#30

#30 is a book club book.  One I probably would not have read on my own, but it was enjoyable.  It was The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma.  The father was a little strange...didn't like to be touched (reminded me of a co-worker, who's a good guy...so his weirdness didn't seem like a bad thing). 

Chapter 12 had me laughing OUT LOUD!  Absolutely the funniest thing I've read in a long time.  If you only pick up the book and read one chapter...read chapter 12.  Can you imagine being scared of JFK's dead body?!?  Written so well you can feel her fear and remember irrational fears from your own childhood.

I loved that each chapter started with a quote from a book.  It was even more meaningful because I had read many of the books and cherished them just as Alice and her father did. 
The most madding part was how the public school system forced reading, and hence, her father from the school.  They are doing the same at my school...where we have LITERACY WITHOUT LIMITS...and 1/3 of the library was given up for a computer lab...and another large chunk was given to the humongous copy machine...that will be LOUD...and there has not been money for new books in two years...and the high school doesn't even have a librarian anymore.  Sad days for pubic schools.  And no one really cares.

Good Quotes:  ...there was just something about Roald Dahl books that made everything seem like a dream.  The vivid colors, the underlying darkness that sometimes hinted at despair.  The ending seemed just a bit too happy to fit the rest of the book, but I wasn't one to complain about a happy ending.  p10
"It could be that one day you will want to get a boy in the dreaded kiss-lock."  This was a wrestling move my father often described, where one person held the other down and forced mouth-to-face contact, usually lips to cheek; but sometimes, in a worst-case scenario, lip-to-lip contact accidentally occurred.  This, he informed me, was actually poisonous and to be avoided at all costs.  An accident of such proportions could be nearly fatal, if not properly treated.  p35
If your father is an eccentric and excitable children's librarian like mine, or even if he's not, you may very well know about the joy of book fairs.  Even if your father is a dancer of a plumber or a professional teapot designer, you have probably sill experience a book fair.  You need only to have  kid or be a kid to remember the thrill of walking into the library (or gym or cafeteria) and seeing those big silver cases, all lined up in a row, waiting patiently for someone like you to wander over and pick out something nice. p61

fl: It started on a train.  I am sure of it.  The 3,218-night reading marathon that my father and I call The Streak started on a train to Boston, when I was in third grade.  ll:  Thirteen years ago, my father made the reading promise to me.  He kept his word.