How to keep track of your books (or: This post is not about Kindergarten)

Well it is still the case that I'm in Kindergarten mode 24/7 (including very detailed dreams of lessons I've planned for the next day going wrong...), so I haven't had much time to blog lately. Nor have I had many topics, because this blog isn't the place to explain the cool lesson I taught today, or to fawn over my super-adorable students and their super-adorable personalities. Even so, here's a cute picture from class yesterday:

I could go on and on about the shapes lesson we did, which involved a
 vocabulary game playing rock paper scissors, or the learning how to use
glue sticks component, or about all the cute shapes and shape "families"
they drew on their mini whiteboards, but instead I'll just say: awwwww.

Now that that's out of my system, I'll talk about another of my favorite things (after kids and teaching)-- books!

A colleague at British Council introduced me to shelfari.com sometime last spring, and I've found it to be a really useful tool since. Shelfari has a "bookshelf" for each user with three categories: "I plan to read" "I'm reading" and "I've read", with a 5 star rating system for finished books. It has just about every book ever to search for and browse through, including synopses quotes, reader reviews, discussions, characters, even glossaries! It's a very cool resource, plus you just need your amazon account to log in (because you most likely already have one of those).

Living in Morocco it's hard to get my hands on English books, so I read mostly whatever comes my way. The upside is I read all sorts of interesting things I'd never have picked out myself, but the downside is my list of "to read" books just gets bigger instead of smaller, yet I keep forgetting what titles are on the list! So this site helps me keep track a bit and when I was in the US this summer I was able to move a couple books to the "I've read" list, which gave me a nice feeling of accomplishment.

The reason I even thought to write about Shelfari now is that I recently added two books to my profile. I'm currently reading one of Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street novels, and loving it. My mom brought it on my family's Morocco/Euro trip and had finished it by the time she left so she gave it to me to read. I'm so happy she did because I really am enjoying it!  

Also, I recently finished a really interesting non-fiction book given to me by my friend David when I saw him this summer in Chicago. Written by a husband-and-wife investigative journalist team, it's called Provenance and is about a con-man and a forger in England operating in the late-80s and early-90s, who successfully created and sold a huge number of forged modern art paintings all across the world, and created fake "provenances", or histories (receipts of sale etc) for each. The story was incredible and the writing very fast-paced and entertaining, and full of tons of characters from all over the world. The fact that it was all real made it that much more interesting. I especially loved considering where I was and how old I was throughout the timeline, since the story spanned more than 10 years, all during my early childhood! I really enjoyed the read, and learned a lot about the art world in the process. David works at an auction house, and while I still don't really know what he does, now I've had a little glimpse into that world!

                                    
Anyway, here's a link to my profile/shelf. Take a look at the site, and if you like what you see and sign up, add me as a friend!