It’s Monday What Are You Reading- The New Year’s Edition

Just as I did in 2016, I am starting off the year with the intention of participating in this wonderful weekly reading update filled with bloggers that form a great community of readers. Last year, I did several of these updates, and then September happened. My current posting seems to suck up more time, but reading other posts is worth the time when I can find it, so here I go. Thanks to teachmentortexts and unleashingreaders for continuing to host.

I feel like I am the last person to read a Brian Selznick book. This one was really good, and I would certainly read another. The pictures area really great but I wouldn’t read another if the story was not also great, and this one is. This writer clearly has his own unique style and great stories to tell.

This is a novella (probably half the length of the other books in this series) that I thought was excellent. Really though, it is for big fans of this series only. Henning Mankell is the writer of the Kurt Wallander mysteries that have been brought to the screen by Swedish and British filmmakers. They are not for kids to be certain. Wallander investigates some very serious crimes in this series. The strength of this series is how Mankell writes a falliable, believable character as his hero. There is a great afterword in which the author talks about the entire series for those that are fans (this book falls between the ninth and tenth books chronologically).

This is a work of speculative fiction that could likely be read by a senior high school student. It takes place in a frighteningly real future in which a series of events (rather than one colossal one) have occurred to create something referred to as the “jackpot”, a sort-of slow burn apocalypse. The world is a very different place and characters in this world develop a relationship with people who lived seventy years prior (in the very near future). The strength of many William Gibson books is in the way he explains things that are on the cutting edge of technology today and where they might lead in the future. I loved one line in which he wrote, “Reality television. It merged with politics.” That one seems a little obvious now, but five or so years ago when it was written…

I read this book with my six year old. We really enjoyed Inkheart by Cornelia Funke so we tried this much shorter book together. We really enjoyed the humour and the different rules for hunting and neutralizing different types of ghosts. I think there are four books in this series and my daughter is keen to listen to another. A colleague at school tipped me off about this series. She is having lots of success engaging grade three students in this series.

Currently Reading:

With my youngest daughter, we moved from Ghosthunters series to the third Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She was reading it with her older sister, but I think older sister wanted to read it faster than they could read aloud. So they parted ways but my youngest never stopped wanting to hear it. It is the book she craves more than our whole family book right now.

Our whole family book is The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which was my oldest’s pick. We read The Magician’s Nephew about a month ago, and I remember as a child reading it in the other order. I think this was the way to go though.

On my own, I am reading An Ember in the Ashes. Only 50 pages in, but it is really good so far. A dystopian seeming thriller, it reminds me a little of Divergent, but set in an Ancient Rome like past, rather than the future. I had heard some good things about this one, and was wondering if it was more an MG (for my gr. 6 or 7 library students) or a YA (maybe a book I would not stock in the library). I am leaning towards the latter so far. If you have read it, I would welcome your opinion (I am in a K-7 school).

Coming up, I have some more YA planned (an ARC of Scythe by Neal Shusterman via Goodreads that I really should have already read), a few from the early chapter series Roscoe Riley Rules, If I Had A Gryphon (a PB from my last book fair) and either The Seventh Wish or The Inquisitor’s Tale (the latter two are the ones I was the most excited about).

Happy New Year, and Happy Reading to all.