Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

 

There are three weeks left of school.  As this is (probably) my last year teaching, I'm getting... honestly, a little sad? I'm not leaving teaching because of all of the pervasive issues in the education system, I'm leaving teaching because I never actually intended to be a teacher (someone does NOT have an education degree) and life changes sometimes and also I'm a job-hopper. These past few weeks, months, I've felt really good about my classroom management and ability to make relationships and all of that jazz. So let's talk about some good moments this year. The seventh graders read Okay for Now , and while last year's kids didn't like it as much, the discussions that came out of this book with this set? Oh man. These kids did so goddam good . Same with tenth grade and Beartown . I had three girls crying, and because they were invested in the book .  Juniors and seniors. Juniors are historically a difficult class academically. Half of the class was go...

As someone who got an English degree, I have read a lot of classic literature. Most of it was British, American, or, inexplicably, Russian, but I did read some classic French lit; most notably, I read Candide and Germinal. The latter I did read en français .  I have a lot of classic lit in the book wall. I have a lot of everything in the book wall. Recently, though I've been getting quite a few classics, about half-French, half... other. Recently, in the other category, I read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, and Crime and Punishment by Dostoeyvsky. I'd say Dostoyevsky was my favorite, Conrad my least favorite. I am also currently reading Notre-dame de Paris and, recently, I re-read Germinal , except in English this time. I also read Justine by the Marquis de Sade, and while I don't think many people think of de Sade when they think of classic French literature, he was writing earlier than both Zola and Hugo, so, like. I gotta count him he...

 

 

 Currently, I'm reading A Conjuring of Light by VE Schwab. It's the third book in the Darker Shade of Magic trilogy, and if that doesn't sound familiar to you except for a brief whisper at the back of your head, that's because the series was very popular in the mid-2010s and I am very late in finishing it. The book came out in 2017. I read book two in 2019. I remember who the characters were but not the situation, and the thing is, especially when you read 300+ books a year (lately my numbers are running more around ~500),  you uh. You forget things when there's a series involved.  This is not the only series this has happened with. The Shadow and Bone trilogy's another one. I read book one in 2014, book two in 2019, and book three is sitting somewhere in the book wall, just... waiting. Luckily for SaB, I did watch the show! So maybe I'll kinda know what's happening when I pick up book three! We'll see! I don't know how accurate the show is to at...

 Ladies and gentlemen, spring has finally sprung, and now all we have to worry about is flooding because it's going to be sixty degrees a week after a multi-inch blizzard and some of us teach in a valley. But it is nice. I've started going on walks again. Growing up, it was a Thing, that after every meal we ate together, we would go on a walk. Mostly this meant after-dinner walks, because that was consistently the only meal we ate together every day, but on the weekend it sometimes meant lunch walks, or even breakfast walks if it was a fancy day. So I've started going for walks these past few days after my meals. It's nice. It's so nice. It's so sunny and warm.  Granted, it's like, forty degrees, but after several months of winter, forty degrees is like seventy. I guarantee you right now if that happiest state poll came out ND would win it again. I'm absolutely convinced that the year North Dakota was the happiest state, it was because they surveyed peop...

 Today, I finished the second draft of the third and final Vendettic book.  This will be my first series that I've truly completed; the Pentalogy of Hell did, technically finish up last year, but I have, you know, novellas and spin-offs to come. Vendettic is over. I have no plans, at all, for more of these books.  It's a little exciting. I mean, I'm not done with it yet. I still need to edit and give it that final polish before I throw it up on Amazon, and it's not like it's going to be a big deal, because the Vendettic books are 100% my least popular series. But it's nice to be done with something. It's nice to check one series off my list, especially seeing as I'm starting another duology (? has more potential).  For those of you that don't know, Vendettic is a trilogy of little horror novellas following a heavy metal band and so much demon shit. Like, all the time. The main character is stupid and I had a lot of fun with it. Pasted below is the fi...