Flowers and Books

This is the last weekend of summer for me.  As always, I am wondering where it went?  Summer always goes by so quickly.  Although the first day of school is not until Thursday, we have mandatory meetings Monday and Tuesday and then "Meet the Teacher" on Wednesday, where I'll get to meet all of my new students for the next year.  I've heard wonderful things about them and am excited for a new year of teaching.

The past week I've been trying to fit in all of the things that I wanted to do this summer that never got done.  I went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens and greatly enjoyed it.  It was beautiful.  A few of my favorite pictures were:

While at the Gardens I was able to read some of Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games series.  I finished Catching Fire last week.

Loved Catching Fire.  It was by far my favorite book in the series.

I thought Mockingjay would be even better than Catching Fire, however, I was disappointed.  It was really slow and my least favorite.  The end was really rushed, too.

I really didn't enjoy reading for pleasure until after I was done with college and grad school.  The summer I got my stress fracture (2009), I really started to read and decided to keep a book journal.  Another person I know had started one and I thought it sounded like a good idea, especially if you read a lot of books.  Each entry has the title of the book, author, a small caption and if I liked it or not.  It is neat to look back and read what I thought of certain books.  Everything is also dated by month and year.

Page 1 of my book journal.  I always think it is funny that the first book I recorded in it is People are Idiots and I Can Prove it.  Mockingjay  was book #72 for me.  

What am I currently reading?  I've read a lot of fiction this summer and wanted to read something a little different.  My current book is...

The Greatest: The Hail Gebrselassie Story by Jim Denison.

I thought the book would give me some inspiration for running leading up to the Chicago Marathon.

Have you read The Hunger Games?  Which book was your favorite?

Do you have an all-time favorite book?  My favorite book is Still Alice.  It is so sad, but changed the way I think about things.