Author: Rae Longest
This year (2019) finds me with 50 years of teaching "under my belt." I have taught all levels from pre-K "(library lady" or "book lady"--volunteer) to juniors, seniors, and graduate students enrolled in my Advanced Writing class at the university where I have just completed 30 years. My first paying teaching job was junior high, and I spent 13 years with ages 12-13, the "difficult years." I had some of the "funnest" experiences with this age group. When I was no longer the "young, fun teacher," I taught in an elementary school setting before sixth graders went on to junior high, teaching language arts blocs, an assignment that was a "dream-fit" for me. After completing graduate school in my 40s, I went on to community college, then university teaching.
Just as teaching is "in my blood," so is a passion for reading, writing, libraries, and everything bookish.
This blog will be open to anyone who loves books, promotes literacy and wants to "come out and play."
TUESDAY TEASER
HERE is the choice for Tuesday, January 25th.
Rebecca is talking to her ex, about her new tenant in her “in-law apartment” off the garage,
” ‘Our new tenant downstairs, ‘ Rebecca said. ‘I finally got the in-law apartment in shape.’
‘He’s a monk’ , Mary Martha (Rebecca’s daughter) announced.
‘Wow, a monk, no kidding. Does he wear a robe and sandals?’
She (Mary Martha) giggled, ‘No, silly’…
‘He’s very nice,’ Rebecca said, before this got out of hand. ‘Very ordinary. Just a guy. Makes his own coffee, keeps to himself.”
And so the unusual relationship begins…
Sunday funnies
SUNDAY (EVENING) POST
I haven’t written one of these in over a year. it’s high time I slipped one in. When I first started following blogs, I was intrigued by S.J. Higgins’ “Sunday Post” on Brainfluff. It was where I first learned to enjoy reading blogs. I wanted to do a Sunday update like hers, so when my mind went back to the 50s magazine, Saturday Evening Post, whose covers featured the paintings of Norman Rockwell, I decided to call my post “Sunday Evening Post.” It is an update on what you’ve read the past week, what you are continuing to read, and what you hope to read next. Here’s the “Saturday (Evening) Post” for Sunday, January 23, 2022.
The last passage from The Risen Christ was part of the fine group of devotionals. “Christ does not change; the preparation for the coming of the Spirit is the same today as two thousand years ago, whether it be the rebirth of Christ in one soul that is in the hard of winter, or for the return from the grave of Christ, whose blood is shed again by the martyrs…[It is] quiet mind, acceptance, and remaining close to God…”
What a nice thought to end my celebration of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with!
This was a very helpful book that allowed me to grow in grace through gratitude. I reviewed it recently on this blog.
A daily devotional, Daily Wisdom for Women by Carol L.Fitzpatrick
Hoda Kotb’s I Really Needed This Today, a secular “devotional”
A science fantasy novel,
I really hope to block out some time this week to read on this novel, so it will be…
Rain is predicted for Monday, so I plan to stay in, and READ! How about you? Reading plans for your new week are welcome in the Reply/Comments box below.
2022 MOUNT TBR CHALLENGE
Because I have participated for over a year in the Japanese practice of tsurdoku, buying books and then not getting around to reading them, my Mount TBR was very high.
Then…the other day, Mt. TBR toppled…
It became time–to do something about the situation, so I am accepting the Mount TBR 2022 challenge. I am entering at level 2, Mount Blanc
Pikes Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile
Mount Blanc: Read 24 books
Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books
Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books
Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books
El Toro: Read 75 books
Mt. Everest: Read 100 books
Mount Olympus: Read 150 books
Because I was doing this challenge for the first time, I thought I’d start at level one, Pike’s Peak, but then I realized I’d already committed to reading 22 books from my TBR pile for a challenge I’d made up on January 1st, “22 in 22,” so I rounded up two books and tackled Mount Blanc. The challenge runs from 1/1/22-12/31/22. The challenge’s rule is that “you may count books BEGUN prior to 1/1/22 provided you had 50% of the book left to finish when Jan. 1 rolled around.” Also, “You may count ‘Did Not Finish’ books provided they meet your own standard for such things.” ( I am setting a standard of three chapters read), and if “you do not plan to ever finish it, and you move it off your mountain[give it away, sell it, remove it from your ebooks, etc.]. ” The challenge host gives the book 100 pages to capture her interest. She adds, “No page limit–if it was published as a book, it counts. No single short stories–but collections of short stories do count.” Books being used for other challenges count for this challenge as well. So, here goes…
This book will also count for the What’s in a Name Challenge, as a book with a season in its title. It is a classic and typically Edith Wharton.
February is not even here and I am off to a good start in two challenges. If you are participating in, or would like to join me in either challenge, let me know in the comments below.
HAPPY READING!
TUESDAY TEASER
Today’s Teaser comes from N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became, a sci-fi thriller set in New York City.
Bronca has just caught sight of one of the mysterious white tendrils people who have been “taken over” have emanating from them,
“Bronca blinks, her attention caught…[Is that] “a loose shoelace? He’s wearing thong sandals, so that can’t be it…It looks like an especially long and wispy hair…at least six inches long…although as Bronca watches, it stretches upward as if trying to touch the crate [the man] is carrying. Nine inches. A foot, just shy of the crate’s wooden wall–and then it stops and contracts.”
This vivid description its a characteristic of Jemisin’s beautifully worded, horrifying novel.
Stick with Love | #MotivationMonday | Martin Luther King, Jr Day
Special words for a Special Day
WAKE UP GRATEFUL by Kristi Nelson: A Review
At the beginning of the new year, I began an informal “study” of gratefulness. My experience with illness and recuperation this past summer has left me with extreme gratefulness for life and living. Each morning, I wake up and say, “Good morning, Lord; thank you for another day.” The mug for my first cup of coffee says, “Renew/Restore/Refresh,” so I repeat the little mantra I’ve made up: ” ‘Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me;’ Restore me to health, please; and refresh my mind to where it can handle anything that might come my way today.” Then, I am ready to start my day. I believe I read in something by Brene Brown that Happiness does not cause gratitude, but gratitude causes happiness.
Deb Nance, a blogging friend at Readerbuzz, sent me a whole list of books about gratitude available at our local library that she discovered in her recent study of happiness. Here is the first book from that list that I have read in 2022.
Nelson does not allow her reader to wistfully think, “I’ll be grateful when…,” but encourages her to be in the moment and grateful for what she already has. It is a “touching, powerful, real” read because she shares her own story as a survivor of Stage IV cancer. During her search for recovery, she met a Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast who helped found the Network for Grateful Living. This book articulates his teachings, which the author has put into practice in her daily life. Subtitled “The Transforming Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted, this book is full of inspiring quotes, which I often copied into my Quotes Notebook. I also began a gratitude journal during the time I read Wake Up.
Nelson tells the reader, “Grateful living offers a path and a promise” and explains both. The book is full of practical guidelines and specific practices for the reader to carry out. These practices are: Stop. Look. Go, and each is given for every section of the book. I was spurred to put these practices into action and to continue doing so for some time now.
To call Wake Up a self-help or self-improvement book is an understatement. it is a narrative by Nelson of her journey to a more positive, happy life, plus ways the reader can obtain this for herself.
I highly recommend this book.
SATURDAY MORNINGS FOR KIDS
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Today’s recommendation comes from books I read that were novels in verse, which were Cybils nominees.
This is what was written about Rez Dogs.
****Four starred reviews!****
From the U.S.’s foremost Indigenous children’s author comes a middle grade verse novel set during the COVID-19 pandemic, about a Wabanaki girl’s quarantine on her grandparents’ reservation and the local dog that becomes her best friend
Malian loves spending time with her grandparents at their home on a Wabanaki reservation. She’s there for a visit when, suddenly, all travel shuts down. There’s a new virus making people sick, and Malian will have to stay with her grandparents for the duration.
Everyone is worried about the pandemic, but Malian knows how to keep her family and community safe: She protects her grandparents, and they protect her. She doesn’t go outside to play with friends, she helps her grandparents use video chat, and she listens to and learns from their stories. And when Malsum, one of the dogs living on the rez, shows up at their door, Malian’s family knows that he’ll protect them too.
My opinion:As an adult who loves good poetry, I loved the format of this 2021 publication. Each poem continues Malian’s story all the while using verses, rather than paragraphs. For example, when she first sees Malsum, a stray dog outside, she consults her grandfather,
” ‘Can I go outside and
see what he does?’ Malian said…
‘Seems to me
if you step outside
and then move real slow
whilst you watch what he does
you’ll be ok.
But just in case,
I’ll be right behind you…’ “
As Malian stays through the pandemic with her grandparents, she learns from them about her Native American heritage, many parts of which are hard to read and were things I knew nothing about including government programs to sterilize Native American women in order to reduce their numbers, and even the diseases the Native Americans were first exposed to by white settlers which wiped out a large part of their population, freeing up to land to ownership by whites. I always knew our government had given Native Americans a “raw deal” pushing them back, westward, and taking over their lands, finally containing them on reservations, but I had never considered their “side” of things. This children’s book was an eye-opener and gave me an empathy for Native Americans I’d never felt before. In this area, especially, the author did an excellent job. It is a book parents or grandparents and kids need to discuss after reading, and one teachers should read for themselves as well. I highly recommend Joseph Bruchac’s Rez Dogs.
Each Day | #KindnessFriday
It doesn’t take much.
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