Where Have My Words Gone?

In addition to neglecting my blog lately, I've also been getting really bad at returning emails--especially fun emails, from friends and former students with whom I'm typically pretty chatty.  What gives?

• I'm back in the swing of school, and with two schools and two sets of students and colleagues, I'm using a lot more of my words during the day!  

• I'm reading a ton--I'm in two professional development book clubs, running three different student book clubs, and teaching two different novels and a history text book at any given time.  At the moment, the novels are Speak and wrapping up Emma, about to transition into Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, plus Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Salinger's Nine Stories for book clubs.  All books I love but MAN, the pace is intense.  And I got halfway through The Dream Thieves before I had to tear myself away and focus on school reading, so that's calling my name as well!  So maybe I'm taking in so many of other people's words that I need some silence in my brain when I'm done.

• I'm simply out of the habit of writing!

So, although I'm not going to have time to say much, I'm going to try to get back into the rhythm of posting and ESPECIALLY of reading and commenting.  I've really missed you all!  And I've missed writing, even if that muscle feels a little rusty. 

So, help me dive back in: tell me the best thing that's happened to you in the last two months!

Monday Love: One Book At A Time Edition

I'm easing back into this whole reading thing and I have to say, I LOVE IT.  Snuck in another book this week.

I also wanted to post today to say congratulations to the newly chosen Cybils panelists and judges for 2013!  I applied again but then went on extended blog hiatus so I wasn't surprised to find that I wasn't chosen this time around--and I also wasn't at all surprised to find that many of the awesome people I worked with last year on the YA Fiction Round 2 panel are back in action!  Congrats to everyone who was chosen--I can't wait to nominate some books and see what makes the cut this year!

What I Read This Week:


The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sara Zarr's writing makes me feel like there is an inflating balloon inside my chest. Like when you make a pinata? Except I feel like it is going to keep inflating and crack open my ribcage from the inside.

The Lucy Variations, more than even any of Zarr's other books, made me feel--actually physically experience--the anxiety and excitement of being a teenager. I read chunks of this book with my teeth gritted against how awful so much of it felt, the way I have always ridden roller coasters. My limbs were tense, my stomach ached--not because Lucy was any more cringe-inducing than any other teenage protagonist, but because Zarr gets her so achingly, awfully right that it zaps me back into feeling all of those feelings (oh god all those FEELINGS--we don't give teenagers enough credit for being able to walk and talk, never mind go to school or have careers as concert pianists.)


I don't normally write in my books but I kind of want to read this again with a pen and a highlighter, because I stopped so frequently to celebrate a line or an idea. While my own experience is a long way off from Lucy's, her general story of pursuing a career in the arts, walking away from the arts, and finding a way back on her own terms has some things in common with my life. This is one of those books that feels like it belongs to me in a way most books don't.

That said, this is not a book to be reserved for the artsy set. As always, Sara Zarr creates a whole world here, with other people who have reasons for doing what they do, and who matter in the story and to the protagonist (yes, even her parents! And the rest of her family: her brother and grandfather and housekeeper. Zarr is a master of giving other people something real to do in the story, even the adults. In so many YA stories--including my own WiP, at the moment--adults mostly exist to give advice or create story obstacles; here, they are irreplaceable real people, part of the story because how could they not be.) If you've read Zarr before then you get it; if you haven't--please, please do.



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I'm Alive!

Oh. Emm. Gee.  I don't even know where to start.  The last month or so is an absolute blur--a lot of hard work, a couple of unexpected bumps in the road, a lot of excitement.  Mostly just life stuff but all at once, you know?

Anyway, this is probably not a return to regular posts just yet.  Both of my schools had their first day last week, and this week marks the first week of my regular routine--one school in the morning, the other in the afternoon--teaching my regular classes.

I got to meet most of my students last week, and I asked the rest of them to email me a little bit about themselves this weekend, and I am so stoked for this school year.  I am teaching such awesome kids.  I'm still pinching myself that I get to teach at both of these schools.

I've been driving myself back and forth this week--got my license in mid-August!  As nervous as I was preparing for the driving test (and actually taking it) I find that I am not nervous at all driving on my own!  I'm sure I will be the first few times when I go out on the expressway around town, or on the highway, but I've got the home-work route down pretty well.  However, my new school owns two small buses (like, seriously, not large vans, but true buses) that we are supposed to learn to drive in order to take students places.  I am not keen to do that anytime soon!

But the real reason I am blogging right now is because I picked up Eleanor & Park off my shelf around 11:30 pm last night, and finished it around 11:30 am today, with sleeping in between.  And it. was. glorious.  Reading, how I've missed you!  (Although I did get to read Ready Player One, since it was my new school's summer reading!  I highly recommend it--it's totally a YA book in a lot of ways, although the MC transitions from HS to adulthood partway through.)

Anyway, here are some barely-coherent thoughts on E&P!


Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was the perfect book to sneak into the busiest and craziest month of my life. I've been missing reading and I don't know when I'll find time to read another book for fun; it's been at least a month since I read a book off my shelf just because I wanted to and I was hurting for a good story. I got a great one.

Eleanor & Park is a love story that reminded me of how things actually felt when I was a teenager. There was a delicate balance at school, in the lunchroom, on the bus. Your life in school is different from your life outside school; one can change while the other stays (outwardly, at least) the same. Holding hands can be life-changing enough to make anything else seem unnecessary, for days or weeks or months.

The thing I loved the most about this book was how well it captured the awe on both sides of the relationship. The how could this amazing person possibly be interested in me? that can be so toxic when it's one-sided but so lovely when it's mutual. The complete fascination with another person's ears, or hands, or laugh.

I also love that both characters had lives outside of their blooming relationship, and their lives affected the course of their relationship in large and small ways. Park kept eating lunch with his same friends; Eleanor made friends of her own to eat with; both of them navigated the waters of their families' reactions to the relationship as well as they knew how. Eleanor and Park love music and comics, sometimes the same ones, but not always. I love that they disagreed sometimes--that this wasn't a relationship based on the kismet of complete similarity of opinion (which is probably feigned by at least one party in 100% of situations that ostensibly fit that description.)

Mostly I loved how perfectly this story was told, and how much it swept me away with it.

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What's Up Wednesday: Back to Work Edition!

What's Up Wednesday is a meme started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk to bring reading and writing bloggers together once a week. Go to Jaime's blog to add your link and check out posts from other writers!

What I'm Reading

I'm still beta-ing, but mostly right now I'm reading the textbook I'll be using this year in my American History class!  It's consuming pretty much all of my time but I'm also getting really into it. 

 

What I'm Writing

Little did I know how much time this textbook project would take up...so my goal for this week is to write every day, even if it's just a hundred words or so.  As school approaches, I have to give priority to my teaching jobs, so just keeping the writing habit alive is challenge enough.  

What Else I've Been Up To

This weekend was the first one in a long time that Mr. S and I were just at home, with no travel plans and no big family plans.  As fun as travel and family are, it was nice to just have two days to ourselves.  We drove around listening to podcasts for part of it: our long-time favorite Pop Culture Happy Hour, and the recently-popular-on-Tumblr Welcome to Nightvale. 

What Inspires Me Right Now  

Taking a day off!  Yesterday, I woke up a giant ball of stress.  Work stuff is already piling up, and my road test is a week from Friday.  I had a driving lesson around noon, so I spent the whole morning messing around online and worrying.  The lesson went ok-not-great (it had been a while, so I had gotten used to our car, not the car I do lessons in--which will also be the car I take my road test in--and it took some time to get it back) and when I came home, I decided: I was calling a "sick day."  I made myself some soup and tea, and curled up on the couch to watch Little Women.  Mission: Chill Out went nicely, and I'm feeling energized and excited about working again.

 

I apologize in advance as well as retroactive to last week for not posting, commenting, or responding to comments as much as I normally do--I may try to keep up with WuW check-ins, but until school is clicking along, I'm going to be online a lot less than usual.  I'm hoping things get back to normal by the end of September!

What's up with you?

Monday Love: Taking a Break Edition

One book this week!  Oh my goodness--school is coming up SO FAST!  There are not enough hours in the day.  I'm gonna call a hiatus on reading and reviewing for a little while, but here's a great one I read this week!


 Pinned by Sharon G. Flake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked this one up after reading a review and praise for the cover at Bookshelves of Doom. For serious, though, the cover: not one but TWO characters depicted with FACES and everything, both African-American teenagers, one a girl, one in a wheelchair. For that reason alone, I plunked down the ol' Visa. (It's called voting with your dollars, folks: if you have the money to buy books, you gotta buy the books you ask for when the publishers put them out. A non-white-washed, non-hidden-disability, non-chopped-off-head-girl cover? Yes. More please!)

But when Pinned finally made its way to the top of my TBR, I was happy to see that the story inside was just as great. Autumn and Adonis are not characters I've really seen before--in books. I've seen Autumn in my classroom, FOR SURE--I thought of two of my former students in particular reading this, and it really made me miss them and hope they're doing ok. Autumn is a stellar baker, a hard-working and gifted wrestler, a student who really struggles with reading and math (but has a ton of integrity in the classroom), and a gregarious, chatty girl. Her best friend Peaches--whose high grades are a reflection of her mother's pressure, who finds a way to shine at any price, who just wants to live in Paris and have a glamorous life, who knows how to put her best foot forward and rock a speech or presentation to state officials--is another character who felt more like a person than a story. Even Jaxxon, a relatively minor character who is in some classes with Autumn, clearly had his own thing going on, and his brief confrontation with a teacher put me right back in the moments when my students shouted at me: they always had a reason, and it's clear he does too. I adored these kids. In fact, all the supporting characters in the book clearly had other things happening in their lives that the POV characters--and therefore, readers--aren't privy to. The one character I had trouble connecting with was Adonis--and I think that was intentional. Adonis isn't interested in connecting; he is so disciplined that other people's failures confuse him, and he is still making sense of a traumatic incident that rattled his ironclad self-image. So while I didn't connect to him, I was fascinated by him, and by this story about a pair of students who seemed unlikely to ever find themselves on the same page. I can't wait to share this with students when the school year starts.

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What's Up Wednesday: Getting Serious Edition

What's Up Wednesday is a meme started by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk to bring reading and writing bloggers together once a week. Go to Jaime's blog to add your link and check out posts from other writers!

What I'm Reading


I am in the weirdest of all states: between books!  I finished off my Little Women project yesterday, and haven't picked up a new book yet.  I did just start beta-ing a really exciting MS, though.

 

What I'm Writing

I did pretty well last week, meeting goals and even hitting my challenge goal once or twice.  Monday I spent doing some necessary legal research that helped me pin down the details of how my story will end.  And yesterday...well, I wrote MAYBE 100 words...and then started a new project entirely.  Sigh.  (But I wrote almost 1K on that project without batting an eye!)  Turns out I hate writing endings.  But it's gotta happen...so that's my goal for this week.  Finish this MS!!!  

What Else I've Been Up To

This weekend we had the first of a couple celebrations of my father-in-law's 60th birthday.  Most of the family went kayaking while  I sat in a lovely park and read/babysat the picnic stuff, and then we had a great homemade lunch by the water (fun fact: Buffalo is a waterfront city!) and later went out to dinner. 




Now that August is TOMORROW, I'm also starting to kick into high gear with school stuff.  I think I may be slowing down my creative projects soon in favor of some heavy-duty planning.

What Inspires Me Right Now  

The new project I started yesterday!  It's the treat I get to work on if I get a decent amount done on my real WiP.

What's up with you?

Monday Love: Wonder-ful edition

This week, I finished the fantastic At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson, which took me quite a while to read.  So I wanted to switch up to something I knew I'd read quickly and something I was confident I'd enjoy: Wonder by R.J. Palacio.  I'd heard so much great stuff about that book that it was a natural choice; I didn't know how much it would crawl inside of me and make me spend the rest of the day looking at things that make me happy-cry.

What I Read This Week: 

  At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this ramble through the history of modern civilization, organized by the rooms in Bryson's old English parsonage. Bryson is the king of anecdotes that make you turn to whoever is sitting next to you and go, "Whoah, did you know..." I highly recommend this for anyone who's curious about the details of history: why does "toilet water" mean two very different things, why forks have four tines, and why jackets have those useless sleeve buttons, to name just a few.

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  Wonder by R.J. Palacio
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is going to be a terribly incoherent review because I've just finished reading this book and I'm still in pieces. Ok. Let me see. You know how, when you have a massage, you feel tired afterward, because your muscles have been mushed around for an hour? So even though you did something relaxing and enjoyable, now you feel like you just need to sit and sip water and recuperate? That's how I feel about this book. Like I need to spend the rest of the afternoon meditating or something, even though the actual experience of reading it was mostly a lot of fun.

The thing about this book is that even though it's a serious book, it's a fun-serious book, because Auggie and the people around him are people, and like most people they enjoy fun things and have senses of humor and don't go through life never cracking a smile because a person in their lives has medical issues. Wonder does an especially great job of capturing the moods of the gala days of growing up: science fairs and school plays and graduations. It's also got things in it that are sad and things in it that are frustrating. It's got song lyrics and quotations from books and plays that I love. It's the kind of book that makes me want to teach fifth grade (and it also reminds me of the hard parts of teaching kids that age.)

I know I'm a little late to the party on this one, but if you haven't read this yet, do yourself a favor and set aside some time (preferably by yourself, in your home, as the likelihood of tears in the second half is strong) and read it.

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