Atlanta Reads!

According to the America's Most Literate Cities 2013 study recently released by Central Connecticut State University, Atlanta ranks 4th out of all large cities (250,000+) in the United States, and the only Southern city in the top 10.  We've moved up from 8th place in 2012. Could it be due to all the reading our High School teachers have done in the past couple of years?

I was looking in the "What I'm Reading Now" folder on my laptop, and was kind of surprised at how many book cover images I've distributed since fall of 2012.   Twenty-one high school teachers (including me) are participating; I've got over a hundred images in that folder, and I know there are several missing (some clues are in last winters's "Caught Reading" post).  Check out the long list below.

Whatever Atlanta's doing right, let's keep doing it!

What are YOU reading now???

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What We've Been Reading

12 Years a Slave   by Solomon Northup
36 Arguments for the Existence of God  by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

The Elegance of the Hedgehog  by Muriel Barbery

A Walk in the Woods  by Bill Bryson

After Dark  by Haruki Murakami

Alone Together  by Sherry Turkle

The App Generation  by Howard Gardner & Katie Davis

Augusta Played  by Kelly Cherry

Bangkok Noir  edited by Christopher S. Moore

Banquet at Delmonicos  by Barry Werth

Beautiful Ruins  by Jess Walter

The Best American Poetry 2013

Biko  by Donald Woods

Bill Veek: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick  by Paul Dickson

A Short History of Nearly Everything  by Bill Bryson

One Summer: America 1927  by Bill Bryson

The Bone Bed  by Patricia Cornwell

The Moonstone  by Wilkie Collins

The Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin  by Jill Lepore

Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain  by Daniel Siegel

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21^st Century  by Christian Caryl

Clemente  by the Clemente family

Cooked  by Michael Pollan

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter  by Tom Franklin

The Culture of Defeat  by Wolfgang Schivelsbusch

Curtsies and Conspiracies  by Gail Carriger

Dear Life  by Alice Munro

Death of a Red Heroine  by Qiu Xiolong

Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King

One Foot in Eden  by Ron Rash

The English Girl by Daniel Silva

Every Day by David Levithan

The Fault in Our Stars  by John Green

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Flying Too High  by Kerry Greenwood

The Forger’s Spell  by Edward Dolnick

Fractured  by Karen Slaughter

From Beirut to Jerusalem  by Thomas Friedman

The Gardner Heist  by Ulrich Boser

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief  by Lawrence Wright

The Good Lord Bird  by James McBride

Gospel of Freedom: MLK, Jr.’s Letters from Birmingham Jail

The Heart of Everything That Is  by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin

A History of Food in 100 Recipes  by William Sitwell

I Am Malala  by Malala Yousafzai

Idiot America  by Charles P. Pierce

In Human Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World  by David Bryon Davis

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death & Detection  by Judith Flanders

Jennifer Government  by Max Barry

The Language of Bees  by Laurie R. King

Glitz  by Elmore Leonard

Lexicon  by Max Barry

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Lincoln Lawyer  by Michael Connelly

Little Bee  by Chris Cleave

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren  by Iona & Peter Opie

Lowland  by Jhumpa Lahiri

Mao’s Great Famine  by Frank Dikotter

Legend  by Marie Lu

Middlesex  by Jeffrey Eugenides

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children  by Ransom Riggs

Norwegian Wood  by Haruki Murakami

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth & Happiness  by Richard H. Thaler

Nurture Shock  by Po Bronson

On These Courts  by Wayne B. Drash

The Orphan Master’s Son  by Adam Johnson

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book Shop  by Robin Sloan

The Battle of the Labyrinth  by Rick Riordan

A Person of Interest  by Susan Choi

The Last Picture Show  by Larry McMurtry

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking   by Michael Ruhlman

Reservation Blues  by Sherman Alexie

The Savage Detectives  by Roberto Bolaño

Serena  by Ron Rash

The Shining  by Stephen King

Steve Jobs  by Walter Isaacson

Stiff: The Curios Lives of Human Cadavers by  Mary Roach

Suite Française  by Irene Nemirovsky

Suspect  by Robert Crais

Swamplandia!  by Karen Russell

Sweet Tooth  by Ian McEwan

The Lives of Tao  by Wesley Chu

The Bingo Palace  by Louise Erdrich

The Wedding  by Dorothy West

The Last Olympian  by Rick Riordan

The Burgess Boys  by Elizabeth Strout

The City and the City  by China Mieville

The Maid’s Version  by Daniel Woodrell

The Mayor of Casterbridge  by Thomas Hardy

The Tilted World  by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fenelly

The Lightning Thief  by Rick Riordan

Thieves’ Quarry   by D. B. Jackson

The Highest Tide  by Jim Lynch

The Titan’s Curse  by Rick Riordan

The Vision of a Champion  by Anson Dorrance and Gloria Averbuch

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty  by James Thurber

The Golem and the Jinni  by   Helene Wecker

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?  by Maria Semple

White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of 
     Modern Conservatism  by Kevin Kruse

Wild  by Cheryl Strayd

Winger  by Andrew Smith

World War Z  by Max Brooks

The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar

4/21/2104 (post-spring break!) additions

Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest 
     to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York  by Richard Zacks
The Interestings  by Meg Wolitzer
The Round House  by Louise Erdrich
The Golden Notebook  by Doris Lessing
Case Histories  by Kate Atkinson
 Regeneration   by Pat Barker
The Dreyfus Affair  by Peter Lefcourt
Cesar Chavez  by Miriam Pawel
Room by Emma Donohue
Female Trouble  by Antonya Nelson
Boy, Snow, Bird  by Helen Oyeyemi
The Cigarette Century: The Rise and Fall of the Drug that Defined America   by Allan Brandt

Year Zero: A History of 1945  by Ian Buruma
Chronicle of a Death Foretold  by Gabriel García Marquez

Reading Clubs Update: Books for March

The junior high reading club is reading a favorite of mine this month:  Marcelo in the Real World  by Francisco X. Stork (ebook link here).  The coming-of-age tale of an Asberger's-ish teenager, there is a tiny bit of mystery, a dash of romantic interest, and a whole lot of looking at life through atypical eyes.  I wrote enthusiastically about it when I first read it in 2010, and I predict the club members will really like it as well.

High school reading club members voted before winter break to read Jennifer Government, a sardonic futuristic thriller by Max Barry.  To quote from the blurb:

In Max Barry’s twisted, hilarious vision of the near future, the world is run by giant American corporations (except for a few deluded holdouts like the French); taxes are illegal; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; The Police and The NRA are publicly-traded security firms; the U.S. government may only investigate crimes if they can bill a citizen directly. It’s a free market paradise! 

 Three guesses for which entity Jennifer G. works (of course the last two don't count).  She takes the investigation when hapless Hack Nike discovers his contract requires assassinating teenagers to build gangsta' cred for his employer's new line of luxury sneakers.  Another intriguing mystery -- what does the barcode tattoo under Jennifer's eye mean??

The library also has Jennifer Government in an audiobook edition.

Have you read either of these?  Write your review in the comments, please!

Awards, Apocalypses, and a Personal Challenge

So far in 2014, between federal holidays and 'snowtastrophes,' it hardly seems like we've had school at all.  The headmaster promises that we'll have a 5-day school week soon, but who knows when?? Not this week (hooray for winter break!!!).

At its mid-winter meeting, the American Library Association announced its latest slew of book awards for children and young adults, so even though I haven't been writing weekly blog posts, I've been hard at work. 

The two awards lists most valuable to Paideia junior high and high school readers are the Printz Award (one winner plus honor books) and the Alex Awards (a list of 10 titles).  You may recall my chagrin last fall when the National Book Awards announced its long-list of nominees for 2013 and I had barely heard of any of them.  Well, fast forward to deja vu all over again.  Of the ten Alex books and five Printz books, I'd heard of only two (Lexicon and Eleanor & Park), and only had one in the collection (Eleanor & Park - but at least I had read it and loved it). Oh, the shame.  I did feel a bit better upon discovering that neither the Atlanta-Fulton County nor the DeKalb Country public library systems had all 10 titles, and one wasn't in either system at all.

Enter the personal challenge: in 2014, I am going to read all 10 Alex books, and at least the Printz winner, and report back here in the blog.   Five years ago this challenge didn't go so well -- I hit #4 and wondered who in the world thought this book needed to be written, and I disliked #5 so much I didn't even skim to the end. And then I gave up.  2014 is off to a better start, with two down and 9 to go, and I'm feeling very optimistic that it's a good crop this year.

2014 Alex Awards 
(given by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of ALA)

~ The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.

Links go to a book's entry in the Paideia Library online catalog, if we have it.

• √ Lexicon: A Novel  by Max Barry.  The latest utterly plausible dystopian thriller from this Australian author, and my first challenge choice.  I listened to the audiobook from Atlanta-Fulton public library (an excellent production).  I've been a Max Barry fan since 2003's Jennifer Government.

• √ Help for the Haunted by John Searles.   Sylvie survived the night her ghost-hunting parents were murdered, and figures out who they really were and what really happened.  The second challenge choice, finished.

• In progress  The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu.  A couch potato becomes host to an ancient alien who's partnered with world makers and breakers through history. I've got this on my iPad, and am reading it now.  

• Brewster by Mark Slouka. Friends Ray and Jon plot an escape from their dead-end town and dysfunctional families.
   
• The Death of Bees  by Lisa O’Donnell.  Two Scottish sisters with dead parents buried in the back yard.

• Golden Boy by  Abigail Tartellin. The life and struggles of a seemingly successful intersex "golden boy."  Novels exploring mismatched physical and emotional identities seem to be in vogue lately -- I know at least a couple of teens who would have been relieved to see themselves in these pages.  The 2014 Stonewall young adult winner,√ Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, centers on a F-to-M transgender teen.

• Mother, Mother  by Koren Zailckas.  A novel about a dysfunctional family and a mom with serious control issues.  I'm not super-excited about this one (sounds scary), but we'll see.

• Relish by Lucy Knisley.  A graphic novel memoir with recipes.

•  The Sea of Tranquility  by Katja Millay.  Traumatized and lonely teens find each other and heal.
  
  
• The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence. An epileptic British misfit science geek  befriends an aging American Vietnam War vet.

2014 Printz Award

The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.

• Midwinterblood   by Marcus Sedgewick.  "Doomed love circles back through the centuries in a series of seven intricately plotted, interlocking stories set on a mysterious, isolated island." I have not been able to sell Marcus Sedgewick (we have two or three novels) to Paideia readers.   He's definitely not a cookie-cutter writer, on the dark, Gothic-y side of paranormal, and I'm a bit skeptical. But I'll read it, and let you know.

Find out more about all five of the 2014 Printz award and honor books at Omnivoracious.com (Amazon.com's book blog).

My goals for Thursday and Friday's Winter Break? Clear and re-home the redundant dining room table, and READ!

 Have you read any of these 15 books yet?  Which one sounds best to you?  Comment below!

High School Reading Club:Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Snippets and ideas for this afternoon's high school reading club meeting.

If you've read Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, this may sound very familiar:

SEATTLE — Maria Semple made an instant, jarring discovery when she moved with her boyfriend and daughter from Los Angeles to Seattle, a city whose Patagonia-clad inhabitants like to talk about bicycling, the environment and the eternally dull question (in her opinion) of whether it might rain.

“It’s just not a funny place,” said Ms. Semple, a novelist and veteran comedy writer who worked on the television shows “Arrested Development” and “Mad About You.” “I was in a miserable mind frame, and I found that I was driving around and all I was thinking about were funny things about how awful Seattle was. I would do these riffs in my head and I would polish them in my head. It was poisonous and self-pitying.” New York Times, 8/15/12

How is the author like Bernadette?  
How might all the characters reflect different aspects of Maria Semple?

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"Indeed, Semple's greatest strength is the courage to stock her book with characters who are, upon first glance, largely unsympathetic and then gently peel them until they become, if not entirely likable, then at least recognizably and even endearingly human."  L.A.Times, 1/1/2009

Do you like Bernadette, or Elgie, or Soo-Lin or Audrey at first?  Do you ever like them?

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Maria Semple pitches her book ("it's about . . .")



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The UK trailer


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Short interview with Maria Semple



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Pages from Maria Semple's website

About Maria Semple
Dig It, Baby - The Story of Bernadette
Extras - Links to articles,  reviews, trailers and general wacky stuff

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And more
New York Times review
Entertainment Weekly interview

Drumming Preview

For Chuck's West African drumming class -- a study guide for Monday's MMM presentation!

The 1st and 2nd accompaniments for each of the three parts of the piece --

Direct link to video on YouTube

The whole piece (terrible video, but the sound is ok)

Direct link to YouTube

A World of Music

Go to kumandi.com for Chuck's adult drum lesson info.

We are just over halfway through the high school Short Term A, and I'm having a great time.  It's been probably 10 years since I sat in on a short term class (the last time was Russian for Beginners in 2003), and this January I've been sitting in on Chuck Cogliandro's West African Drumming class.  It's so much fun, and there are so many things I didn't know!

• drumming is good for your brain.  Maintaining a rhythm with two hands, while the person next to you is drumming an entirely different rhythm, is a serious mental exercise.

• in any one piece there can be 5 (or maybe more) distinct rhythms going on at the same time.

• there are songs with words that are an integral part of the drum music (I never thought of it quite as music, either, just rhythm. No idea why. Duh.)

• Paideia's elementary music program has a whole big bunch of djembe drums. Time to ask Miranda about that part of her program.  How long have I been here? And yet so much yet to learn.

There was a piece on All Things Considered just yesterday about globalFEST, a one-night music festival in New York that showcases artists from Europe, Africa, Asia and beyond.   Being a librarian and an inquiring mind, I am reminded of the books, CDs and videos I've added to the collection over the years, on African music and on other music traditions & styles from around the world.  You can bet I'll be checking out a couple for myself, and you should come nose around and check out some too.  See a more complete list on the library catalog web page.

African Drumming

West African Drum & Dance: A Yankadi-Macrou Celebration -
a book, CD and DVD set

Drum Circle Facilitation - a DVD for leaders and learners

Garland Handbook of African Music - reading for the scholar, with a CD for audio examples


African Music and Musicians -
a few years ago an African Music class was offered during short term. Lots of DVDs to explore!

Rai (The Rough Guides series) - CD of "Arabic rebel pop" from Algeria and the Western Sahara.  Cheb Mami is the 'prince of rai."

On Tiptoe: The Music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo - the renowned South African a capella group

Cesaria Evora: Morna Blues -   the "Queen of Cape Verdean Blues"

Angelique Kidjo - singer/chanteuse from Benin, the "African Piaf"

Youssou N'Dour Live in London - Senegalese superstar

The Rhythm of Resistance: The Black Music of South Africa - DVD

Asia

The Music of Central Asia (The Rough Guides series) -  a CD of music from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikstan, and Kyrgyzstan.  With liner notes.

The Silk Road: Music, Art, and Poetry from Istanbul to Samarquand - DVD

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: The Last Prophet - documentary DVD of the late Pakistani star of Sufi Qawwali music


Latin America

Musica!: Salsa, Rhumba, Merengue and More - a guide to the dance music with a Latin beat

Rock en Español - explores the fusion genre which blends Anglo alt-rock with Latin folklore & music.

Compay Segundo - DVD - the Cuban group Buena Vista Social Club plays their classics

More!

The Rough Guide to World Music - 2 volumes, arranged geographically by continent

Travel the World with Putomayo - music videos and live performances of popular international artists

The Rough Guide to Irish Music - CD - travel across Ireland through music

Ukulele for Dummies - book and CD set


Do you listen to or play international music?  Share your favorites in the comments.

Research for Science Classes

I've created a Blogger page as a class outline for presenting science research methods and sources to Larry's DuPont Challenge and Science Fair short term classes.  Link to this page below.

Researching Science Information On the Web