Tag: Reading

Books that Shaped Us

ByRachel September 30, 2010 3 Comments
I'm starting a new post idea called Books that Shaped Us, where we can talk about those books which influenced us most in childhood and what we remember of them. This idea started a few weekends ago when my husband and I went for a family visit to my parents' house. In digging through the basement (for some unfathomable reason), we stumbled upon an old plastic bin full of the books I owned in...

So Many YA Books!

ByRachel February 2, 2010 5 Comments
The size of my reading que approaches unbelievable lengths this week. I'm still trying to finish PURE by Terra Elan McVoy--I started this one primarily out of curiosity, to see how an author would handle the Christian faith in a mainstream YA novel about sex and friendship. My search for further volumes of Tanith Lee's CLAIDI JOURNALS turned up empty. Oh, I found them at the library all right,...

Readalong With The Seasons–Halloween '09

ByRachel October 22, 2009 2 Comments
"Readalong With the Seasons" is a new series of posts offering suggestions for quality books to get you and your family "in the mood" for upcoming holidays! As Halloween approaches, I've hand-picked a short list of my favorite spooky tales. Full-length novel: DRACULA by Bram Stoker Written more than one hundred years ago, this classic horror novel became the foundation of much pop-culture vampire...

Trekking Through the Rockies

ByRachel October 5, 2009 9 Comments
I just finished up my long trek to Colorado for the inaugural year of the Sirens conference, and boy oh boy was it a week of adventure! It was an exercise in socializing, networking, intellectualizing...and survival. The altitude alone took some endurance. Crammed into the car with my husband and parents (our luggage practically spring-loaded the trunk), we made the ear-popping climb to Vail, CO,...

Fall Reading in YA Lit

ByRachel September 1, 2009 4 Comments
Everyone thinks of summer as the time to lie back with a good book. We see advertisements for "great summer reads" each May. But what about fall? No one advertises "great autumn reads." Granted, students start back to school in the fall and thus have less time for free reading. But that shouldn't stop them! Free reading is still important, and there are plenty of shorter YA books out there that...