Summer reading reflection

Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be sea monsters

It’s summer and along with a lighter posting schedule for the month of July, I’m in need of some relaxing reading along with my reflection.

Also some removing of hex bug brains and replacing them with better brains, but that’s a different blogpost.

As all work and no play makes Jack take a job as a caretaker in a haunted hotel and hear voices tell him to pick up an axe, the Tarrant Institute does in fact endorse the taking of vacations. So without further ado:

What I’m Supposed to Read this Summer:

• What Every Middle School Teacher Should Know, by Dave F. Brown and Trudy Knowles
• This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents, by the Association for Middle Level Education
• Curriculum Integration: Designing the Core of a Democratic Classroom by James A. Beane

What I’m Actually Going to Read:

• Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen (and Ben Winters). Because so many of the classics could be improved by having homicidal cephalopods chase the main characters across the course.
• Cold Moon Over Babylon by Michael McDowell. Don’t make the swamp angry. You wouldn’t like it when it’s angry.
• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor. Sea monsters FROM SPACE.
• The entire Jessica Daniels series by Kerry Wilkinson. They’re stacked on the mantelpiece just waiting for my vacation clock to start.
• Sharcano (Sharkpocalypse Trilogy #1). WHAT?

(And yet even with all these sea monsters, I am still planning on also going kayaking on the lake. At night. In the dark. Where no one can hear– okay, I’ll stop.)

And I’m sure I’ll be giving these masterpieces all five stars over on GoodReads, but I’ll also be thinking about what makes reading and talking about books so compelling to me. More and more I’m impressed by how much reading has moved into the multimedia sphere, in ways that the promotional book video trailers of the early 2010s couldn’t have imagined.

Take, for instance, this tiny 2-minute podcast episode, tackling Donna Tartt’s The Secret History:

If I hadn’t already enjoyed the book, I definitely would pick it up after listening to that snippet.

I’m also going to be working on my video-making skills this summer, so figuring out what makes a great book trailer is definitely part of that.

Time to step my game up.

Be safe this summer, kittens, and don’t go near the water until a full hour after eating or the last sharkcano eruption. And let me know what y’all are reading down below in the comments. I’m always on the lookout for a good book or six.