It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? 9/28/2020

What I Read

2.5 books this week! I feel like in the past few weeks things have settled down enough at work. To the point, that I’ve got a better handle on balancing work, my blog, and my personal life. Granted, we’ll be increasing our open hours at work next week and bringing back additional staff. Which also means we’ll start again with training and getting everyone caught up after having been out for 6+ months. But for now, I’m getting some reading done and really making a dent in my TBR pile.

This week I read Eva Evergreen-Semi Magical Witch by Julie Abe. And I realized that every time I tell myself I don’t like a genre, I read something that surprises me. Fantasy is not my go-to genre, as you can clearly see from my reading list. But, I really enjoyed Eva Evergreen – the main character uses both her magical powers and her mechanically-inclined mind to find creative solutions to problems. It was a fun adventure story too and I really liked it!

I also read Something to Say by Lisa Moore Ramée which is so on point for what’s going on right now. The main character is starting school at John Wayne Middle School. There is a petition to change the name to Sylvia Mendez Middle School. The story really looks into how history is told, by whom, and what should happen when a person says or does something bad. Does one comment make him a bad person? Is he a product of his times? Does that make it okay now? This would be an amazing book to use for a book discussion about history and present day.

And finally, I started The Candy Mafia by Lavie Tidhar which is so fun! It’s like a film noir middle grade book about a town that bans all sweets. Meanwhile there are three kid gangs smuggling candy into town and one when of the kids goes missing, it’s up to private eye wannabe, Nelle to solve the case!

What I’m Planning to Read

This week I’m going to pick up Sara and the Search for Normal by Wesley King and Dear Universe by Florence Gonsalves. If there’s time, I’m going to try and get to Above All Else by Dana Alison Levy. I’m trying to mix up my middle grade and young adult reading and get through about 30 books on my physical TBR shelf before the end of the year!

How’s your reading life going? Have you found any must-reads for me?

Join Jen from Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki from Unleashing Readers and share all of the reading you have done over the week from picture books to young adult novels. Check out the hashtag #IMWAYR for reading suggestions from readers across the globe.