A new kind of fluff...

I LOVE to read. You could say I am, in fact, a voracious reader. Despite my crazy life ( see Who's Driving Anyway? ), I actually manage to read every night. And not just Click, Clack, Moo or Charlie & Lola, but real grown up books. I am a bit of a literature dork. I have always been head over heels for my lit teachers, Mrs. Nace, Audrey Eyler, etc. The ICS AP English teacher recently, did a devotion ( I will explain this concept in a future post) based on a sonnett by John Dunn, and I almost cried I was so exicted. I felt like the annoying girl in the front row who couldn't stop throwing her hand up in the air. I literally had to PHYSICALLY pin my arm down at my side with my other hand. Lit. Dork.

Anyway...despite my taste for fine literature, my MO as a reader is to alternate one "really good book" with a piece of trash. That's right, this lit dork likes to read trash. Usually this means a crime novel, preferably without a love story. Hard to find, but out there. Sometimes, I cave on the love story part, particularly if loaned a book by my friend Jenny's mom.

Lately, my trash has run toward the juvenile, and by that I mean "adolescent" literature, and unfortunately love features prominently in most of these stories. I figure, that if I am going to get into the minds of these kids, I've got to live in their world once in awhile. Last school year it was the "Twilight" series by Stephanie Meyer. If you have been living under the rock of motherhood, and haven't heard of these books you will soon, the first book "twilight" has been made into a movie featuring oh so lovely Robert Pattinson (also played the ill fated Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter movies). It comes out in the US late Novemeber. Lucky you. At first I told myself I was reading these books to understand my students better. Then it was because most of the story takes place in and around Forks, WA. That's right. Forks. In my admission days at PLU, I actually visited Forks HS, where much of the novel takes place. And then there were the vampires, and the Native American Werewolves. Needless to say, I was hooked.

This school year, with Stephanie Meyer's "breaking dawn" checked off my list I was at a loss after finishing my last non trash bookbook (The Book Thief, if you haven't read this amazing book, read it. I cried so much in the final pages, I literally had to put the book down between paragraphs to regain my composure enough to be able to see to read.). But then, one day, while perusing the new scholastic books my husband Erik had just ordered for his classroom library I discovered the "Uglies" series, by Scott Westerfield. This futuristic series includes four books "Uglies", "Pretties", "Specials", and "Extras", about a society, where everyone is considered ugly until their 16th birthday when they undergo an operation that makes them supermodel pretty. I tore through the first three books, only to discover that Erik didn't order the fourth.

Sigh.

I guess I have to read a non trash book now. Suggestions?