100 Book Challenge Update

Last January I joined the 100 Book Challenge at J. Kaye's website. I ended up reading 115 books, but that's counting children's books and I'm an elementary librarian, so I get paid to read them! Here's a breakdown of what I read:

32 Novels for adults or older teens (the large majority were adult books)
10 Novels for children (helps with my job so I can recommend books to kids)
72 Picture books (again, for my job, but I looooooove picture books!)

And that adds up to 114. Hmmm. I probably read 73 picture books.

I'm disappointed that I only read 32 "real" books. I really thought I could read one a week, but I also moved to a new country, got a new job and dealt with the decline and death of my father. Not exactly good reading situations. Thirty two books is a lot more than most Americans. According to an article in the Washington Post (2007), 25% of Americans didn't read a book at all the previous year. (Yikes!) The typical person read 4 books. Well, I have most of America beat!!!

I read a lot of great stuff. If you want to see the full list, go back to my original post. The fun aspect of the challenge is that it forces you to keep track of what you've read during the year and your list is in chronological order. I also subscribe to librarything.com (it's free!) and that let's me see all the books I've read. Well, the ones I can remember anyway. That's where I get that cool widget on the right side of my blog that shows random covers of books I've read. Very visual! Very fun!

I didn't write any book reviews or anything. No interest in that. But my favorite books of 2009 were:

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. It won the national book award for teen literature and boy did it deserve it. Amazing story. Great writing. Terrific book.

• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. I read a lot of literature set in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and that region of the world. I'm finding really great literature coming out of there right now. The White Tiger is an amazing novel about a taxi driver in modern India. 

• The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller. I don't like nonfiction because I'm all about characters, but this is a terrific book for teachers and librarians. I had to talk myself through it because nonfiction just shuts my brain off. I would say, "Read 1 chapter of this and then read as much of your novel as you want." It worked! That makes it sound like a bad book, but it's excellent, I'm just a bad NF reader. Her ideas about turning kids on to reading made me re-think how I run my library and present myself to my students. If you're a teacher or have children, read this.

• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Won the Pulitzer and rightly so. The writing is amazing. It's a collection of 13 short stories that are somehow connected to the main character, Olive Kitteridge. Olive isn't your typical protaganist that you fall in love with. She has short comings. Many, frustrating short comings. I often confuse my opinions about a book with my opinions about the characters. For example, I used to say that I didn't like The Corrections, but in reality I didn't like the characters. It was so well written that I transferred my dislike for the characters to the book. Same with Olive Kitteridge. I wanted to shake her at times to open her eyes. The author said she wrote it in 13 short stories where Olive is sometimes in the background because she didn't think the reader could take a full novel centered around her. That sums it up for me. That being said, Olive has some very good qualities, as well. She's not all bad. She's human.

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I know I'm a little behind the ball on this one. I loved The Kite Runner and this is another amazing novel by Hosseini. 

I read other good ones, too, but those are my stand outs. I'm going to do the 100 Book Challenge for 2010, too. It starts tomorrow. My goal is to read more than 32 adult books and to read more than 10 children's novels. I encourage you to sign up. If you read more than 4 books, you're doing better than most Americans!

I have a pile of books next to my bed for my vacation. I wonder what I'll start with.

Library Thing with Grade 7

If you've read any of my blog, you probably know that I'm crazy about Library Thing. Yesterday I finally had a chance to show it to some classes. I taught 2 sections of 7th grade Humanities classes how to create their library and put Library Thing widgets on their blogs. 

The beauty of Library Thing is that it's sooooo easy. To register, you just create a username and password. You don't have to give an e-mail address or any other information. It's super simple. I showed the kids my library and the Library Thing widget on this blog. They quickly joined Library Thing and added books to their library. 

My favorite part of the whole process was listening to the kids talk about reading. One boy yelled out that Tunnels by Roderick Gordon is the best book ever written! Everyone was remembering books they've read and giving impromptu reviews. It was fun to witness an enthusiastic discussion about reading that just happened on its own. If we had tried to orchestrate this type of conversation it probably would have been stilted and lackluster. Somehow the sight of the book covers spurred on a natural discussion about literature.

Next the kids browsed the different styles of widgets and added one to their blog. They looked really good! Lastly, we created a Group so they could see what the others in their class were reading. The classes can have online discussions about reading and literature. 

The Humanities teacher and I really enjoyed the experience. It seemed like the kids did, too. It was a simple way of combining literature and technology and to promote and celebrate reading.

Library Thing Obsession

I've already blogged about Library Thing, but that was when I first discovered it. Now it's become somewhat of an obsession. My library is up to 108 books, but I know I'm missing quite a few. Dang! I wish I had kept that book diary like I always said I would! 

Today out of the blue I remembered a title that I read 3 or 4 years ago. I was so excited to get home and add it to my library. It's such a simple concept, but I'm hooked! I've also started looking at libraries of other people that have read some of the same books. While browsing their libraries I've found titles I've already read and can add to my library. I also see lots of great books that I want to read. I really need to get my hands on The Magician's Assistant and The Alchemist.

There's something about seeing all those covers. When you read a book, you make connections with the characters and even the author. You experience other places and situations. Seeing the cover brings it all back. A friend described it well when she said, "It's like seeing old friends!" 

Hey! I just thought of another title! That makes 109!