Five O'Clock Friday

As the summer progresses, I'm letting readers know what I've read earlier in the year before I start a weekly "Other Stuff I Read That I Didn't Post (Yet) On the Website" feature. (Here's the January post.) And after looking at February's weak list (weak in quantity, that is), I'm wondering why I promised such a thing.

Nevertheless, here is the February update.

Penny Dreadful by Laurel Snyder

Kid vs. Squid by Greg van Eekhout
I Beat the Odds by Michael Oher
The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller - Highly recommended professional book.
Big Nate in a Class by Himself by Lincoln Peirce.

Quite an eclectic list. There's realistic fiction, fanciful fiction, nonfiction, a professional book, and a graphic novel. But I did notice that 4 of the 5 authors are on Twitter.

twitter.com/LaurelSnyder

twitter.com/gregvaneekhout

twitter.com/MichaelOher

twitter.com/donalynbooks

Looking at this list, maybe Mr. Peirce wishes he was on Twitter too.

Five O'Clock Friday - Other Books

I realized recently that I do a lot of reading that doesn't end up on the website. It wasn't so much as a realization since I already knew it, but for some reason, there it was. Books get read but don't get reviewed. People ask, "Did you read such and such? I looked on the website and didn't see it."

So I thought of an idea for Help Readers Love Reading to share other books I've read that haven't been reviewed, sort of an end of the week wrap-up. Since Friday is the end of the week, and since 5:00pm seems to be the unofficial transition from week to weekend, that seems like a good time to give a weekly update of notable books I've read that may or may not get reviewed. This isn't my official reading log, just a list of books I've read that are worth a mention, maybe a sentence or two, and possibly a future review.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to catch everyone up on the first half of the year, month by month. Then it will become a summary of each week's reading. At least that's the plan.

One last thing. It's important to note what is not listed. I do a lot of reading that isn't books, stuff like Sports Illustrated (weekly) and ESPN the Magazine (biweekly). There's also blog posts, newspapers, Twitter, and various time-wasting excursions into Wikipedia, my fantasy baseball/football leagues, and YouTube (daily). And all of them (okay, excluding that last one) are reading. Just because it doesn't fit neatly onto a reading log (date, title, author, genre) doesn't make it not reading. Remember that for your students and kids.

January:

• Spaceheadz Book #2 by Jon Scieszka - Love this series. Don't know why I haven't reviewed this one yet, but I did review Book #1.
• The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
• Ghostopolis by Doug TenNapel - Interesting graphic novel about traveling between the land of the living and the land of ghosts.
• The Ghostwriter Secret by Mac Barnett - Second in the great Brixton Brothers series.
• Scumble by Ingrid Law - Savvy is excellent, yet it took a while to finally read the follow up. I shouldn't have waited.
• We Are In a Book by Mo Willems
• Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same by Grace Lin
• Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
• Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer Holm
• Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preuss
• Dark Emperor by Joyce Sidman
• One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia