Reading Is Sexy: Books Part III

[martha]

Affairs at Thrush Green is done. Now I have to wait for the next few Thrush Green books to come from Amazon. I started this run with the second one, so I'll read the first one whilst I wait: Thrush Green.

 

[corianderstem]

Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

I honestly was not expecting to like this as much as I did. I thought it was going to be one of those books that everyone's mom read and loved, and I'd just roll my eyes and be all "It was just okay."

But I really liked it. Off to look at some Vermeer paintings online now. BRB.

 

[martha]

I liked the movie.

 

[corianderstem]

It was already in my Netflix queue, and I just moved it to the top.

 

[corianderstem]

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

Huzzah, I finally got to finish the last 100 pages of the book I'd left on the bus last week!

I really liked this one. A group of friends and their families, in New York ... I don't really know how best to summarize it. It takes place in 2001, which I didn't pick up on until about halfway through. You can see a big ol' plot point coming from there.

 

[martha]

The Warden by Anthony Trollope.

This should keep my busy until the rest of the Thrush Green books arrive from Amazon. I hope.

 

[corianderstem]

So here we are at the end of the reading year. I mowed through 74 books this year, and here are the ones I enjoyed the most (in order read):

Songs For the Missing - Stewart O'Nan
Drop City - T.C. Boyle
The Book of Dahlia - Elisa Albert
Change of Heart - Jodi Picoult
How Soon Is Never? - Marc Spitz
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (I think this was my favorite of the year)
Dark Places - Gillian Flynn
This Common Secret: My Journey As An Abortion Doctor - Susan Wicklund
The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
Julie and Julia - Julie Powell
Undress Me In the Temple of Heaven - Susan Jane Gilman
Zeitoun - Dave Eggers (second favorite)
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Certain Girls - Jennifer Weiner
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic - Alison Bechdel
The Kids Are All Right - Amanda, Liz, Dan and Diana Welch

 

[onebloodonelife]

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (I think this was my favorite of the year)
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

I almost grabbed We Need to Talk About Kevin at the Half-Price Books grandstand sale for a buck. Now I'm bummed I didn't. And, we're reading Middlesex for a class of mine next semester, so I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it; it's received pretty solid reviews, from what I've seen.

 

[corianderstem]

I knew very little about Middlesex before I'd read it; I'd picked up a used copy because I'd heard it was very good. Glad I did!

We Need to Talk About Kevin is chilling, but so, so amazing.

 

[u2popmofo]

The Warden by Anthony Trollope.

I've had this for 20 years or so, and still have not read it. What did you think?

How Soon Is Never? - Marc Spitz

 

[martha]

I've had this for 20 years or so, and still have not read it. What did you think?

I'm enjoying it a great deal, but I like Trollope anyway. He's easy to read.

 

[meegannie]

All the books I read last year with favourites in bold:

1. The Quincunx: The Inheritance of John Huffam
Charles Palliser

2. Watchmen
Alan Moore

3. Night Play
Sherrilyn Kenyon

4. The Princes in the Tower
Alison Weir

5. +Anima: v. 1
Natsumi Mukai

6. Anima: v. 2
Natsumi Mukai

7. Bizenghast Volume 1
M. Alice LeGrow

8. Bizenghast Volume 2
M. Alice LeGrow

9. Bizenghast Volume 3
M. Alice LeGrow

10. One Good Turn
Kate Atkinson

11. Princess Ai: v. 1
Courtney Love

12. Dewey: The Small-town Library-cat Who Touched the World
Vicki Myron

13. The Knife of Never Letting Go
Patrick Ness

14. Bone: One volume collection
Jeff Smith

15. Fever Crumb
Philip Reeve

16. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Volume 3: Wolves at the Gate
Drew Goddard

17. Bizenghast: v. 4
M. Alice LeGrow

18. +ANIMA Volume 3
Natsumi Mukai

19. +ANIMA Volume 4
Mukai Natsumi

20. Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
John Boyne

21. The Tales of Beedle the Bard
J. K. Rowling

22. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Brian Selznick

23. A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini

24. +Anima: v. 5
Natsumi Mukai

25. +Anima: v. 6
Natsumi Mukai

26. Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye
Robert Kirkman

27. Coraline
Neil Gaiman

28. +Anima: v. 7
Natsumi Mukai

29. +Anima: v. 8
Natsumi Mukai

30. +Anima: v. 9
Natsumi Mukai

31. The Lady in the Tower
Marie-Louise Jensen

32. The Walking Dead Volume 2: Miles Behind Us
Robert Kirkman

33. Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides

34. The Dreaming, volume 1
Queenie Chan

35. Let the Right One In
John Ajvide Lindqvist

36. The Dreaming, volume 2
Queenie Chan

37. The History of Love
Nicole Krauss

38. Alichino, volume 1
Kouyu Shurei

39. The Autobiography of Henry VIII
Margaret George

40. The Walking Dead Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars
Robert Kirkman

41. The Walking Dead Volume 4: The Heart's Desire
Robert Kirkman

42. The Walking Dead Volume 5: The Best Defence
Robert Kirkman

43. Bizenghast: v.5
Alice M. LeGrow

44. The Ask and the Answer
Patrick Ness

45. Skellig
David Almond

46. Tithe
Holly Black

47. Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins

48. We
Yevgeny Zamyatin

49. Battle Royale
Koushun Takami

50. A High Wind in Jamaica
Richard Hughes

51. The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Carrie Ryan

52. The Walking Dead Volume 6: This Sorrowful Life
Robert Kirkman

53. The Walking Dead Volume 7: The Calm Before
Robert Kirkman

54. The Daughter of Time
Josephine Tey

55. From the Dust Returned
Ray Bradbury

56. The Dreaming, v. 3
Queenie Chan

57. My Father Had a Daughter
Grace Tiffany

58. The Walking Dead Volme 8: Made to Suffer
Robert Kirkman

59. The Walking Dead Volume 9: Here We Remain
Robert Kirkman

60. The Lady in the Tower
Alison Weir

61. Zel
Donna Jo Napoli

62. Dissolution
C.J. Sansom

63. Blood and Chocolate
Annette Curtis Klause

64. Gatty's Tale
Kevin Crossley Holland

65. The Best of H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft

66. Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot
Antonia Fraser

67. The Walking Dead Volume 10: The Road Ahead
Robert Kirkman

68. Monday Mourning
Kathy Reichs

69. Death Be Not Proud
John Gunther

70. The Eyre Affair
Jasper Fforde

71. Fluffy
Simone Lia

72. Apache
Tanya Landman

73. Seize the Night
Sherrilyn Kenyon

74. The Unburied
Charles Palliser

75. Cross Bones
Kathy Reichs

76. Dragonswan
Sherrilyn Kenyon

 

[martha]

I'l finish The Warden tomorrow, so I'm taking Barchester Towers and Crampton Hodnet with me to Indiana.

 

[Pearl]

My favorites from 2009 were The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

My plan for 2010 is to read more books than last year, since I read less than 10.

 

[adamswildhoney]

Don't know if I have said I am reading it or not but I am on to "Swimming to Antarctica" by Lynne Cox. Great read, makes me want to swim again.

 

[ShipOfFools]

I'm reading "Under The Dome" by Stephen King. About 365 pages in, it's really getting interesting.

 

[Thora]

The books I read while on vacation:

Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl - Fantastic! It was a very easy read, so I breezed through this one pretty quickly. There were some interesting recipes in there that I plan on trying out. I was always hungry when I put the book down, as her descriptions made all the food sound so delicious!

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. Very fascinating to read about life in Iran. The only thing I didn't like was her writing style. She was never consistent with whether or not to put quotations around people's words, and it drove me nuts. Sometimes she'd do it, and other times not, and I would have been less frustrated if she picked one way and stuck to it, instead of changing it up every other paragraph. Despite that I thought it was excellent.

Mademoiselle Boleyn by Robin Maxwell. I love reading about the Tudor period, but this book annoyed me. It was an easy read, but I never was captivated by the story, and found it a bit boring. There were bits of it that seemed historically inaccurate, but I don't know for sure. Either way I kinda wish I had taken it out of the library first instead of buying it.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It was phenomenal. Read it in one day. The jumping around in time was a bit hard to keep track of at times, but I thought it was fantastic. I haven't seen the movie, but I plan to soon. I just wish there had been some sort of resolution as to why he jumped around in time, and I would have loved to read more about the daughter's experiences, but that probably would have made the book a lot longer.

 

[corianderstem]

The Man Called Cash by Steve Turner

You may or may not know that Johnny Cash did not, in fact, shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

I enjoyed this book and read it a lot faster than I thought I would. And thus begins the 2010 list!

 

[Zoobaby14]

^ I read that a while back, it's a good read.

 

[Dalton]

One of the best books I've read in years. I highly (HIGHLY) recommend that you all read it.

 

[No spoken words]

Finished The Dome and was really disappointed.

Now reading Child 44. So far, so good. I love Martin Cruz Smith's books, and this one is in a similar vein thus far.

 

[Mr. Green Eyes]

Also finished King's Under The Dome. I liked it. Now reading The Shining and Jonathon Mooney's The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal. Read the beginning a couple of years ago but never got a chance to finish it.

 

[No spoken words]

Finished Child 44. Not anything to rave about but definitely enjoyable. Actually makes me want to read some non-fiction about Post WWII Soviet Union and their police/prison systems.

Going to start Lehane's The Given Day later today.

 

[corianderstem]

Going to start Lehane's The Given Day later today.

I'm really looking forward to reading that.

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick

I've never been a big Elvis fan, and didn't think I was all that curious about him, but I saw this book some years ago and it looked like it would be really good. I'd also heard references to it, which made me curious.

The first of two books takes us up through Army Elvis, departing for Germany. It's very well-written, although I skimmed some sections because I didn't need to know so many details about contracts, record sales and recording sessions.

But I think he did a really good job of showing us a big picture of what Elvis was really like in those early days. He seemed like a goofy kid, which I had never pictured. He sure did love his mama.

I just ordered the second book, Careless Love, which I'm looking forward to reading.

 

[Pearl]

Currently, I am reading "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. So far, I am finding it rather boring. There's almost no dialogue; you can go through 5 or 6 pages without anything in quotations. Plus, there's too much with each character's background. In other words, just get to story already! How does what happened to so-and-so 10 years ago affect them in the present scene?

Today as I read the book, I almost fell asleep I found it so boring. I'm tempted to put it down, but I really do want to see how it ends, but then again, it is so dull.

I'll give it another try.

 

[powerhour24]

Going to start Lehane's The Given Day later today.

I LOVE that book. Huge scope, yet intimately drawn characters, and visceral action. Mystic River is his gut-punch dramatic best, but this is right up there. Supposedly he wants to do a trilogy... of course that probably means 5 more years between each one. All I can hope is that Hollywood (we know they love Lehane) doesn't try and make it into a movie. If it's filmed as anything it HAS to be a mini-series.

 

[No spoken words]

I LOVE that book. Huge scope, yet intimately drawn characters, and visceral action. Mystic River is his gut-punch dramatic best, but this is right up there. Supposedly he wants to do a trilogy... of course that probably means 5 more years between each one. All I can hope is that Hollywood (we know they love Lehane) doesn't try and make it into a movie. If it's filmed as anything it HAS to be a mini-series.

So far, so good. Just laying groundwork thus far, this early into it.

Spoiler

Love using Babe Ruth early on.

I'm such a big Lehane fan. My Dad turned me onto him after his first novel and I've been along for the ride ever since. Also, love that he was involved with the best drama ever, The Wire.

 

[corianderstem]

So far, the only Lehane I haven't liked was Coronado, his book of short stories (and one play).

 

[u2popmofo]

I read the first 30 pages or so of Shutter Island over Thanksgiving, but then sat it down and read some other things in December. Guess I should finally get back to it with all the Lehane-lovin' going on here. Of course, I don't remember any of what I read in November now, so it'll all be read again.

 

[LMP]

I picked up Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned, and Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars collection earlier this weekend. Barnes and Noble was having a Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale on Classics and Carter was on-sale separately. Kind of felt like a no-brainer to me.

When I finish up Alan Moore's assorted DC stories, The Dark Knight Returns, and Dune, I'd love to get to those.