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The 31 Days of December: Top 10 of 2021 childrens, middle grade, & adult edition

The year end review is here! Over the next three days I’ll be featuring three top tens including today’s childrens, middle grade, and adult edition, tomorrow young adult fiction edition, and Thursday’s graphic novels and manga edition. I have had to intentionally leave off young adult nonfiction since I have spent the year reading close to two hundred middle grade and young adult nonfiction titles for my work on the 2022 Excellence in Nonfiction Award and therefore cannot talk about them.

In no particular order, these ten books feature elements like lyrical prose, thought-provoking questions about life, and the necessary empathy to be a human being in this world. Whether it’s grief or loneliness, needing to find your purpose, or going on an adventure, these ten authors kept me riveted from start to finish.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 28, 2021 in Adult, Blogging, Childrens, Cover Love, Fiction, Middle grade, Miscellaneous, Reflections, Verse

The 31 Days of December: Holiday vibes

26 Dec

Only recently did I create a bookshelf on Goodreads for seasonal/holiday reading because I don’t often seek them out intentionally or need to retrieve them often, however I’m finding I am more often. With that said, I know one person in particular, a coworker, who reads with holidays and seasons in mind. He first introduced me to Truman Capote’s three short stories (which I read as a collection): “A Christmas Memory,” “One Christmas”, and “The Thanksgiving Visitor.”

A few weeks ago we were again discussing holiday reading and he mentioned a tradition he has that includes Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” which I had never heard of and promptly put it on hold at my library. Serendipitously, it came in just in time for the holidays and I was able to settle in to read the short story on my couch, in my red and white striped pajamas at the foot on my tree, with a white cranberry mimosa. And it was delightful. I highly recommend the ambience and even more so, the short story itself which is exactly what you would imagine it would be from the title and the writer.

After this, I might be a convert to seasonal and holiday reading in a way that was never intentional before. All I know is that I now have a new memory and that one includes reminiscing about old memories and books.

I would love more season and holiday recommendations!

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 26, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Blogging, Childrens, Quotes, Reflections

The 31 Days of December: Literary lunchbox

21 Dec

A fellow librarian colleague, Stacey Rattner, who I’ve mentioned in the past and I presented last month about how our reading lives as librarians affect our students’ reading lives. We asked questions to think-pair-share about and then coupled them with reading recommendations.

During one of these sections, we talked about having time/making time to read and Stacey shared that I read during my lunch period. Yes. Every day I read during my lunch period. Other than when my intern and I were eating together this fall or if I can’t take my lunch for some reason, you’ll find me with my feet on the opposite chair, eating my snack, and reading. And it was recently reinforced when I was listening to the audiobook Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee that what I’m doing has work and personal benefits similar to this BBC article from 2019 that also references how brain breaks at work lead to happier employees and feelings of productivity. I didn’t start doing this because of these reinforcing studies, I did it because I knew it would help me detach for a brief time in the middle of the day and do something I loved. It resets me and I started sharing on my public Instagram my lunch time reading it, using the hashtag #literarylunchbox. They tend to be graphic novels or short nonfiction that I can either read in a period or over a few days.

Here are some of the titles I’ve read recently during my lunch period:

What do you do during your lunch break?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 21, 2021 in Adult, Articles, Blogging, Fiction, Graphic novels, Middle grade, Nonfiction, Young Adult

The 31 Days of December: The death of Anne Rice

14 Dec

I woke up to the news in my Instagram feed and was flooded from memories of my teenage years. There are certainly books I remember reading over and over again in elementary school but as I moved into middle school Anne Rice was the author woman for me.

I don’t remember which book I started with but I have a sneaking suspicion it was The Witching Hour because while her career was made famous through writing about vampires, her witches trilogy I remember being taken away with. But I did read every one of her books on vampires too. And I know I’ll have a few who agree and many who won’t, but I dare say that Interview with the Vampire was better on screen than it was in the pages of the book. It doesn’t diminish the worlds she created, the character development, sharing deep desires and longings, and what immortality could look like. She built them with skill and passion. She embodied her work. I’m sad to have never met her. But 80 is a fabulous life in which most knew her name and the work she produced.

Is it any wonder that a newer batch of writers like Holly Black and Cat Winters are among my favorites as well? Probably not because they both wrote messages of heartbreak over the loss.

While you’ll have to buy me a drink to get my best Anne Rice reading story, rest assured I owe my teenage reading life to the many checkouts at the local public library of the queen of vampires, Anne Rice.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 14, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Blogging, Fiction

The 31 Days of December: When one thing leads to another

12 Dec

You can agree that once a word, an item, a phrase is introduced to you or you learn about a topic, it then seems to be everywhere– but it’s about what’s in your consciousness. And I’m always entertained when it happens in my reading. I’ve explained that I’m a mood reader– I always have a mountainous stack of books at home so that I have a range of options to pick from. So when there is no real strategy, it’s delightful to make connections between books. Here is that tale in three books yesterday:

Book 1: I’m taking my time reading John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed. It’s essentially a collection of short stories– his reviews. I’m entertained and enlightened by his stories, so I’m reading a few a day. The other day I read his review on the Lascaux Cave Paintings. I knew a little about what they were, but now I now more.

Book 2: Science Comics are cool. I’ll always pull one of them aside if I haven’t read it even if it’s not a topic I’m super interested in (though I don’t know if I’ve ever really felt that way about any of them thus far). One of the new ones that came into our library was Crows: Genius Birds by Kyla Vanderklugt. In the graphic novel between a dog and a crow, it’s mentioned that there’s a sketch of a crow in the Lascaux Cave. BINGO!

Book 3: Then ding, ding, ding! I wanted a quick transitional book in the afternoon, so I picked up Singer’s picture book illustrated by Fotheringham from a recent box delivered to my front door called A Raven Named Grip: How a Bird Inspired Two Famous Writers, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. Crows and ravens– all part of the corvidae family.

From caves to crows… I love when one thing leads to another.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 12, 2021 in Adult, Blogging, Childrens, Graphic novels, Middle grade, Nonfiction

The 31 Days of December: The popularity of Junji Ito

11 Dec

Regardless of what level you work at in a school library, as a librarian part of your goal is to have books in the library that students want to read. Popularity is sometimes obvious, re: Dogman and sometimes it’s geographical or site-specific. This was evident several years ago when Karen McManus broke out on the scene for young adults with her murder mystery One Of Us Is Lying. Students should feel comfortable requesting the purchase of certain books. And sometimes they make it loud and clear.

Enter Junji Ito, the GOAT of horror manga since he entered the field in 1987. His popularity in our library is a confluence of one of our senior electives called Horror Fiction and Film, the large showing number of students who attend Anime Club (of which I’m the faculty advisor), and that manga regularly makes the top circulated items in our library.

Ito is the GOAT for a reason. They are dark, mind-bending, frightful, and intelligent horror stories and short stories. I’m drawn to them as so many of our students are. We recently started getting in our newest order which is adding more of Ito’s books to the collection and replacing well-worn books that have been in circulation for several years. He’s someone that we will likely always have on order.

First, read at least one of Ito’s books if not all of them. Second, remember to listen to your students when it comes to what’s on the shelves.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 11, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Blogging, Fiction, Manga

The 31 Days of December: Brain break

09 Dec

The celebrity memoir.

I don’t seek them out, but often I add them to my audiobook TBR (particularly when they’re read by them) when I see multiple recommendations or reviews with favorable reviews. I find they are the perfect brain break from more robust nonfiction audiobooks and my general reading.

Currently I’m a half an hour away from finishing Seth Rogan’s Yearbook after seeing it on a “best of” list. I am a lover of the brief but shining series he was in called Freaks and Geeks. Interest piqued and audiobook added to my list.

Within a day of adding it to the my reserve, it was available and I took a detour from my previously available audiobook, a collected anthology, to listen to this shorter (6 hour) audiobook as a way to take a little break from the epic fantasy adventure I had just finished.

And what a fun detour it has been. Celebrity memoirs are usually no-holds-barred entertainment leaving little to the imagination whether that’s the publisher expectation or what the celebrity wants. I’ve listened to Mindy Kaling and Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Nick Offerman, Dolly Parton and Anthony Bourdain with an emphasis it seems on comedians.

The best kind of brain break and when I might learn a thing or two, it’s bonus material.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 9, 2021 in Adult, Authors, Blogging, Nonfiction

The 31 Days of December: Blinding me with science

04 Dec

Today is the second anniversary of my now-thirty nine year old cousin’s heart transplant. I blogged about it here. And I shared a book that I read pretty soon after that called The Man Who Touched His Own Heart: True Tales of Science, Surgery, and Mystery by Rob Dunn. I want to celebrate her two years with a new heart and having her on this planet still.

Plus give a little love to the nonfiction writers out there who blind us with science. I seek out nonfiction regularly for every type of audience from picture books like Tiny Stitches to middle grade like Breakthrough! to young adult like Jane Against the World to adult like Pump. Simply because I’m fascinated by science. I’m in awe of it, the developments over time, and the people who make it happen. I still get a little teary thinking about my LASIK surgery in October, correcting my fairly horrible eyesight (since fifth grade) in the matter of 15 minutes. I think about our school’s valedictorian last year who was going to become a surgineer– she didn’t want to *just* be a surgeon but she wanted to design the robots that aided in that surgery, the engineer too.

Cheers to STEM and the books that explain it to those who love reading about it.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 4, 2021 in Adult, Blogging, Childrens, Middle grade, Nonfiction, Reflections, Young Adult

The 31 Days of December: Morning reading joy

02 Dec

A few years ago I decided that I wanted to incorporate 15 minutes of reading into my morning routine. It’s looked different each year, especially last year but it gave me a sense of accomplishment along with my workout and first cup of tea to have at least 15 minutes to read. This year, I tend to do it through Hoopla on my tablet since I’m already using my tablet to read the newspaper. Usually Hoopla is reserved for my graphic novel titles because they have an awesome selection but I like how their comics reader is done that if the full page is too small, double-tapping will allow you to scroll panel by panel.

I didn’t need this feature yesterday morning for my reading and I wanted to share my morning reading joy on a humdrum Wednesday. It was In Love & Pajamas: A Collection of Comics About Being Yourself Together by Catana Chetwynd which had come to my attention during the Goodreads Choice nominations. And I fell in love. Because Chetwynd’s story is a celebration of connection with a loved one. The characters are as adorably delightful as the communication (verbal and nonverbal) between the couple. I chuckled. I sighed. I felt warm and tingly. It was the perfect side for my morning *three* cups of tea. Then I proceeded to borrow the other two that were there as well.

I sat and finished it before getting ready for the day because I had the time and the want but whether it was a simple 15 minutes or a whole comic collection, I find joy in the bit of time I do spend to read because if something is important, we make the time for it. What is that for you?

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on December 2, 2021 in Adult, Blogging, Cover Love, Graphic novels

Outstanding book of the month for September 2021

30 Sep

The launch of a new school year always means there is so much to get organized even when you felt organized right from the start. Therefore, my reading has been disjointed; a cobbling together of an audiobook while doing housework and driving to and from work in addition to my obligations on a book committee and interspersing that my literary lunchbox features. There seems to be no fluidity yet. However, even disjointed reading is reading and I was able to review September’s books (that I CAN talk about) to pick my favorite of the month:

The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris

But not the print version because I didn’t read it in print. Instead, I listened to the audiobook of the collection of poetry via Hoopla and was ensconced in the sounds of the forest and animals added to the audio with a multi-cast set of readers during a walk. It’s a brief collection. One that I wished was longer because it captured the essence of nature in ways that the print on the page might not have. This is an audiobook done right. One that uses the format to its fullest and it was not disappointing.

Don’t wait until April to read this collection of poetry. It can be read it any season. It’s warmth on a winter’s night or a heightened sensation of all of spring’s beauty. An amplification of nature for nature lovers everywhere.

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Posted by Alicia Abdul on September 30, 2021 in Adult, Book of the Month, Poetry