Skip to main content

Week in Review

       aaa1

Red Epic Reads BadgeIt's Banned Books Week!! To bring attention to challenged and banned books, I will be publishing reviews throughout the week of books that have been at the top of the challenged lists many times. I hope you'll visit and read these reviews, and also share what your favorite banned or challenged books are in the comments below. Click here for the list of the most challenged books in 2013. Captain Underpants tops the list once again!

And now on to my regular weekly update.

Reviews and Blog Posts
Bloggiesta
Review - The Missing Place by Sophie Littlefield
Review - Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

Reading
I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, which I will be reviewing for Banned Books Week.

Now I'm reading Accidents of Marriage: A Novel by Randy Susan Meyers for a book tour on Tuesday. 

C is reading Loser by Jerry Spinelli in school, and he seems to like it.

M is reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 by Jeff Kinney.

What are you reading this week? It's Monday! is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, so hop over there if you'd like to see what others are reading too. You can also check out the younger version of It's Monday!
Labels:

Comments

  1. Nise' September 21, 2014 at 10:47 PM

    My sons loved Captain Underpants. I will look to see if they are still here or if they took them when they moved out. I loved The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 21, 2014 at 10:50 PM

      My son loved all of the Captain Underpants books. My daughter hasn't discovered them yet! Have a great week!

      Delete
  2. Sheila (Bookjourney)September 21, 2014 at 11:01 PM

    Sherman's book is a great one!

    ReplyDelete
  3. MysticaSeptember 22, 2014 at 12:16 AM

    Looking forward to your thoughts on the Myers book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 22, 2014 at 12:31 PM

      Thanks. I'm still reading it! I need to get through it tonight so I can get that review published tomorrow!!!

      Delete
  4. GregSeptember 22, 2014 at 12:19 AM

    Looking forward to your Banned Books reviews... and The Missing Place sounds like a great read as well. Have a great week Julie and happy reading!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 22, 2014 at 12:31 PM

      Thanks! Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!!

      Delete
  5. UnknownSeptember 22, 2014 at 9:12 AM

    I love Diary of a Wimpy Kid and I have heard good things about The Absolutely True Story of a Part time Indian. Have a great reading week!
    Laura
    My Monday Post

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 22, 2014 at 12:32 PM

      I have to admit I like Diary of a Wimpy Kid too! Have a great week!

      Delete
  6. UnknownSeptember 22, 2014 at 10:25 AM

    Oh, Diary of a Wimpy Kid! I hope you enjoyed that book - and the others too, of course. Have fun reading this week.

    It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Kathy MartinSeptember 22, 2014 at 3:16 PM

    I can't keep the Captain Underpants books on the shelf in my elementary media center. The kids just love them. I have been meaning to read the Sherman Alexie book for years but it keeps slipping farther and farther down the list as new books come in. Happy reading!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 23, 2014 at 4:51 PM

      I recommend you get around to reading the Alexie book. I have been considering it for years during Banned Books Week and never got around to it until now.

      Delete
  8. Sue JacksonSeptember 22, 2014 at 6:20 PM

    My boys never liked the Wimpy Kid books that much - they thought the main character was kind of mean to his best friend...which I thought was sweet of them! My younger son loved Captain Underpants, though!

    BTW, I love your new banner photo - some great books lined up there and I like the look of the photo.

    Sue

    Book By Book

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 23, 2014 at 4:52 PM

      Thank you! I would love to someday get a graphic designer to design a banner for me (and a logo) but for now, I'll settle for a picture of my bookshelf. Just three on there that I still need to read. Of course, I have several other shelves with plenty more books to read!!

      Delete
    2. Sue JacksonOctober 13, 2014 at 5:09 PM

      So, did you take the picture yourself? And how did you give it that old-fashioned look? I have been wanting to add a book photo to my blog for a while. I do like a clean look, but it;s sort of impersonal now.

      Oh, and what site did you use to create the banner with your blog title? I am such a neophyte at all this! I did make a custom button for my Big Book Summer challenge but that was a while ago.

      Sorry to pester you with so many questions!

      Sue

      Delete
    3. JulieOctober 14, 2014 at 8:50 AM

      I did take the picture myself. That's one of my many bookshelves. I took it with my iPhone and used some sort of filter on it (I'm sorry I have no idea which one!!). Then I put it on my computer and opened it in a program called SnagIt. It's a photo editor. That's where I used the eye dropper to get the orange color from one of the books, and typed the name of the blog using that color. I just saved the image from there and uploaded it to Blogger. Pretty unprofessional, but I like how it came out.

      Delete
    4. Sue JacksonOctober 14, 2014 at 1:42 PM

      I think it looks great! Thanks so much for the details - I want to try something similar when I get time (ha ha)

      Delete
  9. lisateachrSeptember 22, 2014 at 7:54 PM

    Haven't read Loser yet but I do love Jerry Spinelli.
    Lisa
    LisaTeachR'sClassroom

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 23, 2014 at 4:52 PM

      He seems to like it. I don't think I've read anything by him yet.

      Delete
  10. Brooke ShowalterSeptember 22, 2014 at 8:06 PM

    Banned books always surprise me....it just seems like books shouldn't be censored!

    It's Monday! at Brooke Blogs

    ReplyDelete
  11. Introverted JenSeptember 22, 2014 at 10:30 PM

    I need to read The Absolutely True Diary. I always think I own it but I don't; I always get it confused with The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. I guess it's that long title. Enjoy your week!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 23, 2014 at 4:53 PM

      Ha! Well, I do recommend it if you end up getting it at some point! Have a great week!

      Delete
  12. UnknownSeptember 23, 2014 at 12:30 AM

    I have accidents of marriage on my TBR.
    I want to read the Sherman Alexie book at some point--have heard great things.
    Thank you for sharing.

    Here's my week: http://www.alwaysreiding.com/manic-monday-09222014/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JulieSeptember 23, 2014 at 4:54 PM

      Accidents of Marriage was pretty good. My review is on the blog now. I hope you're having a good week.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Popular posts from this blog

Getting back to blogging

It seems that blogging has dropped to the bottom of my list for the past year, and was pretty low for the year or two prior to that. I love to read, and am continuing to do so, but as my regular readers know I haven't been around much. My last blog post was almost a year ago!!

There are many things that have taken me away from blogging. Work has been much more challenging and interesting these past few years, but that means I really don't want to get back on the computer when I get home at night - or on the weekends.

Family life has been more busy with kids having multiple activities in the evenings, leaving little time to just hang out and write about the books that I read.

I will admit to a bit of a Facebook addiction, which means way too much time spent scrolling through my newsfeed instead of doing something more productive. This is one of the things I'm working on and hoping that this will free up some time for getting back to the blog.

Overall, life is good. Work is …
Post a Comment
Read more

Banned Books Week: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park

This is the end of Banned Books Week and unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to write about banned books this year. But I did want to include at least one post about it, so today I wanted to share one of the book series that it seems most people are surprised to find on the list: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park.

According to Wikipedia:
The Junie B. Jones series came in at #71 on the American Library Association's list of the Top 100 Banned or Challenged Books from 2000-2009. Reasons cited are poor social values taught by the books and Junie B. Jones not being considered a good role model due to her mouthiness and bad spelling/grammar. This is an interesting example of a banned book. Many times there are serious, controversial topics featured in books that are challenged. Things like homosexuality, drugs, vulgar language, etc. You can actually understand why people may not want their children to read those books, and why they may challenge their inclusion in school libra…
10 comments
Read more

April Reading Review

Where exactly did April go? I swear it was just the middle of March and now it's May. Once again, I'm going to provide a quick review of each of the books I read last month. For the last two weeks of the month, I participated in the Spring Into Horror Readathon hosted by Michelle at Seasons of Reading. The only rule was that you had to read at least one book that was horror, thriller, etc. I read one book that qualified. With the exception of the first book in my list, the books I mention below were read during the readathon


My book club's May selection was Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. I had started reading this nonfiction book about the author's work representing men, women and children who were on death row in March but finished the book in April. This is an eye-opening story that everyone at my book club discussion agreed should be required reading for law schools and police officers and even legislators who are making the laws related to judgements. I learned to…
3 comments
Read more