Summer Reading

The most recent Joy the Baker ¨Let it Be Sunday¨ post included a list to her summer reading list for 2014, which reminded me that I've been sadly remiss in sharing my own reading lately. While I no longer average a book a day, I still have been reading steadily, stealing time at lunch, on breaks and in between bike rides. While I've mostly been reading non-fiction, a few fiction titles have also captivated me.

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley - Oh how I love me a prickly protagonist. Ada, who has been hidden by her mother from the neighbors her entire life, due to a club foot, and brother Jamie evacuate WWII London. I don't know that a plot summary could possibly do this justice - and you certainly cannot judge this book by its' cover, but I'm hearing a bit of Newbery buzz, premature though it may be.

Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard - So I'm not ready to pack up and move to another country, but I was inspired by the slower pace of life (especially compared with Lunch in Paris, the author's first book). Maybe we can move to an island or have a few more slow weekends...

Make It Stick: the Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown - Spacing, interleaving, retrieval practice, reflection and elaboration are the keys to learning. I could not stop talking about this book, to the point that I may have annoyed friends and co-workers. Tests have never really seemed like anything more than a way of judging if you have learned the material, but this book stresses the value of tests as a learning tool (if you get something wrong on a quiz, you're more likely to remember it in the future). I am changing my Swahili-learning strategy after reading this to include more quizzes. Also, I've been thinking about the implications for classes that I teach or staff learning at work.

Are You Fully Charged? The 3 Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life by Tom Rath - Eat, sleep and move - while some of this should be common sense, these items can also be the first to go in times of stress when we most need them. I even took time to finish the chapter questions, which get you thinking about how to increase energy and engagement.

The Precious One by Marisa de los Santos - After reading Love Walked In and identifying with the Cary Grant-loving protagonist, I've followed Marisa de los Santos' fiction. While nothing has quite compared with her first novel, this one comes close. She just writes characters that I want to read about - quirky, old-fashioned and just a little of how I imagine myself to be - and Taisy and Willow, half sisters 17 years apart in age that are brought together when demanding father Wilson asks estranged Taisy to ghost-write his memoir. A very sweet description of first love made this a favorite this summer (so far).

And still on my to read pile - either on hold, checked out, but not yet read or on my mental to-be-read list:

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Daughters of the Samurai by Janice Nimura
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

What are you reading this summer?