My apologies to the kind friends and family members who check this blog regularly and have wondered, "What?  Did she stop reading??"  The answer is yes and no.

I read, but only the books required for my reviewing gig this past month, and they were just not up to snuff.  Remember, this isn't a log of what I'm reading, but a sharing of books that are too good to miss.  And believe me, it's more evident all the time that there is a bunch of junk out there being published.  Think of me as your filter.    The other excuse is that I had friends and family in town for part of the month to celebrate the publication of my book, Faces of Hearst Castle.

That said, yesterday I was at a book store and saw three new picture books that renewed my faith in the genre, so I'll be sharing those with you soon.  Discovering them helps counteract the truly dreadful book I have to review for Children's Lit this month.

Today, in light of my sporadic blogging habits, I want to share an on-line goal-setting and monitoring tool my dear friend Mari sent me:  www.joesgoals.com.  For any of you who are really children at heart and miss those charts with smiley faces or stars from your youth, this is a geeky grown-up way of tracking your progress on both positive and negative goals. It's free, easy to use, doesn't require downloading anything, and has all sorts of cool features like a journal tool and a graph.  I think I need to add "blog!" to my weekly list of goals.  Surely I can find one book each week that is worth recommending!

Happy October, everyone.  I hope you are enjoying the plethora of publications launched this fall, and if you find something great, please share it!