Faith, Hope, and Love

January marks the start of a new year and is all about follow-through on resolutions, so it only felt right that most of the books I read were either new releases or books that have been on my TBR for way to long! Here's what I've been reading lately... 1. Denton Little's Deathdate : This is a book I bought in the Spring of 2017, and it had been sitting on one of my side tables for months. So, on January 1st, I was resolved to get through that stack before the end of the month. I have not  be successful in getting through all the books (especially because a few more keep getting added), but Denton Little got me started! I thought this book was funny and super engaging. Imagine if we lived in a word where we knew the day we would die from the day we were born. That's the world Denton Little lives in. This books takes us through the 48 hours before he is supposed to die. I won't say much more, except that secrets are revealed and surprises abound. And... ...

Every so often, people ask me, "How many books to do you read?" It's a question I never knew the answer to because I had never thought about keeping track. Reading wasn't a competition, nor was I attempting to attain a medal for it. I never set reading goals. I just read . However, the question got asked more and more often, and so last summer, I decided to keep track. I wrote down how many books I'd read the summer of 2016 and kept at it once school began in the fall. And between June 2016 and December 2016, I had read 88 books. Close to 100 books, and that was missing 5 months! So for 2017, I decided to keep track for the whole year. Each month, I would jot down the title of each book as I finished it. On average, I read about 10 books a month. Some months I read more, some less. Length and genre varied, although I did try to push myself to read one non-fiction book a month  (and didn't always succeed). And... I ended 2017 with 152 books under m...

Today I went to my first book conference and... I'm hooked. I want to go to more! I definitely plan to return to this one each year (as scheduling allows) and maybe even bring some kids back, too! It truly was a reader's heaven. When I first heard of the conference and read through the line-up, I only recognized three names: Laurie Halse Anderson, Shannon Hale and Ann Brashares. And then there was 25 other authors I had never heard of. Or thought I had never heard of. Many of them are pretty big names in YA lit right now, and I had seen their books on shelves or read one of their books before. It was fun to sit through panels and feel like you were just hanging out with these awesome authors--many of whom are equally awesome people. Because it's the Teen Book Conference, there were a lot of teens present. And it was great to listen to the questions they would ask. While the most famous question of the day was, "How do you deal with writer's block?" (th...