July Blogging Challenge - My Bookshelf

Today I am following the Pam and Beth's lead and posting about books. This is a tough one for me because if you read yesterday's post, you know...

I am a nerd

but I need to follow that statement with..

I adore books.

One of my earliest memories is sitting in our den and my step-dad reading to me. My life was surrounded by books, and honestly, it still is. As a child, I never left home without a book in my hand and whenever I packed for a trip, I always packed at least 5 books. As a pre-teen, I volunteered in our town library, working with the summer book program, shelving books, checking books out, and adding to my own pile to check out. Our town librarian had a limit on how many books a person could check out, but I had special permission to check out up to 10 at a time and I felt like I had won the lottery.

Story Time!
Some of my favorite memories of elementary school involve story time and I really wish we had that time in high school. I loved coming in from lunch to hear my teacher read Beverly Cleary or other great children's authors. My absolute favorite was in fourth grade. Mrs. Collins was a strict teacher and in my 9 year old mind, she was *old*! I'm guessing she actually was about my age now because almost 30 years later, she's still teaching and according to my great-niece, still pretty strict. :) After lunch and recess, we would pile back into our classroom to hear about the latest adventures of Tom and JD from The Great Brain series. The books were set in 1900 Utah and Tom was always coming up with a new scheme to rope the children of their town into some great adventure. There were 7 books in the series at the time and Mrs. Collins read them all to us that year. I remember going to back to her year after year to borrow the books to revisit Tom and his shenanigans. In college, hubby (then boyfriend) and I were at a flea market and I found a box set of the first 5 books in the series. I quickly snatched them up, of course! :)

Fiction books..
When I think about books that I could read over and over...

The Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean Auel - My sister convinced me to read these when I was in high school and there is just something about it that keeps pulling me in. After my sister passed in 2010, I inherited her hardback copies and every time I look at them, I think of her.

The Harry Potter series - I'm sure this one does not need much explanation.:) I got into the series when the 1st movie was about to come out and a student convinced me to read it. After that, I pre-ordered 3 copies of each book and even went to a few of the midnight parties. Two of the copies were for me and hubby (he didn't want to have to share since he reads slower than I do), and the 3rd was for the sister above.

One of my favorite places to visit is used book stores and thrift stores just so I can look at the books. For years, these places were the only places I purchased books because I read so quickly that I could rarely justify spending $7+ per book. At this point in time, I try to limit my physical book collection and have only one (large) bookcase that houses fiction work. However, my Kindle has hundreds and hundreds of books thanks to places like dailyfreebooks.com :)

My Professional Library
While I have limited spending on novels, my professional library is not so limited. In my office, I have 4 large bookcases and 2 small bookcases filled with books and resources. At one point, my library included two more large bookcases, but once I stopped teaching middle school, I gave away a ton of upper elem/middle school materials to a friend who was just starting her career.

Until I got plugged into the MTBoS, my professional library consisted more of classroom resources such as textbooks and ancillary materials, activity books from the teacher stores, etc.

Books sitting next to me right now... (aka, Currently reading)

A Handbook for Classroom Instruction that Works by Marzano, et al

Summarization in Any Subject by Wormeli

The Strategic Teacher

Mathematics Formative Assessment by Keely and Tobey

The Practice of Statistics by Starnes, Moore, and Yates

My favorite go-to books...

Embedded Formative Assessment by Wiliam

Every Minute Counts (series) by Johnson

Why Didn't I Learn This in College? by Rutherford

Literacy Strategies for Improving Mathematics Instruction by Keeney, et al

What books are on YOUR bookshelf?

July Challenge
Don't forget to check out the other July bloggers!

The bloggers (so far)
Robin at Flip! Learn! Share
Bridget at Reflections in the Plane
Teresa at GeometryWiz
Sherrie at Middle School Math Rules!
Brooke at Sined, Sealed, Calculated
John at Functions are Fun
Jedidiah at Math Butler
Pam at the radical rational
Roxy at Rockstar Math Teacher
Paul at TeacherPaulP