The Book Nook

[[Kegan]]

********' barnes and nobles making my title confusing

This is the book nook. What are you reading? Tell us about it, make some suggestions.

Let me start out. I am reading George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and I've just finished the second volume. It's like "Wow" good.

I finished The final Dark Tower novel a few months ago, and I have been without a fresh new book since. I decided to look back at some books that had really affected me as a child: the Harry Potter series! I re-read the first 5 books for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised to see they held up. Fred and George were much funnier now that I've got a sense of humor, and in general it was just fun to go back and reacquaint myself with everything.

Once I finished Order of the phoenix, I decided to put the series down for a while. Since half the people I follow on tumblr were posting game of thrones gif-sets on tumblr, I decided I'd check it out. (Game of thrones is the name of the TV series on HBO, and the first book.)

So, right, what about you guys?  

[Paper Sonic]

Just bought a few Vonnegut. I'll have time to read them soon~
Before that I was reading Jeffrey Brown's Girlfriend "Trilogy."
I've been meaning to read ASoIaF.
I also got two graphic novels from the author of Persepolis.
Backlog!  

[old jazzy]

I've been reading the dialogue in Animal Crossing. 4laugh  

[[Kegan]]

read a book or i will headbutt you  

[Rad Electropow]

I don't read books much anymore ) :  

[[Kegan]]

Kegan is lowering his head.  

[Zephyrkitty]

> People posting in a book thread to say that they don't read or are reading things that aren't books


The fun thing about being in the teaching program is that I get to read a lot! The only problem is that it's overwhelmingly children's books, and usually picture books on top of that. I don't think anyone here actually wants to hear about the Mo Willems books I've been reading with the first graders, for example.

So, stuff I'm reading that has actual chapters:

- Lincoln: A Photobiography: I've been reading this with my literature circle group, and it's been a really great experience. Our class did a lit. circle earlier in the year and I've seen a few in action in my fifth grade placement, but they were all based around fiction books so adjusting some aspects for an informational text has been interesting. It also means very different questions come up than what I'm used to; the kids ended up getting into a long discussion one meeting about why slavery existed, for example.

It's also been a good reminder that students' tastes will vary wildly; all of the kids in my group had this book as their first choice, and several of them have mentioned that they picked it because they love reading about history or about the presidents. The ones that didn't pick it for that have mentioned that they love wrestling; the snippet I used to introduce the book was about Lincoln getting into a wrestling match shortly after moving to a new town. A lot of kids love fiction (especially aliens and dragons and other fantastic things), but there are also a lot of kids who are interested in real events and people, and other kids who could be interested in that if they can find some sort of connection or reason to be interested.

Oh yeah, the book itself is pretty good too. It's pretty thorough, and despite being a biography it reads very well; I'm never bored while reading it, which is really good because it's easy for non-fiction to end up that way. The author includes a ton of pictures of Lincoln and the people close to him, but there are also pictures of things like a replica of the house he lived in as a kid and a sample of his schoolwork. It really adds to the picture you get of Lincoln from the book. Freedman's written several other books that seem to be in a similar format, so I might have to look into some of them over the break.

- Cloud Atlas: This got put on the backburner due to classes, but I'm actually pretty interested in seeing where this all goes. I'm only through the second section so far.


Song of Ice and Fire: I did manage to pick up the first book a while back. I have to finish a couple of other books first (The Makioka Sisters is due June 1st), but I'll try to start it after that.  

[[Kegan]]

Ahh, picture books. I actually enjoy a good picture book. I love good illustrations, and most of my favorite books growing up were picture books, even though I was an early reader.

Anyone remember I Spy?  

[[Kegan]]

I am reading to ungodly hours right now, as though books would not wait, and as though I had nothing to do tomorrow.

And I am not even done yet.  

[Tae-Kwon-Doh-Boy]

I've been getting a bunch of public domain books for my Kindle, mostly Vatican documents, and some classics like Don Quixote.  

[[Kegan]]

Interesting. Does amazon scan those or is it google books?  

[Tae-Kwon-Doh-Boy]

[Kegan]

Interesting. Does amazon scan those or is it google books?

You can get them from Amazon. I prefer to use .pdf files that I get either from copied and pasted word documents that I converted to the right format, or straight from Project Gutenberg.