Reader Profile

Trying to think about my Reading Profile leads to so many complicated thoughts.  I have always loved reading and been a voracious reader all of my life.  I chose to become a Language Arts teacher.  However, due to a chance encounter during my senior year of college, I realized I had chosen the wrong major and should have been a Library Science student...and, unfortunately, it was too late to change my career direction.  

I was a middle school Reading and Language Arts teacher for eight years, and even earned a Master's Degree in Education.  The teaching profession has changed so drastically in the past ten years, and I began to hate it--not the students, the job.  My favorite thing about teaching was inspiring my students to read and teaching novel units that allowed us to have great class discussions.  I built a classroom library that contained over 1,000 titles to encourage free choice and was very proud of that collection.  The pressures from testing began to take those things away--no time for free reading (according to a horribly ignorant principal)!  My husband and I had a very serious discussion, and I decided to begin applying for jobs in the library profession and go back to school.  It has been a huge sacrifice, but completely worth it!!!

My courses for this degree have introduced me to a great deal of reading material and information about reading.  I now feel guilty that I have not been as diligent as I should have been about reading.  I have kept a reading journal for over ten years, but it has huge gaps where I didn't record what I was reading, so I don't have an accurate count of what I've read, how many books in a year, etc.  At times I become overwhelmed thinking about all that I NEED and WANT to read.  My "To Read" list is ginormous.

My favorite books in no particular order:

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
• Unwind (book and series) by Neal Shusterman
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Harry Potter Series (especially book 5!) by J.K. Rowling
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larson
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

My favorite books to teach:

• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

I'm, generally, fairly open to reading all genres---except non-fiction!  It is very very very rare that I will enjoy a non-fiction book.  (Although, I recently finished Yes Please by Amy Poehler  and loved it so much several family members received it as a gift for Christmas.)  I want to be a Teen Librarian, so my choices tend to cater to that age group.  

I would love to be a part of a book club.  Unfortunately, most of the ones through my local library meet at very inconvenient times, or choose books that I have no interest in reading.  One major drawback of online courses, I keep meeting people that I would love to be in a book club with, but we don't live anywhere near each other...