a new home for the books once you read them
post the titles and the authors of books you’ve read and passed on
project runs from January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010
crossover challenge books are allowed

I have several bookshelves that beg, plead, implore to be unburden so I take this challenge and add to it that I will not purchase any new books until…I have read the books I choose for this particular challenge. It probably will take me all year, but that’s okay.

Stay tuned for the list of books I will extract from my bookshelves. If you have lots of books needing to be read perhaps you want to join this challenge as well.

451 Challenge

I’ve decided to join this 451 Challenge. I do this trepidly as I’m already busy but it seems like an important one. I had to do some research, figuring out which books appealed to me, many of the titles were somewhat unknown to me. I’ve picked several so far and once I make my final selections I will post them here.
After looking over the list I was happy to see a few I’ve already read so I had to list them here:
1. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
2. Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. Harry Potter series of 7 by J.K. Rowling
4. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins-I was very excited and amazed to find this one on the list.
5. Night by Elie Wiesel

6.Peace like a river by Leif Enger

7. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

8. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

9. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

10. The Hobbit by Tolkein

11. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

12. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein

13. Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

14. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

15. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

16. The Sleep Book by Dr. Seuss-(if it counts I’ve read all of his:)

17. The Stand by Stephen King

18. To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee

19. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

20. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by Robert E. Pirsig

21. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffinegger

If any of these titles intrigue you, flip over to the 451 Challenge blog, hosted by Elizabeth at As Usual, I Need More Bookshelves.

Here is how it will work: between January 1, 2010 and November 30, 2010, participants are challenged to read books on the 451 master list. There will be several levels of participation:

Spark – read 1-2 books from the master list
Ember – read 3-4 books from the master list

Flame – read 5-6 books from the master list

Blaze – read 7 or more books from the master list

Re-reading is acceptable, as are crossovers with other challenges. Audio, print, and e-books are all acceptable. Each month, participants will be encouraged to post their reviews on the challenge blog, and each review posted will be an entry into a grand prize drawing for a $25 gift card to the online bookseller of the winner’s choice.

Final Friday

Today is the last day for us to be at our old elementary. Everyone is finishing boxing things up and we had a lovely lunch together, sharing memories and positive ways to move into our new building. I have been in the new building for a few weeks now. Just me and the construction crew!
I’ve finished moving things around, re-alphabetizing the shelves and setting up my office in an effecient manner, I hope. I’ve also been working on a project to get our 5th graders reading more chapter books and series titles. When students come back on the 4th it will be like the beginnng of library classes all over as I show them where everything is located and how the computer system works. For the first time students will have access to good, fast computers and be able to look up books using Destiny. As we go through all these changes I want to emphasize reading, naturally and am going to put forth a challenge to them. Beginning with with the fifth grade it will look something like this.

1. For each book they read that I’ve read they will receive 15 points.
2. For each book on my recommended list (see left side bar “don’t leave 5th grade w/out reading these) they will also receive 10 points.
3. For each book in a series they will receive another 10 points and if they read at least three in a series they will double their total.
4. The goal is to get to 70 points. Invitations to a library pizza party will be given out to 50 point students.

Does this sound too complicated? This is meant to encourage them to read but yet not be accelerated reader. I have a list of series titles and it has varying reading levels on it so if not a strong reader you could read Ron Roy’s Capital Mysteries or Emily Rodda’s Fairy Realm and still receive 10 points. On the other end of the spectrum they could be reading The Lightning Thief or the Erin Hunter writing team‘s new Seekers series.
Let me know what you think or how I could tweak this idea???

Reading Challenge

My first!

Join me-really how hard can it be!!
Check out the rules and sign up over at J. Kaye’s Book Blog.

Diversity Rocks!!

Not that I need more to do but I really liked the idea of Diversity rocks! challenge and it is something I am already working at my school with a 5th grade book club. I joining the challenge as a freethinker so I can “do my own thang”, which is just an easy way for me to not feel the strains of a number looming over my head. Our book club right now is reading Joseph Bruchac’s The heart of a chief. I will have to seek out some YA and adult books by diverse authors as well to complete this challenge. I have to finish Three cups of tea by Greg Mortenson (for my adult book club) and The friday night knitting club first but then I will be seeking new literature to read. What a joy!!! Are you up for it, V??