You Go, Girlfriends!

I'm so glad I discovered book blogging and found out there were readers even crazier than me! :-) I've now found Veronica, who is making a project of the library of Penguin Classics, a project idea I myself have kicked around in the past and still may pick up the torch for at some point. Make sure you stop over at her blog and cheer her on!

I'd also like to welcome the folks who have decided to join me and many others reading off the "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" list. We all have our work cut out for us! And kudos to all the fabulous projects and challenges going on out here in cyberspace! This is just too much fun!

As usual, I'm not getting as much reading done as I would like. Dog school is keeping us busy, and now that Peter and I have officially become "Timberwolves Season Ticket Holders" (insert huge grin here), I'm probably going to have to make sure I pick up a few more shows with Tony to make sure I can pay the bill! :-) Go Wolves!!! I'm hoping to finish off The Orchard Keeper today or tomorrow and move on to some more Jean Plaidy. I'm in the mood for some good history and royal scandal. . .

And check out the Novella Challenge for something a little lighter. Again, resistance is futile. . .

Lezlie

Spring Reading Challenge

After my dismal literary performance for February, I think the Spring Reading Challenge is just the thing to get my reading back on track! All we do is make a list of what we intend to read in the months of March, April and May. No minimums or limits. Here's what I'm hoping to accomplish as warmer weather draws near:

**FINISHED May 31, 2008** (See wrap-up post here.)

Achebe, Chinua -- Things Fall Apart
Achebe, Chinua -- Arrow Of God
Achebe, Chinua -- No Longer At Ease
Bass, Jefferson -- The Devil's Bones
Christie, Agatha -- Cards On The Table
Denby, David -- The Great Books
Dunant, Sarah -- In The Company of the Courtesan (Audio)
Eisner, Michael Alexander -- The Crusader
Goodkind, Terry -- Blood of the Fold (Audio)
Goodkind, Terry -- Temple of the Winds (Audio)
Goodkind, Terry -- Soul of the Fire (Audio)
Goodkind, Terry -- Faith of the Fallen (Audio)
Grahame, Kenneth -- The Wind In The Willows
Greene, Graham -- The Power and the Glory
Haggard, H. Rider -- Kind Solomon's Mines
Heller, Joseph -- Catch-22
Kalogridis, Jeanne -- The Borgia Bride
Kellerman, Jonathan -- Compulsion (Audio)
McCarthy, Cormac -- The Orchard Keeper
Obama, Barack -- The Audacity of Hope
Plaidy, Jean -- The Queen's Secret
Plaidy, Jean -- The Reluctant Queen
Plaidy, Jean -- The Lady In The Tower
Rice, Anne -- Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (Audio)
Twain, Mark -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Verne, Jules -- Journey To The Center Of The Earth
Wilde, Oscar -- The Picture of Dorian Gray

Three months, twenty-seven books, seven of them audio. That should put me back on track!

Happy Reading, Everyone!
Lezlie

Short Story Reviews

Disclaimer -- I don't really think "review" is the correct word to use, but lacking a more descriptive prospect off the top of my head, I'll just go with it. I'm not a critic, I'm not a literature major, I'm not an aspiring writing. I'm just a big fan of reading. These aren't "reviews" so much as simply my thoughts on the stories, whether I liked them or not, and who else may enjoy them. I won't be rating them as my feelings regarding certain stories tend to change as time goes on. I can never really tell if a story deserves a personal 4 or 5 star rating until long afer I've read it. It's only then that the truly memorable reveal themselves. Some may find my musings helpful or interesting, others may not. Fair enough. If I can help even just a few fellow readers discover a new favorite they may have otherwise missed, I'll call it a job well done!

If I've given my thoughts on a collection of short stories, that book will be listed along with other books under "Author" and "Title" posts, rather than here.


B

Berg, Elizabeth -- The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted

E

Ellison, Ralph -- Battle Royal

F

Faulkner, William -- Barn Burning

G

Greene, Graham -- The Destructors

H

Hemingway, Ernest -- Up In Michigan

M

Mansfield, Katherine -- Miss Brill

T

Tolstoy, Leo -- God Sees The Truth But Waits
Twain, Mark -- The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

W

Welty, Eudora -- A Worn Path
Whitecloud, Tom -- Blue Winds Dancing

Reviews By Author

Disclaimer -- I don't really think "review" is the correct word to use, but lacking a more descriptive prospect off the top of my head, I'll just go with it. I'm not a critic, I'm not a literature major, I'm not an aspiring writing. I'm just a big fan of books. These aren't "reviews" so much as simply my thoughts on the books, whether I liked them or not, and who else may enjoy them. I won't be rating them as my feelings regarding certain books tend to change as time goes on. I can never really tell if a book deserves a personal 4 or 5 star rating until long afer I've read it. It's only then that the truly memorable reveal themselves. Some may find my musings helpful or interesting, others may not. Fair enough. If I can help even just a few fellow readers discover a new favorite they may have otherwise missed, I'll call it a job well done!


FICTION

A

Abe, Kobo -- The Woman In The Dunes
Achebe, Chinua -- Arrow of God
Achebe, Chinua -- No Longer At Ease
Achebe, Chinua -- Things Fall Apart
Aciman, Andre -- Call Me By Your Name
Ackroyd, Peter -- The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
Aesop -- The Complete Fables
Alexander, Robert -- The Romanov Bride
Amis, Martin -- Time's Arrow
Apuleius, Lucius -- The Golden Ass
Atwood, Margaret -- Oryx and Crake
Atwood, Margaret -- The Year of the Flood
Austen, Jane -- Pride and Prejudice
Austen, Jane -- Sense and Sensibility
Austen, Jane & Ben H. Winters -- Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
Auster, Paul -- The Book of Illusions
Auster, Paul -- Timbuktu
Auster, Paul -- Travels In The Scriptorium

B

Baldacci, David -- Divine Justice
Baricco, Alessandro -- An Iliad
Barnes, Julian -- A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
Barnes, Margaret Campbell -- My Lady of Cleves
Bass, Jefferson -- Bones of Betrayal
Bass, Jefferson -- The Devil's Bones
Berg, Elizabeth -- The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted
Bohjalian, Chris -- Skeletons At The Feast
Boulle, Pierre -- The Bridge Over the River Kwai
Boulle, Pierre -- Planet of the Apes
Bronte, Emily -- Wuthering Heights
Burroughs, William S. -- Junky

C

Chevalier, Tracy -- Girl With A Pearl Earring
Christie, Agatha -- The Body In The Library
Christie, Agatha -- Cards On The Table
Christie, Agatha -- Crooked House
Christie, Agatha -- Death On The Nile
Christie, Agatha -- Dumb Witness
Christie, Agatha -- Evil Under The Sun
Christie, Agatha -- The Labors of Hercules
Christie, Agatha -- The Moving Finger
Christie, Agatha -- N or M?
Christie, Agatha -- One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Clark, Clare -- The Great Stink
Clark, Clare -- The Nature of Monsters
Clinch, Jon -- Finn
Coetzee, J.M. -- Elizabeth Costello
Coetzee, J.M. -- Waiting for the Barbarians
Collins, Wilkie -- The Woman In White
Crais, Robert -- Chasing Darkness
Cunningham, Michael -- The Hours

D

Deaver, Jeffery -- The Bodies Left Behind
Deaver, Jeffery -- The Broken Window
Deaver, Jeffery -- Roadside Crosses
Defoe, Daniel -- Moll Flanders
Delors, Catherine -- Mistress of the Revolution
Dickens, Charles -- Bleak House
Dickens, Charles -- A Christmas Carol
Dickens, Charles -- Nicholas Nickleby
Dickens, Charles -- A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor -- Crime & Punishment
Douglass, Frederick -- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Dunant, Sarah -- In The Company of the Courtesan
Dunant, Sarah -- Sacred Hearts

E

Eggers, Dave -- What Is The What
Eisner, Michael Alexander -- The Crusader
Erickson, Carolly -- The Last Wife of Henry VIII
Erickson, Carolly -- The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots
Erickson, Carolly -- The Tsarina's Daughter
Essex, Karen -- Stealing Athena

F

Falcones, Ildefonso -- Cathedral of the Sea
Faulkner, William -- Light In August
Faulkner, William -- The Sound and the Fury
Fitzgerald, F. Scott -- This Side of Paradise
Flaubert, Gustave -- Madame Bovary
Flynn, Vince -- Extreme Measures
Follett, Ken -- World Without End
Franklin, Ariana -- Grave Goods
Franklin, Ariana -- The Serpent's Tale

G

Gaines, Ernest J. -- Catherine Carmier
Gaines, Ernest J. -- A Lesson Before Dying
Gaskell, Elizabeth -- Cranford
Goldstone, Lawrence -- The Anatomy of Deception
Gortner, C.W. -- The Last Queen
Grahame, Kenneth -- The Wind In The Willows
Graves, Robert -- I, Claudius
Greene, Graham -- The Heart of the Matter
Greene, Graham -- The Power and the Glory
Greene, Graham -- The Quiet American
Gregory, Philippa -- The Other Queen
Gregory, Philippa -- The White Queen
Gruber, Michael -- The Forgery of Venus
Gulland, Sandra -- Mistress of the Sun

H

Haggard, H. Rider -- King Solomon's Mines
Haley, Alex -- Roots
Hardy, Thomas -- Jude The Obscure
Heller, Joseph -- Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest -- A Farewell To Arms
Hemingway, Ernest -- To Have and Have Not
Herbert, Brian & Kevin J. Anderson -- Paul of Dune (Guest Review)
Heyer, Georgette -- Charity Girl
Heyer, Georgette -- The Conqueror
Heyer, Georgette -- The Corinthian
Heyer, Georgette -- Cotillion
Heyer, Georgette -- Faro's Daughter
Heyer, Georgette -- The Quiet Gentleman
Hickman, Katie -- The Aviary Gate
Hollingshead, Greg -- Bedlam
Horn, Dara -- All Other Nights
Hornby, Nick -- High Fidelity
Huxley, Aldous -- Brave New World

I

Ishiguro, Kazuo -- Never Let Me Go
Ishiguro, Kazuo -- The Remains of the Day

J

Jones, Lloyd -- Mister Pip
Jordan, Robert & Brandon Sanderson -- The Gathering Storm
Joyce, James -- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce, James -- Ulysses

K

Kalogridis, Jeanne -- The Borgia Bride
Kalogridis, Jeanne -- The Devil's Queen
Kellerman, Jonathan -- Bones
Kellerman, Jonathan -- Compulsion
Kellerman, Jonathan -- Evidence
Khadra, Yasmina -- The Attack
Khadra, Yasmina -- The Sirens of Baghdad
Khadra, Yasmina -- The Swallows of Kabul
Kingsolver, Barbara -- The Poisonwood Bible
Koontz, Dean -- Frankenstein: Dead and Alive
Koontz, Dean -- Odd Hours
Kostova, Elizabeth -- The Historian
Kourouma, Ahmadou -- Allah Is Not Obliged
Kyle, Barbara -- The Queen's Lady

L

Laforet, Carmen -- Nada
LaMarche, Phil -- American Youth
Levi, Primo -- Survival At Auschwitz
Lofts, Norah -- The Concubine

M

Maguire, Gregory -- A Lion Among Men
Maine, David -- The Book of Samson
Matar, Hisham -- In the Country of Men
Mawer, Simon -- The Gospel of Judas
McCafferty, Kate -- Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl
McCarthy, Cormac -- The Orchard Keeper
McGrath, Patrick -- Dr. Haggard's Disease
Moran, Michelle -- Cleopatra's Daughter
Moran, Michelle -- The Heretic Queen
Murakami, Haruki -- After Dark
Murphy, Louise -- The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

O

O'Brien, Tim -- Going After Cacciato
Otsuka, Julie -- When The Emperor Was Divine
Ozick, Cynthia -- The Shawl

P

Palahniuk, Chuck -- Choke
Palahniuk, Chuck -- Haunted
Palahniuk, Chuck -- Pygmy
Palahniuk, Chuck -- Rant
Palahniuk, Chuck -- Snuff
Palahniuk, Chuck -- Survivor
Paton, Alan -- Cry, The Beloved Country
Pearl, Matthew -- The Last Dickens
Pears, Iain -- The Raphael Affair
Pearson, Ridley -- Killer Summer
Pearson, Ridley -- Killer View
Penman, Sharon Kay -- Devil's Brood
Phillips, Christi -- The Devlin Diary
Phillips, Christi -- The Rossetti Letter
Plaidy, Jean -- The Courts of Love
Plaidy, Jean -- Madonna of the Seven Hills
Plaidy, Jean -- The Queen's Secret
Pressfield, Steven -- Killing Rommel
Proust, Marcel -- Swann's Way


Q

Quinn, Daniel -- The Holy (Guest Review)

R

Reichs, Kathy -- 206 Bones
Reichs, Kathy -- Devil Bones
Renault, Mary -- The Praise Singer
Rice, Anne -- Christ The Lord: The Road To Cana
Roth, Philip -- American Pastoral
Roth, Philip -- Everyman
Roth, Philip -- The Humbling
Roth, Philip -- Indignation
Roth, Philip -- The Plot Against America

S

Sanderson, Branson & Robert Jordan -- The Gathering Storm
Sandford, John -- Heat Lightning
Sandford, John -- Phantom Prey
Sandford, John -- Rough Country
Sansom, C.J. -- Revelation
Scott, Susan Holloway -- Duchess
Stowe, Harriet Beecher -- Uncle Tom's Cabin (Annotated Edition)
Styron, William -- The Confessions of Nat Turner

T

Tolstoy, Leo -- War & Peace
Twain, Mark -- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Twain, Mark -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

V

Verne, Jules -- Journey To The Center Of The Earth
Verne, Jules -- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea
Vonnegut, Kurt -- Slaughterhouse-Five
Vreeland, Susan -- Girl In Hyacinth Blue
Vreeland, Susan -- Luncheon of the Boating Party

W

Weir, Alison -- Innocent Traitor
Weir, Alison -- The Lady Elizabeth
Wiesel, Elie -- Dawn
Wiesel, Elie -- Day
Wilde, Oscar -- The Picture of Dorian Gray
Winters, Ben H. & Jane Austen -- Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
Woolf, Virginia -- Mrs. Dalloway
Worth, Sandra -- The King's Daughter
Wright, Richard -- Native Son




NON-FICTION

Art History

King, Ross -- Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

Biography/Autobiography/Memoir

Dublanica, Steve -- Waiter Rant
Ellis, Joseph J. -- His Excellency: George Washington
Fisher, Carrie -- Wishful Drinking
Haley, Alex -- Roots
Levi, Primo -- Survival In Auschwitz
McCullough, David -- John Adams
Taylor, Andy -- Wild Boy: My Life In Duran Duran

Environmentalism

Friedman, Thomas -- Hot, Flat and Crowded

Essays

Hornby, Nick -- The Polysyllabic Spree
Morrison, Toni -- Burn This Book
Sedaris, David -- Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Sedaris, David -- Holidays On Ice
Sedaris, David -- Naked
Sedaris, David -- When You Are Engulfed In Flames
Vidal, Gore -- Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace


Globalization

Friedman, Thomas L. -- The World Is Flat

History, American

Loewen, James W. -- Lies My Teacher Told Me
Wright, Lawrence -- The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

History, European

Hibbert, Christopher -- The Borgias and Their Enemies

Humor

Barry, Dave -- Dave Barry's Money Secrets
Black, Lewis -- Me Of Little Faith
Carlin, George -- When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?

Lexicography

Winchester, Simon -- The Meaning of Everything

Literature Studies

Bloom, Harold -- The Grotesque

Philosophy/Psychology

Adler, Mortimer J. -- How To Think About The Great Ideas
Frankl, Viktor -- Man's Search For Meaning

Poetry

Falkoff Marc (Editor) -- Poems From Guantanamo
Hirsch, Edward -- How To Read A Poem And Fall In Love With Poetry
Spencer, Edmund -- The Faerie Queene

Politics/Current Events

Ehrenreich, Barbara -- This Land is Their Land
Milbank, Dana -- Homo Politicus
Plouffe, David -- The Audacity To Win
Wolffe, Richard -- Renegade
Zakaria, Fareed -- The Post-American World

Religion

Ehrman, Bart D. -- Misquoting Jesus

Science, General

Kolbert, Elizabeth -- The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009

Social Sciences

Pierce, Charles P. -- Idiot America
Postman, Neil -- Amusing Ourselves To Death
Reding, Nick -- Methland
Smith, Dan -- The Penguin State of the World Atlas

Sports

Shirley, Paul -- Can I Keep My Jersey?

Trivia

Kidder and Oppenheim -- The Intellectual Devotional: American History

Writing

The Paris Review -- The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II
Zinsser, William -- Writing To Learn

Reviews By Title

Disclaimer -- I don't really think "review" is the correct word to use, but lacking a more descriptive prospect off the top of my head, I'll just go with it. I'm not a critic, I'm not a literature major, I'm not an aspiring writing. I'm just a big fan of books. These aren't "reviews" so much as simply my thoughts on the books, whether I liked them or not, and who else may enjoy them. I won't be rating them as my feelings regarding certain books tend to change as time goes on. I can never really tell if a book deserves a personal 4 or 5 star rating until long afer I've read it. It's only then that the truly memorable reveal themselves. Some may find my musings helpful or interesting, others may not. Fair enough. If I can help even just a few fellow readers discover a new favorite they may have otherwise missed, I'll call it a job well done!


FICTION


A

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
All Other Nights by Dara Horn
Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
American Youth by Phil LaMarche
The Anatomy of Deception by Lawrence Goldstone
Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
The Attack by Yasmina Khadra
The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman

B

Bedlam by Greg Hollingshead
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffery Deaver
The Body In The Library by Agatha Christie
Bones by Jonathan Kellerman
Bones of Betrayal by Jefferson Bass
The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
The Book of Samson by David Maine
The Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Bridge Over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle
The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver

C

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
Cards On The Table -- Agatha Christie
The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones
Catherine Carmier by Ernest J. Gaines
Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer
Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
Christ The Lord: The Road To Cana by Anne Rice
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran
The Complete Fables by Aesop
Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman
The Concubine by Norah Lofts
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
The Conqueror by Georgette Heyer
The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer
Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
The Courts of Love by Jean Plaidy
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crooked House by Agatha Christie
The Crusader by Michael Alexander Eisner
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton

D

Dawn by Elie Wiesel
Day by Elie Wiesel
The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg
Death On The Nile by Agatha Christie
Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs
The Devil's Bones by Jefferson Bass
Devil's Brood by Sharon Kay Penman
The Devil's Queen by Jeanne Kalogridis
The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips
Divine Justice by David Baldacci
Dr. Haggard's Disease by Patrick McGrath
Duchess by Susan Holloway Scott
Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie

E

Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
Everyman by Philip Roth
Evidence by Jonathan Kellerman
Evil Under The Sun by Agatha Christie
Extreme Measures by Vince Flynn

F

A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer
Finn by Jon Clinch
The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber
Frankstein: Dead and Alive by Dean Koontz

G

The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
Girl In Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chelvalier
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius
The Gospel of Judas by Simon Mawer
Grave Goods by Ariana Franklin
The Great Stink by Clare Clark

H

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
Heat Lightning by John Sandford
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
The Holy by Daniel Quinn (Guest Review)
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Humbling by Philip Roth

I

I, Claudius by Robert Graves
An Iliad by Alessandro Baricco
Indignation by Philip Roth
Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir
In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar

J

Journey To The Center Of The Earth by Jules Verne
Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Junky by William S. Burroughs

K

Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson
Killer View by Ridley Pearson
Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
The King's Daughter by Sandra Worth

L

The Labors of Hercules by Agatha Christie
The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir
The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl
The Last Queen by C.W. Gortner
The Last Wife of Henry VIII by Carolly Erickson
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Light In August by William Faulkner
A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire
Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland

M

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Madonna of the Seven Hills by Jean Plaidy
The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots by Carolly Erickson
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors
Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
My Lady of Cleves by Margaret Campbell Barnes

N

N or M? by Agatha Christie
Nada by Carmen Laforet
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
No Longer At Ease by Chinua Achebe

O

Odd Hours by Dean Koontz
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory

P

Paul of Dune by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson (Guest Review)
Phantom Prey by John Sandford
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
The Praise Singer by Mary Renault
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk

Q

The Queen's Lady by Barbara Kyle
The Queen's Secret by Jean Plaidy
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer

R

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Revelation by C.J. Sansom
Roadside Crosses by Jeffery Deaver
The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander
Roots by Alex Haley
The Rossetti Letter by Christi Phillips
Rough Country by John Sandford

S

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen & Ben H. Winters
The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin
The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick
The Sirens of Baghdad by Yasmina Khadra
Skeletons At The Feast by Christ Bohjalian
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Stealing Athena by Karen Essex
Survival At Auschwitz by Primo Levi
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

T

206 Bones by Kathy Reichs
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl by Kate McCafferty
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Timbuktu by Paul Auster
Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
Travels In The Scriptorium by Paul Auster
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
The Tsarina's Daughter by Carolly Erickson
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne

U

Ulysses by James Joyce
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Annotated Edition) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louis Gates Jr. & Hollis Roberts

W

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy
What Is The What by Dave Eggers
When The Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Woman In The Dunes by Kobo Abe
The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins
World Without End by Ken Follett
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Y

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood





NON-FICTION

Art History

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King

Biography/Autobiography

His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis
John Adams by David McCullough
Roots by Alex Haley
Survival In Auschwitz by Primo Levi
Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica
Wild Boy: My Life In Duran Duran by Andy Taylor
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

Environmentalism

Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman

Essays

Burn This Book edited by Toni Morrison
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Holidays On Ice by David Sedaris
Naked by David Sedaris
Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace by Gore Vidal
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris

Globalization

The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

History, American

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

History, European

The Borgias and Their Enemies by Christopher Hibbert

Humor

Dave Barry's Money Secrets by Dave Barry
Me Of Little Faith by Lewis Black
When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops? by George Carlin

Lexicography

The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester

Literature Studies

The Grotesque edited by Harold Bloom

Philosophy/Psychology

How To Think About The Great Ideas by Mortimer J. Adler
Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Poetry

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spencer
How To Read A Poem And Fall In Love With Poetry by Edward Hirsch
Poems From Guantanamo edited by Marc Falstaff

Politics/Current Events

The Audacity To Win by David Plouffe
Homo Politicus by Dana Milbank
The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
Renegade by Richard Wolffe
This Land is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich

Religion

Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman

Science, General

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009 edited by Elizabeth Kolbert

Social Sciences

Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman
Idiot America by Charles Pierce
Methland by Nick Reding
The Penguin State of the World Atlas by Dan Smith

Sports

Can I Keep My Jersey? by Paul Shirley

Trivia

The Intellectual Devotional: American History by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim

Writing

The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. II by The Paris Review
Writing To Learn by William Zinsser

SWANN'S WAY by Marcel Proust

This book exhausted me. Don’t get me wrong. I really liked it. But the extravagant style, endless sentences and multi-page paragraphs wrung my brain dry. There are seven books that make up this complete work (In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past) and I have every intention of reading all six volumes in which they are contained, but I will be spacing them out a bit. It’s like a rich dessert. No matter how much I love French Silk Pie, there is only so much I can eat at one time.

Swann’s Way revolves around the narrator’s memories of his childhood. While he knows memory is fallible, he still revels in reliving times of his life suddenly and unexpectedly brought back to him by simple acts such as the tasting of a madeleine dipped in tea or the sight of a church steeple. Among the many amazing quotes in this book, one of my favorites occurs near the end:

[L]arge birds swiftly crossed the Bois, like a real wood, and uttering their sharp cries alighted one after another in the tall oaks which under their druidical crowns and with a Dodonean majesty seemed to proclaim the inhuman emptiness of the disused forest, and helped me better understand what a contradiction it is to search in reality for memory’s pictures, which would never have the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from not being perceived by the senses.

There is an enormous cast of characters introduced and many scenes which seem not to be connected to any of the others, but my understanding is that most of this sets up future volumes. I’m very curious to see where this all goes. In the meantime, I just have to share with you another passage that I adored:

He was smiling, enraptured in a sort of dream, then he hurried back to the lady, and since he was walking more quickly than was his habit, his two shoulders oscillated ridiculously to the right and left, and so entirely did he abandon himself to this, without concern for anything else, that he looked like the inert and mechanical plaything of happiness itself.

How can you not love that writing?? So over the top!

Lezlie

U.S. Presidents Reading Project

If you would like to join me in this project, see my U.S. Presidents Reading Project blog. I hope to see you there!


Completed: 2/43 as of June 27, 2008


LIST OF U.S. PRESIDENTS

1. George Washington (1789-97)
2. John Adams, 1797-1801 (Federalist)
3. Thomas Jefferson, 1801-9 (Democratic-Republican)
4. James Madison, 1809-17 (Democratic-Republican)
5. James Monroe, 1817-25 (Democratic-Republican)
6. John Quincy Adams, 1825-29 (Democratic-Republican)
7. Andrew Jackson, 1829-37 (Democrat)
8. Martin Van Buren, 1837-41 (Democrat)
9. William Henry Harrison, 1841 (Whig)
10. John Tyler, 1841-45 (Whig)
11. James Knox Polk, 1845-49 (Democrat)
12. Zachary Taylor, 1849-50 (Whig)
13. Millard Fillmore, 1850-53 (Whig)
14. Franklin Pierce, 1853-57 (Democrat)
15. James Buchanan, 1857-61 (Democrat)
16. Abraham Lincoln, 1861-65 (Republican)
17. Andrew Johnson, 1865-69 (Democrat/National Union)
18. Ulysses Simpson Grant, 1869-77 (Republican)
19. Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 1877-81 (Republican)
20. James Abram Garfield, 1881 (Republican)
21. Chester Alan Arthur, 1881-85 (Republican)
22. Grover Cleveland, 1885-89 (Democrat)
23. Benjamin Harrison, 1889-93 (Republican)
24. Grover Cleveland, 1893-97 (Democrat)
25. William McKinley, 1897-1901 (Republican)
26. Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-9 (Republican)
27. William Howard Taft, 1909-13 (Republican)
28. Woodrow Wilson, 1913-21 (Democrat)
29. Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1921-23 (Republican)
30. Calvin Coolidge, 1923-29 (Republican)
31. Herbert Clark Hoover, 1929-33 (Republican)
32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-45 (Democrat)
33. Harry S Truman, 1945-53 (Democrat)
34. Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953-61 (Republican)
35. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1961-63 (Democrat)
36. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963-69 (Democrat)
37. Richard Milhous Nixon, 1969-74 (Republican)
38. Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr , 1974-77 (Republican)
39. James Earl Carter, 1977-81 (Democrat)
40. Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1981-89 (Republican)
41. George Herbert Walker Bush, 1989-1993 (Republican)
42. William Jefferson Clinton, 1993-2001(Democrat)
43. George W. Bush, 2001- (Republican)
44. Barack Obama, 2009- (Democrat)

In Like A Lion. . .

Welcome to March! It's nearly spring!!!

I have to say I was quite ready for February to be over. I was sick the entire month, Peter got sick, our cat Jack got some weird lip infection and our whole household mourned the loss of Cleopatra. It was all I could do to keep the house from looking like it was taken over by a band of monkeys. Needless to say, I didn't get much done in the realm of literature. I hate when that happens.

Five. That was my total for February. And two of them were audiobooks!! If I'm going to get all my challenge books read this year, I'd better get moving. A new month, a breath of fresh air, and I'm all ready to get back to some serious reading. Well, if not serious reading, then at least lots of fun reading anyway! My goal is to finish and post my review for Swann's Way this weekend, then dig into some less time-consuming books for a while. And just think . . . By the time I do another monthly summary, it will be Spring! I can envision the iced tea on the patio now. . .

We're almost there. . .
Lezlie