Sunday Salon: April 14, 2019

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz is taking over The Sunday Salon and she has decided to make it a blog again rather than only a Facebook group. Yay! I am not doing FB these days so I love that I get to participate again.

My life in books over the past two weeks: 

• The Eighth Sister by Robert Dugoni
• Visible Learning for Literacy (a book for work)
• Swing by Kwame Alexander

• Let's Go Swimming on Doomsday by Natalie C. Anderson
• The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
• Internment by Samira Ahmed

• Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

Challenges progress:

• A to Z Reading--I have read books with titles for 18 letters so far: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, and W.
• Diversity Reading Challenge--I have read 25 books.
• Literary Escapes--I have read books set in 21 states so far, adding Idaho in the past two weeks. I have read in 33 countries so far, adding Somalia and South Korea in the past two weeks.
• Motif Reading Challenge--The April motif is "Crack the Case" (Read a mystery, detective story, true crime, cozy mystery, or book involving a puzzle to solve) and I am counting The Eighth Sister by Robert Dugoni
• Non-fiction--I have read 11 books so far.
• YA Award Winners--I have read 8 of the winners
• My Own Books--This challenge runs from March 15 to May 15, 2019 and I will try to read 10 books off my TBR shelves. So far I have read 12 of them!

My life outside books:

Work:

Work is work. Actually, it's been busy and good recently. I was down in Corona-Norco (Riverside County) this past week at a conference where I was on a panel. It went well so that's a relief. It was fun to hang out with work people, most of whom were high up administrators, and get to know them a bit better.

Actually, one of the books I read this week, Visible Learning for Literacy, turned out to be fantastic and is going to be the book I have my newly-formed social studies leadership team read this summer.

Personal:

Charlie when we first got him 11 years ago

This past week has been a tough one personally. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that our dog seemed to be having a tough time. He wasn't eating much (he had lost 2.5 pounds of his 11 pounds), he was sleeping a lot. He just didn't seem like himself. We took him to the vet three times in the past month and they couldn't find anything wrong. However, on Monday we took him again and they said it was time. His heart was finally giving out and in fact, was having moments of not beating.

Charlie on his last day

On Tuesday afternoon my mom and I took Charlie to the vet for his final appointment. I was pretty much a wreck during the process, but our vet was amazing and the process was quick and peaceful for Charlie. I miss him terribly, but know that he is no longer suffering and that we made the right choice.