What’s on MY Nightstand?

It’s time for taking inventory of our stash of soon-to-be-read’s with 5 Minutes for Books’ monthly meme “What’s on Your Nightstand?”

What's on Your Nightstand?

Not surprisingly, my nightstand is full, packed with a wide variety of library (and a few privately owned!) books.

Adult Fiction

  • Barren Corn by Georgette Heyer
  • The Carousel Painter by Judith Miller
  • The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • When Calls the Heart by Janette Oke

Young Adult/Children’s Fiction

  • Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
  • Mystery in the Sand by Gertrude Chandler Warner
  • Mystery of the Flying Express by Franklin W. Dixon

Nonfiction

  • Catastrophe by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
  • Life is Tough but God is Faithful by Sheila Walsh
  • Guinness World Records 2010
  • One Thing by Sam Storms
  • Dave Barry Slept Here by Dave Barry
  • I Married Adventure by Luci Swindoll

I also have a whole stack of children’s picture books by Verna Aardema. I’ve been in the process of reading every book in my local library for a little over 3 years now–but I’ve been doing it rather haphazardly. Carrie’s system of reading through the picture book section of her library struck my fancy, so I’ve started at the beginning–and the beginning is Aardema. I’ve only read two of her books thus far, but it appears that she generally retells African folk-tales. The pronunciation can be a bit tricky, but both stories I’ve read seem okay. Not great enough that I’d recommend them, but not bad enough that I’d recommend avoiding them. Just neutral.

Check out what other women are reading at 5 Minutes 4 Books


What’s on Your Nightstand?

What's on your nightstand? Logo

5 Minutes for Books hosts a monthly “What’s on your nightstand?” carnival on the fourth Tuesday of each month. The idea is that you let everybody know what you’ve been reading or are planning on reading this month.

It suits me to a T since the books I’m reading are literally on my nightstand. Here’s today’s photo.

Books on my nightstand (August)

Fiction

  • The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (I’ve been re-reading this one. Check out my notes on Chapter 1, 2, 3a, and 3b.)
  • Dangerous Sanctuary by Lois Richer (A recommendation from my little sister that I haven’t started yet.)

Nonfiction

  • How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch by David Feldman. (Halfway through–just finished reading about why ceiling fans get dusty.)
  • Your Two-Year-Old by Loise Ames. (Still trying to finish up that 649.122 Section at the library.)
  • Secret’s of the Baby Whisperer for Toddlers by Tracy Hogg. (Ditto above. Only about a dozen books to go in the section–can’t let them multiply too fast on me.)
  • Bicycling Magazine’s Complete book of Road Cycling Skills (Now that I’m commuting by bike and training for my big ride next year, I’d like to develop some skills.)
  • How to Expand and Upgrade PCs. (Got my new hard drive installed, now I just need to clone my current hard drive over and get everything arranged right.)
  • Do it Yourself PC Upgrade Projects. (Do you mean to tell me that you do not routinely check out at least two books on any given subject before attempting to accomplish a task?)
  • The Perfect Apron by Rob Merrett. (Felt the need for some cute new aprons for while I’m teaching my cooking-I mean-Scientific Principles of Food Preparation-lab. And these aprons are HARD-CORE cute. I made the bias cut one and wore it to lab today.)
  • Get out of that pit by Beth Moore. (My church’s ladies retreat this fall is based on this book. A friend and I decided to read it and discuss it together prior to the retreat. So far, so good.)
  • Opposing Viewpoints: Medicine. (With the current Health Care debate raging, it helps to be informed!)

Childrens/Young Adult

  • Leonardo, the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems. (Carrie at Reading to Know recommended Mo Willems–and I’ve fallen in love with his cute illustrations and story lines–in that order. I haven’t read this one yet though.)
  • Breathing Underwater by Alex Flynn. (I read Alex Flynn’s Beastly and loved the modern-day retelling of Beauty and the Beast from the Beast’s perspective. This one looks to be pretty different, but I’m eager to read it regardless.)

School

It’s too depressing to enumerate these. Suffice to say that I’ve got a biochemistry text and a couple of library biochem primers, a book of lab tests (to study for the RD Exam), a text for my program planning class, and a half dozen texts for my counseling class.

Just finished

  • Farmer Boy Days (A very abridged version of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy for new readers. Unless your child is seriously intimidated by the bulk of the Little House books, I’d encourage them to read the “real thing”. I was reading the Little House books by 2nd grade–and I don’t see why others shouldn’t be able to as well.)
  • Nurse Matilda: Collected Tales by Christiana Brand. (I loved Nanny McPhee, so when I saw this book at the library, I snatched it right up. I enjoyed the first novel, but found the second two to be a bit too repetitive.)
  • The Contented Soul by Lisa Graham McMinn. (This wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t great either. It had nice thoughts of contentment, but seemed a lot more “worldly wisdom” than “wisdom from above”. I can get enough worldly wisdom from worldly books. I don’t want to have to read it in “Christian” books too.)
  • Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley. (I LOVED Beauty, McKinley’s first retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In Rose Daughter, McKinley tells the story again–with a completely different twist. I love both. These are books you definitely don’t want to miss.)

What’s on Your Nightstand?

What's on Your Nightstand?

My “nightstand” is a desk next to my bed–I keep most of my current library books there (if they fit).

Feel free to take a peek:

Picture of Nightstand January 2009

I know, it’s a lot to take in. So I’ll break it down for you:

To Be Read:

Reading Every Book

I’ve written before about my quest to read every book in Eiseley Library–so I won’t go into too much detail here. Suffice to say that once I have read every book by a certain author or in a certain Dewey decimal category, I can “close out” that category and won’t be required to read anything more in that category even if the library acquires more books. If I were smart (hah!) I would work feverishly to close out authors that are still writing prolificly. But alas, I am not smart–and instead work on closing out all sorts of dead authors.

In the children’s section, I’m working on two picture book authors (Dr. Seuss and Ludwig Bemelmans) and two juvenile fiction series (The Boxcar Children and The Hardy Boys). These are my current selections from each.

  • Hop on Pop
  • Green Eggs and Ham
  • Great Day for UP
  • Madeline’s Christmas by Ludwig Bemelmans
  • The Woodshed Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner
  • The Shore Road Mystery by Franklin W. Dixon

In adult non-fiction, I’m hard at work on 640.43 (Time Management) and 649.122 (Infant and Toddler Care). I’m two books away from completing 640.43 (and those two books are on my nightstand now). 649.122 reproduces too rapidly for me to make any real progress.

  • Managing Workplace Chaos
  • Mom, Inc. by Neale S. Godfrey
  • Growing up Green by Dierdre Imus

Compliments of other Bloggers

My blog reader is always suggesting new books or authors for me to read–so much so that I can’t keep up on reading both at the same time (blogs and books, that is). Several books that are on my nightstand now were recommended to me by other bloggers (or I got interested in the topic because of a blogger.)

The 5 Minutes for Books review of Mistaken Identity convinced me that I had to read it.

When Jolanthe was studying Antarctica with her kids, they studied Shackleton’s adventure on the Endurance. The reminder was enough to re-spark my interest. I’ve been reading up on Shackleton since December.

  • The Endurance by Caroline Alexander
  • Sea of Ice: The Wreck of the Endurance

Anna is a big fan of Grace Livingston Hill–and quotes from her on a semi-regular basis. I haven’t read much Hill since I was a preteen, but I nabbed one of her books from the library a while back. It has, unfortunately, been sitting on my desk for WAY TOO LONG!

I had no clue what to expect when I borrowed The Mysterious Benedict Society from the library–only that I’d heard it’s name favorably on a dozen occasions from my most respected bookie bloggers. It was AMAZING! I was telling my little sister about it and trying to see if the library had another copy she could borrow when the librarian informed me there was a sequel. So–I have book 2.

We weren’t able to find a second copy of The Mysterious Benedict Society for Grace, so she didn’t get it. But I checked out a few of her recommendations:

Just Because/That Looks Interesting

I’m a big fan of randomly browsing the library, picking up whatever looks interesting. These fit the bill.

To Be Reviewed

I’m trying to review the books I read more often on my Book Review page, but I’m always hopelessly behind. Recently read books are piled on my desk/nightstand awaiting review.

Hidden Elsewhere

My bag (and bed itself) acts as a cache for a few more books:

Check out some other nightstands at
5 Minutes for Books.