Reading With Teenagers

I have to warn you: I will be doing a LOT of gushing in this post. If you are anti-gush, consider yourself warned, and flee now for your own good!

I finished what my girlfriend doesn't know, and while I found it sweet and hilarious, I think that I liked what my mother doesn't know better. They are both excellent, and it may just boil down to the fact that I liked the one narrated by Sophie better because I'm a girl ;).

I forgot to mention in my first Teen Read post that I loved my first Sarah Dessen novel: I picked up Just Listen last week because I was kind of at a loss as to what to read, and I pretty much devoured it. I hope to review it tomorrw, but I will keep the gushing (I hope) to a minimum when I do.

I gave my sophomores time to read in class today. One of the students has already finished two books, so I sent him off to the library to choose another one. I had to SERIOUSLY restrain myself from jumping out of my chair and GUSHING when he came back from the library with The Hunger Games. I'm so excited for him that I can hardly stand it!

Finally, my sophomores are required to give a book talk about their independent read, and I have been sort of agonizing over which book I should use to give a sample book talk. Right now I'm trying to decide between The Hunger Games, Jane, and Shiver. If you would like to weigh in, please do!

"My Head Feels Fuzzy"

I have been thinking about this line from You've Got Mail (possibly one of the BEST movies ever!) a lot over the last week because I can completely empathize with Kathleen Kelly (but I didn't get daisies from a dashing stranger). There have been multiple students hacking up their lungs all over my classroom over the last few weeks, so I'm not terribly surprised that I got sick. I would, however, have liked to avoid missing three full days of work my first month at the school.

Oh, well. "The best laid plans" part two, I suppose.

Anyways, on to the point. I am supposedly participating in the 24-Hour-Readathon on Saturday (and greatly looking forward to it), but my recent stint with illness may demand a less-involved readathon than I would like. I would like to catch up (some, at least!) on Bleak House, which I will probably finish NEXT October at the rate I'm going, but it may turn into grading catch-up, license acquiring, and other miscellaneous things day. And I don't have internet at home (STILL!).

Needless to say, the life lesson is that it does no one any good to be essentially knocked out for three days straight, but on the book front, I'm still loving The Hunger Games trilogy (I'm in Mockingjay), and I discovered that Never Let Me Go will probably be a completely compulsive read as well once I fully give myself over to it. Sadly, my poor, fuzzy head couldn't handle it last week.

Hunger Games, Bleak House, Maltese Falcon, Oh My!

What are you reading right now? What made you choose it? Are you enjoying it? Would you recommend it? (And, by all means, discuss everything, if you’re reading more than one thing!)

I am very glad that the caveat was included for multiple books. As I've mentioned before, I am a chronic multiple book reader, and the habit has only been reinforced by my choice of profession. I haven't participated in Booking Through Thursday in a while, but I knew I needed to answer this one!

My highest priority read right now is Maltese Falcon. I am teaching it in one of my classes and had never read it before. I wasn't necessarily thrilled that it was included in the curriculum for the class as I am NOT a mystery fan (at all...I kind of detest them), but I have been very pleasantly surprised by how much I am enjoying Maltese Falcon. Perhaps I like hard boiled detective fiction? It has been fun to teach, too, because I am reading everything out loud to the class. It is a group of struggling English students, but it has been entirely gratifying to experience this novel along with them. They even asked to keep reading today, so we did!

I am also nominally rereading To Kill a Mockingbird for my sophomore class, but since I have read it so many times before, I am just kind of dipping in and out as time allows (I am still trying to unpack, and there is still some scrambling taking place at school because of my last-minute hire). I WILL read the last few chapters because they are my favorite...and they make me cry...and I don't cry when I read...

My highest priority personal read is the Hunger Games Trilogy. I finished the series about two weeks ago, and I immediately started it again. I NEVER do this, but I just couldn't let Panem, Peeta (oh, Peeta! You're so my favorite!), and Katniss go quite yet. I'm currently halfway through Catching Fire, and I have had a stern talk with myself about how I have to put them down when I finish Mockingjay because I suspect that I will want to read them again right away.

The other books I am "reading" (i.e. I was actively reading when I was ambushed by the Hunger Games and followed it down the rabbit hole) are Bleak House and Echo in the Bone. I haven't done more than pack them and look at them in several weeks, but I will go back to them as soon as I'm done with Mockingjay.

In other exciting news, I am anxiously awaiting my library card. I was thrilled to discover that I didn't need to have a state driver's license to apply for a card, so it is really only a matter of time before cumpulsive library material checking out commences once more! Yay!