Books...

Come on, sing it with me:  "Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high.  Take a look.  It's in a book.  It's Reading Rainbow."  Reading Rainbow...  Did any of you ever watch that show?  I don't think I ever really did.  But I've developed an appreciation for it throughout my years of teaching.

Anyway, I thought it would serve as a fun introduction for the wonderful topic of books. I idn't start loving books until I didn't "have" to read them anymore.  You know, when I wasn't being forced to read for school.  Now, I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't still require the reading of these books.  Of course they should.  I'm just saying that for whatever reason it didn't work for me.  I thought of books as work, instead of fun.  Now, though, I have a completely different attitude.  A good book is entertainment...an escape...a way to relax and get caught up at the same time.

What brought about this change of heart, you ask?  Well, as I've said a few times before...I am a self-professed nerd.  As I was doing my student teaching, the Harry Potter books were still relatively new and were all the rage.  So I figured, if I was going to be a decent teacher and be in on what the "kids these days are into".  I started reading out of dutiful soon to be teacher obligation.  But I finished reading the first 4 of the books (which was all that were out at that time) over Christmas break out of sheer enjoyment.  That was it.  The nerdy beginning of my relationship with books.

Seeing as how I've already gotten a little wordy, I'll try to keep the rest of this as short as possible.  But I'm going to share some of my favorites, with the hopes that you'll share some of your own.  And I'll end with some great quotes that were shared with me by a friend at school.  Here we go:

Favorites
(in no particular order)

* The Harry Potter series
* The Hunger Games series
* The Twilight series
* The Notebook, The Choice, and the rest of the Nicholas Sparks books
* Little Women
* My Sister's Keeper and the other Jody Piccoult books that I've read so far

Coming Soon
(books I've yet to read, but am eager to)

* The Help
* The True Blood Collection
* Water for Elephants
* Bitter is the New Black and other Jen Lancaster books

Quotes

* "It's not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish."    -S.I.Hayakawa
* "My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter."    ~Thomas Helm
* "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."   - Groucho Marx


:)  :)