School starts tomorrow, and I think it's pretty safe to say I'm nervous. We had pre-planning all this week, and I've vacillated between excitedly hopeful and panicky nervousness. I feel completely unprepared for the first day, and it's driving my crazy. The veterans have all told me not to worry; the first day is usually a breeze, because you have to spend so much time with introductions, passing out books, and going over the handbook/syllabus that there's not time for anything else. That, and the students are all so tired after their two month vacation they tend to just zombie out on you. So, we'll see how it goes.
I did manage to get some reading done this week, which was nice:
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You, by Ally Carter - When I did my student teaching at the middle school last year, one of my 7th graders LOVED this book. It's about a girl named Cammie who goes to school at the Gallagher Academy, which looks like a typical private school, but is actually an elite superspy training facility. The ending was surprisingly harsh, but in a good way - it was nice to have a unpredictable, anti-fairy-tale conclusion. I can't wait to pick up the sequel,
Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy.
Side note: what's up with
Powell's search feature? I couldn't find either of those books by title, author, or publisher - I had to go to Amazon, get the ISBN, and search for them that way. Weird.
Anyway, I also read
ttyl, by Lauren Myracle (which is also impossible to find on the Powell's site, which is making me regret linking the books at all). The neat thing about this series is that it's written entirely in chatspeak. It's a series of IM conversations between three best friends. The best part (for me) is that it takes place in Atlanta, so anytime they mentioned a street or business (Junkman's Daughter, Churchill Grounds), I got excited and knew exactly what they were talking about. There is a downside to this, though. One of the subplots involves a bunch of teen drivers protesting the speed limit on I-285. According to the book, it's 65 mph. I wish! It's actually 55 mph, which makes it even more ridiculous. But that was my only major quibble with the book. I don't know if I'll read the others in the series, because the IM style and constant (true to life) errors gave me a headache, but it was pretty good and definitely different.
I'm currently reading:
Peeps, by Scott Westerfield - because
Breaking Dawn just wasn't teen-vampire-angsty enough for me.
The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis - for the
1% Well-Read Challenge.
The Hours, by Michael Cunningham - for the
Book Award Winners II Challenge.
Some fun book links:
Locus Online and
Tor both have coverage of the Hugo Award winners - YAY for Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, and Dr. Who!
Kafka apparently collected a bunch of porn. Not exactly what we learned about him when I was in school, but okay.
Livejournal user absinthetic has created this amazing
Wonderland expedition kit for his girlfriend. I have no words.
Happy reading!
Title: 
Title: 
After much thought (and encouragement from 
Title of book(s) read since last update: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman