Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

 Like I mentioned when I rolled for options for realistic fiction, I have read this book before, but I didn't review it on here. I'm so glad I picked it up again and reread it. I finished this book in one day, it's quick, engaging, and powerful. Melinda Sordino is an outcast. Her friends have all abandoned her and no one will speak to her. What's worse, Melinda finds herself not caring about anything. Her grades slip, she cuts class, and she almost doesn't care about her complete lack of friends. She also stops speaking, almost entirely. What happened?  This book does deal with sexual violence and rape, however I believe that it's a story that must be told. So many young girls (predominately) will find themselves in a position where they don't consent to what's happening to them (and let's be clear, minors CAN'T consent) but they don't know how to stop it. After it's happened, they also don't know how to talk about it, or how to tell ...

 Continuing the Inheritance Games  series, I was really excited going into this book. I've enjoyed all of the characters and the story, the riddles and puzzles, so I was so eager to continue in this series. The Final Gambit  raises the stakes of the series immensely. Toby has been kidnapped, and Avery must find him before it is too late. Each clue seems like a dead end, and when Toby's daughter shows up at the House, the stakes rise even further. Will they be able to find out who is behind it before it's too late? This book was intense from start to finish. Barnes made the stakes high with the abduction of Toby, and that intensity carries throughout the novel. I loved the added character development in this book, especially in Avery and Jameson. I also liked that as part of that development, we started to move past the love triangle that The Hawthorne Legacy  set up. It was good to see Grayson finally letting someone in, and watching his character fail in The Final G...

 I finished reading The Final Gambit  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and now need to choose my next mystery read. That's a 1, so I get to read... The Brothers Hawthorne ! Lucky me, I get to continue reading the series. Look for my post about The Final Gambit next week.

 I've been to the bookstore a couple of times in the last couple of weeks, thanks to my husband. Here's what I got: I bought The Most Boring Book Ever  by Brandon Sanderson for my kids. I added the following books to my TBR and collection: Edgedancer  by Brandon Sanderson Between Shades of Gray  by Ruta Sepetys The Life Impossible  by Matt Haig Glorious Rivals  by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Katabasis  by R. F. Kuang At the second bookstore, I bought: How to Stop Time  by Matt Haig My Friend Anne Frank  by Hannah Pick-Goslar I've been really excited about Matt Haig lately, after revisiting The Midnight Library  this summer. In part, it's for my English 12 classes, and the other half...I just really loved Midnight Library . I also always love Brandon Sanderson, and Ruta Sepetys has her good moments. I picked Katabasis  because a couple of my coworkers are obsessed and highly recommended it. And then I had to get Jennifer Lynn Barnes to cont...

 All right, at work on Wednesday, I pulled Les Misérables , A Wrinkle in Time , and Speak  from my shelves. I forgot that my copy of Speak  got horribly water damaged at one point (it happens) and I need to replace it. So that one might not be going back to school. But I've added them to my currently reading shelf, and will be working through them as they come up in rotation.

In case you haven't noticed, I read a rather wild assortment of books. Some of that's because I'm a teacher, and I'm trying to read widely for the sake of my students, and some of that is because I have an insatiable desire to read every book ever published. Just kidding. But really.  One of my coworkers reads in a rotation format, and late last year, I decided to give it a try and see how it goes. For one, I love reading multiple books at once and seeing how many I can keep straight at a time (turns out it's quite a few). For another, it's helped me get out of some slumps ( Fourth Wing , I'm looking at you). By rotating through, I know I have several other books that come in between having to read a book that I'm not as into (but don't want to DNF). This has been a marvelous way to get myself motivated to read, and to get out of my slumps.  So I did a crazy thing and I took all of my books that I haven't read in my house and put them in a giant ...