My friend Heather Demetrios inspired me to post my reading list for grad school. As I don't have a lot of time to write in-depth posts and I won't write about the content of my grad program, I thought posting my annotated bibliography is the best way to keep everyone informed about what's going on in my life. After all, my life pretty much revolves ( Read more... )

I decided to go without the internet on Saturday to try to minimize distractions for a productive day. And while there were some annoying side-effects (I wasn't sure what time the library closed, the name of an actor in a movie I was watching escaped me, I couldn't check Facebook to see if my friend had her baby), I was more than pleased with the ( Read more... )

It had to be the most ridiculous book I had ever read. Making booze from weeds, a broken-down carnival game, a Podunk town in Illinois. Seriously? I couldn't believe my English teacher was making me read such a stupid book for my first reading assignment in high school.

Read more here.

My librarian friend is coming to visit this weekend, and she reminded me that it's National Library Week. So in honor of Steph, I wanted to give thanks for my ever-changing relationship with local libraries. I will always be grateful for the books they give me access to, the information they make available and the many librarians who have helped me ( Read more... )

I realized today that while the majority of the books I'm in the middle of right now are YA, they basically have nothing in common with each other.

Read more here.

This year I signed up for the Goodreads 2011 Reading Challenge for 150 books. It started out that I set a goal for 60 books, but within four months I knew I would surpass that. Than I changed my goal to 100 books, and by July, I knew I'd pass that. So I took a look back over my 4-year membership with Goodreads and realized that I could probably ( Read more... )

I had a few people over for dinner last night, including the 3-year-old daughter of my good friend. M loves coming to my house and exploring all of my picture books-it fascinates her to no end that I have so many and no kids. To make up for my lack of reading audience, M makes me read book after book to her in between spinning circles to her ( Read more... )

I've been working on my critical essay for my grad school applications this week. While I'm really excited about the topic I've chosen, the research for the essay is turning into a lot more work than I originally planned ( Read more... )

Transitioning from YA to adult books is a common theme on my blog, and today I wanted to address another way of doing this: series with increasingly difficult reading levels ( Read more... )

There are so many things I want to post about! I have pictures from my Chicago trip, highlights from visiting the new MLK Memorial with my uncle, reminders about the SCBWI Mid-Atlantic Fall Conference this coming Saturday, thoughts on prepping for NaNoWriMo, and so many other things. But I just don't have the energy ( Read more... )