I haven’t kept good track of what I’ve read for the last several months, but here’s what I could come up with.

 

28) Think Like a Freak, by Steven D Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner.  With more than ten hours of flying ahead of us, we browsed in Hudson before boarding when I came across the latest by the Freakonomics authors.  They are always worth reading and their writing paralleled some things I had heard about in other reading.  I also had some tidbits at the ready for cruise small talk, though their ideas are bigger than that.  Worth reading!

 

27) Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-sense Approach to Reading, Spelling, and Literacy, by, Denise Eide.

The title may make you drowsy, but I thought this was an excellent book.  It makes the case that the conventional wisdom of English being a language with more exceptions than rules in false because most of us simply aren’t taught correct rules.  This book will be helpful both as a parent and an educator.

 

26) Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions, by Susan R. Barry.  More vision therapy research.  This Ph.D. had vision problems all her life and finally did VT in her 50s.  Suddenly being able to see real life  in stereo (or 3D) was her biggest surprise, but being able to drive at night was one of the ways her life improved.  Very readable as a memoir and interesting personally as a parent (and daughter!) of those who need vision therapy.

 

25) Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. I loved, loved, loved this book as a child, checking it out over and over again.  One of my summer projects was to buy this book and read it aloud to my children.  Wesley didn’t get much out of it, but the girls, especially, Kyla gobbled it up and had lots to say about it.  It’s got two interesting themes going for it: what life was like on a farm long ago, somewhat like Little House books, and helicopter versus “cage-free” parenting, a theme I didn’t consciously notice 30 years ago.

 

24) The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. A bit Spanish, a dash Gothic, a sprinkle of horror and mystery, a fairy tale, all centered around a wonderful and rare book.  The story itself is worth reading, but if you like to analyze literature through visual imagery, patterns, etc, there’s a lot there for you!

 

 

23) The Story Girl, by L.M. Montgomery.  You may recognize this author of the Anne of Green Gables series (as well as other of my favorites).  I began reading this aloud, but got the audiobook just before we left for Sunriver.  It entertained all five of us for the entire book (several hours-yeah!) and there is still the sequel, The Golden Road, in store for us.

 

22) Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic + the Domestic, by Esther Perel.  I heard her on NPR, probably, and then again somewhere else, a good reason to pick up any book.  Her premise seems obvious, once you’ve read it—it’s very hard to have a romantic, titillating relationship while also being  stable, respectful, and loving.  Perel would say that jealously can make for great sex but a lousy marriage.  It’s a book worth reading no matter what aspect of relationship you have.

 

21) Sister, by Lupton, Rosamund. Generally, I avoid contemporary fiction as I don’t find books that parallel my white, middle-class life interesting.  However, we chose it for book club, and I like mysteries and this had a twist which I never saw coming (extra points!).  But it still left me slightly unhappy.  I want books to either fully entertain me by removing me from my world (like #1, 11, & 12 on this list) or  give me new, interesting ideas.  This did neither, but it wasn’t that bad.

 

20) Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to NOT Reading, by Tommy Greenwald.  I picked up a bunch of books for our schools parent-led book groups, and this was one.  It’s a fun read, and while meant to appeal to boys (and possibly girls) who hate, hate, hate reading, it’s pretty entertaining to bibliophiles to.  It’s been fun getting back into YA (young adult) literature again—at least YA that doesn’t involve dystopia youths killing each other.

 

19) Ungifted, by Gordon Korman. I Gordon Korman.  I -ed him when I was ten and discovered his I Want to Go Home, which I read under bedcovers dozens of times and was caught often by laughing so hard, and I him now because he is still writing great kids books 30 years later.  Ungifted is a story about a boy who always, always does really stupid things.  He has no impulse control but some sense of self-preservation.  When he does his stupidest thing yet, the superintendent accidently puts him on the list of the gifted school, which he willingly goes to hide out until his latest prank is forgotten.  It’s got heart and laughs—a good read for boys and girls, smart kids and others. 

 

18) Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life by Karen Karbo.  Karbo writes biographies of famous women, and she’s okay.  She makes lots of assumptions, such as they the reader wants to be Julia Child and is reading this book to discover the secret.  I do know more about this famous icon now.

 

17) Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Half-Changed World by Peggy Orenstein

Peggy Orenstein wrote another book a few years ago that I loved (that somehow didn’t get written in this blog) called Cinderella Ate My Daughter. I really like how she takes topics relating to girls and women and examines them through many lenses.  In both Flux and Schoolgirls, she looks across socio-economic status and race.  Schoolgirls was especially alarming from a parent, teacher, and student perspective.  Another reason to make a difference in the world.

 

16) Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap by Peggy Orenstein

 

 

 

 

15) When Your Child Struggles: The Myths of 20/20 Vision, What Every Parent Needs to Know, by David Cook.  I will have lots more to say on this, as its very relevant to our life right now. It was a 90 minute read and I learned a lot about the difference between eyesight and vision.  A really good hour and a half investment of time.

 

14) Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. When we chose it for our book club, I was pumped because I loved his award-winner The Graveyard Book.  This one was just as imaginative as Graveyard, but without any likable characters, a quality I can’t overlook.

 

 

 

13) Bellman & Black, by Diane Setterfield.  I loved her debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale, and had this one on hold long before it was released.  It was beautifully written, amazing imagery, interesting plot and yet not quite as good her first one.  Like #14, the characters weren’t quite as engaging. 

 

11 & 12) Heir of Novron, Vol. 3(Riyria Revelations), by Michael J. Sullivan.

Yeah, judge a book by its cover.  This trilogy (with #1 on the list that I read Jan. 1) is that awesome.  Great characters, amazing adventure, plot twists galore.  Ah, if only I can find far more books like this….well, I’d never sleep.

Rise of Empire, Vol. 2 (Riyria Revelations), by Michael J. Sullivan.

 

 

 

 

 

10) America’s Women Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, by Gail Collins.  Her Texas book (#2 on the list) was interesting enough for me to download this title and listen in my quiet moments.  Great information plus great writing style equals a wonderful listen. My current favorite statistic from the book is “in 1972, a woman with a college degree could make as much money as a man with an eighth grade education”.

9) When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers, 6-12, by Kylene Beers.  The class I just completed was facilitated by Dr. Beers, who is completely unrelated to this Dr. Beers, but it caught my eye and I enjoyed reading the Kylene articles, so I found this book.  Her failures in teaching are my failures, so her reflections and new methods resonated with me.  I don’t think it goes far enough, but I will look this up again when I get closer to being back in the classroom.

8) The Penderwicks: a Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and A Very Interesting Boy, by Jeanne Birdsall.  Read The Penderwicks.  Listen to The Penderwicks.  Wait for the movies to come out in several more years.  Buy several copies and lead a 5th grade girls book club at your local school with it.  Listen often with your younger children so they can be exposed to wonderful story telling.  Yeah, I Rosalind, Skye, Jane, Batty, Jeffrey, and Hound. 

7) Love, Ruby Lavender, by Deborah Wiles.

My kids’ beloved kindergarten teacher recommended this title to me after she read the Penderwicks and wanted to share one of her favorites.  I love Ruby Lavender and want to be as wonderful as her grandmother someday.

 

 

6) The Wide Awake Princess, by E.D. Baker.  From the author of Kyla’s beloved Tales of the Frog Princess comes the story of Sleeping Beauty’s little sister who is unaffected by magic, which is a fine twist.  Unlike the Frog series, this one is not on audiotape so Mama gets to read it often. 

 

 

 

5) The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, A Flavia De Luce Novel, by Alan Bradley.  The sixth in the series, it might be the last.  I love, love Flavia and the last book turned everything upside down in the very last sentence, and this book kept it going through the end. Supposedly, it’s even better on audiobook (from a reliable source, BFF Susanne) and I found the first two books on CD at Value Village, if anyone wants to try them out.

4) Love Does: Discover A Secretly Incredible Life in An Ordinary World by Bob Goff.  He’s got a surreal life story but an even more extraordinary heart.  It’s quick, but worth reading. 

 

 

 

3) Read Right: Coaching Your Child to Excellence in Reading by Dee Tadlock.  I picked up this book on the on a chance encounter who (3 degrees of separation) knew that Garfield HS in Seattle used this program for its struggling readers.  When I began this, I had to vent in a document I called “Read Right notes—Stupid things it says that make me angry”.  I did read the whole thing because it turned my brain (and a lot of my graduate work) on its head….pardon the pun.  I’ll be gnawing on this information for a while, but I will give the author a D for unprofessional writing. 

2) As Texas Goes…: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda, by Gail Collins.  I’m not sure exactly why the title appealed to me.  Maybe I need a boost in feeling Superior in Seattle while laughing at Texas, but it was a really fun audio-read.  First it gave an insightful historical perspective of what being a Texan means, from the Alamo to the Empty Spaces paradigm.  Then it gave several examples from financial deregulation, education, business, and global warming that “as Texas goes…so goes the nation.”  I think the author began in earnest to be fair and even-handed, but by the end of the book, you could tell she was rolling her eyes.  I’ll read more by her and try not to have nightmares about Texan presidents.

1) Theft of Swords, Vol. 1 of Riyria Revelations, by Michael J. Sullivan.  Some of the final books I read and loved in 2013 were two prequels of a fantasy adventure genre.  So I was really excited when the 650-page first volume of the actual trilogy came in just before Dwayne sent me to the cabin for a few days.  I read it in less than 24 hours in a overstuffed leather chair in front of a cozy fireplace.  It was the perfect book to read in the perfect setting.  Think of it as a book along the same style as The Princess Bride, but one you would never read aloud to your children.  (It’s a tad bit violent with magical dragon-weapons eating people gruesomely.)  This books sets a high standard for fun reads for the rest of this year.  Luckily, I have two more extra-thick volumes of this series to go.

———————–

As always, red denotes nonfiction.

It’s the beginning of Week 25 of 2013, and I’m on track for a book a week this year (#1 on the list took me weeks to finish!)

24. All Over the Map, by Laura Frasier. Excellently titled, this travel writer’s memoir is the story of a middle-aged single woman who loves her exotic, adventurous life while she longs for love and children. She envies her married, child-ful friends almost as much as they envy her.  But her journeys go deeper than simply Samoa and blind dates—she is a living, breathing, interesting person who hits hers 47^th birthday as she completes this book. Worth the read.

23. Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg. I ran out of sticky arrows to mark important passages in this important manifesto. Very readable, but more importantly, more “thinkable”. I wish she had written this ten years ago; my history would probably be different. But I’m willing to bet Mrs. Sandberg will be influencing my future. More importantly, I hope I will be influencing my future. For those who want the short version, click here. It’s a verbatim list of passages I marked.

22. Parenting a struggling reader by Susan Hall & Louisa Moats. Good information for those who might be the parent described in the title. A decent handbook to get you started.

20. Teaching on Poverty Rock / Joby McGowan. It’s not his first year teaching, but it’s his first year teaching on Mercer Island. A very short memoir.

19. To Sell is Human: the surprising truth about moving others / Daniel Pink. I read Drive, a book on what motivates us, last year. He’s a writer like Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell, great at taking diverse studies and bringing interesting information into a cohesive framework. He’s just a fun read! And we all so spend a lot of time “selling”—what to put in a subject line so you will read—and respond—to my email, advertising old stuff on craigslist, convincing someone else to do a job so you don’t have to…

18. How Children Succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character, by Paul Tough (author of Whatever It Takes).   LOVED this.  I posted more in depth on some of the ideas that stood out in this book.

17. Giving Our Children a Fighting Chance: Poverty, literacy, and the development of information capital / Susan B. Neuman, Donna C. Celano. This is the perfect book for me—the tale of two libraries, it deals with literacy, learning, poverty, the achievement gap, technology and education all within the parameters of an empirical research paper published as a book. (Those who listen to NPR will recognize the Susan B. Neuman name.) In case you find this as interesting as I do, you are in luck! KCLS didn’t have this book until I requested it and it looks like I will have to buy the book as it has some water damage. Hmm.

16. The Introvert Advantage: How to thrive in an extrovert world / Marti Olsen Laney. I am interesting in this topic, as I consider myself quite introverted (social, but introverted) and at least one of my kids has my same introvert characteristics. Recently, I went to a very engaging Susan Cain lecture about introverted children. Her book, Quiet, is on my hold list at the library and I think I will find it more interesting than this one.

15. Gilead / Marilynne Robinson. We read it for book club. It was excellently written, and it was hard to believe the nearly 80 year old pastor narrator was written by a middle age woman. It was pretty good.

14. Dawn Huebner has written 6 books, the first two I have read and recommend:

1. What to Do When Your Temper Flares: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Problems With Anger

2. What to Do When You Dread Your Bed: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Problems with Sleep

3. What to Do When Bad Habits Take Hold: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Nail Biting and More

4. Sometimes I Worry Too Much, But Now I Know How to Stop

5. What to Do When You Grumble Too Much: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Negativity

6. What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Anxiety

13. Going Bovine / Libba Bray. Great title. Great cover. Lousy story.

12. The out of sync child: recognizing and coping with sensory processing disorder / Carol Stock Kranowitz. I read this to see if it fit anything we had been seeing in one our little darlings. It didn’t. Here was the companion book: Answers to questions teachers ask about sensory integration : forms, checklists, and practical tools for teachers and parents

11. Fluency instruction: research-based best practices / edited by Timothy Rasinski, Camille Blachowicz, Kristin Lems. (2006). Great articles about, well, fluency. Quickest summary: kids learning to read fluently should read the same thing 4 times.

10. Tears of the Giraffe / Alexander McCall Smith. The second in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series. I really like listening to this series. Luckily, there are lots more.

9. Becoming a Thinking Christian: If We Want Church Renewal, We Will Have to Renew Thinking in the Church / John B. Cobb, Jr. From the publisher, “This book challenges Christians to think. Committed lay Christians, says Cobb, are already theologians; he wants them to realize this and then to become good theologians. Laypersons are just as capable as professional theologians of intellectual hard work, but they no longer expect the church to ask this of them. Cobb discusses why it is important for Christians to think about their own beliefs and assumptions.”

[Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. This is supposed to be an excellent book. I picked it up and started reading it at the library while Wesley slept in my arms. I had a few concerns about the subject matter, so I read the ending, decided I would hate the novel, no matter how well-written, and put it in the return box on the way out.]

8. Speaking Among the Bones (A Flavia de Luce novel) / Alan Bradley. This is the 5th in a series that I am on the library hold lists long before the book is published.  A day’s read if one ignores one’s duties enough.  I adore Flavia, who is now almost twelve.  The last sentence in the book is the best/worst I’ve read in a mystery.   Unfortunately for my sanity, the sixth book isn’t scheduled to publish until “early 2014”.  You’re killing me, Alan Bradley.

7. Radical: Fighting to put students first / Michelle Rhee.  I read a book about Ms. Rhee last autumn and got a lot out of it, including a radical crush on Michelle and her philosophies.  I bought Radical when I went to see her last week at a Town Hall lecture (thank you, Seattle Public Library!). There were pickets and protests and hisses and everything.   Since leaving the Washington, D.C. district, she has started StudentsFirst, a union of sorts for students.  She’s considered controversial, but I support her positions.  I definitely want to teach again when the kids are all in school, but she inspires me to move to the inner city and work harder than I ever have in my life to be the best teacher any kid has ever had.  I’ve already said it: she’s inspiring.

6.  All There Is: Love stories from StoryCorp / Dave Isay (editor).  I put this on my Hold list when I got on my This I Believe essay kick last year, one of NPR’s great features.  Forty minute interviews between lovers, friends, and family are written up in short essays.  It’s an excellent peek into the love lives of representative slice of America. 

5.  American Dervish / Ayad Akhtar. We picked this novel for book club and I loved it.  I learned more about Islam, Jewish-Muslim-Christian tensions, and the Koran through this piece of fiction than I’ve ever gotten out of a deliberate study.  Ah, the power of story.  It brings up some great discussion topics, not only for book club, but even for Dwayne and me.   Unfortunately, this is the author’s first book so as much as I would like to grab from the shelves all his other brilliance, I will have to wait. 

4. Blueprints for building better girls / Elissa Schappell.  Meh. A collection of short stories that I didn’t realize were about the same women until nearly the end.  If you decide to read this book about anorexic girls with more issues than food, know that Elizabeth, Bender, and B are the same person.  Maybe now you will get more out of this than I did.

3. The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron.  Another audio read, I found this is the section of previous Newberry winners.  Lucky, a ten year old orphan, is trying to find her Higher Power, a concept she has heard about while eavesdropping on the different “Anonymous” meetings her in small, small town.  Hey, it won a prestigious award—always worth reading.

2. Predictably Irrational: the hidden forces that shape our decisions, by Dan Ariely.  This was an audio read for me and both the reader and subject were fascinating.  It’s in the same genre as Freakomics or anything by Malcolm Gladwell.

1.  World without End, by Ken Follett.  Our book group read Follett’s Pillars of the Earth a few years ago and decided to tackle the sequel, giving ourselves December and January.  It’s 1,050 pages about life in a English town and priory in the 14th century.  I love his historical fiction—I can read a history book about Martin Luther’s protests of certain Church practices, but fiction makes the fact more real.  The author uses a few prototype characters no matter what century he’s writing in, but overall, I’d say my enjoyment of the novel was just about worth the 4-5 other books I gave up reading to get through this one. 

[Red denotes a work of nonfiction.] 

How Children Succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character, by Paul Tough—follow this author if you enjoy fantastic writing that puts together non-related studies into a c0hesive, practical narrative, not unlike Freakonomics, Malcolm Gladwell, and Daniel Pink.

(My note:  In 2009, Paul Tough wrote Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, a fantastic read about education, poverty, acheivement gap, charter schools, etc. Listen to Geoffrey Canada on KUOW’s Speakers Forum.)

Again, here’s my shortcut version of the book, but really, this is one of those books that I read for my kids (like I read Lean In for me).

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Big Idea: A study took kids who scored low on an IQ test retested those kids and gave them an M&M for every correct answer. They went from an average IQ of 79 to an average of 97.

So…what is their “real” IQ, 79 or 97? (It turns out that life prospects were more in line with a 79 score.) “They may have been low in IQ, but they were low in whatever makes a person try hard on an IQ test without any obvious incentives” (pg. 69).

In other words:

IQ = Natural/developed intelligence/ability + amount of innate motivation

Self-control as a child is correlated with, as an adult, being less likely to smoke, have health problems, have bad credit, brushes with the law, have multiple addictions, and raising children in a single-parent household (p. 73-74).

However, self-control isn’t quite the “driver of success that [Duckworth] was looking for” (p. 74). She called “a passionate commitment to a single mission and an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission” (p. 74), or grit, the important quality that could make the difference in succeeding (my note: compare word choice with success).

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/grit/angela-duckworth-grit.html

Denise: Your grit score is: 4.5. You are in the 90th-99th percentile of other users who have taken this test.

How to improve your grit:

Three strategies people use when setting goals:

1) Optimism: envisioning all the good things that will happen when you achieve; indulging; “doesn’t usually correlate with actual achievement” (p 92)

2) Pessimism: “dwelling, thinking about the entire thing that will get in the way of their accomplishing their goals” (p 92). Doesn’t work well, either.

3) Mental contrasting: “contrasting on a positive outcome and simultaneously concentrating on the obstacles in the way. Doing both at the same time… ‘creates a strong association between future and reality that signals the need to overcome the obstacles in order to attain the desired future’” (p 93). Set rules for yourself.

If you don’t have that kind of safety net (middle class, affluent)—and children in low-income families almost by definition do not—you need to compensate in another way. To succeed, you need more grit, more social intelligence, more self-control than wealthier kids. P 103

Pp120-1  Researchers have demonstrated that for infants to develop qualities like perseverance and focus, they need a high level of warmth and nurturance from their caregivers. ….[W]hen children reach early adolescence, what motivates them most effectively isn’t licking and grooming-style care but a very different kind of attention. Perhaps what pushes middle-school students to concentrate and practice … is the unexpected experience of someone taking them seriously, believing in their abilities, and challenging them to improve themselves.

When [Tom Brunzell’s] students were flailing, lost in moments of stress and emotional turmoil, he would encourage them to do the kind of big-picture that take place in the prefrontal cortex: slowing down, examining their impulses, and considering more productive solutions to their problems [than yelling, hitting].

Pg 152-3  The SAT (and the ACT) were designed to equalize the differences in schools (eg a 3.5 GPA in different high school across the nation). But ACT and SAT scores were poor predictors of college completion. The better predictor, actually, is high school GPA. “It was true that a student with a 3.5 GPA from a high quality HS was somewhat more likely to graduate from college than a student with a 3.5 GPA from a low-quality HS, but the difference was surprisingly modest.”

Conclusion: “whether or not en is able to graduate from a decent American college doesn’t necessarily have all that much to do with how smart he or she is. It has to do, instead, with the same list of character strengths that produce high GPAs in the middle and high schools…motivation, perseverance, good study habits and time management skills”

OneGoal Leadership principles: Resourcefulness, resilience, ambition, professionalism, and integrity.

I’ve been keeping track of the books I’ve read since January 1, 2012, and have only listed ones I’ve finished and actually read (somehow, books on CD haven’t “counted”.  I’ll update this list as I finish something new and you can access if, if you choose, but clicking on “2012 Books” under LABELS (to your left).

26. Dead end in Norvelt / / Gantos, Jack. 
25. The Case of the Left-Handed Lady / Springer, Nancy.
24. The case of the missing marquess / Springer, Nancy.
23.Half the sky : / Kristof, Nicholas D.,
22. The Reading Promise / Alice Ozam
21. A Gift of Ghosts / Sarah Wynde  This is a debut novel from my favorite writer of Fan Fiction (short stories about shows/characters written by talented–or not–fans).  Sarah is talented and this novel was the perfect four-hour summer fling. 
20. The Fault in Our Stars / John Green
19. The Hound of the Baskervilles / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
18. Girl Land / Caitlin Flanagan
17. Mighty be our powers : / Gbowee, Leymah
16. One small boat : the story of a little girl, lost then found / Kathy Harrison
15. I speak for this child : the true stories of a child advocate / Gay Courter
14. Radical : taking back your faith from the American Dream / David Platt
13. Another place at the table : a story of shattered childhoods redeemed by love / Kathy Harrison
12. Outlander / Gabaldon, Diana.
11. An abundance of Katherines / John Green
10. To hell with all that : loving and loathing our inner housewife / Caitlin Flanagan
9. A Matter of Class / Mary Balogh
8. Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? / Michael J Sandel
7. Wench / Dolen Perkins-Valdez
6. Clockwork Angel / Clare, Cassandra
5. Think : straight talk for women to stay smart in a dumbed-down world / Lisa Bloom
4. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk / David Sedaris
3. Drive : the surprising truth about what motivates us / Daniel H. Pink
2. I’m Half Sick of Shadows/ Alan Bradley
1. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother/ Amy Chua