Am I Smarter Than 5th Grade Me?

I recently let my husband in on one of my most embarassing school secrets...I used to ask my elementary teachers for the extra copies of our handouts so I could take them home and play school in my bedroom. By the end of my grade school days I had amassed a carefully organized, waist-high pile of purple mimeographed math timetables, social studies worksheets, science and reading assignments. I loved school. Well, the learning part of it. I could fill volumes on why the social aspect of public education was not for me, but it was exciting to sit at my desk with my #2 pencil and make something better of myself. I'm pretty sure I wasn't espousing that exact thought as I sat next to the boy on my right incessantly eating carrot sticks or the girl on my left sticking straightpins through her skin, but school was always a great intellectual outlet for me. 5th grade was particularly enthralling. I wrote my first report, on the state of Washington, and was proud that it was the longest report in the class. I looked forward to Fridays when we read Weekly Reader (I learned that one day telephones would have video cameras in them) and I would get all the questions right. Most memorable activity, though, are the scores of books I read and reports I wrote. There were always books in our home. We'd get boxes of them for a quarter at garage sales and carefully stack them on the bookshelf in our upstairs hallway. I organized them alphabetically for a CampFire project and they numbered nearly 200. It was from these that my library of book reports evolved. In fifth grade we had a tri-fold book report form that asked for generic information (title, author, genre) on either outside fold. The inner fold was where I found the gold-a completely blank white space waiting for my humble review. I would write until that page was full and then flip the whole form over and continue writing until not an inch of that paper was bare. I'd fold it up, take it to the teacher, and hurriedly begin the process over again. I don't know how many book reports I turned in during my fifth grade year. I do know I kept them all and will one day find them neatly filed in a folder waiting to be rediscovered. I never lost that unbridled love for learning. For this I am grateful. I've recently found myself once again feverishly looking for great reads. With a new baby and my role in life being redefined, I've found my ability to appreciate a good story invaluable-a rope out into the world I once knew. That's why I've included a list of recently read books on my blog. Take a look at the titles. Some of them were so enrapturing I couldn't put them down; others I unabashedly skimmed over hundreds of pages in order to end the dreadfulness as painlessly as possible. I'd love to know what you think is out there worth reading. And, of course, I'm still ready and willing to give my humble version of a golden book review.