Sunday, December 5, 2010

Procrastination Rears Its Ugly Head

After many years of rushing to meet deadlines, I thought I had put that nasty habit of procrastination to bed a long time ago. Then November 30 rolled around and I realized that I had read only 74 of the 100 books I pledged to finish in 2010. YIKES!

So I've been racing the calendar in an effort to read 26 books in the month of December. I'm off to a decent start, with three books done in the first four days: Crescendo by Becca Fitzgerald, The Ball by Tod Whitaker, and Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris.What follows is a two-sentence reflection on each book, because I need to spend my time today reading, not writing!

Crescendo is the sequel to Fitzgerald's Hush, Hush (which I loved), but it fell short because it didn't have the depth of its predecessor. It was much more brain candy than a real exploration of human (and angelic) emotion, and it strayed even further from any religious tradition I've ever known.

The Ball was a short parable about the need to for teachers (and small business owners) to stay focused on what's important in our classrooms: to keep our eyes on the ball. It was a good and valuable read so long as I did not remind myself that Whitaker is also the author of the less uplifting Dealing with Difficult Parents and Dealing with Difficult Teachers.

If I have a guilty reading pleasure, anything by Charlaine Harris is it! It was a pleasure to tear through Grave Secret and once again enter the (almost ridiculously unrealistic) world of Harper Connelly and Tolliver Lang. I'm just sad that the conclusion of the novel leads me to believe it's also the conclusion of the series.

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