What I'm Reading: January 2015

Just because I haven't been blogging doesn't mean I haven't been reading. Quite the opposite, actually! Here's a snapshot of my Goodreads for since my last update and a quick rundown (in case you care!)

 

What I'm Reading: October 2014

After my YA binge this summer for my Children's Lit course, it's been a little slow going on the reading front, but now that I'm in the swing of things with my classes, new school schedules for the kids, and so on, I am ready to get back at it!

My book club book this month is The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer, which I just recently finished. It was, surprise, surprise, another one picked up from the Parents' Picks shelf at my local library, but I had also remembered one of my Goodreads friends reviewing it a while back. I have a soft spot in my heart for summer camp - which features pretty prominently in the story - but this one fell a little flat for me. It was certainly readable, and I liked Wolitzer's style, but the characters didn't quite do it for me. There's another one by her that seems pretty applicable to my stage in life - The Ten Year Nap - which I might check out soon.

For my YA pick, I am finally reading If I Stay, and will likely follow it up with Where She Went (damn Gayle Forman...there's no way I can *not* follow up with the companion book right away!). So far so good on this one - certainly very readable and have a feeling there may be a tear or two shed before all is said and done!

What I'm Reading: Popular YA Books

It's the final week of my class and our theme this week is "What Teens are Reading Now" - while the obvious answers are Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, I figured I'd try to delve a little deeper to get some ideas for my recommendations this week. I also solicited two of our teenage babysitters so it will be interesting to see how their recommendations align (or not!) with what I find on my own.

Two great lists that helped me this week were Mashable's 12 YA Books for Your 2014 Summer Reading List and Teen Vogue's The 15 Most Exciting YA Books Coming Out This Year (don't judge...I actually found the Teen Vogue list to be a pretty thorough and thoughtful one...who knew?).

I predict I'll be reading much more YA in the coming months...there are so many books that I have come across that I can't wait to dive into!

What I'm Reading: Nutritious Books

What's a Nutritious Book, you ask? Simply put, a YA novel that a teacher could use as part of their curriculum, supporting Common Core standards, etc. As an adult reader, I actually have loved some of the ones I have come across this summer...it's great to feel like I'm actually learning something as I'm reading, and many of them have given me a much greater understanding of a time period or event that I didn't know (or let's be honest, remember) much about before.

ELA and History are definitely the predominant teachers who might be inclined to use YA novels to support their classroom activities, and as it turns out, all of my picks this week have some sort of historical basis. I have to cheat a smidge and include one of the books that I included on one of my midterm reading lists, because I just loved it so much (as much as you can love a Holocaust book, I suppose!). In fact, I really enjoyed three of my recommendations from that list, so I'm including the other 2 as Honorable Mentions, as I didn't think I could get away with recycling all three of my picks!

So, here we go...Nutritious Books for your reading (or teaching) pleasure:

What I'm Reading: Geeky and/or Scary Books

This week is my least favorite genre...and honestly a bit of a letdown after my required romance reading last week! "Geeky" is essentially science-fiction and fantasy (a bit tongue-in-cheek, I think, by my professor) and Scary obviously speaks for itself. Our course this summer is one week shorter than when it runs in either the fall or spring semester, so we were able to choose either Geeky or Scary for the week's assignment. Since my assigned book was in the Geeky category (More Than This by Patrick Ness), I decided to be consistent.

In searching for my books this week, I tended to gravitate towards ones that I might actually be interested in reading. I figure this category is the easiest to get boys interested in so I let myself off the hook. In the comments kicking off our module this week, our professor advised not to shy away from series. Which is good, because all of my choices (unintentionally) are parts of a greater set.

Here we go...

What I'm Reading: Romance Books

Ah...teen romance novels. Call it listening to too much Taylor Swift, or actually having mostly positive memories of high school (boys included), but I loved this week's genre. Interestingly, I couldn't remember any romance/love stories that I loved as a teen reader but I devoured three of my picks in a matter of days this week. I started off my exploration by searching "Popular Lists" on my nook and quickly found a Contemporary YA Romance list with 53 titles to sift through. My neighboring library has a much larger YA section than my local one, and I got lucky finding two of my top picks there as well as finding another one on display. I suspect I may be checking out a few more of these once my class is over and I can get back to leisure reading!

As in previous weeks, I tried to find at least one title that (might) appeal to a teen boy, though this genre was a little more difficult. Per usual, in no particular order...

What I'm Reading: Funny Books

This week, we are focusing on funny books. This is kind of a tough one for me...it's not that I don't think I have a sense of humor, or don't enjoy laughing (though who would admit to that, I suppose!), but I am not really drawn to comedies in any of my entertainment choices (books, movies, stand up, etc.). Throw in that I am looking at books that are meant to be funny to teenage boys and girls and I'm even more out of my element. But as with anything that puts you outside of your comfort zone, it's certainly not a bad thing!

The book I was assigned to read this week was Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle, which I did enjoy, and had some laugh out loud moments. Others I have found in my searching this week are highlighted below, again in no particular order.

What I'm Reading: Award-Winners

It works out well that my prior "What I'm Reading" topic fits nicely into the required blogging of my Lit course. Each week, we'll be looking at a different category of YA literature, searching for titles published in the last 10 years or so, and providing annotations of some of the books we find.

This week, it's Award-Winners. For any of you non-library/education folks, the Newbery has been the "king" of the awards, dating all the way back to 1922, and has included such classics as A Wrinkle in Time (1963), Bridge to Terabithia (1978), and Sarah, Plain and Tall (1986). Another award list that I discovered this week, where I found some quality books was the Michael L. Printz Award. Perhaps it's because the list is newer, and also solely focused on YA books (vs. the Newbery which includes children's titles as well), but I jotted down a ton of books I wanted to read from this list. A 3rd list I focused on this week were the National Book Awards (Young People's Literature category, abbreviated as NBA further in this post), where I also found some excellent titles.

The genre I nearly always gravitate towards is realistic fiction, so I made a conscious effort to mix up what I read this week (though as you'll see, I couldn't resist including at least one in my list!). In one of our class discussions a few weeks ago, we talked about the difficulty in drawing in teen male readers, so I also made an effort to include at least one title that would appeal to them. In no particular order, here are my award-winning choices for the week:

What I'm Reading

Been a while since I have done one of these (updated my last post with my verdict on Coming Home), but I am 1/3 of the way through this YA gem and can hardly put it down. It's already brought me to tears multiple times...I am not sure how I am going to make it through to the end! So glad I am reading it before the movie comes out (isn't the book always better than the movie?)

What I'm Reading

I had a rare 3 days away from the kids (including a very long airport delay on Sunday) so I made it through 2 of my inaugural picks in one weekend (see original post for my verdicts).

Had to return a couple of things to the public library today and perused the "Parent Pick" section while my kids played in the Children's Room.

Side note: If your library doesn't do this, you should really mention it to your librarian. There is a rolling shelf of 100 or so books that they think might appeal to parents of young kids - it's a nice mix of genres, mostly newer titles - but I always seem to find something I'm interested in.

Today's selection was:

Verdict:
3 stars. Pretty readable and decent storytelling but many of the characters were tough to relate to/empathize with and the ending kind of got a little hokey. Good vacation reading, but I don't know that I'll be rushing to read more from this author.

That and Happier at Home should keep me occupied until my next book club selection!

What I'm Reading

A happy byproduct of pursuing a career that involves books is giving myself "permission" to read more often, something I didn't always have time to do when I was working. And another happy byproduct of pursuing a career with middle school students is that it gives me a built-in excuse to check out some new YA literature, as well as revisit some of my old favorites.

My goal is to read at least one book targeted to the middle school population (give or take) as well as whatever other books I happen to be reading at the time.

Without further ado...