I know, I know. Long time no post. I could have been posting daily but do you really want to hear me whine, still, about how I am not adjusting to the move? I didn’t think so. So I’ve been quiet. Happy to answer emails but don’t feel like I should shout to the world in electronic format that will long outlive me about my frustrations with everything.

Funny thing, I read other writer’s blogs about their day to day lives and I’m fascinated but I figure I’m too boring to keep people mesmorized that way. On top of that, I started this blog to talk about my writing life and while moving and getting settled informs my writing life I’m not doing much writing. Hence, the silence.

Plus I am tired. So very very tired. All the time. But I am trying to poke my head up a bit. I have a couple of speaking events coming up for the end of the school year and then I am going to feel a bit more free. The last event is 5/21 and I’m taking the whole week off from work. Maybe then I can finally get caught up on some rest, if even for the short term.

In any event, anticipating my upcoming time off I need, want to read. I am actually feeling like I could read fiction again and focus and enjoy it but I’ve been so out of it that I have no idea what is new and is out that I should be reading. Okay, the Newbery and Printz books. I have those on the list but what else, especially middle grade fiction (NOT fantasy/sci fi).

Tell me what I should be reading, please?

What I’ve been reading this month for pleasure:

• Breaking Point by alexwrites (Alex Flinn)
• Following Fake Man by Barbara Ware Holmes
• In the Middle of the Night by Robert Cormier
• Megan’s Island by Willo Davis Roberts
• Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters by notjazz (Gail Giles)
• Shattering Glass by notjazz (Gail Giles)
• Dangling by Lillian Eige
• The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place by e. l. konigsburg
• No Limit by Pete Hautman
• Invisible by Pete Hautman
• Geography Club by brentsbrain (Brent Hartinger)
• Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher (reread)

What I’ve been reading for research: (3 guess what the topic was for the NF proposal I just turned in)

• A Time to Stand by Walter Lord
• The Alamo Remembered, Tejano Accounts and Perspectives by Timothy M. Matovina
• Women and Children of the Alamo by Crystal Sasse Ragsdale
• Echoes from Women of the Alamo by Gale Hamilton Shiffrin
• A Line in the Sand by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson
• The Boy in the Alamo by Margaret Cousins
• Alamo Traces by Thomas Ricks Lindley
• 1836 Facts About the Alamo by Mary Deborah Petite
• Inside the Alamo by Jim Murphy
• The Alamo by Frank Thompson

A day late but here’s a list of most of what I read in January. Some of them got put back on the shelf before I remembered to write them down.

Some reading was rereading of old favorites:

• What Daddy Did by Neal Shusterman
• Counterfeit Son  by Elaine Marie Alphin
• The Killer’s Cousin by Nancy Werlin
• Backwater by Joan Bauer

New reading

• Jude by Kate Morgenroth  (Fabulous!)
• An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg (Breathtaking adult novel. The film is out now.)
• Donuthead by Sue Stauffacher 
• All Alone in the Universe by Lynne Rae Perkins (From the winner of this year’s Newbery award featuring the same characters)
• The Boy in the Burning House by Tim Wynne-Jones (Always a great read author to read.)
• Blister by Susan Shreve
• Tender Mercies: Inside the World of a Child Abuse Investigator by Keith N. Richards (Non-fiction, very good.)
• I Speak for This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate by Gay Courter

Okay, the idea was to post this list on the first of every month but I’m running a bit behind. Here’s what I read this past month. I might have missed a few but I think this is most of them.

• Contents Under Pressure by Lara M. Zeises
• A Room on Lorelei Street by Mary E. Pearson
• Scribbler of Dreams by Mary E. Pearson
• Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles
• One Night by Margaret Wild
• Escaping Tornado Season by Julie Williams
• Splintering by Eireann Corrigan
• Chicken Boy by Frances O’Roark Dowell
• Stained by Jennifer Richard Jacobson
• Michael Rosen’s Sad Book
• The Cloud Chamber by Joyce Maynard
• Tribes by Arthur Slade
• Fame and Glory in Freedom Georgia by Barbara O’Connor
• Last Dance on Holladay Street by Elisa Carbone
• Over the River by Sharelle Byars Moranville
• A Thief in the House of Memory by Tim Wynne-Jones
• Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Field of the Dogs by Katherine Paterson
• Mary Margaret and the Perfect Pet Plan by Christine Kole MacLean
• Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy  by Gary D. Schmidt
• Here Today by Ann M. Martin
• The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon
• Crank by Ellen Hopkins