The Running Bibliophile

In an effort to meet my reading challenge on Goodreads.com, Second Best created by Francine Pascal is one of four books I read in the Sweet Valley Twins book series. It is the sixteenth book in the series. 
Growing up, these books targeted kids eight years old up to twelve years old and in third grade through seventh grade. However, I think they have changed the target ages to younger age groups because children are learning to read much earlier and growing up a lot faster than when I was kid.
Second Best (Sweet Valley Twins #16) deals with seventh grader Dylan McKay feeling like he is second best to his younger brother Tom McKay, who is in the sixth grade. Tom is the popular kid who does well at everything he does . . . making friends, playing sports, and getting good grades. When Dylan learns that he hasn't been invited to Kimberly Haver's party, but his brother has, Dylan decides to run away.
The first thing I have to mention that I never noticed until I reread Second Best …

Growing up, I loved it when my mom would read me books. Two of my favorites were The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey and Corduroy by Don Freeman. When I entered the first grade, teachers started to teach us how to read. I can still picture the text books we were taught from. Throughout elementary school, I preferred picture books to chapter books because I thought they were so much more interesting, and they had pictures to boot!
My teachers and my mom kept trying to get me interested in chapter books, but the books the teachers recommended were absolutely boring to me. My mom introduced me to the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle book series by Betty MacDonald. I liked them a lot more than what my teachers had recommended, but they still didn't pique my interest in actually picking up a chapter book on my own.
During summer vacation between fifth grade and sixth grade, my mom was taking me over to my paternal grandparent's house to visit, and one of their neighbors was having a…

I belong to a couple of book clubs, and one of them reads a bit of everything. It's this book club that chose It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover as one of three book selections for the December Book Club Meeting. Normally, we only have two selections, and we can choose to read one of them or both of them. I decided to go with the aforementioned book because it takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, and Boston is one of my favorite cities to visit.
With that being said, I wasn't too sure I'd like this book because we had read another one of Colleen Hoover's books, and it was just okay. Anyways, despite the heavy topics in It Ends With Us, I ended up loving the book. Topics included spousal abuse, accidental death by gun, and homelessness. It does include some graphic scenes, so it may be too upsetting for people to read if they've gone through any of this in their life. At the very end of the novel, the Collen Hoover explains that the book is semi-autobiographical, w…

Approximately six months ago, I decided that I wanted to see the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra perform before the end of the year as I had never attended any of their performances. I began scrolling through their schedule and found out that they would be performing the score of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone while the audience watched the movie. There were three performances on the evenings of November 30, December 1, and December 2, and so, I reached out to the people I knew were die hard Harry Potter fans to see if they were interested . . . three people committed to December 2 and the tickets were purchased.
As the performance got closer, one of the girls going found out that the University of Georgia would be playing in the SEC Championship game and wanted to throw a football game watching party, and the game was to possibly interfere with our Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performance. She decided she wanted to find someone who would buy her ticket to go with us, so we th…

Back in October, my local library system, which has 16 libraries throughout the county, had their semi-annual book sale where all proceeds help the library system. I was originally supposed to be in Nashville for the weekend but had to cancel my plans at the last minute, so I decided to go to the library sale instead. Browsing through the books, I came across a book that I loved in middle school called Horseback Summer (Horse Crazy # 1) by Virginia Vail. I didn't even hesitate, I grabbed the book and bought it for old times sake. Now if I can only get my hands on the rest of the series!
There was some drama in my neighborhood earlier this week and knowing that there might be some additional drama tonight, I decided I needed to read something that wouldn't be too dramatic or to difficult to read. It was a perfect time to read Horseback Summer (Horse Crazy # 1). As I began, it was exactly as I remembered and brought back all those fuzzy wuzzy feelings of my childhood.
First and…