Jolenes Reading Information Blog

It is no secret that I love to read. As a matter of fact my favorite form of relaxation is reading a good mystery. And I admit that I will read a trashy romance novel on occasion as well. While looking for material for my next article I came across a couple of websites that had quotes about reading. Some of my favorites are from http://www.richmond.k12.va.us/readamillion/readingquotes.htm Here are a couple of examples:

“Beware of the man of one book.” Thomas Aquinas

“Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful
and entertaining authors.” Joseph Addison

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” Joseph Addison

“Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” Mortimer J. Adler

“A library is a hospital for the mind.” Anonymous

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” Anonymous Teacher

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?” Henry Ward Beecher

“Books are not men and yet they stay alive.” Stephen Vincent Benet

Here are a few more from the Reading Rockets website: http://www.readingrockets.org/books/fun/quotable

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” Jorge Luis Borges

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” Frederick Douglass

“The things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I [haven't] read.” Abraham Lincoln

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” Emilie Buchwald

Now what are your favorite quotes about reading?

One of my favorite magazines to read is the Readers Digest. I love to read on the jokes and humorous stories at the bottom of the pages first and then Laughter is the Best Medicine and Humor in Uniform stuff next. Finally, I will read the articles. Whenever I am in a waiting room that is the first magazine I look for. It has always been a great resource of information and humor. I can read it in a few minutes or take my time and read the whole thing. I haven’t had a subscription to the magazine in a long while as it was costing too much but now they have an online version that is just about as much fun to read at: http://www.rd.com/. I know that all magazines depend on advertising and paid subscriptions to stay alive and I wish them well in that pursuit. So if you can afford the price of a subscription please get one.

The Readers Digest magazine will keep over time better than just about any other magazine you can get. I have kept all of the ones that I have collected over the years and enjoy re-reading them whenever I run out of books to read. They are compact enough to put in your purse or maybe in your back pocket (if your pockets are big enough). The company also still pays for stories contributed by everyday people as well. I have never done this but if you have and were paid we would like to hear from you about your experience. Encouraging people is write is always good thing and even young people can get their start by writing for the magazine you can go here: http://www.rd.com/submitJokePage.do

My next favorite author is JA Jance. She has three characters that she normally writes about and one of those is Ali Reynolds. Ms. Reynolds is a former TV News Anchor who lost her job and her husband (her philandering husband is the one who fired her) and decided to move back home to Arizona for a while to get her barrings. Her grown son encourages her to start her own blog and her adventures start there. Her latest book is “Trial By Fire”. Ms. Reynolds volunteers to be a Media Consultant for one of the local sheriff’s offices that is having a little trouble. She gets mixed up in a murder (of course), has no authority to investigate but gets pulled in nonetheless.

The Reynolds character speaks to me as she is about my age, has to look for another career, has a grown child and starts her own blog. I would like to become an investigator as well but, sadly, don’t have the time or the resources and quite frankly glad that I haven’t been thrown into any murder investigations. Ms Jance’s books are always entertaining as well as suspenseful, lots of action, and have a well thought-out plot. She is very descriptive about her surroundings and allows the reader to feel like they are there.

I am playing catch-up again and so you will notice that there are 3 or 4 articles added this time. Sorry about that. Don’t be alarmed as these are being back dated. As I have stated in previous posts I love to read and some of what I like to read takes time away from things that I need to do such as keep up with my blog postings. And I have to limit myself or else as you can see nothing will get done. I have to read articles, newsletters and other blogs to keep up with trends in my job for which I have a blog at: http://medicalofficeclerk.info. I have a couple of blogs for family and friends at: http://jolenesramblings.blogspot.com/
As well as an electronic bookstore that I am currently renovating at: http://jolenesbooksandmore.com
And I have started a new business of website and blog creation service that is still in it’s infancy at each of the following:
http://websforyou.info
http://blogsforyou.info
http://websforwriters.com
http://blogsforwriters.com
Of course, I have other websites and blogs and for shear dumbfoundedness on my part I volunteer to redo a website for our local Volunteers in Medicine chapter as well. Which I believe turned out pretty well. In between all of this I have found the time to read for pleasure as well.

One of my more recent books that I have read was Laurel Hamilton’s Divine Misdemeanors I wasn’t able to get the book when it was first release in December of last year like I normally do, you know Christmas expenses, but when I did read it it was well worth the read. Ms. Hamilton’s stories are always good and this book is about her second set of characters that she writes about Merry Gentry – Private Eye also known as Meredith Nic Essus, princess of faerie. It is the eighth book in the series and on her website you can still download the first chapter and read it. If you like books about supernatural stuff and murder mysteries then give this author a try. Her books have a great story line with suspenseful plots, great characters that are well fleshed out and she gives informative details about the worlds she has created that seem so believable that they could actually happen. Both her series that I read, Anita Blake – Vampire Hunter and Merry Gentry – Private Eye are set in the U.S. Anita Blake is set in St. Louis and Merry Gentry in Los Angeles. All of her works are great reads and take you out of the everyday!

Hey Gang, I couldn’t wait to post this one. One of my daughter’s teachers sent this video from Ocoee Middle School in Ocoee, Florida. Great video and fun too. Check it out on you-tube at:

Ocoee, Florida is a little town just west of Orlando, Florida which use to be nothing but orange groves and farmers. It is still a kind of small town but the Middle School has created a really first rate project. Congratulations Ocoee Middle School and keep up the good work!.

After seeing this video I have hope that there are children out there who want to read and whatever we can do as parents, relatives or friends of kids to encourage our children to read is worth trying. Once a child or adult, for that matter, learns to read it opens up all kinds of possibilities for that person to pursue knowledge in its many forms.

There are lots of resources out there on how to teach your children about reading and writing. We like to blog about them when we come across them. Today we found the website called ABCTeach.com This is a very nice little website with lots of reading and writing worksheets. This website offers a limited amount of worksheets for FREE as the bulk of them are offered to members only at about $40 a year for a single user access. The worksheets that are available without a membership are very nice and they have some Math worksheets as well. Like most of the websites for teaching kids how to read and youngster how to write it is mostly centered around young children. They have some for high school students but not very many in the FREE area. Printing out these worksheets at home helps to save the planet and you can print them on the back of papers you already have around the house. Recycling is a great thing and having these resources available online can only improve our efforts to save the planet. Actually this website has some Green worksheets as well.

I try to keep up with what’s happening with the EBook Reader area. I came across a website that has incorporated everything you would like to know about the devices as well as news about them, prices currently being charged and much more. Go to: http://www.top-ereaders.com/ and read what is there. This site gives information on each of the readers, what you should look for and the prices as well. Walmart offers the Ebook Reader’s at a slightly lower price and you should make sure which ever one you would like to get the best price. There have been several articles over the last few months that Walmart is getting into selling ebooks as a major competitor against Amazon. They haven’t really done anything as of this writing but we will continue to monitor the situation. The readers themselves are all still around $200 to $500 or more depending on the manufacturer and the options that you choose. The Amazon Kindle 2 seems to be pretty nice but still on the pricey side for my taste. The most important feature, for me at least, is that the device be able to read PDF (acrobat reader) files. Without this feature the Reading Devices is usually locked into one type of ebook and/or company which is not very a good thing.

Another website I would recommend is the EBOOK88 website at: http://www.ebook88.com/about.html This website has some great information about Ebooks themselves. If tells where you can get them from, where some free resources of ebooks can be found, and more. “eBook88 is an independent web site for eBook resources. We provide a list of some educational eBooks that are available at different eBook Stores. Some of them are free. We also have an ebook directory where individual authors can submit his/her works.” I found the site to be informative and helpful.

We have added some new links under ‘Resources to Reader” that might be of interest to our subscribers. Most are for helping your kids to read and to learn to enjoy it. The other two are for aspiring writers. We have going into the Blog and Website creation business to help new writers advertise their products, talk to their fans and the build a email mailing list. Check them out.

The other part of this post is a book review of one of my favorite authors, J.D. Robb a.k.a. Nora Roberts. The new book is “Kindred in Death”. Our heroine, Lt. Eve Dallas is called on her day off to a fellow police officer’s home to investigate the death of his daughter. As the story unfolds we find that this is just the beginning and the killer has a list and he is working his way down it. On top of this Eve must participate another WEDDING! Oh, my she really doesn’t want to do that.

The story is, of course, great. I have always enjoyed J.D. Robb’s books and this one is no exception. My mom enjoyed it as well. The book has good pacing and some great plot twists and suspense. Each of the books and can alone but the whole series is like getting caught up on your family. This book brings some old friends back as well. Enjoy this and the other books written by this author. But I must warn you once you start to read Nora Robert’s books you will not stop!

I found some more websites that has cute helpers for your little readers to try for FREE. That’s right a reading helper for you and your little ones to go to.

The Lil-fingers website features online books and applications to review words and letters. It also has some free coloring pages, games to play and stories to read. It is called http://www.lil-fingers.com/index.html Check out their site. There are not too many advertisements that get in the way of clicking in the right areas. Which is important because I have found that most sites that offer things for free has too many advertisers and they are right in the middle of what you are really trying to access.

To encourage the “poet” in your little ones try out this Rhyming site at:
Seventy-One Other Take Home Rhymes They have a listing by the first line in the nursery rhyme and you click on it and it opens up an Acrobat Reader file with the rest of the poem.

PBS Kids is also a great FREE Resource for online learning. They have books that are read aloud, music videos, activities and games online to play and printable pages to print out and color. There is even a “Tips for Parents or CareGivers” section. This is a fun website that you and your children can enjoy.

JA Jance is a great writer of fiction and has several recurring figures that I enjoy reading about. Joanna Brady is a small town sheriff in Arizona. Ms. Jance’s other great character is JP Beaumont. She wrote a book several years ago where these two characters meet called “Partner in Crime”. That story left us readers wondering, “what if”. “Fire and Ice” follows these two characters through a series of murders that are connected. JP is following on the trail of a serial killer. Joanna is having problems with a murder as well. She also has an officer who is missing a sister. Yes, you guessed it, the sister is one of JP’s victims.

It is amazing how the author can keep the two areas separate in their series. You go from the desert area of Bisbee, Arizona to the rain-soaked area of Seattle, Washington. I think that is where the title comes from fire-hot Arizona to ice-cold Washington. It is a yin-and-yang kind of thing. And it makes for a “keep you on your toes” mystery!

Even though the Joanna character and the JP character do not meet up until the end of the book it is still a great story and has a very believable if maybe a somewhat disappointing ending. But it does end none-the-less. Pick up your copy today and give it a read. This story may inspire you to read the entire series of Joanna Brady and JP Beaumont books. You can find a listing of them on the author’s website:
http://www.jajance.com/jajance.com/Books_In_Order_List.html
You can pick up a copy of “Fire and Ice” from our ebookstore page as well as all the other great books by JA Jance. You pick up a paper copy of these books or if you own a KINDLE machine you can order the electronic book.
Cheers!
jolenemacinjax
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Fire and Ice