Ten Bookish Things I Have Quit

Ten Bookish Things I Have Quit

1. Reading to the end of a book

2. Reading every book that arrives in my mail from authors and publishers

3. Reading every book I buy

4. Reading books other people give me and tell me to read

5. Reading bestsellers

6. Reading a series in order

7. Reading all the books in a series

8. Reading a book just because I said I was going to read that book

9. Reading genre fiction

10. Reading a book I don't like

How about you?

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Tiny Treasures: Books You Have to Dig a Little to Find

That's my husband. He's not actually digging for books; he's an avid rockhound and I couldn't resist including his picture in my new now-and-then meme, Tiny Treasures.

I have always loved best the books nobody else knows about; I've never been one for bestsellers. So I decided to create this meme.

Once-in-a-while, I plan to feature a book that is (1) little-known or was-once-known-but-has-been-forgotten, and (2) fabulous. I'll use this format:

Tiny Treasure

Publication Date

A Tiny Review

Why You Must Try to Dig It Up

Best Digging Spots

I bet you know some tiny treasures, too. It would be lovely if you'd like to share them along with me.

I plan to post my first Tiny Treasure soon. Hope to see you there!

Animals I Saw in Wyoming

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.

If You Like Ken Robinson, Here are Some Great Books about Teaching

There are 49.5 million students and 3.1 million teachers here in America. 

I am a teacher. I have been teaching since 1977. 

Most of us teachers know we can do better. Many of us love to read stories about schools and education and teaching.

Here are some I have loved....

There Are No Shortcuts by Rafe Esquith

Raising the Curve:

A Year Inside One of America's 45,000 Failing Public Schools

by Ron Berler

Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade

by Linda Perlstein

Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America's Teachers

Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year by Esme Raji Codell

Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul

by Stuart Brown

Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever

by Mem Fox

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman

Improbable Scholars: 

The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools 

by David L. Kirp

The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way

by Amanda Ripley

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America

by Paul Tough

How Children Succeed: 

Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

by Paul Tough

Others you recommend?

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

What I Read and What I'm Reading

What I Read Last Week Oh, how I love Bill Bryson. He's everything I look for in an author. A good writer. Brave, but not too much. Human. And funny. Most of all, funny.  So last week I reread A Walk in the Woods. I reread it slowly. It was one of those books you don't want to end. All along the way you are laughing. You just have to laugh at Bryson. He tries to do the hard thing, but it's...well, hard. And his companion, Katz, is equally human. Quintessential Americans.  So much fun.   I'm going to be controversial here, so please bear with me. Here are three things I want to say about The Library at Mount Char: 1. I recommend this book. 2. I do not recommend this book for me. 3. I didn't finish it. I don't read scary books. Scary books give me nightmares. I don't like nightmares. When I got to the chapter where Carolyn lures Steve to her room where she has left a zombified Detective Miner to shoot and kill Steve and then Carolyn places the gun in Steve's dead hand and uses it to shoot and kill the zombified Detective Miner...well, I knew this story wasn't for me. But I'm pretty sure it is for somebody. A lot of somebodies. Somebodies who love scary. And odd. Can I do this? Can I recommend a book that I haven't read? I say I can.

What I'm Reading Now Can you tell I'm on a Mary Karr reading kick? Yes, I went to see her last week when she visited Houston. And, yes, she mesmerized me, somehow, into buying all her books. So now I'm reading them. More later....

What are you reading today?!

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week. 

 It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from! I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme Book Journey loves to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme. 

Wyoming Road Signs

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.

Top Ten Books On My Fall TBR

Here are the books I hope to read this fall...

Browsings by Michael Dirda

Paris: An Inspiring Tour of the City's Creative Heart

Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain

Driving Hungry

The Monks and Me: How 40 Days in Thich Nhat Hanh's French Monastery Guided Me Home

This is Your Life, Harriet Chance

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard

Hurry Up and Wait

Notes from a Blue Bike: 

The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World

Are any of these on your list?

Any thoughts about any of these?

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

A Week With the Poor in Mexico and India

What I Read Last Week      I can't wait to tell you about the two books I read last week.       It was one of those wonderful serendipitous times where you read two similar books in one week and can't stop thinking about the connections between the two. The Distance Between Us is a memoir by writer Reyna Grande. Grande tells the story of her childhood in Mexico, as her father illegally enters the US for work; as her mother follows him after years in which he does not return; as Grande's grandmother reluctantly raises Grande and her siblings; as her mother learns her father has a girlfriend in the US and bitterly returns to Mexico; as Grande's mother leaves with a new boyfriend and again abandons the children; as Grande's other, poorer grandmother takes in the children; as her father returns for Grande's siblings and reluctantly agrees to take Grande as well; and as Grande and her siblings adjust to life in the US. The Distance Between Us is one of the most powerful stories I've read this year. I'm still thinking about Grande's poverty in Mexico, about her father's abandonment of the family, and about the difference between Grande's eager embrace of the opportunities available in America and the faltering of her siblings. It's a beautiful, heart-crushing story of gain and loss. At what cost do we leave our home and family?       I also read The Village By the Sea by Anita Desai. The family in Village By the Sea is deeply poor in India. The father, like the father in Distance Between Us, mentally and emotionally retreats from the family through alcoholism. The mother mentally and emotionally retreats from the family through illness. Like Distance Between Us, the children are left to fend for themselves for the most part, with some taking on work and some caring for the other children. Village By the Sea has a child audience, so the pain of poverty is often glossed over, and the story is fiction so the author is able to bring about a magical happy ending. I think these things weakened the story for me as a reader. I was nevertheless taken with the details of life in a small poor village in India.      Poverty is such a foreign idea to many of us here in the US. I feel like my heart has expanded with my reading this week. What Arrived Last Week       It was another great week at my mailbox. I've been reading Walk in the Woods slowly (it's such a good story) but now I'm eager to finish and dig into some of the books that have just arrived.

What are you reading today?!

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week.  It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.


It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from! I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme Book Journey loves to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme. 

Bob's Rock Shop, Kemmerer, Wyoming

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.