It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme was started by Sheila at Book Journey.  The kid's version was started by the lovely ladies at Teach Mentor Text.

I did get more reading done than I thought I would this week and weekend.  I didn't meet my goal of reading 10 nonfiction books this past week, but I did read 5 nonfiction books.  Below, I'll talk about the ones I read and my favorites out of the 5 books.  I would have gotten more read, but I had to work on my taxes and I got sick towards the end of the week.  I was starting to develop two ear infections.

I'm still reading The Notorious Benedict Arnold by Steve Sheinkin.  I'm really just fascinated by rise and fall of Benedict Arnold.  I haven't gotten to the point where he turned against his county.  I'm really curious about what led up to him committing those acts.  I'm reading this book while I'm at physical therapy, so I only read it two times a week.  I have therapy today, so I can't wait to see what happens next!

I'm always looking for Titanic books.  My kids are totally obsessed with the disaster.  All of my Titanic books have been well loved.  Dangerous Waters by Gregory Mone will be in my Spring Scholastic Book Fair and I wanted to read it because I know that the kids will be interested in it.  Click here for a summary on Goodreads.  I'm as bad as my kids, I read anything and everything about the Titanic.  (But I really didn't like the movie.)  I really enjoyed this book, the characters were very likable and the story of the thief kept me interested.  I just loved how Gregory Mone really meshed fact and fiction in this book.  I enjoyed learning more about one of his main characters, who was actually a real person, Harry Elkins Widener.  It was interesting to learn that after he died on the Titanic, his mother paid a lot of money to have a library built and named after him at Harvard.  It just goes to show you there are still some many stories associated with the Titanic that we might never know.

When I was in Target one day last week, I found The Runaway King by Jennifer A. Nielsen.  I had forgotten that it was being published this month.  Click here for a summary on Goodreads.  This is the second in The Ascendance Trilogy.  I, like many others, was worried that the sequel wouldn't live up to the first one.  Well, I was not disappointed!!  I loved this one as much as The False Prince.  Jennifer A. Nielsen made me love the characters even more than I did in the first one and made me change my mind about one character.  The only problem that I did have, is now I have to wait for last book in this wonderful trilogy.  On an up-note, Jennifer A. Nielsen is writing book six in the Infinity Ring series.  It comes out in December 2013.  If you haven't started the Infinity Ring series, you really need to, it is great!

I'm happy I got through 5 nonfiction books, even though it wasn't the 10 that I hoped for.  The books I read were Insect Fossils by Kathleen Connors, Face to Face with Polar Bears by Norbert Rosing with Elizabeth Carney, Harlem's Little Blackbird (The Story of Florence Mills) by Renee Watson, Zoo Borns! by Andrew Bleiman and Orangutans Are Ticklish by Steve Grubman with Jill Davis.

My two favorite's were:  Harlem's Little Blackbird and Orangutans Are Ticklish. These books couldn't be more different from each other.  Harlem's Little Blackbird is all about Florence Mills.  I had never heard of Florence Mills before this book.  I learned a lot about this talented lady, who grew up in Washington D.C.  I really want to learn more about her.  Click here for a summary from Goodreads.  Orangutans Are Ticklish is a book of fun facts from an animal photographer.  It was really neat to read the thoughts of Steve Grubman, who was the animal photographer.  I never really thought about the photographers who get those great shots in the nonfiction books.  This book gives the kids a great behind the scenes look at being an animal photographer.  Click here for a summary from Goodreads.

Happy Reading!!

Stacey (@libraryjo92)