2012 Reading Year in Review

This year, I have only managed to read 81 books.  Way off my pace of 140 books last year!  Although, I wasn't working last year until September.  There was a time where I was even too busy and stressed to write down my books in my reading journal, so that number might be a few low, but it's pretty close.  Here are some highlights:

The only "regular fiction" I read was:

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Be Different, Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian by John Elder Robinson
The Beach House by Jane Green
Beaded Hope by Cathy Liggett

All but two of these were my book club's picks.  I can only attend my book club in the summer due to my job now, but I try to read along with them at home.  I enjoyed all of them, but my favorite was Unbroken.  It's quite a story; all the more interesting because it's all true!

Here are some of the series I read a lot of this year:

Betsey Taylor Vampire queen by Mary Janice Davidson, I really enjoyed the first few books, but then the jokes seemed to get old and there didn't seem to be enough meat to the books.  I stopped reading at book # 8.  I might pick-up more later.

Laurell K. Hamilton.  I finished up reading all the available Anita Blake books and started reading the Meridith Gentry series.  I don't like Meridith as well as Anita, but then again I like Shifters and Vampires better than the Fey anyway!

I'm still reading Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter series and I have started reading the Dream Hunter books also.  I don't get the Dream Hunter books.  I still don't really understand what I dream hunter is and there are a lot of characters and stories to keep track of, but she is still worth reading.  I am on book 16.  I read Acheron in November, it's got to be my favorite so far!

My favorite by far is J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood Series.  I devoured all 11 books!  The men are totally hot, completely cool, and utterly heroic!  I LOVE them!  I have started reading her Fallen Angels series since I have to wait until March to get the next Black Dagger book (and I must say I can't wait to read it!)  The Fallen Angels are really good, but not quite up to the most excellent level of the Black Dagger Brotherhood!

I have read the first two books in Larissa Ione's Dominica series and so far I am really enjoying them!.  I am excited to read the next Black Dagger Brotherhood book, the next Sookie Stackhouse book, and the next The Hollows book.  I am sooo looking forward to all the excellent spring reading!

Merry Christmas

I have not been posting because I have been busy working.  I work as a teacher's aide for my county's special educations cooperative and I love it, but it keeps me very busy.  After work, almost every night, I have to run the kids around then help the youngest with his homework (a long nightly struggle).  I don't mind.  I consider helping my children the most important thing in my life right now.  Sometimes other things have to take a back seat.

I have been reading, but I haven't been very good about keeping up with my writing journal.  Here are some highlights:

My latest discovery/favorite--J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood.  This series has everything and I mean everything I have ever wanted in a book--romance, hot, but tough heroes, steamy sex scenes, paranormal, lots of on going story lines, and a large cast of characters that we continually follow through the books!  I can't get enough!

I did not read a Christmas novel this year.  I have been unhappy in the past with these.  It seems like the story line always overshadows the Christmas part and the story lines are usually not what I would normally want to read.

What I've Been Reading

Okay, I haven't put out any book reviews lately.  It doesn't mean I'm not reading, it just means that I haven't felt like reviewing any books.  I often think that there are plently of reviews out there.  Why should I rehash the same old again?  If I do write a review, I try to keep it short and sweet.  I really hate the reviews that go on and on and on about every detail of the plot.  If we cared that much, we would just start reading the book.  So, here is what I have been reading in the last month:

Paranormal:

Deep Kiss of Winter, Kresley Cole & Gena Showalter, Okay
Spellbound, Hex Hall #3, Rachel Hawkins, Okay
Undead & Unwelcome, Betsy Taylor Vampire Queen # 8, Mary Janice Davidson, Okay
Devil May Cry, Dark-Hunter #13, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Good
Once Burned, Jeaniene Frost, Okay
Vacation with a Vampire, Harlequin Nocturne, June '12, Not Great
Lover Awakened, Black Dagger Brotherhood #3, J.R. Ward, Heaven
Kiss of the Dead, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter #21, Laurell K. Hamilton, Heaven
Sentinels:  Tiger Bround, Harlequin Nocturne, Aug. '12, Doranna Durgin, Not Great
Lover Revealed, Black Dagger Brotherhood #4, J.R.Ward, Heaven
A Kiss of Shadows, Merry Gentry #1, Laurell K. Hamilton, Heaven


Erotic Romance:

50 Shades Darker, E.L. James, Okay


Literary Fiction:

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffennegger, Great

My Raiting Scale:  Bad, Not Great, Okay, Great, Heaven

Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose

This year for vacation, my husband wanted to drive to Yellowstone.  I was at first unwilling to spend so much time trapped in the car driving, but my husband was persistent and wore me down like he usually does.  He has an old friend that moved from the Midwest to Montana and he has been dying to see the Montana/Yellowstone area ever since.  I try to read a book about the area we are going to see and this year I select the classic, Undaunted Courage by the unequaled Stephen E. Ambrose.  I had planned to read it aloud to the family during the LONG car drive thinking that I would have plenty of time.  Well, when the book came, I realized the folly of that kind of thinking.  The book is



484 pages (with lots of small words of each page).  Undaunted myself, I decided to forge ahead and read as much as I could.  My husband and the raging princess actually looked forward to and enjoyed the readings.  By the end of the trip, I had read 132 pages, the first 10 chapters.  We all are enjoying the book so far and plan to bring it along to read whenever we have a car trip.  We will probably be reading it for the next several years, but it is a great book and worth the effort!

Water Parks and Silos

Yesterday, I was at the water park.  I am roped into going every year to take my kids, I don't particularly enjoy it.  As I have grown older, I have developed a fear of being in enclosed spaces and I have never liked being in the dark.  So as you can imagine hurdling down a small, enclosed tunnel, in the dark does not in anyway sound fun to me.  So I sit frying in the sun at the wave pool.  An overcrowded, murky 0 depth entry pool.  It disgusts me and there are lots of unknown floaties floating around.  I try not to think about what is floating and what is causing the water to be so murky and I quickly cool off so I can go roast in the sun some more while I wait for my kids to be finished.  I would have preferred a spot in the shade, but all the shade spots are gone, so I am adding more unsightly "age" spots and moles to what's all ready there.  My sunscreen has proven to be ineffective.  I guess it's time to toss it.  How many years have I had that tube?  I probably don't want to know. 

So I am sitting immersed in the unnatural, man-made monstrosity that is the water park.  Surrounded by throngs of people, cement, unnaturally bright plastic tubes, and loud music that is piped all over the park.  I am pretty good at shutting out stuff and am trying to read one of my three books I brought (one never and I mean never wants to be without reading material).  Putting my book down, I gaze out of the water park and look longingly across the farm fields when I spy I silo.  You still see old falling down silos dotting the  horizon.  They were built back when farmers could still make money planing crops and raising stock.  The silos held the silage that cattle ate.  Farmers now days, can't make money raising a small herd of cattle, so the silos stand unused and falling down.  Cattle are now raised on giant industrial farms and the family farmer is struggling to make ends meet, banking it all on how well the next season of corn and soybeans will do.  So, I sit having 'fun' frying in the sun and cooling off in the murky water, thinking about how sad it is that the days of being able to make a good living off of a small farm are long gone.   There will be no more silos, no more barns, no more small family farmers quietly making a living.  Sure their are still farmers, but it's all about being big now.  More acres, more heads, until it is nothing more than an industrial machine.  We no longer build silos.  Now we have to look forward to more unnaturally bright water parks.   

Parents: You must read this!

 This book is a must have for parents!

I might have written about this book before, but I feel so strongly about it that I wanted to blog about it again.  I have always been a big reader and have routinely read to my children, but I have taken it to another level since reading this book several years ago.  Read the info. below and pick-up the book.  I never reread books, but I think I might be reading this one again. 

Also, check out Jim Trelease's website at, www.trelease-on-reading.com



Below is an excerpt from the web site:

This is not a book about teaching a child how to read; it’s about teaching a child to want to read. There's an education adage that goes, “What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn.” The fact is that some children learn to read sooner than others, and some better than others. There is a difference. For the parent who thinks sooner is better, who has an eighteen-month-old child barking at flashcards, my response is: Sooner is not better. Are the dinner guests who arrive an hour early better guests than those who arrive on time? Of course not.

However, I am concerned about the child who needlessly arrives late and then struggles through years of pain with a book. Not only will he miss out on large portions of what he needs to know in school, he'll experience a pain connection with print that may stay with him for a lifetime. There are things that families must do as "preventive maintenance" to ensure against those pains.

Even I have to admit that the subject of children's reading is broader than simply reading aloud to children, passionate as I am about that subject. And that's why there's a chapter (five) devoted to SSR—sustained silent reading, reading aloud's silent partner, if you will. And just as the best baseball players come from countries and states where they can play baseball most often, research shows that children who have access to more print (magazines, newspapers, and books) have higher reading scores—because they end up reading more. That's explored in chapter seven.

There is also a chapter on television (nine), including some new research correlating infants' daily TV exposure with attention deficit disorder by age seven. That chapter also includes information about a mechanical device for the TV that is the most successful reading tutor in the world!

Questions covered in the Introduction for print edition of The Read-Aloud Handbook:

• What if the No Child Left Behind Act is wrong? Where does that leave the nation’s children?
• Are you suggesting this reading stuff is the job of the parent?
• Can we really change families and homes in America?
• Will this book help me teach my child to read?
• How did a parent come to write this book?
• How do I convince my husband he should be doing this with our children?
• Is reading still important in the video age?

The Summer of Harry Potter, Update

After a rough start (which I have blogged about earlier this summer), we finally finished the first Harry Potter book on the 4th of July, Yea!  My son, eventually, got into the book and once I dragged him away from whatever he was doing (he never likes to transition away from something he is enjoying) he would enjoy the nightly reading.  Immediately after finishing the book, we watched the first movie with the Raging Princess (who is also a Harry fan). 

I think it is SO important to share the books you love with your kids.  They will pick-up on your enthusiasm and even if they don't ever like it as much as you do, you still have shared something of yourself with your kids and along the way are fostering a love of reading that will sustain them for the rest of their lives. 

We have started on book 2, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.  The goal is to finish it before school starts.