It's Monday! What are You Reading? 2-16-15

It's Monday! What are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA! is hosted by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts.

And surprise, it's the middle of February ... oops. I am going to cheat a little here, since I am pretty sure that last week lasted around 14 days or so.

Friday the 6th I complained about the weather This is what is outside my office window !

I also posted  A peak into Fairest and Brown Girl Dreaming for Book Beginnings and the Friday 56

Then on Sunday the 8th I posted a review of The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey - hurray, I finally finished it! 

On Wednesday I posted a review/rant about Fairest by Marissa Meyer - mini rant! probably not much of a spoiler to admit that I was less than pleased. It should have been so cool and given us an in-depth peak into Lunar culture! ARGH!  Oh - warning, spoilers - they are marked so you can skip them if you wish.   

As a bit of a palate cleanser I read Jill Mansell's Walk in the Park which was generally enjoyable, though not as much as others of Mansell's that I have liked. The end was messy and trite at the same time. Still, fun overall.

 

And bringing it full circle - I complained about the temperature on Friday Too d**m cold around here only for it to get  even colder today. 

I started reading The Eye of Zoltar by Japer Fforde yesterday. Much more fun. I think I am going to buzz though some middle grade stuff for fun this week. 

Also - I am still working on learning Japanese. My notebooks look like this now ... 

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 1-19-15

It's Monday! What are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA! is hosted by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts.

This past week ... 

On Wednesday I did a Wondrous Words Wednesday 38 using words that were all from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and I followed that up on with a brief mini-review of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (it is still quite a fun read). 

On Thursday I posted a huge, long review plus conceptual discussion about the nonfiction book When Oil Peaked by Kenneth Deffeyes (long). Did I mention this was long ? 

Friday I posted A peak into A Natural History of Dragons and The Secret Rooms for Book Beginnings and the Friday 56. 

Then on Sunday I posted a review of A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan (what a neat book!). 

This week, I am going to try to read Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes to see if his first book was better (I imagine it has to be otherwise he never should have gotten to the point of writing a third one.) Not sure what else I will pick up. Right now I just want to get my hands on The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent the second Lady Trent book, but that would take ignoring my monster TBR pile.

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 1-12-15

It's Monday! What are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA! hosted by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts.


Wow - I haven't done one of these since classes ended last spring.  Well - in a probably vain attempt to start paying more attention to sharing what I have been writing, I am going to try to remember to do one of these posts at least once a month or so.

And here I find out that Sheila is in Australia!  Soooooo jealous!

Last Monday I signed up for some reading challenges

• 2015 Full House Reading Challenge
• 6th Annual TBR and Nonfiction Reading Challenges

I am curtailing my attempts this year since last year when life hit I totally spaced on doing any of the links for the challenge - I was read the books, and even managing reviews. I just wasn't taking that last step. This year I have only signed up for three so far. I might add a couple more but will attempt to control myself this year. 

Tuesday I was a Mystery Reader for a 2nd Grade Class. It was tons of fun! I read Rosie Revere, Engineer and If an Armadillo Went to a Restaurant.

I also posted a review of Waistcoats and Weaponry by Gail Garriger. Review spoiler - I didn't like it nearly as much as the first, or even the second. I think it was only nostalgia for the first book that really carried me through. Rather disappointed.

Wednesday - was Wondrous Words Wednesday 37 but the books that I found the words in were pretty meh, so I didn't include them in the post this time around.

Thursday I posted a review for the novella  The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon). Very cool creepy take on the Bluebeard fairy tale. If that is your thing, definitely worth a read.

I also read Dragonbreath #10: Knight-napped by Ursula Vernon. I haven't posted a review yet but - squeee! - I love Danny Dragonbreath books! They are awesome. My son read it over the weekend and spent a ton of time reading bits out loud to me and laughing uproariously.  

Friday was my A peak into The Seventh Bride and The Quiet World post where I post a bit from the first page and a bit from either page 56 or the 56% mark in a book. I usually try to do both a fiction and non-fiction title.
 
Saturday I posted a review for The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani - another review spoiler - I found this book to be very problematic. The ideas the book purports to play with are very cool and would subvert some traditional tropes, except that the way the narrative actually plays out, most of the negative stereotypes are actively reinforced. Plus the writing was pretty sloppy. Sorry, I know that lots of people really liked this book but I was hugely disappointed.


And I have no clear plan for this week. Goodness only knows I will be reading.  

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 5-12

It's Monday! What are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Finals week!  EEK!  Also Bout of Books 10.0 week. Double EEK!

I posted a review for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

I also participated in a couple of memes ... 

• Wondrous Words Wednesday 14 - Slightly Updated
•  A peak into Lexicon and Cadillac Desert

My plan for this week is to alternate between writing/giving/grading finals and reading fun books so that I don't go completely bonkers this week. Thus here is my Bout of Books 10.0 Goals List, such as it is.  I think I need to alter it so that "Don't go bonkers" tops the goal list.

Despite any grand plans that I might have had, I have actually been reading Owl's Well That Ends Well by Donna Andrews - the 6th book in that series. I have no idea how that ended up in my bag rather than any of the books on my goals list, but what the heck. 

I started reading it while proctoring the test this morning and discovered the it makes the students nervous when you sit there snickering and trying really hard not to laugh out loud while they are being tortured by an exam.  In my defense, I did get myself under control :-)  but I forgot how much I liked this book.  Snicker!

Here is the start of the book (you have to read it if you want to know why Meg is doing this :-) ... 

When the doorbell rang, I stumbled to the still-dark window and poured a bucket of water where the front porch roof would have been if it hadn't blow away in a thunderstorm two weeks ago. 

"Aarrgggg!" screamed our visitor. A male voice for a change. 

Ignoring the curses from below, I poured another gallon jug of water into the bucket, added a scoop of ice cubes from the cooler, and stationed it by the window before crawling back into the sleeping bag.

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 5-4

It's Monday! What are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

It is the last week of classes and things are completely frenetic now. Finals are next week and everyone is starting to panic. Me - I am buried under grading.

As a consequence, not much has changed since last week on the blog ...

I got a review/stream of consciousness posted about Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

and that was pretty much it. I still need to post reviews for

• Legends of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke 
• Giants Beware by Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado  
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows  
• Monster on the Hill by Rob Harrell 
•  The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis last week.

 (all these I either liked or loved - so consider that a mini-mini-review :)

I finished reading Austenland by Shannon Hale this week. I started reading it for Dewey's 24-hour read-a-thon and finished it during a bout of insomnia this week.

I doubt if I will get around to reviewing it - the only reason I finished the book was because it was too much work to pick another ebook to start reading. I just found the premise too creepy for words. Yuck!  Especially since there are plenty of re-creation groups that play at being in Regency times, the Middle Ages, the Civil war - voluntarily with no paid coercion  - the whole rich 'lady' playground idea was unnecessary. I would give it two claws - I didn't like it and found the premise alternatively squicky and offensive.  The concept of 'paid romantic experience' makes me feel vaguely ill.

I participated in two memes last week ...

• Wondrous Words Wednesday 13
• A peak into The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel ...

And posted two short environmental new pieces. 

• The ice boom is finally coming out !
• Environmental News Notes 2

It is very unlikely that I will get much reading done this week (and no, I still have not finished Packing for Mars, sigh - I lost it on my desk under stacks of grading instead. Oops.)

On the plus side my daughters school had a buy-one-get-one-free book fair on Friday, so we stocked up on children's books for both my daughter and my son. I still have to take a picture of all our loot. 

I am saving The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and several of our new purchases for the Bout of Books 10.0 next week (which is also finals week - so I will be alternating between grading and reading - it will be weird!) I am really looking forward to BoB and will not be trying to be a "serious reader" this time at all. I will be a frivolous reader instead and pick up whatever books catch my fancy this time.  I have a very odd fancy.

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 4-28

It's Monday! What are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

We are in the last couple of weeks of classes, and as it usual, when you are on the downhill slope - things pick up speed!  I have fallen way behind on my grownup reading.

I participated in the Dewey's 24-hour Read-a-thon on Saturday and in addition to not really having much fun (I found out that high-pressure, fast read-a-thon's are not my thing - no time for reflection, which is one of the reasons that I read) I also appear to have picked an infestation of spam hits.  Sigh.

Oh well - I read some good books. I got short reviews up on the first two and will be trying to find time to post reviews on the rest of them soon ...

• Nurk: The Strange, Surprising, Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew by Ursula Vernon.
• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff 
• Legends of Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke 
• Giants Beware by Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado  
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
  

I also read Monster on the Hill by Rob Harrell and The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis last week. 

I know that seems like I managed to read lots - but four of the books are graphic novels for kids (Legends of Zita, Giants Beware, Monster on the Hill and The Secret Science Alliance) - which were really quick reads. If you have kids, all of these were great and both of my children's really liked all of them. The only down side what that Legends of Zita ends with a cliffhanger!

Plus I participated in the Anne of Green Gables read-along at Midnight Garden, and still need to write that review as well.

• Anne of Green Gables Raffle at Midnight Garden
• A peak into Anne of Green Gables and Abominable Science

I forgot how much I loved the Anne book's - once you get back into the swing of the lyrical (and long-winded to modern readers) prose, it paints such an vivid and amazing picture of Prince Edwards Island and that period in time.

This week (déjà vu) I will finish Packing for Mars by Mary Roach. 


I also had a couple of environmental news posts last week...

• Lake Erie Ice Survey hopeful
• Interactive map shows schools + chemical storage

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 4-21

It's Monday! What are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Happy (Belated) Easter !

Work has gotten completely overwhelming so I haven't been up to much reading for fun the past couple of weeks.
 

I only got a couple of reviews up last week

• Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke - mini review
• Hen of the Baskervilles by Donna Andrews

 Currently I am working on (ooh - not a good phrase but that is rather what it feels like) three books ...  

I plan to finish Packing for Mars this week. I have to admit that I have been rather stalled on this book - thinking too much about the nitty-gritty of the early space program is rather depressing me, since I used to dream of being an astronaut.

 I have also joined 2014 Classic YA/MG Challenge so I am re-reading Anne of Green Gables.  I am getting to one of the bits that is really sad, so I have stalled here too - but I need to finish the book for the April 25th discussion. 

Finally - I have been reading No Place for a Lady about women explorers/travelers in the 1800's - "those ladies who will travel where they have no business to travel, who will wear costumes which they have no business (in those latitudes) to wear; who will go 'unprotected;' who will choose their dragoman by physiognomy, as romance suggests, and not by advice of friends, as common sense would dictate." pg 7-8.

You can see a bit of the book in A peak into No Place for a Lady and my Wondrous Words Wednesday 11 post last week.

On the environmental front we have ...

• Your Inner Fish Episode 1
• Years of Living Dangerously - first episode free!
• Niagara Ice Boom going for record

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 4-7

It's Monday! What are You Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Mondays, I have discovered, are not a good day for me to remember to do something new - I hadn't realized I had missed so many. 

Last week was rather slow compared to the previous week. I got short reviews up for Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff and Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart - Mini Review


and posted two environmental news pieces ... Chemical Valley - The New Yorker looks into West Virginia Chemical Spill and The Lake Erie/Niagara River Ice Boom. I have to find time to get back to the Elk River chemical spill - I read that New Yorker piece and it raises some interesting questions, and I also have more information about the coal ash spills/leaks in North Carolina that I want to  highlight.

I am still reading Packing for Mars by Mary Roach and Silent Spring by Rachael Carson. I keep getting distracted by shiny new books (oops!) - is book ADHD a thing?

Speaking of shiny new books, these are the books I picked up last week (left to right) ... 

• Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science by John Fleischman
• Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff
• Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman
• Abominable Science: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and other Famous Cryptids by Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 3-17

The It's Monday! What are You Reading? meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

It has been a couple of weeks since I had a chance to do this. Last week I finished Lake Effect:Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy by Nancy A. Nichols - it does a very good job of walking you through the complex issues associated with environmental cancer and is well worth the read if you are not familiar with the topic. I also read Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman with my daughter. Oh - and I finished Soulless by Gail Carriger which have to admit was not quite what I was expecting based on the other books I had read.

This week I am reading Some Like it Hawk by Donna Andrews (the 14th book in the Meg Langslow series). It is amusing - though not laugh out loud for me right now.  Not sure if this is because of a little bit of a slow start or I am still a little down after finishing Lake Effect.

I am also reading Field Notes from A Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert. So far I am enjoying it and am really jealous of the author. She got to travel to some amazing places while researching the book. 

I plan to keep reading The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet by Neil deGrasse Tyson as soon as I can get it back from my son.

I also started reading Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II by Wil S. Hylton. I made the mistake of picking it up while I was at the bookstore for lunch on Friday and before I knew it had read a couple of chapters. It peaked my curiosity because this is a topic that I have long been interested in and it was fresh on my mind because of the NPR/Pro Publica Special report Grave Science

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 3-3

The It's Monday! What are You Reading? meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

I finished The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (finally!) and Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger therefore I am feeling vaguely accomplished. 

I decided to join the Take Control of Your TBR Pile March 2014 Challenge in a probably vain attempt to make the pile go down (or at least maintain numeric stasis) this month and give myself further encouragement to get some of my TBR goals moving forward.  I need to pick up pace with my nonfiction reading/reviewing, because that was actually supposed to be the primary point of this blog in the first place.

To that end I am currently reading Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town's Toxic Legacy by Nancy A. Nichols and have also started The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet by Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

Dr. Tyson managed to seriously annoy me by starting his book with an ungrammatical sentence, sigh.  Just in case anyone is wondering, I had absolutely no trouble with the IAU vote that declared Pluto a dwarf planet. I teach Earth Science so I was already aware that historically what constitutes a planet has varied wildly over time and whenever I taught a section on planetary geology I kept using some variation of the phrase "except Pluto" so many times it was getting annoying. I am one of those odd people who was trying to explain why Pluto was so odd, therefore its 'loss of status' made sense.  Dr. Tyson's book is a bit of a historical trip through time that seeks to explain why Americans in general were so emotionally attached to Pluto as a planet.  I am only a couple of dozen pages in so I am not sure how I feel about the book, other than it is trying a bit too hard to be cool. 
 
Lake Effect is a personal examination of the connection between environmental pollution and rare forms of cancer.  I have already zoomed though 40+ pages and am reasonably impressed. So far this is a serious contender for being required reading in one of my classes. The fact that the book is about a former manufacturing center located on the shore of a Great Lake makes it particularly pertinent. This is a short book and well written so far.

I am also taking a look at a couple of biographies of Rachael Carson that I have On a Farther Shore by William Souder and The Gentle Subversive by Mark Hamilton Lytle to see which one of them I might before reading Silent Spring or if I am just going to go straight to Carson's most famous book.

It's Monday! What are You Reading? 2-24

The It's Monday! What are You Reading? meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

I finished Scarlet by Marissa Meyer  and Digger by Ursula Vernon last week , which means that I am still working on The Disappearing Spoon but will finish it this week.  

And I have new books (which I need like a hole in the head) as a reward for getting those exams written this weekend.

I now have Cress (which I decided I wanted despite being not that overly thrilled with Scarlet. I still want to know what happens with Cinder. I really enjoyed the first book and have been silently cursing whomever decided that this story needed to be restructured (I guess originally the whole who is the princess thing wasn't supposed to be figured out until later) and padded out into four books.

And I adored Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger so of course I had to get Curtsies and Conspiracies!

However, I am not allowed to read either until I have finished The Disappearing Spoon, written a review of it and picked out and started my next non-fiction TBR pile read (which will probably be Uranium) !

That ought to force me to get this done!  It is not that I don't like the book. It's just too similar to work right now to be as much fun for me as it should. After all, the other book I am reading right now is Geochemistry by William White - the new text I am using for my class. I ended up picking it because the texts I prefer are either way overpriced ($200+) so the students won't by them or are out-of-print. That makes Disappearing Spoon a bit of a busman's holiday for me at the moment. I should have chosen something else and saved it for the summer.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading 2-17

The It's Monday! What are You Reading? meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Because of my cold I switched to children's books and graphic novels last week. I read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan
Aiken and Digger by Ursula Vernon.

I am still reading The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, and still enjoying it, but once again the whole big hardback thing got in the way.  I didn't want to curl up with a hardback. I wanted something easy to cope with. Digger volume 1 was easy to curl up with but once I finished that book I ended up getting the complete omnibus edition rather than volumes 2-6 individually. The Digger omnibus weighs like 700 pounds - alright 5 pounds  -  it is bigger than a phone book!  Very hard to curl up with but I had to know what happened! I am still processing the ending.  (AHHHH! I understand why but AHHHHH!!!!!).  Ursula Vernon is awesome and Digger is amazing.  I totally understand why it won the 2012 Hugo.  If I had been paying any attention at all to fun things in 2013 I would have totally been all over that Kickstart.  Oh well. 

So this week I have to 1) totally get rid of this stupid cold, 2) finish The Disappearing Spoon already! and start on something else on my TBR pile list. The whole idea of this blog was actually to read and review nonfiction for myself and stuff with the kids. Instead I have been avoiding my nonfiction reading list like the plague.

I put up a couple more environmental news pieces this past week and still have a couple longer ones in draft mode that I need to work up the energy to finish. This at least is going pretty well.

• Coal Ash Spill into the Dan River, North Carolina
• Three injuries now confirmed at Tonawanda Coke
• Historic weather = historic problems
• The view from space ...

It's Monday! What Are You Reading 2/10?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? February 10th

The It's Monday! What are You Reading? meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

I finished Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger enjoying every bit of it.  What a fun read. I am looking forward to the next book in the series.


I have been making progress with The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean. I have a cold which has slowed me down this time. I want to read fun, fluffy stuff and not stuff that I want to think about.

I also have been referring back to Travels of a Tee-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli because I might end up using the NPR Planet Money series that used the book as an inspiration in one of my classes this semester.

I added a few pieces on environmental issues this past week and I have two more that I need to get up. Eek.

• An explosion at Tonawanda Coke on January 31st sho...
• The Aral Sea isn't the only disappearing body of w...
• Tonawanda Coke update - contradictions continue

My head feels like it is stuffed with dirty socks so my only forward plans right now for the week are to keep remembering how to read and perhaps make it though The Disappearing Spoon finally.  

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 3

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? February 3rd

The It's Monday! What are You Reading? meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.


This was the first week of classes, so it was very busy.  I did manage to finally finish The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecke.  

I also read Goth Girl and the Ghost of A Mouse by Chris Riddell. 


The other book related thing I did, other than participate in several memes last week (summarized in my Sunday Post 1), was that I wrote up a lament, well alright  - a whine, about what the BBC did to Dirk Gently ...  What, oh what, did they do to Dirk ? Dirk Gently that is.


I haven't gotten much done on my TBR nonfiction reading (eek!) so I plan to concentrate on some of that this week.  Of course, I have already undermined this determination by going on a buying spree at the bookstore - I got the paperback version of Scarlett by Marissa Meyer, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and several other items.  Oops! 

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? January 27

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

The It's Monday! What are You Reading? meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

So, classes start Monday. A leak in my office destroyed a bunch of articles and paperwork that I had on one side of my desk and on the credenza. My syllabi are a mess, I am stressed out of my mind and have the concentration of a gnat.

Needless to say, I haven't done much in the way of substantial reading. Instead I have read some kids books - lots of Level Three Books for early readers with my daughter plus I got copies of Ottoline and the Yellow Cat and Ottoline goes to School both by Chris Riddell. I liked them and will be reading the first one to my daughter tonight.

I am still working on The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. I am enjoying the story but it isn't the kind of brain popcorn I can cope with right now so I have been a little stuck. At least I have gotten to the point where the Golem and the Jinni have met. There are so many threads to the story I want to be able to pay attention while I am reading.

Last week I got a copy of  S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorset (you can see A peak into S.) but there is virtually no chance that I am really going to be able to start reading it this week. Sigh.

I am still hoping to get one non-fiction book knocked off of my TBR pile list before February. Since I am teaching geochemistry this semester, I am going to start with either Uncle Tungsten or The Disappearing Spoon.