Sunday Salon: April 16, 2017

My life in books:
Now that it isn't spring break my reading has slowed down a bit again. And my daughter was here for a week so I wasn't reading as much.

• We Are Okay by Nina LaCour--a YA novel dealing with family and emotion that is really well done
• The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon--super good novel about love and immigration
• If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo--a fabulous novel about a girl who is transgender

Challenge updates:

• Read Your Own Damn Books--My goal is to read 25 books from my TBR shelves this year. So far I've read 16, adding three this week.
• Travel the World in Books--The idea is to read books set in as many countries as possible. I didn't add any books set outside the US.
• Literary Escapes--Similar to the previous challenge, this one tracks the US states. This month I added a book read in Georgia.
• Read all of the ALA YA Award Winners--One book I read this pas week was an ALA winner. I only have two categories left.

My life outside books:

Not a lot to report outside of my reading. I ran a professional development day for the social studies teachers in my district and it went well. Otherwise, work has been cruising along. We are getting ready to do a 1:1 iPad deployment in our district so when that happens (in the fall?), I'll be super busy, but right now we're dealing with all the prep details as well as convincing many teachers that it's a good idea.

A new season of The Amazing Race has started so that's fun. This season the partners are all strangers, which is a new twist. They are heavily firefighters, police officers, and military personnel so I bet it's a physically demanding season. I also binge-watched the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which I liked and I've returned to watching old seasons of The Great British Bakeoff that I haven't seen yet.

My daughter was home for the second week of her spring break so that was really nice. We did a lot of hanging out together, which hasn't happened in a long time! Her first week of break she was on the east coast looking at colleges and Georgetown, Vassar, UPenn, and Wellesley ranked high for her. I am so interested and excited to see where she ends up applying and attending!

Happy Easter everyone!