Parents out there--Please make reading a top priority in your home. Reading is the foundation for success in all school subjects. Read aloud to your children, no child is too old to read to. Jim Trelease, a reading advocate, recommends reading interesting newspaper articles, etc. to teenage children while they are doing the dishes. Check out his website at www.trelease-on-reading.com Younger children who can read still enjoy being read to. Children can listen and understand books that they can not read themselves. Buy your kids books, enforce daily reading time most school's recommend, and model good reading behavior.

Merry Christmas to all my many followers! (okay, it's just the one! Thanks, friend)

I have been busy with back to school activities, then I have started working part-time (because as my husband so kindly pointed out, I don't get paid to read), and then there

is Christmas! I love celebrating Christ's birth, I don't like all the expectations women especially, feel. Cookies, gifts, shopping (which I hate, unless it's for books), cards, all the false cheer, etc.

Since my last post, I have read 80 books! My favorites are:

The Overachievers, the Secret Lives of Driven Kids, by Alexandra Robbins (All that stress on our children today, comes at a price)

Steig Larsson's trilogy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and the Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's nest (A very, interesting, readable thriller)

My Teenage Were-Wolf, A Mother, A Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence, by Lauren Kessler (The Teenage years are the most important for establishing the mother-daughter relationship you will have with your adult daughter)

Made by Hand, Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World by Mark Frauenfelder (A man after my own heart)

The Taste of Good Fruit by MaRita Teague (Christian Fiction has always inspired me! A reminder of Who we should lean on in times of trouble)

The Maximum Ride Series by James Patterson (Angel Experiment, School's Out Forever, Saving the World & Other Extreme Sports, The Final Warning, Max, & Fang) (YA, fun, positive, empowering, fantasy)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (A classic everyone should read)

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman (Narnia, meets Harry Potter all grown-up)

The Seven Realms, The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima (YA Fantasy doesn't get any better)

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (An interesting take on mental illness and people struggling to fit in to the world)

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis (The movie was good, the book is GREAT. Football, poverty, class relations and life)

Blood Oath (The President's Vampire) by Christopher Farnsworth (A vampire Assassin bound to the President. I want more books!)

Well, that's all for now. Keep reading. Your commets are welcome.

Happy New Year! and Happy Reading!