September in Review

These posts are inspired by a great YA blogger, The Magic Violinist.

Books I Read
In September, I read 10 books. Not as many as usual, so a bit of a disappointment, really... Luckily, most of them were excellent! Here are the highlights:

Airman by Eoin Colfer (5 stars)
Eoin Colfer does outstanding historical fiction in this thrilling adventure. Set on islands off the coast of Ireland in the late 1880s, Airman follows Conor Broekhart, a boy obsessed with flight. He dreams of designing a flying machine and taking to the skies himself. My Full Review

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (2 stars)
One of three books I read this month for the Classics Club. This book annoyed me to no end so I wrote a blasphemous review.

A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd (5 stars)
An outstanding coming-of-age fantasy. I loved these characters. I want to live in this magical town and eat funky ice cream.

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein (4.5 stars)
Quite different from Code Name Verity, but still excellent. Both books really affected me, but in different ways. This one is raw.

Spirit's Key by Edith Cohn (4 stars)
A well-crafted, haunting, dog book that doesn't make you cry! This book is for every dreamer and wonder-er. For kids who love dogs or a good mystery or interesting magic - or all three! It's full of magical moments set firmly in a fascinating world. My Full Review

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (4 stars)
More a supernatural mystery than a romance, and I really enjoyed it. A family of psychics and a group of prep school boys determined to find Ley Lines. Add murder, power, and ghosts to the mix and you've got a fascinating tale.

The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud (4.5 stars)
The stellar sequel to last year's The Screaming Staircase. It jumps right in with ghost-action and continues to build tension throughout the central mystery of who stole a deadly, haunted mirror spirals to include murder, black-market scheming, raids, and catacombs. My Full Review

Obsessions I Acquired

This month I started an action figure collection behind my desk at work. The students and I love it, and some of them have even brought in contributions to the collection. I currently have:
* Groot (Guardians of the Galaxy)
* Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon)
* Evil minion, good minion, and fluffy unicorn (Despicable Me)
* Minecraft Steve
* Sontaran soldier and Silurian (Dr. Who)

Activities Documented

Thanks to my Vivofit I have some data for you. This month I walked 319,934 steps - that's a new a decrease of about 30,000 steps compared to last month. My daily average was 10,664. At least I'm still making the recommended activity level of 10,000 steps per day.

The biggest problem is that we started school, so I'm pretty exhausted by the time I get home from work. Between exhaustion and the sunset, it's really hard to go for the evening walks that I was doing over the summer.

The best thing is that I worked really hard to get a new personal record for Longest Goal Streak. My previous record was 10 days. This month I achieved a new record of 11 days because I met my steps goal every day from September 4-14. This record included several days where I had to work extra hard to get my goal.