The Ten Best Books on My (Pretty Long) List for 2013
Many bloggy friends have been tallying up and promoting their best-of lists and top ten mega-traffic posts. Doing that produces a bump in numbers, I suppose--but I feel as ambivalent about blog numbers as I do about achievement data. I've read some passionate, articulate thinking on education issues from virtually unknown teachers--and found some pieces with thousands of re-tweets shallow and poorly written.
What feeds me is reading, not being read--although I certainly appreciate everyone who reads "Teacher in a Strange Land" and especially those who comment and share.
Back in January, 2012, my friend Claudia Swisher--a high school English teacher who taught the all-time dream course for Language Arts educators, Reading for Pleasure--challenged me to read 150 books in 2012. I thought that was beyond my grasp (it was), and re-set my personal bar to 125 books. I made it, barely.
This year, Claudia's retired and not reading five hours a day in school, but still way ahead of me in our friendly competition. We both use Goodreads to log our books, critique and rate completed volumes, one to five stars. My goal this year is 135 books (I have a couple left to go). I just sorted my 2013 reads by stars granted, and found 35 five-star reads. I suppose you could say I'm an easy