How important are book covers in getting you to read a book?

I think that the book cover is more important in getting me to pick up the book. What the book jacket says, either on the inside of a hardcover or the back of a softcover book, is more of what influences me to read a book. But, some books will speak to me at different times. When I first picked up The Help, I could not get into it. Everyone said what a wonderful book it was, and although the back cover looked interesting, I could not get into the book. I put it down for awhile and then picked it back up and could not put it down! A book that I thought I may be interested in reading by the cover and even own a copy, but have never picked up is Eat, Pray, Love.

Book Fair & Giving Life Purpose

Both of my children wanted money for the book fair at school today. I told them that they had only $12.00 to spend this time. My daughter chose a Question of the Day Diary, which I think that she will enjoy. My son has always liked non-fiction and chose "The President Has Been Shot!": The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson. Just reading the title from his wish list, I thought that the book would be about Abraham Lincoln so I was pleasantly surprised that it was not.

I picked up the book and started reading The Beginnings and then flipped to the back of the book and read the Epilogue. The words that spoke to me today are, "He believed," Jacqueline Kennedy said, "that one man can make a difference-- and that every man should try." (p. 210) I believe that I try everyday, some I will reach and make a difference; others may be for someone else to reach on another day. I know that I won't reach them all, but to brighten the future of some is worth it.

I Love My Book Club

Tonight was the first book club of the year.  We read Night Road by Kristin Hannah.  Previously, we read Firefly Lane by the same author.  Although we could all relate to both books on many levels, across generations, most agreed that they like Night Road better.  It was a quick read, and there were many different points of view with regards to how issues were seen in the book.  We all cried through the book even though it was fiction; it could happen to anyone.  For our book club the overreaching themes are forgiveness will make your heart lighter, justice and revenge are two different things, and "Man makes plans; God laughs."

The Gift of Time to Read

Below is the list of books that I read in 2011.  There are many books that I started and did not finish, and maybe even a few that I finished and did not list.  I have found that I do not get to as many books as I use to, but that does not mean that I am not reading.  I read all the time whether it is the newspaper or the headlines on yahoo.com.  Sometimes, I read for professional reasons, and those books, I tend not to finish.  I also reread both The Blind Side and In A Heartbeat after reading I Beat the Odds....

My favorite book was Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, but I enjoyed all the books that I read this year.  Some of my book club friends went onto to read more Jodi Picoult books after we read My Sister's Keeper.  Although I liked the book and enjoyed the discussion, I have not read another Jodi Picoult book, but I have found that author in Kristin Hannah.

Night Road by Kristin Hannah
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness to The Blind Side and Beyond by Michael Oher with Don Yaeger
The Butterfly's Daughter by Mary Alice Monroe
Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Family Affair by Debbie Macomber
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach by Anthony Bourdain
Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan
Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

My goal for 2012 is 12 books, one book for pleasure a month.  With technology at my disposal in an e-reader and an itouch as well as regular paper books, I hopefully will exceed this goal!

The Gift of Books and Friendship

Over 10 years ago my friends and I went out one night and as we were talking, we decided to start a book club.  At that time we decided on six members, myself, my friends and their mothers, and a former coworker of one of my friends.  We decided to meet on the first Wednesday of every month.  From the original six, five of us still remain.  We have had some friends come and go, some come and stay, and one go and come back.

We all love our book club for different reasons.  Although I don't always read the book, I always try to go to book club.  This is the one thing that I have kept consistent and fought for the most over the last 10 years.  It is my time to explore my interest in books and to read a few that I may not have read otherwise.  It is also a time to get together with friends and learn from their lives and share mine with them as our book club ranges in age from close to 70 to myself, the youngest at 37.

The one thing that we have done over the years is discuss the book.  There may be side conversations or other dinner time conversation, but, at some point, the discussion questions come out and we actually talk about the book.  We still rotate houses and everyone hosts once a year.  We use to meet year round and gave that up a few years back as it got harder and harder to schedule around vacations.  We were up to 10 members at one point, and right now, the nine that we have seems just right.  We don't meet in July and August, go out to eat in December and have a potluck in June.

We have changed the way that we pick books.  When we started, we chose books month to month, then quarterly.  Presently, the host for this month picks the book for the next month.  The new system seems to be working out and is fun!

We don't know the big secret as to why we have remained a book club for so long.   But, we do know that we hope to continue meeting long into the future!

The Pile of Books

The list of books that I want to read and have to read just keep getting longer and longer.  I should be reading for professional growth and have an assigned reading right now, but have not started it yet.  I go to the library often enough that I see things that I want to read all the time.  I also have my book club book to read for January that I should get started on soon or I will not finish it!  But, I find that my time for reading has diminished.  Some of the reason is I find that I am reading more online.  Another is I am participating in NaBloPoMo and have spent time writing and reading other blogs.  And, finally, I am reading so much to do my job that I do not find the time to read for pleasure as much or am too tired to read for pleasure except for the People magazine that I just started getting weekly this fall.  I love getting People, but only have the subscription because of expiring frequent flier miles.  I don't love it enough to actually buy the subscription.

E-reader or Real Paper Book

I enjoy reading books on my Sony Reader, but, if I have a choice, I like to choose my books by physically holding them.  I really like my reader when we are going on trips because I can take lots of books, but they do not take up space or weight up my luggage.  But, I still like to go to the bookstore or library and browse the books that they have.  I like being able to look at sections that I may not consider if I am looking for books on the computer and looking at the new titles.

When I go to the library, I still come home with a few paper books and sometimes, I jot down titles to find when I get home on my e-reader, either to borrow or buy.  More often than not, nowadays, I take pictures of books that I want to read on my cell phone to keep them in mind for later.  This happens most often at Target when I have the chance to look at their books.  I have found quite a few books browsing here.

Mostly, though, since I am at the library at least once a week, I tend to read paper books as oppose to books on my reader, especially if I am reading professionally.  I like to have the references on hand to be able to flag ideas if needed.

Recap of 2009 Books Read

I am proud of myself for reading all of these books this year. My favorites for this year were: Sarah's Key and Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige.

Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge
a most uncommon degree of popularity by kathleen gilles seidel
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Summer on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber
The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil
The Diary by Eileen Goudge
Among the Free by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Among the Enemy by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Among the Brave by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Among the Barons by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Among the Betrayed by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Among the Imposters by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy's Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard by Mawi Asgedom
The Skin I'm In by Sharon G. Flake
No One You Know by Michelle Richmond
Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige by Kathleen Gilles Seidel
Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay
They Did It with Love by Kate Morgenroth
Good Night, Sweet Dreams, I Love You Now Get into Bed and Go to Sleep by Patrick C. Friman, Ph.D.
The Fold by An Na
SPAM The Cookbook by Marguerite Patten
Beach Road by James Patterson
Wait for Me by An Na
A Step from Heaven by An Na
Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall
Hope's Boy by Andrew Bridge
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Sarah's Key

I read this book a few weeks ago and could not put it down. It is about how the Holocaust affected France and the round up of Jews in Paris. It also connects to the present in that a journalist is researching the Vel' d'Hiv' for its 60th anniversary. I agree with the review on the back of the book by Risa Miller, author of Welcome to Heavenly Heights, who said, "This book will stay in your mind long after it's back on the shelf".

An Na

Some of you may have noticed that I am reading all of the An Na books that I can find. She is the author of teen books, but I find them interesting because they focus on Korean Americans and their immigration issues. I like how she focuses on the problems that some families face when they choose to come to the United States. It sometimes seems like the American dream is always within reach and easy to achieve, but many immigrants face difficulties when they come to the US that are sometimes overlooked.

For an interesting read from an Asian perspective, read An Na's books.

Hawaii Day Thirteen: Haleakala National Park

We started out our day with breakfast at McDonald's. In Hawaii they have a Local Deluxe Breakfast in addition to the regular Deluxe Breakfast. The Local Deluxe Breakfast includes two pieces of Spam, two pieces of Portuguese sausage, scrambled eggs, and rice. Their rice was very good, and Ron got the Local Deluxe Breakfast, and I got Spam and eggs with rice. Riley was very happy that McDonald's still had Hot Cakes with Sausage with syrup. He had a great breakfast at McDonald's, only in Hawaii!

Haleakala mountain is known as the world's largest dormant volcano. We actually went up to the peak above the clouds at over 10,000 feet. The road up was not as treacherous as the road to Hana and does not take as long. We left about 11am and we got up to the peak about 12:30pm. We spent some time up at the top and then drove back down so that we could be back in Kihei by 3pm for OSU football. It was a great feeling to feel that you are on top of the world, and the scenery was beautiful. On the way up you could see all parts of Maui's beautful landscape and over to the Big Island from the top.

We went back to Sansei for dinner since it was Monday night. This time Riley and I stood in line and just as we get in line, Riley tells me he has to go to the restroom. My sister in law had left to go and give Ron a key to the house, and I told Riley he had to wait until she got back. He did a great job, and we made it to the restroom at the local grocery store just in time.


After dinner we went to Borders so that I could use my gift card from Christmas to buy some Hawaii books for Riley and Reese. We ended up with an alphabet book, S Went Surfing and Santa's Hawaiian Holiday for souvenirs.

Recap of 2008 Books Read

As it nears the end of the year I realize that I will probably not finish another book in the next five days. I am proud of the books that I did finish reading and as always, some were memorable and some worth forgetting! The following are the books that I read:

A Page Out of Life by Kathryn Reid
Multiple Bles8ings by Kate Gosselin
Audition by Barbara Walters
Shutter Island by Dennis Lahane
Her Mother's Shadow by Diane Chamberlain
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain
Veil of Roses by Laura Fitzgerald
Domestic Affairs by Eileen Goudge
Kitchen Confidential Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
Escape by Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer
Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber
Freedom: The Story of My Second Life by Malika Oufkir and Linda Coverdale
Swimming Lessons by Mary Alice Monroe
Around the World in 80 Dinners: The Ultimate Culinary Adventure by Bill Jamison and Cheryl Alters Jamison
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Escaping the Giant Wave by Peg Kehret
The Girls by Lori Lansens
Big Green Purse by Diane MacEachern
The Good Children by Kate Wilhelm
Write It When I'm Gone by Thomas M. DeFrank

My favorites for the year were: Veil of Roses and Escape. The ones that I trekked through and didn't really care for are: Kitchen Confidential and Shutter Island.

Reading Challenges

I feel so much better now that I am earning a paycheck again. I had to wait over a month to get one since I had to be boarded before I could get paid. I find that it is challenging to work with individual students day in and day out and find activities that hold their interest as well as achieve their goals. Assignments that take a whole class at least 15 minutes to do can be accomplished by an individual in five minutes.

I have tried to find books that are interesting to my boys especially to get them to enjoy reading and find writing assignments in which they can relate. One of the things that has seemed to work is draw a picture and write about it. But, just like my son, I have found that as I research their interest and find materials at their reading levels, my knowledge of boy things expands. The interests that I am looking for materials for are: Mythology, Cars, Fighter Jets, Basketball, Kickball, Frogs, Bats, and Sharks.

I believe that reading is reading and although for most of my boys, graphic novels are below their reading levels, I want them to find reading easy and fun to encourage them to read more. I have trouble with graphic novels because I feel they are glorified comic books, but we all have different reading interests and if pictures help make reading more interesting and less of a challenge for my readers, then I will keep looking for these books.

Veil of Roses by Laura Fitzgerald

Although I have not kept up on reporting on the books that I have read, I believe that this is one worth talking about. I enjoyed this book because although it is a work of fiction, it gives some insight into the oppression that women feel in Iran. The main character, Tami, comes to the US and has three months to find a husband or face losing the freedom that she has just gained. It is amazing to see through her eyes the freedoms that we take for granted that are not freedoms everywhere such as the freedom for kids to play outside. I think of my children, and how blessed they are to be able to play outside and have the ability to be kids until they grow up and choose not to play outside. Read the book! Times may be hard, but we take a great deal for granted, and we need to be thankful for the freedoms that we have.

21: Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich

This is the inside story of six M.I.T. students who took Vegas for millions. I reserved this book because it was recommended on my library's website as a great read. It was floating around my car, and my husband found it on the way home from a visit with family. He started to read it and the book became the first book that I have ever seen my husband read for pleasure. It was a quick read for him since he enjoys gambling and Vegas. I was impressed that the book held his attention even after finding out that the movie had just come out on DVD.

Around the World in 80 Dinners: The Ultimate Culinary Adventure by Bill Jamison and Cheryl Alters Jamison

I saw this book as I was browsing through Borders one night and decided to borrow it from the library because they included a stop in Thailand. Well, I had trouble getting into the book and although it was a struggle, I did finish the book. I think what would have made the book better was if it was illustrated. They talked about different foods and scenery from all the country that they visited. I believe that it would have been more interesting to me if I could see pictures of the food and even some of the settings. The book does refer to their website for more photos of their trip, but I did not find that many more photos there.

To the authors: For your next trip, good luck and plan a book with more photos!

How Unread I Am

One of the blogs that I read, http://www.oakmonster.com/ published the following list of books. I thought it would be interesting to see how I would fair since I like to read, although not always stuff that is good for me. I didn't do too well and I do not know that I will ever read all of these books.

From CV Rick, the 106 (why 106? nobody knows) books most often tagged "unread" at LibraryThing. The idea is to mark the ones you've read in bold, the ones you've started but not finished in italics, and the ones you read for school in bold and underlined. À la CV Rick, I put asterisks next to the ones I plan to read.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
*One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
*Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
*Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities (I was also suppose to read for school; the main reason why I did not get into Honor English again my sophomore year.)
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner (I loved this book and enjoyed A Thousand Splendid Suns more!)
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
*Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha (This book I read for book club and really liked it!)
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
*Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein (This was a book that I read for a college English class and found that I really enjoyed it.)
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels & Demons (Thought I might like this after reading The DaVinci Code, but didn't get into it.)
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist (High school reading that I never finished)
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
*Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces (Book club reading)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Unfortunately, some of these books I have not even heard of!

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

This was a book that was picked for book club this month. I was not able to go to book club and join in on the discussion which was just as well because I wanted to finish the book on my own and I would not have if I had gone to book club.

Again, this author has published a wonderful book that sheds light on a world that we sometimes do not think still exists. We are extremely blessed to be United States citizens and as women have the opportunities that we have. We need to remember that all women do not have our opportunities and although some accept their lot in life, there are others that would like change.

The setting is Afghanistan during the last thirty years and how things have changed not only for women, but for all people of Afghanistan. There were parts of this book that touched me deeply and I will never forget.

What a great follow-up to another wonderful book The Kite Runner, which was also a book club choice. Look forward to more great work by this author.

Escaping the Giant Wave by Pat Kehret

I was turned onto to this book when I subbed in a fourth grade classroom. It was their read-aloud book from which I read them a chapter. I found that I wanted to know more about the book, so I reserved it at the library.

I really enjoyed this easy reading. It is a fiction book, but it could be a true story someday. The book is based on vacationers who encounter a tsunami while visiting the Oregon coast. Would you know what to do? The children in this book did, and it made a difference.