Blast From the Past- February 2004

Love, Greg and Lauren by Greg Manning - I have vivid memories of reading this memoir while running on the treadmill. It is one of the first times that I couldn't wait to run because I wanted to read so badly.  Greg Manning's emails to friends and relatives are published in this book to keep them all informed about his wife, Lauren's condition.  Lauren was engulfed in a ball of fire as she tried to escape the World Trade Center on September 11.  Her fight to live is amazing.  

The Gossip Girl series is one I started and I liked it, but I never stuck with it.  If I picked it up again I would need to start all over.  Kind of reminded me of a Candace Bushnell novel for teens.

Poor Donuthead.  He has a phobia about nearly everything.  Sue Stauffacher was the author that fifth grade students in the Cedar Valley got to meet a decade ago. That was just a year before I began teaching in Waterloo and I missed out, but I did enjoy reading this book and the sequel, Donutheart.

Something Rising by Haven Kimmel  - not as memorable for me as A Girl Named Zippy, but reading it on my list of books I finished in February of 2004 makes me curious what happened to Kimmel since the publication of her last book.

I had to include this Danielle Steel novel in my Blast from the Past because I think it is the last novel I read by Steel. I raced through her romances in high school, but she churns them out so quickly now I feel like she is just changing a few names and settings and the stories are all the same. I still love Family Album and some of the other books that she wrote a few decades ago - I'm just not impressed with her later work.