Two More...

I finally abandoned a book!  Crazy that I'm excited for not finishing a book though.  I usually think that all books have enough value that as a reading teacher, I should probably finish them.  Like I said before though, I tell my students to not waste their time reading books that they don't like.  I got The White Darkness for $2 at Plato's Closet.  (Great place to buy used books!)  The cover is mysterious and the quotes on the back are good.  At the very beginning of the book, the author recommends that you read the postscript which is about a man named Titus that dies trying to reach the South Pole.  Strange, right?  Even stranger is that the main character is best friends with Titus who died over 100 years ago.  She "talks" to him.  I abandoned the book on page 149 which wasn't quite half-way.  At that point, Sym is on Antarctica which her Uncle Victor who isn't really her Uncle and a group of people that are trying to find Symme's Hole which is a hole in the Earth's crust that goes to another world/planet.  From what I can figure out, this Uncle Victor has kidnapped Sym from her mother.  Her mother thought that they were all going on a few day vacation to Spain, but somehow her mother had lost her passport.  (Sym found it later in Uncle Victor's pocket.)  Sym thinks frequently that she should try to tell her mother that they are in Antarctica, but she never does.  It's really strange and I don't really care to even know how the book ends up.  I didn't really connect with any of the characters and the plot was too strange.  As I read through some reviews on Amazon, many other readers agreed that Sym was just too strange to connect with. 
     I'll put the book on my shelf and see what someone else thinks.  I love to encourage kids to read books that I hated.  Last year, one student would love to read the books that I hated to see if he liked them or hated them.  We seemed to agree half of the time and disagree half of the time.  He was a great reader, but just loved having that purpose for reading.

After I abandoned that book, I picked up reaching for sun.  I'm not sure if I already shared this book, but I enjoyed it enough to read it a second time.  It's written in prose, so it's an easy read.  It is full of so many similes and metaphors that it would be an excellent book to discuss with others.  I'm sure that some would just like to read it though and not discuss the symbolism of the metaphors.  If you have a chance to read it, let me know what you think.

I'm getting ready to go on vacation.  The great thing about vacation is the opportunity to read lots of books while just relaxing!  I've started to pack some clothes, but I need to think more about what books to pack.  I'm definitely taking Insurgent, the sequel to Divergent.  I'm really hoping that it's as good as the first.  One of my fellow teachers posted to her facebook a comic about having a book hangover which is where you finish a book that you loved so much that you hate to read another book.  That's how I feel about this book.  I'm afraid to read this sequel because I'm afraid that I won't like it as much as the first book.  I hope to have a long list of books to share when I return home.  (I'm taking several education books too!)