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A quick update. I have moved to Northern Virgina, where I am currently enrolled in graduate program to become a (real) Reading Specialist. Like many of the moves I have made over the past 9 years, I arrived in town Friday and started class Monday (this used to be, "leave camp Saturday, move in to college Sunday"). I drove down here without knowing exactly where I was going to live, so I packed light. Three bags of clothes, my sewing machine, bedding, beading supplies, professional development books about reading I already owned, some dishes
and one single milk crate of recreational reading.
As you may know, I have a hard time sorting through books. Combing through my collection and pulling titles to tie me over until I go home for a visit proved difficult. I wanted to bring a good balance of books I've already read and may want to reread (or at least like to leaf through now and then), and ones that I haven't read at all yet (meaning finding books that I own and would be interested in reading, but for whatever reason, haven't yet). Here's what I ended up going with:
Read:
- Sin Boldly; Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper, by David R. Williams
- Great book on essay writing. I highly recommend it to anyone in school or actively writing.
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (half read)
- Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Kid Nobody Could Handle has always been one of my favorite short stories.
- Tough Sh*t, by Kevin Smith
- I read this over the summer. There are some great motivational chapters that kept me going through my job search.
- World War Z, by Max Brooks
- What Learning Leaves, by Taylor Mali
- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
- The Turner Diaries, by Andrew MacDonald
- I could probably write a blurb about each of these, but this one probably deserves the most explanation. It became part of my collection when I discovered it on the shelves of a children's library which is stocked entirely by (sometimes clearly unsorted) donated books (some of you may just know it as Grube). I had just seen a documentary about American Neo-Nazis that referenced it. A sense of responsibility prompted me to take it out of the reach of kids. A sense of curiosity lead me to read it. I can't say I agree with, well, anything that is in it, but it does offer some very insightful passages, such as, "...one of the major purposes of political terror, always and everywhere, is to force the authorities to take reprisals and become more repressive, thus alienating a portion of the population and generating sympathy for the terrorists. And the other purpose is to create unrest by destroying the population's sense of security and their belief in the invincibility of the government." (51)
- Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech
- The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks
- Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus
- The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (obviously)
Unread:
- Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien
- If I Die in a Combat Zone, by Tim O'Brien
- The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck
- Room, by Emma Donoghue
- Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
- The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman
- The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, by David L. Ulin
- Eating the Dinosaur, by Chuck Klosterman
- Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut
- Bridal Bargins, by Denise and Alan Fields
- Rip the Page: Adventures in Creative Writing, by Karen Benke
- Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke
