See What I Read in 2015

I've been a member of the readers' social network, Goodreads, for many years now. Every year, I set myself the goal of reading at least 365 books and I use Goodreads to keep track of them. Several of my overseas friends are on Goodreads, and it helps me to feel close to those distant friends through the books that we read.

This year, Goodreads created an infographic of all the books I read in 2015. I love it! It's very motivating to keep reading and logging what I read on the site. Join up. It's free and it's easy.

Here's a screenshot of the top of my infographic. I wish it was downloadable as a pdf. I'd print it out as a poster! At the bottom of this on the page there is a mosaic made from the covers of all the books I read.

Go ahead and join up. Friend me and you'll see all my reviews. I don't often write long reviews but I do give stars to all of the books I read. You might recommend lots of good books to me, so I'm looking forward to seeing you on Goodreads.

Keep your New Year Resolutions with the ES Library!

Have you set yourself New Year resolutions? Let the CAC ES library help you keep them! (If you haven't set them yet, it's not too late!)

Scroll down the list to find inspiration for the resolutions you have already made for this year or for inspiration. -- One of my New Year Resolutions is to blog more so subscribe to this blog and cheer me on by commenting.

Eat more healthily as a family / Teach kids to cook

The ES library has a large collection of cookbooks suitable for children. The best way of ensuring that children eat everything on their plate is for them to be the cooks. Even little hands can help if adults handle sharp edges and heated surfaces. See here for a list of our cookbooks. You will notice that a lot of them are checked out, but if you log in with your CAC username and password, you can place holds on the books that are out. You will be notified via email when your titles arrive.

Cookbooks at the ES library - If this link does not work, simply visit the library catalog, choose the elementary library collection, and enter cookbooks in the search field.

Exercise more / Set up a family exercise routine

The 613 and 790 sections of the library have lots of titles on fitness and different sports. Come together as a family to the library to find exercise resources. We have an especially robust soccer section because we have so many soccer fans, and more are coming soon.

Stay in touch with current events / Help my children stay in touch with current events

The Visual Tab of the ES library catalog has a wealth of links to child-friendly news sites from all over the world. We are eager to have an even bigger resource, so if you know of good news sites for children in your language, please let us know in the comments or email me, jfitzgerald at g-cacegypt dot org.

Learn a new language 

The CAC ES library has a large collection of books in Arabic and languages other than English. If your New Year resolution is to improve your Arabic, be sure to stop by for recommendations from our library assistants who are well acquainted with our Arabic collection. That is housed in our beautiful Egyptian tent, so do come and enjoy the collection. 

Our "Multi-Language Collection" has books in more than 30 different languages. Most of these have come from generous donations of CAC families. If you would like to contribute by donating gently used books in your mother tongue, please see us. 

Read more fiction / Read more non-fiction

With over 25,000 titles, there's a book for everyone at the ES library. Here's some ideas to support your new/improved reading habit.

• Log your minutes for the Million Minutes of Reading Challenge. 
• Come to the library often. All you need is your CAC ID.
• Challenge yourself to read all of the Caldecott or Newbery Award winners.
• Set a number goal, e.g., 50 books this year.
• Find a buddy to discuss your book choices with.
• Start a book review blog, on your own or with a friend.
• Pick up an CAC bookmark at the library. It has useful links for you to get the most out of the library online resources.
• Download the Overdrive app on your mobile device and access our ebook collection. You'll need your CAC single-sign-on. 
• Ask us for reading recommendations. We love to talk about books!

Join a bookclub

The MHS library organizes a cookbook book club that is a lot of fun. Every month, we get together to sample dishes prepared from a selected cookbook. Meetings are usually on the last Wednesday of the month. Stop by the MHS library to browse through the book and sign up for a dish. 

Want a reading book club? At my previous school, we had a parent-library book club. Members met once a month to discuss a book chosen by consensus among the members. It was a great deal of fun and a highlight of my month. If you are interested in something like that, let me know. We could start one here!

A New Year Full of Reading!

Welcome back to school! We hope you had an enjoyable and relaxing holiday, and that you read heaps and heaps of great books. Remember to log your minutes of holiday reading, if you haven't already. The link to the Million Minutes of Reading Form is on the menu of this blog. You will need to log in with your CAC username and password.

Here's how far we've come as I type this. Please visit the Million Minutes of Reading Totals page  to see the updated total.

The monthly CAC Core Value focus for January is on integrity, and logging your reading minutes is an opportunity to exercise your integrity by entering accurate amounts. While it's okay to round up numbers to the nearest 10 or 100, please make sure to not inflate your reported minutes. We'll get there together and with integrity, or else the journey is not worth it.