7 posts tagged “books”
1. What to Keep - Rachel Cline
2. The Owl Service - Alan Garner
3. The Generous Years: Remembrances of a Frontier Boyhood - Chet Huntley
4. The Forest Lover - Susan Vreeland
5. Open House - Elizabeth Berg
6. Before Green Gables - Budge Wilson
7. The Lost German Slave Girl - John Bailey
8. Mudbound - Hillary Jordan
9. The Overland Trail - Wendi Lee
10. Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity: One Season in a Progressive School - Elizabeth Gold
11. The Speed of Dark - Elizabeth Moon
12. Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library - Don Borchert
13. Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure - Sarah Macdonald
14. Maid Marian - Elsa Watson
15. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
16. Fluke: Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings - Christopher Moore
17. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
18. Reading - Summer Sisters - Judy Blume
19. Reading - Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Audiobooks
1. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
I've got this posted on a couple different messageboards, but I should be keeping it here, too, no?
I'm not certain this is entirely complete, as I began compiling the list a few months into the year. And they're not in order, at least not at the beginning.
1. The Ruby in the Smoke - Philip Pullman
2. The Shadow in the North - Philip Pullman
3. The Tiger in the Well - Philip Pullman
4. The Tin Princess - Philip Pullman
5. The Bright Forever - Lee Martin
6. Falling Angels - Tracy Chevalier
7. Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Susan Vreeland
8. Into the Forest - Jean Hegland
9. Love Comes Softly - Janette Oke
10. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
11. On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon - Kaye Gibbons
12. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
13. The Twins of Tribeca - Rachel Pine
14. The Wonder Spot - Melissa Bank
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
16. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume One, The Pox Party - M.T. Anderson
17. Keeping the House - Ellen Baker (advance copy, my first ever, woot!)
18. A Dirty Job - Christopher Moore
19. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
20. What Do You Do All Day? - Amy Scheibe
21. Gifted - Nikita Lalwani (advance copy)
22. Stargirl - Jerry Spinelli
23. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling
24. THe Road - Cormac McCarthy
25. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling
26. Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
27. Lady Fortescue Steps Out - Marion Chesney
28. Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling
29. Inkheart - Cornelia Funke
30. Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones
31. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling
32. Hannah Fowler - Janice Holt Giles
33. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling
34. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
35. Stargirl - Jerry Spinelli
36. Stardust - Neil Gaiman
37. Every Last Cuckoo - Kate Maloy
38. The Brief History of the Dead - Kevin Brockmeier
What books are on your nightstand?
Right now, it's:
On deck:
"She awakens to repeated awakenings as though trapped in some strange mechanism..."
This mechanism, quite darkly (in the true tradition of the fairy tale, and perhaps a few steps beyond) serves to explore the question posed by the good/bad fairy:
"Desire: what is it exactly?"
At a mere eighty-six pages, Coover could have probably accomplished his goal in less than half that, and not lost my interest so thoroughly along the way. I can handle a good bit of gauzy unreality in a story (especially when it's a modern take on an old tale, which fascinates me), but this work is mired beneath its own tiresome meandering and double weight.
If you'd like a more enjoyable (and still not entirely fluffy) Sleeping Beauty modernization, Robin McKinley's Spindle's End has more going for it.
Did you know that, prior to Uncle Tom's Cabin, this novel was the bestseller in America? For some ridiculous number of decades? No, neither did I.
Innocent British schoolgirl is seduced by military rogue, and promises to travel with him to America, where they'll be married. Consummation before marriage. Rogue decides not to marry her. Tragedy eventually ensues.
Essentially intended as a lesson to young girls of the period, it doesn't have much to offer in modern times. Not even any interesting historical tidbits that usually redeem such pieces, such that I can recall. The main character is weak, lackluster, and entirely undeveloped, and, frankly, I don't see how it is that she ever garnered such a huge following (to the point that she has a real-life "grave," visited by untold numbers of fans!).
I've actually had this book for some time now (I think D. gave it to me as a Christmas gift in, oh, 2003?), but I haven't been brave enough to actually try out any of the patterns.
Well, now, I'm gonna do it. This sweater. This unintimidating, impossible-even-for-me-to-F-up sweater. I have the yarn. I have the needles. I even have a nifty new row counter.
Yup. I am going to get started, any time now...
It is rare, very rare, that I'll literally weep over the pages of a book. I think the last time I did was at the end of the His Dark Materials trilogy. So, yeah. Not too often.
But Brooks managed it. Perhaps I was in just the right mindset, because it wasn't as if she didn't prepare you for what was about to happen. Or maybe it's because it's far too easy to imagine myself in a similar role. So while I can't promise you the same emotional outburst, you will get a suspenseful tale.
Anna, a seventeenth-century rectory maidservant, recent widow, and mother of two young boys, offers a kind London tailor lodging. By the time the villagers realize exactly what it is the young man has unleashed among them, their fate is sealed. What they decide to do together is an act of supreme courage.
I did find that the anachronistic (and inconsistently so) thought a bit of a hurdle to my belief suspension at first. Able, shortly, to accept it for the fiction it is, I was still often aware despite myself.
If you read it, be sure not to miss the afterword. I found the information there surprising.
