Friday, August 27, 2010

What are you reading?

The books that I know about folks reading right now are mostly from the people I see each day.
Lucy is reading a cool book about a girl named Olive who finds some eyeglasses in the house her family has just bought that help her to see things. She can see things in pictures that other people can't, and I think can actually go in to them, sort of like in the Prince Caspian book where the kids go into the boat picture. I can't remember the name of it. But I want to read it when she's finished. Ben is reading the third in a trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins. They sound a little scary for me. John is reading the second of Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy. Erik is reading the first. We listened to the audio version of that book (The Amulet of Samarkand) years ago and loved it. Owen is reading Trouble by Gary Schmidt, one of my favorite authors (see spotlight). I have mostly been reading for the classes I am teaching. So, I've been reading short stories and a Chinese novel called The Story of the Stone written in the 18th century. In my spare time, I am reading a great book I got from my friend Esther for my birthday. It is called The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World One Correction at a Time. The story is about this guy and his friend who go on a road trip across the country armed with "correction elixir" and sharpies and chalk. They set out to correct all those awful typos that you see on signs. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter describing how he began this quest:
I stared at that "No Tresspassing" sign, and I wondered: Could I be the one? What if I were to step forward and do something. The glare from the extra "s" seemed to mock me. Sure, others before me had recognized that there was such a problem in modern English. Plenty of people had made much hay of ridiculing spelling and grammatical errors on late-night shows and in humor books and on websites weighted with snark. But: Who among them had ever bothered with actual corrective action? So far as I knew, not a soul. A lambent vision descended upon me, like the living wheels revealed unto Ezekiel. In it, I saw myself armed with Wite-Out and black marker, waging a campaign of holy destruction on spelling and grammatical mistakes.

5 comments:

  1. i figured out how to post!
    click on the red comment button under this post.
    just finished the second
    book of the Bartimeus-
    amazing!even as good as the
    first

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  2. Thanks for clearing that up!
    John and I had a nice visit with Julia, Claudia, and Margaret this weekend. Julia said she was reading the series about the Beacon girls. Has anybody else read those? What do you think?

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  3. My summer reading included Cornelia Underwood, the first of Van Reid's old-fashioned stories featuring the Moosepath League. Set in Maine during the late 1900s, these books read almost as if they were written a century ago: Reid's heroes are upright and resourceful, his heroines courageous and tidy. (This is the first of a five-book series of historical adventures, so its sequels are on my list for next summer's lazy evenings.)

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  4. Nancy,
    These sound interesting. What is the Moosepath League? The only thing better than lazy summertime reading is cozy winter reading.

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  5. FYI: The book that I mention above that Lucy is reading is from a series called Books of Elsewhere and the author is Jacqueline West.

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