,Important Sites for Students, Parents & Teachers:

.California Reading List: Matches Students to Books based on the Stanford 9 Achievement Test Results. Good for selecting books designed to improve student reading skills.

Try something different with your IPod!! LibriVox has free, public domain audio books for you to download and enjoy.

How do our Reader's Circle members choose the books they wish to read? Let's see!

• I learned to trust Ophra Book Club books; unfortunately, she discontinued that program. Mostly, I combine choosing between award-winning or best selling books and, in the case of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, books that are sequels of series I like. Choosing award winners or best sellers reduces the risk while introducing new-to-me authors.

Interested in reading more book reviews from our faculty? Click here for some past reviews.

Recent Recommendations:

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, by Jacques Pepin, Houghton Mifflin, Inc., available at Costco for $8.49. This National Bestselling autobiography by French chef Jacques Pepin is charming and interesting for anyone who likes to cook.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (Penguin) is available at Costco for about $8.50 and is both a New York Times and Washington Post "Notable Book". The year is 1666 when the plague comes to this English village that chooses to isolate itself from the outside to contain the plague within its boundaries.

Fool's Crow by James Welch is the inspiring and riveting story of White Man's Dog, later to be known as Fool's Crow, a member of the Lone Eaters tribe of the Pekunis Blackfeet Peoples. The story begins around 1870 and traces the individual and tribal difficulties that affected him and his people during that time of plague and war. It's available in paperback from Penguin Books for $11.00. It's listed as fiction but my sources tell me there was a real Holy Man of the same Indian tribe by the name of Frank Fool's Crow in Montana whose father might have been the model for this book. 7/23/04

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett has won numerous book awards for good reason- superb storytelling and writing. Set in a fictional Latin American country, It's the story of a group of people held hostage by local revolutionaries in the vice-president's home. The hostage stand off goes on for months. The relationships of hostages and revolutionaries are forever changed during those months. This book was difficult to put down so it took only two days to read it. 7/15/04

1421-The Year the Chinese Discovered The World by Gavin Menzies : It took a long time to read through this book as I would put it down and let other books come between over a four month period. Was it worth sticking with? YES! My view of world history is forever changed by it. The author claims that the Chinese explored & mapped the world long before European explorers; he has me convinced. The author has a website dedicated to this thesis.

Reader's Circle members like to read for pleasure as well as learning. This web page is for faculty & staff members who wish to share their reading pleasure by reviewing their recently read books.

Maybe you're simply curious about what your teachers like to read for pleasure. You might enjoy reading the same books.

We'd like to hear about the books you're reading and may even pick them up at the local bookstore ourselves.

To send email to the Reader's Circle, simply click on the following email link and type Reader's Circle. We'd like to receive book reviews from students and post those for others to read.