March in Review

Last month was all about the reading and not so much about the writing; this month was the opposite.

My Reading

# of books read: Ten.  TEN! That's like a normal person or something.
Best(s):  This is tough, since I had a lot of 4 star books, but nothing higher.  I'm going to to with Girl in Pieces and The Other Boy.  And not just because they both have beige covers, which is fairly unusual.

 

Mt. TBR progress:  Four, bringing me to 21 this year.  I've passed Pike's Peak and am near the summit of Mt. Blanc.  79 to go to reach my Everest!

Bookish Events and Happenings:

I participated in the Nerdy Book Club's #titletalk Twitter chat for the first time and came away with approximately 739 ideas about how to keep my students reading over the summer.  I've stopped buying (as many) new books for my classroom library, and INSTEAD I'm buying books to give away at the end of the year.  If I get enough, I'm going to hand a book to each of my students and say, "Here, I think you might like this."  If I don't make that goal, then I'll have massive raffles and give away books to as many kids as I can.  There are also some more sustainable systemic ideas I am going to run by my boss when I get back from spring break.  

I also fiddled some more with my Goodreads shelves, sorting through the nearly 2,000 titles on my "to-read" list and putting 155 on an "urgent" shelf and another 614 on a "maybe" shelf.  Basically, the 155 are books I actively, eagerly want to read right now.  And I blame ALL OF YOU for the fact that I actively, eagerly want to read 155 books.  The 614 are books I'd put on my to-read shelf but have no memory of what it is about them that made me do so.  The rest are books I am at least dimly aware of, but don't have that sense of urgency about.  

I found this poster my dad brought back from a trip to DC when I was in high school, and I finally put it in a cheap frame.  I hope to find a spot for it in my classroom.  Yes, that right there is a poster that spent thirty years wrapped up in a cardboard tube.  

Finally--already getting excited about my third Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon at the end of this month.  Sign up!  It's the best!  

On the Blog

You may have noticed that I participated in the Two Writing Teacher's annual daily slice-of-life challenge in March.  Unlike last year, when I posted 45 times, I pretty much ONLY participated in the challenge, and I'm excited to get back to focusing more on books and reading.  (Hey, did I just discover a way to get over a slump?  Focus on a different type of blogging for a month?)  I only missed one day all month and ended up with 32 posts total.  I included a couple of super personal posts and a few psuedo-poetry posts.  I indulged in a few posts about my kids and students, and a few posts that included mostly photos.  It really is fun to play around with different topics and formats like that.

Last year I found a few particular blogs I enjoyed and really focused on reading and commenting there.  This year I found SO MANY interesting blogs and posts and really jumped around every day.  

IRL

Today is the last day of spring break.  Sob.  But I'm enjoying what I'm doing at school, so it's not too painful to consider returning.  We didn't do any one big thing this week, but a bunch of smaller things--a movie, a trip to OMSI, haircuts, ice cream, sleepovers, crafts, Goodwill excursions, etc.  My highlight was spending the night at my sister's with my other sisters. We ate and drank a bunch, talked and laughed a bunch, did some doodling, and started sorting through the HUGE amount of art our parents left behind.  Our dad was a professional photographer, and our mom was a fabric artist.  There's a lot of things that we don't feel right discarding, but there's no value in just storing them either--and we all already have more than enough of their art for our personal use.  

I'm still really enjoying my bullet journal, and finding that between that and the SOL challenge, I'm looking for opportunities to be creative myself.  Like when my daughter and I played with Fimo dough one day:

I'm a native Oregonian, so the rain really doesn't faze me as much as it does some.  But even I am getting tired of the incessant gloom and drip, so the few bursts of spring weather we've gotten are doing me good.

Enjoy your April!  Read good books!

My monthly summaries are always linked to the Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up on Feed Your Fiction Addiction, along with many other terrific blogs' monthly reflections.  Nicole usually puts together a fun scavenger hunt giveaway too, so go check it out!