Welcome

Hello Fellow Booklovers!

This blog is going to be about books and the role they have played and are playing in my life. I have always loved reading. In fact, I can still vividly remember the first time I realized that I was really reading. It was a sunny day, and I was sitting in our kitchen. My mom and a friend of hers were chatting in the dining room and I was sitting on a stool with the book "In a People House." I was just looking through it, when all of the sudden it dawned on me that I was really actually reading. I can't remember how old I was, but I don't think I was quite in school yet. I felt this huge excitement and ran to tell me mom that I was finally really doing it--I was reading!

From then on, it's just been one big read-fest! I spent my whole childhood reading. Now, I wasn't one of those prodigies who breezed through War and Peace or all of Shakespeare's tragedies. I read typical kid fare: all of the Judy Blume books, some of the Little House on the Prairie books(though I was sort of turned off by Farmer Boy so I never got past the first two books until I read them to my kids and discovered that all the rest of the books are AWESOME!), all the Nancy Drews, etc.

I'm a long way past my childhood now, but my love for reading hasn't diminished. It's still all I want to do. In fact, it's often getting in the way of all the other things that I really SHOULD be doing like making dinner, playing outside with my kids, grading papers, or planning lessons.

As I work on this blog, I hope to cover a lot of different topics, but I'm hoping to hit at least some of the following:

• making time to read in the middle of my busy life
• books I'm reading or have read that I think others might like or that have really made me think
• the beauty of a book club
• reading with my kids
• reading for school vs. reading for fun
• good books to teach or use in as outside/suggested readings in class
• book ideas from you, my readers, especially suggestions for the ENG 99 suggested reading list at the end of the year

I will welcome your comments and thoughts about reading so feel free to join the conversation as we book our way through life! :-)

Kristen