Anyway, for the next 45 minutes, it's still Tuesday!
My current read (in the living room read, anyway) is Three Days to Dead by Kelly Meding.
I am in the middle of the book and it's cooking along so far. I just looked again, I'm almost to the middle. :(
" The hound leapt over the flailing biker and landed in a crouch, ready to spring. Epithets poured from my mouth, streaming faster than I could properly articulate, my fury dripping out with each syllable."
Epithets - ever try saying that word out loud? It's one of those words that read better than it sounds. To me anyway. Maybe I just can't pronounce things. Flailing is another word that's hard for me to say, but it looks good on paper. Very descriptive. BTW - love the cover. I used to look like that - 30 years ago!
I'm feeling anxious to start reading other books, while I'm reading this one. To those who haven't read my first few posts (written a while ago) I suffer from a completely made up ailment or condition that I call B.A.D.D. which stands for Bood Attention Deficit Disorder. Some of the symtoms are ....
- inability to read, or focus on one book at a time (totally me!)
- starts at least five or six books at a time (yep, me)
- unable to make up your mind after a book shopping spree which book to read, so you pick a book you already have ( I totally do this)
- it takes longer, way longer than it should to finish reading a novel, because you are jumping back and forth between books...then there's another shiny new cover, must have...want... (yeah, I have all the symptoms, hey - I made them up!)
This is why I started my blog in the first place. I thought if I decided to review a few books it would keep me focused. It has worked, kind of. I now keep a book in the Bathroom (come on, you know you like to read in there too! it's relaxing. don't be judging!), a book in the car (okay there's about 10 books in the car, some of them kid books -for the grandkids!), a few by the computer, which is in the kitchent (don't ask), and two or three in the living room (along with the other hundred in the shelves) and a few by my side of the bed (about twenty, and there's the bookshelves in there also). I always have a books around at school also. I work in a afterschool program and we have mandatory 30 minute reading Monday through Thursday. My other favorite job is library tech in a k-8 library - so I am SURROUNDED by books. Surrounded. BLISS, UTTER BLISS. which brings me to...
Lately I've been keeping the library open during recess and any lunch time that I don't have to do lunch duty (a horrific job, absolutely horrific-yet fun). One of my favorite things is just allowing some of the students to come in and browse books or finding a book that a student just loves. One of the saddest things, though, is not having a book they're looking for. I'm always on the lookout for novels for kids aged 10 through 14 years old. If I find one laying around, and no one claims it - it goes in our collection!
If anyone wants to donate books to our cash-strapped (California!) school library, I have a wishlist started on Amazon.com under Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts. (long name, little school) It's a small list so far, because I add to it while I'm browsing the blogs. We library techs rarely have time to actually shop for books - that's usually done on our own time. (not complaining - yes I am, a little - 7 paid hours a week, people - 7 hours!) It's fun though. Even if someone has a used book they'd love to send, I'll take it for the school. I'm trying to diversify our library, also. I'd love to get more books about POC, written by POC authors. A dream of mine, that I'd like to see happen. Just contact me through the e-mail, for the snail-mail address. I've gone shopping at Borders and Barnes and Noble, found good deals on clearance books and put those in. As long as a book is in good, fair condition, our students will check them out. We have a few books that are just falling apart, kept together with tape, but the kids keep checking out these books because they are fun. I haven't discarded them because we can't replace them right now.
Okay, enough with the rambling. I went from Teaser Tuesday, to B.A.D.D. to library begging. That's a wrap. Now it's very close to midnight, yet it's still Tuesday - I did it!
We're practically neighbors - I live in Marin! I guess things look bad all over. Novato's thinking of closing some schools.
ReplyDeleteWe are close - within 100 miles I believe. wow. I hate when districts close down schools. The state should always support schools, not close them down.
ReplyDeleteWe were facing possible closure for about five years - every year we lost more students because the paper would write about how we might be closed. Parent would take their kids to other schools. Finally we were down to under 200 students (140). Finally they did close us down, but then we changed over to this charter school under the public school system umbrella with a grant. They kept us peons (lunch workers, office staff, library) but hired all new teachers. It was stressful. Now we have almost 300 students, about as much as this sized campus can handle. And we serve kindergarden through 8th grade. What a trip.
It's always the smallest schools (of course) that get the shaft, also. I think that there should be more smaller schools and less large schools. More of sense of community. On the other hand, if you're too small you probably get less diversity -which is not a good thing to skimp on. On the OTHER hand, with larger schools, there is less personalization. You just can't win, nothing is perfect.
I wish the Novato district the best. It's very tough as an employee working under the ax, never knowing if you're going to lose your job, where you're going to be, etc. It's hard on the students to, because the teachers start getting emotionally shellschocked.
Wow, this is almost another post!