1. Born to Run
2. Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief - This book is a book very similar to the Harry Potter books. At one point in the book Percy Jackson mentions "a security guard reading a rather large book with a wizard on the front of it." I read that part about two chapters after I had started to see quite a few similarities between Percy Jackson and Harry Potter. The book is about Percy Jackson and how he discovers that his father who left his mom right after he was born, is actually the Greek god Poseidon. Percy has to save the world from "world war III" by recovering items that were stolen from the gods and getting them back to their rightful owners before the battles began. I enjoyed the book and will most likely read the books that follow it.
3. The Help:African American servant's lives in the South in the 1960s. 500+ pages and I was interested the whole time. Great book.
4. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters - Another good book that follows The Lightning Thief. There continues to be a lot of similarities to Harry Potter. Since I liked Harry Potter its fine with me.
5. Percy Jackson: The Titan's Curse
6: Percy Jackson: The Battle of The Labyrinth
7: Percy Jackson: The Last Olympian
8. Wonderstruck - Fantastic follow-up book to The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The book is a picture 600+ page picture book with periodic chapters of reading. I highly recommend reading this book!
9. Hunger Games - This was an exciting book. The whole idea of 24 teenagers sent into an arena to fight to the death in order for their village to have food scared me at the beginning. After reading it my previous thoughts about it have changed a lot. This is an interesting read and I can't wait to read the next one. It is sitting on my night stand ready to go when I want to start it.
10. Quiet Millionaire - I read a lot of personal finance blogs. The Simple Dollar, Get Rich Slowly, and Thousandaire are my favorites. Two of them recently recommended this book. It is basically an overview of all of the stuff that I read in the blogs, but it was a nice refresher. The common things that are said, spend less than you make, don't let money sit somewhere if it can be growing somewhere else, don't lose out on taxes and tax breaks... Overall it is a decent book. Not anything exciting, just important to know and refresh on now and then.
11. Catching Fire - The second book of the Hunger Games trilogy. Unfortunately when I checked to see how many pages were in the book I read the last line. To my credit it was in a larger font and was bold, but it really ruined the book for me as I knew how everything ended. I can't wait to get to the last book.
12. Healthy Children's Lunches - This book was more of a book on eating healthy and 52 chapters on how to infuse more healthy eating habits into your daily life. Most of it was stuff that I was already familiar with but there were a few things that were good reminders. If anything, after reading a book on healthy eating it makes for a good week or two of making sure that I don't eat too much garbage.
13. The Myth of the Garage - This book is a collection of essays that each cover about 5 pages. It is a fun quick read. Each chapter is on a different topic that all seem to cover some type of personal development or professional development. The first chapter shares the same title as the book title. It basically shoots down the myth that Michael Dell, Hewlett and Packard and many other companies that claim their humble roots in a garage. It argues that most of those businesses began with knowledge gained in another company or was an idea sparked by information gained elsewhere. It's point, embrace life experiences and keep your eyes open when you are working on professional activities. Then you can break away and begin your rise to the top of your own company in your garage.
14. Mockingjay - Final book of the Hunger Games trilogy. I will miss Katniss Everdeen. She was a fantastic main character. I read this book in two days. I think the other two in the series I read at a similar speed. Great books!
15. Fair Food - Buy Local, Support Local. That is the mantra that is throughout the book. It talks about food shipped from Peru, and other countries and how they are grown more with a focus of how well they will be able to travel over nutrition content. Makes sense. Good propaganda book for going to the farmer's markets and having your own garden.
16. The Journey - This book is about Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus that was written by Adam Hamilton. Interesting thoughts about why Jesus was born in a stable. If you read Leviticus and all of the rules for cleansing of people and places after a woman gives birth and what happens with all of the blood and it makes sense that they would have been put into a stable in order to keep all of the other people clean. It was a really good read. I think I will be reading another book by the author, "24 hours that changed the world." I will probably read that one just before Easter.
17. KaBOOM - This book was written by Darell Hammond, a graduate of Mooseheart. He talked about his journey from living in an orphanage to building an incredibly huge organization that builds playgrounds around the country for communities that need a place for their kids to play. The beginning and middle were a pretty cool story from him growing up all the way through how he got into the playground business. The end got fairly technical about how nonprofits are put together. Not as fun.
18. Unschooling Rules - Get out of the classroom and explore and play. This book is written with the emphasis that homeschooling and exploratory school practices are the way to go. They write that the current classroom setting is just a product of the assembly line factory practices in the early 1900s. I read a lot of great ideas that I plan to use with my kids at school as well as my kids at home.
19. 365 Ways to Live Cheap - This book was written by Trent Hamm who writes and owns the blog The Simple Dollar. This book is a fairly quick read as it is just 365 headings with a paragraph or two below it telling of a way to save money. Honestly, for most of them we already do them. I would say that the book is just a collection of the ideas that have been written about on The Simple Dollar already. The thing that got me motivated to read the book is because Trent is doing one blog post per day this year on each of the money saving ideas that he has in the book.
20. The Red Pyramid - This book was written by Rick Riordan who also wrote the Percy Jackson books. It follows the same concept but instead of Greek gods it has Egyptian gods scattered throughout the book. It folows Carter and Sadie Kane on their quest to save the world and discover that their blood line goes all the way back to some very important pharoahs from ancient Egyptian times giving them powers that they were never aware of. Good book. I plan on reading the next one sometime soon.
21. Stuart Little - This is just one of the classic books I hadn't read. Now I have.
22. Murder Over Easy - This book is a murder mystery set in southwest Wisconsin. It is about a small town that has one of it's most prominant citizens die and the sheriff decided that he fell down the stairs to his death. The newly hired editor of the town paper thinks he was murdered. This was a free book offered on Amazon so I thought I would try it out. I hadn't read too many adult mystery books (Nancy Drew as a read aloud to my students doesn't count) so I wanted to give one a try. It was a good book and was well written. I enjoy mysteries because you know that every chapter that you read could have a clue to who the villain may be.
23. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh - I "read" this one back in 5th grade. The only thing I remembered from the story was that there were mice in the story and that there was a crow named Jeremy. It is a pretty good book.
24. Nurturestruck - Another parenting book about raising kids. I read this on the plane to and from Las Vegas. I learned a few good things from it.
25. Peter and Wendy (Peter Pan) - I read this book to the girls at bed time. In original form it is way over their heads, but they liked the movie a lot so I wanted to read it to them. Because they had seen the movie it was easier for them to understand. I did a lot of changing of words and phrases as well as summarizing to make it more friendly to two eager 4 year old ears to hear. I am so happy that I have kids old enough to read chapter books to at the end of the night. Last night I got a chuckle as I was putting Charlie to bed. I was carrying a book in my hand and charlie started to beg me to "read Peter Pan" to him. He wants to be like his big sisters so bad. The way he is going I think he will be there soon enough.
26. The City of Ember - A good book I read to my class awhile back.
27. Your Money: The Missing Manual - This book was written by J.D. Roth who writes getrichslowly.org which is a blog that I read daily. The book was basically an overview of the blog posts that I have been reading from his blog over the past few years.
28. The People of Sparks - This book is the sequel to The City of Ember. Many of the same characters are in it. Good book.
29. Free Range Kids - This book was written by the mother that sent her 9 year old son on a New York City subway by himself. She basically writes about how to be more willing as a parent to give kids freedom as well as how to teach your children to become independent. I really enjoyed this one.
30. 24 hours that changed the world - This is a book on the Easter story. It is a good account with Biblical description as well as historical background for the events that occurred during Jesus' crucifixion.
31. The Prophet of Yonwood - I was disappointed with this book. It is the third in the City of Ember series, but it didn't have much of a connection to the series. The book is 290 pages and you have to wait until the 287th page to find any type of connection to the other books. The story is decent, but it didn't really have much to do with the others. Also, I read almost the entire book (280 pgs) at the hospital before/after Lucy was born.
32. The Wall: Growing up behind the Iron Curtain - This book is just from the perspective of a kid that grew up under a Communist regime.
33. Racing Weight - This is just how to train and eat without starving yourself. It was a good book. Now all I need to do is start running a bit more.
34. Heaven for Kids - Good book with Biblical answers to tell your kids when they have questions.
35. Cyclopedia: It's all about the bike - This book is basically an encyclopedia on the history of bike riding. Pretty boring at times, but educational.
36. The Urban Biking Handbook - This is a beginners guide to things to do if you are going to ride in the city. It also spends a lot of time talking about components of bikes and how to fix them.
37. 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - Good book on leadership
38. The Thing about Georgie - This is a good book that I will probably read with my students. It is about a dwarf in an elementary school and what life is like for him. Good book.
39. Clementine - Another book I was considering as a book to read to my kids as a read aloud.
40. A Street Through Time - This is a quick fun book about one place and it's progression from pre-civilization all the way to current time. It was interesting to see the picture and the changes that were made each page through time.
41. The Diamond of Darkhold - The last book of the City of Ember series. I really enjoyed this series. The book was good, but the end could have been better.
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