Challenge: 50 Books discussion

I'm counting schoolbooks because they kept me from my first choices...

1. Teaching Students with Language and Communication Disabilities
2. Supporting Struggling Readers and Writers Strategies for Classroom Intervention, 3-6
3. Knowing Literacy Constructive Literacy Assessment

4. Changing Vision
5. Bones to Ashes
6. Tall, Dark & Dead
7. The Birchbark House
8. Stormwitch
9. The Mermaid Chair
10. Artemis Fowl The Arctic Incident

More to come soon, despite summer session!

11. This Child Will Be Great Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Figured out how to add the author too, go me! Really good read.

congrats on 10+1!

I am a teacher (drama and social skills to Asperger Syndrome kids) It's funny how awful those school books sound when really they are fascinating to people like us!

Ha, I know! My first time through school I double majored in gender studies and archaeology, and now I'm going back to learn to be a special education teacher. I'm still getting used to all the new jargon! What age level do you teach?

Oh and let's go for an even dozen:
12. The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key

I teach middle school...kinda like herding cats!

Ha ha! I hear you. I started subbing a couple years ago and have worked with all age levels. I like middle schoolers. They're starting to be independent thinkers but are really still kids.

13. American Education

Whew, finishing that one means I'm almost through one of my three summer classes, hooray!

14. Literacy with an Attitude, Second Edition Educating Workingclass Children in Their Own Selfinterest by Patrick J. Finn

15. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

16. Fables March of the Wooden Soldiers by Bill Willingham

17. Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Long Way Home by Joss Whedon

I had forgotten about these two! Found them while I was reshelving.

18. Nikolski A Novel by Nicolas Dickner

I got this book as a First Read. Definitely not something I would have chosen at the bookstore, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!

19. A Circle of Cats by Charles de Lint

20. Rules by Cynthia Lord

I read these during the semester and totally forgot about them! Seems so wrong because they are both unforgettable.

21. The Silver Sun by Nancy Springer

22. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

23. Mouse Guard Volume One Fall 1152 by David Petersen

Enjoyed reading all of them! I'm surprised by how much I liked Springer. It's the first book by her I've read and usually just plain fantasy isn't my favorite. I think it was her style of narration that drew me in.

I'm really glad I got around to reading The Lightning Thief after all the good things I'd heard about it. It did not disappoint.

The only disappointing thing about Mouse Guard was its brevity. The mice are just adorable (even when doing very violent things), and the maps and other back matter kept me looking long after the story was over.

24. The Progress of Love by Alice Munro

Short stories usually aren't my favorite, but I did enjoy these a lot. Sometimes they all seemed to blend together, and I had to work to remember where one stopped and the other started.

25. Airman by Eoin Colfer

Woohoo for the halfway mark! I liked this book, but it was a lot darker than the Artemis Fowl series. Not that those books are all puppies and sunshine...

26. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett

27. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

28. Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

The first I got as a First Reads, which always makes me happy. The other two are from my school library's fabulous YA collection. Little Brother was fantastic. I was kind of disappointed with Gathering Blue though, after having loved The Giver as a kid.

29. The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

I read this book because it had a young adult with autism as the main character. I'd read other books with people with autism in the supporting cast, but never the main character. I thought the author did a really good job with that aspect of the book, but for me the mystery part of it sort of fell flat. Maybe I'm just overstimulated with all the fast-paced action adventure I've been reading...

30. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Read as a book of the month for the group Wild Things, and I am so glad I did. I absolutely fell in love with this book, and I cried my eyes out at the end.

31. Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

It has a good mixture of fantasy and folklore. The first hundred pages could have used some editing though...

32. When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park

Sometimes in historical fiction, the author's research sticks out like a sore thumb. Not so with this one. It's an excellent portrait of WWII Korea, under Japanese occupation.

33. Messenger by Lois Lowry

Better than Gathering Blue, not as good as The Giver.

34. Leaving a Trace On Keeping a Journal by Alexandra Johnson

Honestly, just finished it so I could say I read the whole thing. It wasn't really what I was looking for.

35. Dead Sexy by Tate Hallaway

I liked this one better than the first, but maybe that's just because I had a better idea of what to expect.

36. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1 The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

Seems like I've been reading a lot of historical fiction this summer. This one was a gem, but very different from most YA novels. An excellent look at racism and American history in a fictional work.

37. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

The second book by Iris Murdoch I've read, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first. I'm glad I didn't read the back cover synopsis before reading the book - why would they give so much away?

38. Hidden in Sight by Julie E. Czerneda

39. Code Talker A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac

I am so sad I don't have any more books by Czerneda in the house. As for Code Talker, it really read as a first-person account of WWII, not fiction. I am also sad I don't have any more books by Bruchac in the house...

40. Black Boy by Richard Wright

41. All the Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn

I wasn't a big fan of AtLBO, but anything would be a let down after Black Boy.

42. Draegon Taymerx Book 1 The Secret of Aejution by A. Steve Zimm

43. Lizard by Banana Yoshimoto

I only finished the first one because I won it as a first read; it is not very well written. Lizard isn't my favorite Banana Yoshimoto book, but it still has her characteristic charm.

So close to fifty I can smell it!

44. Romancing the Dead by Tate Hallaway

45. Graceling by Kristin Cashore

46. The Fold by An Na

Loved Graceling and The Fold. RtD was probably the most disappointing of that series so far.

47. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

And guess who bought the rest of the series from amazon even though she determined she was not going to spend (as much) money on books.

48. Big Mouth & Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates

Another one of those great YA novels I'm not sure I would have enjoyed in high school.

Oh I haven't updated in forever!

49. Beast by Walter Dean Myers

50. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

51. Fun Home A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

52. Waiting To Score by J.E. MacLeod

53. The Eternals by Neil Gaiman

I think I finished 50 in August, but I've definitely slowed down since school started. All of these were good books; it is hard to pick my favorite of the batch!

Another batch update that I'm sure leaves off some of what I have read.

54. The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
This series is such fun fantasy fluff. Makes me happy!

55. Racism without Racists Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
An extremely readable take-down of "colorblind" rhetoric.

56. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
I'm not sure how I missed this one when I read the bulk of her work as a teen, but it was amazing.

57. Tools of the Mind A Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education by Deborah Leong
I wish my school's library had the new edition. This book has a great blend of theory and usable strategies.

58. Therefore, Repent! by Jim Munroe
I had been saving this one up, and it was more awesome than I had hoped for.

59. Fallen Angels by Larry Niven
Lame.

60. Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs
A quick fun read.