I'll try for 50 again (between 01/08/2009 and 01/08/2010), and see how it goes. My 1st challenge can be found here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/42186

The first book I finished in August was a re-read:

1. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger



208 pages
4 stars

A fast read, for example I read the entire novel yesterday afternoon. A thought-provoking novel, though probably I enjoyed it more when I was younger.

"This book consists of two interrelated stories about members of the Glass family. These kids (seven of them if I remember well) are the children of a showbusiness family from New York and they used to be genius-kids who appeared on a radio show answering quizzes and philosophizing. Apparently the Glass kids had a special education in an ecumenical religiosity and philosophy, and their situation as whiz kids has led to emotional distress, much a-la Holden Caulfield but more illustrated. By the way, in terms of its central themes, this book could be said to be the closing of the full circle of Caulfield's story. The Glasses, just like Caulfield, are intelligent people, very frustrated with the inadequacies of life in general and the people who surround them. They are very neurotic in a New York way. They are angry because people aren't as intelligent as they should be, and because the ways of the world are not what reason and humanism tell us they should be. How to cope with it?

In the first story, Franny, a young college girl, arrives in New Haven (Yale) to be with her preppy and also intellectualizing boyfriend for a football weekend. They go to a cafe to have some food (and drinks and cigarettes). The story is simply the account of their talk. Salinger is one of the greatest masters of frenzied and fast dialogue, and it shows here. Franny is telling his boyfriend about all the phoniness of campus life, about the lunacy and presumptuosness of teachers and classmates. She tells him how she has read a book about a Russian monk who discovers a special Jesus prayer. If you repeat this prayer incessantly, it will become a part of you and repeat itself automatically, bringing you closer to grace and peace. The conversation starts getting out of hand as Franny gets carried away and as the boyfriend becomes rather estranged, until Franny collapses on her way to the restroom. When she wakes up, she is constantly whispering the Jesus prayer.

In the second story, Franny is at her parents' home in NY, recovering from her nervous breakdown. In a long talk with her brother Zooey (both of them being the youngest Glass children), they confront each other's traumas, weaknesses, genius and problems with the world. Zooey is also extremely talented and aware of the inadequacies of the world, but he seems to be in a (slightly) better emotional phase than Franny. The dialogue is moving, neurotic and masterful. After they argue rather violently, Zooey goes to another room and calls Franny pretending to be an older brother living away. In a further conversation Zooey forces Franny to understand that following a simple but futile recipe will not do the trick. The Jesus prayer is not enough: we have to accept the world as it is as well as the people around us. We can not be "catchers in the rhye". But we should live an ethical life, just because (which made me think of Kant's "categorical imperative"). As Seymour Glass, the eldest brother, once said to Zooey, sometimes you have to do things "for the Fat Lady", that is, just because it is the right thing to do, even if no one will notice.

"Frany and Zooey" is written in a lower key. It is unprententious, unlike its characters, but deep down it is about profound questions. How to cope with this mad world filled with people who are not bright nor good? Can you save the world? How to live? Yes, sometimes we have to do things we wouldn't like to do, but we have to do it, if only for the Fat Lady. " /Guillermo Maynez, Amazon/

I'm currently reading Coming Up for Air and Coraline.

Message edited by its author, Sep 11, 2009, 7:53am.

Thanks for the link to your new thread! :) Franny and Zooey sounds like a great book. I can't wait to see what you think of Coraline. I have been meaning to read that one myself. Have a great day!
--BJ

Welcome on the new thread, billiejean!:) Franny and Zooey is a great book, Coraline ditto so far, though it's not so creepy yet as I expected.

Have a great day! Happy reading!:)

Update: Coraline is getting definitely creepy and it's only the 7th chapter (out of 13 total).

Message edited by its author, Aug 9, 2009, 3:40pm.

#2.Kramer vs Kramer by Avery Corman



233 pages
4 stars

Another fast read. (I can't remember if I've seen the movie or not, but the cast is pretty impressive.)

I like this review the best (especially the last sentence):

"The story of a boy living with his father, after the relationship between his parents breaks down. After some period of time, his mother decides she now wants the kid.

Man-Woman tug of war, with a young boy in the middle. This one is actually not as deadly dull as it sounds like it could be." (LibraryThing)

I'm currently ALSO reading Aranyhalacska (Poisson d'or) by Le Clézio (Yes, I'm reading it in Hungarian ( I just couldn't find even the English title anywhere, let alone an English translation...), plus, in the morning I finished rereading the first volume of Nászjelentés by Vavyan Fable, the second one is waiting on the shelf, as well.:)

Message edited by its author, Aug 9, 2009, 10:20am.

#3. Coraline by Neil Gaiman



181 pages
4 stars

I had too high expectations, so I almost missed the fun. It's not really scary, which disappointed me a bit first, for instance. But by the time I was a couple chapters in, I was hooked on the story and didn't want to put it down.(Especially loved the last two chapters.) At some point it felt like I was reading about some flashgame I want to play myself, but I resisted this sort of diversion this time (and didn't start to play "treasure hunting" or something like that).
I don't recommend the book to people who have claustrophobia.

"The story is full of twists and nightmare images, dark surprises and moments of stunning beauty, and through it all there is never a misstep, nor a moment when it seems that Gaiman is unsure of what he's doing or what happens next, despite the fact that it took him ten years to write the book, and that he did so piecemeal, averaging about 2,000 words a year. It is a masterly achievement, a delight for children and adults alike -- and I strongly encourage reading it aloud to someone you love, young or old or in between. You'll both be the better for it." /Tim Pratt/

Thanks for the review of Coraline. I think that I might read it if I can find our copy of it. I have been having problems lately locating books around the house! I remember the movie of Kramer v. Kramer. It was a tear-jerker for me. Have a great day!
--BJ

Message edited by its author, Aug 11, 2009, 8:59am.

You're welcome :) I hope you can find your copy of Coraline, because it's really an entertaining little book with its spooky atmosphere and illustrations! I'm glad you liked Kramer v Kramer, as well.:) Have a nice day!

Notes about the books I'm currently reading:

- I got stuck with Coming Up for Air. So many books, so little time. Plus, I don't really like reading online. If only I could get it as a real paper book.
- Aranyhalacska by Le Clézio: It's a story about a strong woman. I think, Clézio is a master story-teller.
- Nászjelentés: Pure fun and fluff. Irony and stupid puns one loves or hates. I usually read it at meals. (Bad habit, I guess.)
- The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: I can't imagine how I could struggle through a year without reading anything by Stephen King. I'm about 2 or 3 chapters (Innings...) into it and I'm losing my momentum already.. It's about a little girl lost in the wood: she got stung by wasps, fell down near a stream on the wet ground, and so on. Her walkman didn't get damaged. Good idea: I need some music to make it more exciting, I wish I had some sinister classical music (I have no classical music at all, just my luck). And where's the monster???? In a King novel I expect some supernatural element sooner really.

Update:

- Abandoned The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
- Started Diary by Palahniuk. (Can't resist his quirky stories. )
- I'll restart The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (absolutely forgot who is who and why happened what)
- Can go on with Coming Up for Air
- starting a new library book, possibly something by Le Clézio (not sure)
- I'm halfway the second volume of Nászjelentés and soon comes lunchtime, when I usually read it. :)

Update 08/15/09

- Decided to struggle on with this Stephen King book (can't really abandon anything by him, I'm too curious). I only wish I knew the rules of baseball at least, or anything else about it. Now I would like to skip the billion paragraphs describing the game or match or whatever, but I just can't. I still have to watch out, so I don't miss any important, new details about the story itself. Aaaaargh!

(I haven't restarted the one about the cat yet.)

Update: 18/08/09

I also started The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

Update: 20/08/09

The situation bookwise keeps changing. TTFN! (So what book am I reading? :) (It's a bit like Adrian Mole's diary, though it's not so "double cool with knobs". )

Update: 22/08/09

I've finished Rennison, now I'm deeply absorbed in Brooklyn Follies, Auster keeps spinning my mind:)

I'm also reading Say Cheese and Die,- what a disappointment! Now I see why is Coraline so popular, - it's a lot creepier than the Goosebumps series. But I think I'll struggle through some more to be sure. Even Enid Blyton (The Magic Faraway Tree) is a lot more exciting.

Ooops, almost forgot: I'm rereading A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. Hilarious, hysterical dark humor and still it has depths. Hornby at his best.

Message edited by its author, Aug 28, 2009, 3:40am.

#4 Poisson d'or by J.M.G. Le Clézio (in Hungarian).



297 pages
4 stars (I know I keep giving 4 stars, but it's not my fault. Blame the books.:)

Ok, the Hungarain title is a bit different: i'ts 'little goldfish'. (Never trust a Hungarian translator when it comes to titles...but yes, it could've been way worse :)

Laila is a real survivor. She gets kidnapped as a young girl, and she starts drifting on from North Africa to the USA and back. I Couldn't really relate to her, but the author rendered her thoughts and motives so convincingly that I could sympathise with her and wish for a happy ending.

A review about the book that I found and liked:

"Poisson d'or is the first-person account of a young North African woman, Laila, who is kidnapped and sold as a young child and who encounters in her journeys (through Africa, Europe, and America) a vast range of humanity, rich and poor, kind and cruel. Some mistreat and exploit her; others suffer and struggle like her. Midway through the text, Laila - the "golden fish" of the title - realizes that the many people with whom she comes in contact each have their own personal agendas to follow, and that she cannot depend on others to assist her as she confronts the harsh realities of life (...). With no family and no known origins or identity (for she does not in fact know her real name), Laila must endure the cruelties of life on her own.

Although sold into virtual slavery early in life, Laila leads an existence with Lalla Asma - her "mistress" and "grandmother" - that is far from desolate. The death of the latter, however, leads Laila to embark on a potentially endless journey whose destination and purpose she never comes to understand. Eventually she will arrive in France as an illegal immigrant and there will meet many like her - Gypsies, North and West Africans, Haitians - who seek their place in a world hostile to those who do not or cannot conform and adjust to its norms. (...) As this need to find a welcome home is unrealized in France, her adventure will lead her to the United States - Boston, Chicago, and California - and to an improbable new life first as a singer and later as a jazz pianist. Yet she will also again encounter those who find themselves marginalized in society: African Americans, Mexican Americans, drug dealers. Laila's adventure in America will be brief, resulting, ironically, in her return to France in order to play in a jazz festival and in her decision to return to Africa to complete her voyage.

The reader already familiar with the novels of J. M. G. Le Clezio (...) will find in Poisson d'or many of those themes present in his previous works: the fate of the oppressed, the tension between so-called First and Third World societies, the both physical and spiritual journey of self-discovery. In particular, readers will detect many affinities between this work and Desert (1980), which also focuses on the life of a young North African woman who, like Laila, leaves Africa only to return in the end, abandoning an unsatisfying Western world in order to rediscover her true origins and identity." /William Thompson/

- Humor * (Ibasically can't recall any form of humor ocurring in the novel right now)
- Style ***** (simple style, easy to follow, vivid imagery, great descriptions, colorful characters)
- Narrator/protagonist: *** (a real survivor)
- Romance: *
- Plot: ****

Overall, this was a pretty good book. Not my new favorite thing, but worth the read.

Message edited by its author, Aug 13, 2009, 4:13am.

#5 Nászjelentés by Vavyan Fable (Éva Molnár) in Hungarian



443+457 pages
3 stars

I would call it a romantic comedy. Funny, fluffy, witty, but certainly not a fast read. Jandra, our heroine marries the wrong man: Selwyn Icon, the charming actor, who can always make her laugh. Meanwhile, she mets Mr Perfect alias Jamal, the even more charming cop, who is a great friend.

Friends and relatives all in a bunch, plus one by one, try to open up Jandra's eyes, in vain: she seems to be hopelessly devoted to care for the wrong man, who has serious drog and several other issues. All this and more are rendered in Fable's hilarious style, - never try to learn Hungarian reading this book!:) Just read it and enjoy.

(Can't fix the touchstones.)

#6 Angus, Thongs and FullFrontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison



256 pages
3 stars

A fast and easy read, just what I needed these days. Recommended for those who like YA literature.

"The funny little insights of the main character were hilarious precisely because they seemed like snippets from the mind of a 13 or 14 year old. /.../ The roller-coaster world of teenagers is reflected in all its hilarity and irony here. So I liked the book. "/Tessa from Goodreads/

"noon

La Marche avec Mystery. We walked up and down the High Street, only speaking French. I asked passersby for directions, “Ou est Ia gare, s’il vous plait?” and “Au secours, j’oublie ma tête, aidez-moi, s’ilvous plait.”
Then . . . this really dishy bloke came along. Julia and Ellen wouldn’t go up to him, but I did. I don’t know why, but I developed a limp as well as being French. He had really nice eyes . . . he must have been about nineteen. Anyway I hobbled up to him and said,
“Excusez-moi. Je suis francaise. Je ne parle pas l’anglais. Parlezvous français?”
Fortunately he looked puzzled—it was quite dreamy. I pouted my mouth a bit. Cindy Crawford said that if you put your tongue behind your back teeth when you smile, it makes your smile really sexy. Impossible to talk, of course, unless you like sounding like a loony.
Anyway, dreamboat said, “Are you lost? I don’t speak French.”
I looked puzzled (and pouty). “Au secours, monsieur,” I breathed.
He took my arm. “Look, don’t be frightened. Come with me.”
Ellen and Jools looked amazed: He was bloody gorgeous and he was taking me somewhere. I hobbled along attractively by his side. Not for very long, though, just into a French pâtisserie where the lady behind the counter was French.

8:00 p.m.
In bed. The Frenchwoman talked French at me for about forty years. I nodded for as long as humanly possible, then just ran out of the shop and into the street. The gorgeous boy looked surprised that my limp had cured itself so quickly."

I definitely liked this funny diary whenever it described anecdotes like these. Made me feel quite nostalgic sometimes.

Update:

Shortly, my favorite sentences from the anecdote:
"I hobbled along attractively by his side."
"I nodded for as long as humanly possible"

I definitely must read some more sequels. Or I'll reread Adrian Mole.

Message edited by its author, Aug 27, 2009, 3:25pm.

Last night I finished rereading

#7. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby



5 stars
352 pages

A Whitbread Prize nominee in 2005.
'It's a thrill to watch a writer as talented as Hornby take on the grimmest of subjects without flinching, and somehow make it funny and surprising at the same time'/Tom Perotta, Publishers Weekly/

Deep (even if slightly preachy):

"There was something else in the article I read: an interview with a man who'd survived after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He said that two seconds after jumping, he realized that there was nothing in his life he couldn't deal with, no problem he couldn't solve - apart from the problem he'd just given himself by jumping off the bridge. I don't know why I didn't tell the others about that; you'd think it might be relevant information. I wanted to keep it to myself for the time being, though. It seemed like something that might be more appropriate later, when the story was over. If it ever was."

Hysterically funny:

“To be fair to JJ, he'd taken his guests with him when he went - he hadn't left them behind in the coffee bar, the way Jess and Martin had done. But later on I found out that he'd taken them all outside to have a fight with them, so it was difficult to decide whether he was being rude or not. On the one hand, he was with them, but on the other hand, he was with them because he wanted to beat them up. I think that's probably still rude, but not as rude as the others.”

Summary:

"New Years Eve at Toppers House, North London's most popular suicide spot. And four strangers are about to discover that doing away with yourself isn't quite the private act they'd each expected.

Perma-tanned Martin Sharp's a disgraced breakfast TV presenter who had it all - the kids, the wife, the pad, the great career - but he 'pissed it all away'. Killing himself is Martin's 'reasonable and appropriate response' to an unliveable life.

Maureen has to do it tonight, because of Matty being in the home. He was never able to do any of the normal things kids do - like walk or talk - and loving-mum Maureen can't cope any more. Dutiful Catholic that she is, she's about to commit the 'biggest sin of all'.

Half-crazed with heartbreak, loneliness, adolescent angst, seven Bacardi Breezers and two Special Brews, Jess's ready to jump, to fly off the roof. Lastly, there's JJ - tall, cool, American, looks like a rock-star (was, in fact, a rock-star before his band split) - who's weighed down with a heap of problems and pizza.

Four strangers, who moments before were all convinced that they were alone and going to end it all that way, sit down together, share out the pizza and begin to talk.

Funny, sad, and wonderfully humane, Nick Hornby's A LONG WAY DOWN is a novel that asks some of the big questions: about life and death, strangers and friendship, love and pain, and whether a slice of pizza can really see you through a long, dark night of the soul."

'Extremely funny … cunning and wise. Hornby remains one of our most gifted comic writers'
Sunday Times

'Hornby's best novel to date, impossible to put down … how can an examination of four people's anguish be so enthralling?'
Ruth Rendell, Guardian

'A page-turning plot and rich, funny characters with several big laughs on every page … Hornby's best yet'
Literary Review

'Hornby pins down the age in which we live with precision and comic brilliance'
Guardian

'Hugely enjoyable'
Irish Times

'Masterful … some of the finest writing, and some of the most outstanding characters I've ever had the pleasure of reading'
Johnny Depp

'The finest novel Hornby has written to date'
Evening Standard

'Enjoyably readable, genuinely moving'
Guardian

'A writer of great feeling and warmth … high on charm and frequently hilarious'
Washington Post

'Highly moving and lively storytelling: Honey's gifts become more apparent with each outing'
Kirkus Reviews

'Immensely impressive and loveable'
Heat

'There are plenty of wry laughs to be had here'
Glamour

'A pleasure'
Helen Dunmore, The Times

'Stays with you. Hornby's writing is so popular because he goes straight to the moral struggle: to find the good in life. About that, he couldn't be more serious. Or engaging'
Evening Standard

'A fine book'
Sunday Express

'Hornby excels in the delineation of individual voice … the warmest and most committed of moralists'
Spectator

'Many pleasures'
Marie Claire

'Laughs on every page. A premier league effort: this is Hornby's best novel since High Fidelity … this is one treat that leave you with a satisfied smile'
Independent on Sunday

'The jolliest novel Hornby has written'
Guardian

'Perhaps the funniest and most exhilarating novel ever written about group suicide. A long way up from much modern fiction, which seems to have been written to supply us with reasons to jump'
Village Voice

'A Hornby fan's dream'
Esquire

'Hornby's most original and accomplished novel to date … there are numerous moments of old, knowing Hornbyesque humour, zeitgeisty references'
Mirror

'Hilarious yet heartbreaking'
In Style

'Generous and wise. Right from the open pages, a smile played continually across my face'
GQ

'Darkly comic'
San Francisco Chronicle

'Brilliant, smart and funny … a cello suite about how to go on living. It's hard to imagine a novel more darkly and sublimely devoted to life'
Boston Globe

You can read all these, some links to other reviews about the book plus brilliant excerpts here:
http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/...

Message edited by its author, Aug 24, 2009, 4:42am.

You are really zooming along! I have never read anything by Nick Hornby, but I must admit that I am curious to read one. Have a great day!
--BJ

Thanks!:) I don't feel the zooming part, because I keep picking up new and new books, looking for the real thing.:) Now I discovered a 'new to me' children's books series, for instance, and I'm definitely charmed by it. As to Hornby, this book was really great, I quite forgot how much I enjoyed it last time. Hope you will enjoy his books as well, when you give them a go! Happy Reading!

#8. The Field Guide by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
(The first book in the Spiderwick Chronicles series)



114 pages
5 stars

I really loved this one. A cute and spooky story with great illustrations (I loved every nook and niche of the mysterious, old house:), a wonderful children's book!

Message edited by its author, Aug 24, 2009, 5:15pm.

# 9. The Seeing Stone by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
(The second book in the Spiderwick Chronicles series)



4 stars
128 pages

The three siblings are attacked by some goblins who kidnap Simon. Jared and Mallory decide to rescue him. They meet a troll and a hobgoblin during their adventures in the forest. Simon, a griffin and a kitten all get saved in the end.
A well written, moderately creepy and funny sequel to The Field Guide. A very short, very fast read again, - especially recommended after a tiresome, busy day. :)

(I'm currently also rereading the New York Trilogy by Auster.)

#10 City of Glass by Paul Auster



4 stars
208 pages

The first novel in the New York Trilogy. It was a reread. (1985)

"the stories of The New York Trilogy have been described as "meta-detective-fiction", "anti-detective fiction", "mysteries about mysteries", a "strangely humorous working of the detective novel", "very soft-boiled", a "metamystery" and a "mixture between the detective story and the nouveau roman". This may classify Auster as a postmodern writer whose works are influenced by the "classical literary movement" of American postmodernism through the 1960s and 70s. There is, however, "a certain coherence in the narrative discourse, a neo-realistic approach and a show of responsibility for social and moral aspects going beyond mere metafictional and subversive elements", which distinguish him from a "traditional" postmodern writer. The New York Trilogy is a particular form of postmodern detective fiction which still uses well-known elements of the detective novel (the classical and hardboiled varieties, for example) but also creates a new form that links "the traditional features of the genre with the experimental, metafictional and ironic features of postmodernism." /wikipedia/

Summary:

"City of Glass features a detective-fiction writer become private investigator who descends into madness as he becomes embroiled in a case. It explores layers of identity and reality, from Paul Auster the writer of the novel to the unnamed "author" who reports the events as reality to "Paul Auster the writer", a character in the story, to "Paul Auster the detective", who may or may not exist in the novel, to Peter Stillman the younger to Peter Stillman the elder and, finally, to Daniel Quinn, the protagonist." /wikipedia/

"As Alison Russell notes, rather than locating a missing person or solving a murder, Auster's detective "becomes a pilgrim searching for correspondence between signifiers and signifieds" while also undertaking "a quest for his own identity". In City of Glass, however, the questor can never arrive at his desired destination, for in this world signifiers are not attached to signifieds, while the distinction between self and other no longer holds."/Richard Swope/

"Regardless of the obvious splintering of Quinn's identity, he continues to believe that "he could return to being Quinn whenever he wished", assuming that a "true" self remains unchanged and accessible beneath his various facades. Unfortunately, unlike the cases Quinn writes and reads, the case he "lives" not only fails to produce a tidy conclusion, but in failing indicates the instability of the world as well as the indeterminacy of language and the self." /Richard Swope/

An amazing book. (Ok, I still think almost everyone is just going mad sooner or later in this book, but it surely can be looked on from a different angle.)

"I place this item on a none-too-tiny list of literary Rorschach tests"/jburlinson, Library Thing/

Message edited by its author, Aug 29, 2009, 4:50pm.

# 11. Lucinda's Secret by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
(The third book in the Spiderwick Chronicles series)



128 pages
5 stars

The three siblings meet a phooka and some elves this time. A truly enjoyable kids' series!

Message edited by its author, Sep 4, 2009, 2:39pm.

I still haven't read The New York Trilogy yet; but I am hoping to read it sometime next year.

How is the weather there? We are having nice, early fall type weather here. Quite suprising for August. My sweet dog loves it and is willing to leave the ac and explore the great outdoors. Have a great day!
--BJ

Hi Billiejean!:)

We have nice sunny weather here, no signs of autumn yet. :) I think you would enjoy New York Trilogy, even Don Quixote is discussed in the City of Glass,- Auster's characters can create the craziest theories about practically anything or anyone.:) I'm also reading the Brooklyn Follies and I've just started Ghosts, the second book in the trilogy. Blue, the protagonist has already started to lose his identity and his connection with reality, but I hope he takes a grip on them in time and don't let them go like Quinn did in the first book.:) Btw, what are you reading these days?
I'm also reading A Girl's Best Friend which/who is actually a sweet doggie, too:)

Have a great weekend and lots of sunshine!

Message edited by its author, Aug 28, 2009, 4:26pm.

Hi, readeron!
I have to agree on the doggie being a girl's best friend! I am almost finished with Naked in Death for the romantic suspense category. Soon I will start Remains of the Day and Greenwitch (which I still can't find). There is just too much out there available to read. I will never be caught up!
--BJ

I feel exactly the same way!:) This series (Dark is Rising) sounds great and I do have it in my TBR piles, too, but somehow too many books make it harder to choose one. Afraid I quite neglected the genre challenge recently, - couldn't tell when I became such a literary fiction freak (I have always been a Children's books freak, so it's not such a great surprise). Probably I should just read on Naked in Death too (I've read one or 2 pages but wasn't in the mood to read on and finish it), but really there are so many wonderful books out there (on my shelves, too) that for instance some weeks ago I just gave up reading for a day and decided to treat my books like I was in a bookstore at home: taking books in the hand, reading the blurbs, reading some lines to savour the style, skipping to the next book, let myself relax and honestly: memorize what books I do have, I even printed my TBRs in a file (110 pages), and now I still had no idea I have this series (Dark is Rising), which is another great kids' series I guess and I definitely plan to read it one day, but... (*drowning in TBR piles so can't babble on*:)

I hope you are enjoying all your readings!:)
Have a great weekend!:)

#12. Ghosts by Paul Auster
(2nd book in the New York Trilogy)



102 pages
4 stars

"This is the second, and perhaps most peculiar, volume of the New York Trilogy. The issues of control and power over a story between the author, the characters, and the readers are brought up even more explicitly in this work. Again the detective plays a prominent role in exploring these ideas, but the focus is even more explicitly focused on words, language, and the experience of reading or writing a book.

The story begins with a detective who has been hired to watch another man and write down everything that this other man does. The problem is that all that this other man does is sit at his desk and write all day, which is, therefore, all that the detective ends up doing. Eventually he learns that the man across the street who he has been hired to observe is also the man who has hired him. Once he has gained this knowledge, the detective begins to wonder what the point of his assignment is, and eventually decides to confront the man who has been toying with him. This confrontation between character (the detective) and author (the man across the street) is the tension that lies at the heart of all three books of the Trilogy.

Auster told me that a friend of his told him that it was a parable about reading a book, which is as good a description as I've heard. It also follows up on the theme of the character/reader escaping the control of the author and writing their own stories instead of passively submitting to the author's control, an idea that is the focus of the final installment of the Trilogy." /bluecricket.com/

Whoever wrote this, I couldn't agree more.

(Hope the touchstone will work.)

That was so interesting! I have got to read those books!
--BJ

I think you would enjoy them! But as I'm a sort of Auster fan, I think everyone would and should enjoy his books.:) And definitely everyone should read them :)
I've read The New York Trilogy three times and it gets better each time.(Still Oracle Night is my favourite Auster yet, though.:)

Have a great day!

# 13 The Locked Room by Paul AUster
(The third book in the New York Trilogy series)



179 pages
4 stars

The Locked Room is the story of the unnamed narrator who we only know as FANSHAWE'S FRIEND. When Fanshawe, a famous author, vanishes, leaving behind a wife, a son, and a horde of novels, plays and poems, his friend slowly takes over Fanshawe's life, publishing his work, marrying his wife, adopting his son, even as he becomes obsessed with his investigation into his friend's disappearance.

Questions of identity are raised, dropped, and rendered moot as the plots twist, turn, and fall back on themselves "like literary Mobius strips--by turns curious and surprising and always fascinating." (Fredic Scott, San Francisco Examiner). These books have more layers than a truck full of onions, but, like noted literary critic Eddie Cochran once said, "when it all comes true, man, that's something else!" /thrillingdetective.com/

"The Locked Room takes it title from the popular detective fiction mystery of a dead body found in locked room with no other entrances, but, in keeping with the ideas presented in the first two books of The New York Trilogy, it is transformed into a metaphor about a character/reader's relationship to a text—a book becomes a locked room because of the character/reader's inability to escape the control of the author. This story also features a detective as its protagonist, although he is a detective in a much looser sense of the word. It is also the only book in the Trilogy where the protagonist is not given a name and where the story is told from a first person point of view, which emphasizes the greater control over the text that the character achieves by the end of the book."/bluecricket.com/

I really enjoyed this one, too. So original and entertaining. I did not want it to end, although it was a reread.

Message edited by its author, Sep 1, 2009, 4:26am.

# 14. The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster



5 stars
304 pages

"Nathan convinced his cancer will return, returns to Brooklyn to die alone. Instead he finds a long lost nephew, great niece, her mother, neighborhood characters and life returns all by a series of chances. Is life all by chance? Auster shows it this way. Easy read, very light and humorous." /rayski, LT/

"From the bestselling author of Oracle Night and The Book of Illusions, an exhilarating, whirlwind tale of one man's accidental redemption.

Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore—a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York." Through Tom and Harry, Nathan's world gradually broadens to include a new set of acquaintances—not to mention a stray relative or two—and leads him to a reckoning with his past.
Among the many twists in the delicious plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man." But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others.
The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving and unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life." /FantasticFiction.co.uk/

#15. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh



320 pages
5 stars

"His 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust, is a sublime example of his bleak satirical style: a mordantly funny exposé of aristocratic decadence and ennui in England between the wars.

Tony Last is an aristocrat whose attachment to an ideal feudal past is so profound that he is blind to his wife Brenda's boredom with the stately rhythms of country life. While he earnestly plays the lord of the manor in his ghastly Victorian Gothic pile, she sets herself up in a London flat and pursues an affair with the social-climbing idler John Beaver. In the first half of the novel Waugh fearlessly anatomizes the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. Everyone moves through an endless cycle of parties and country-house weekends, being scrupulously polite in public and utterly horrid in private. Sex is something one does to relieve the boredom, and Brenda's affair provides a welcome subject for conversation:

It had been an autumn of very sparse and meagre romance; only the most obvious people had parted or come together, and Brenda was filling a want long felt by those whose simple, vicarious pleasure it was to discuss the subject in bed over the telephone.

Tony's indifference and Brenda's selfishness give their relationship a sort of equilibrium until tragedy forces them to face facts. The collapse of their relationship accelerates, and in the famous final section of the book Tony seeks solace in a foolhardy search for El Dorado, throwing himself on the mercy of a jungle only slightly more savage than the one he leaves behind in England. For all its biting wit, A Handful of Dust paints a bleak picture of the English upper classes, reaching beyond satire toward a very modern sense of despair. In Waugh's world, culture, breeding, and the trappings of civilization only provide more subtle means of destruction." /Simon Leake/

A great satire, funny and witty. Mr Todd cracked me up.:) So did the style, too:

In the evening, if they had halted early enough, he employed the last hours of daylight in elaborating a chart. ‘Dry water course, three deserted huts, stony ground …’
“We are now in the Amazon system of rivers,” he announced with satisfaction one day. “You see, the water is running South.” But almost immediately they crossed a stream flowing in the opposite direction. “Very curious,” said Dr. Messinger. “A discovery of genuine scientific value.”
Next day they waded through four streams at intervals of two miles, running alternately North and South. The chart began to have a mythical appearance.

Message edited by its author, Sep 4, 2009, 9:40am.

Interesting review of the Waugh book. I have several of Waugh's books and need to read them. Have a great day!
--BJ

Oops, yes, I forgot to use italics inside the review that I copied here. Corrected it now.

I wish I had more books by Waugh, as well, because I really enjoyed this one. Plain mockery of a class most of the time, and still, I couldn't help liking a bit Tony and feeling a bit sorry for both him and Brenda by the end of the story.

Happy Reading!

Message edited by its author, Sep 4, 2009, 9:42am.

Started some Pynchon, got intimidated and got back in a hurry to Jack Reacher, my hero:)
He is lucky:

Seven thirty-nine, more than three hundred miles to the north and east, Jack Reacher climbed out of his motel room window. One minute earlier, he had been in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. One minute before that, he had opened the door of his room to check the morning temperature. He had left it open, and the closet just inside the entrance passageway was faced with mirrored glass, and there was a shaving mirror in the bathroom on a cantilevered arm, and by a freak of optical chance he caught sight of four men getting out of a car and walking toward the motel office. Pure luck, but a guy as vigilant as Jack Reacher gets lucky more times than the average.

peaceful and modest, but never insecure:

Reacher turned his head and looked at him. Not really to antagonize the guy. Just to size him up. Life is endlessly capable of surprises, so he knew one day he would come face to face with his physical equal. With somebody who might worry him. But he looked and saw this wasn't the day. So he just smiled and looked away again.

and pretty agressive if someone gets too annoying (like this guy who kept jabbing him with his greasy finger):

"Touch me again and you'll find out," Reacher said. "I warned you four times."
The guy paused a second. Then, of course, he went for it again. Reacher caught the finger on the way in and snapped it at the first knuckle. Just folded it upward like he was turning a door handle. Then because he was irritated he leaned forward and headbutted the guy full in the face. It was a smooth move, well delivered, but it was backed off to maybe a half of what it might have been. No need to put a guy in a coma, over four grease marks on a shirt.

As you can see, he isn't vain.
So that's another book I've started to read: Echo Burning by Lee Child.

Message edited by its author, Sep 4, 2009, 1:02pm.

#16 The Ironwood Tree by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
(The fourth book in the Spiderwick Chronicles series)



4 stars
160 pages

"At school, someone is running around pretending to be Jared, and it's not Simon. To make matters even worse, now Mallory has disappeared and something foul in the water is killing off all the plants and animals for miles around. Clues point to the old abandoned quarry, just outside of town. Dwarves have taken over an abandoned mine there. And the faerie world's abuzz with the news that a creature with plans to rule the world has offered them a gift to join with him-- he's given them a queen..." /fantasticfiction/

I added Echo Burning to my wishlist! I am so glad that I have finally figured out how to do that!
--BJ

I'm glad that you liked the excerpts.:) As to the collections, my computer simply refuses to use them (plus it refuses to drag and drop anything, too, no idea why, so I can't customize the home page etc.), but tags are quite ok for me to put books on the wishlist.

A good news (or a memo to myself, in case everyone else knew about it already:): in the future I may read less contemporary books (ok, it's not exactly the good part of the news, not even the news yet), because I found a site (librivox.org - now that's the news:) where most of the books available in the public domain are made into free mp3 files. So I missed a night's sleep indulging alternately in The Circular Staircase and the Book of Dragons.

Btw, Echo Burning is a good choice both for the genre challenge (the mystery category) and for Texas in the Fifty States Challenge. I actually tried Pynchon for the 50 states challenge, - it's not so bad (it's definitely funny sometimes) ,but I had to keep my head in the dictionary half of the time while I was reading, so just gave it up:)

Have a great weekend! Happy reading!

Update: Oops, that was another book, Pynchon was killing me with the length and structure of his sentences.

Message edited by its author, Sep 5, 2009, 2:50am.

# 17 Say Cheese and Die! (Goosebumps, #4) by R L Stine



144 pages
3 stars

Finally, I decided to finish this one, my first Stine. The ending, and all the twists and turns of the road were far too predictable. I'm sure there are more exciting and original books in the series (or at least I hope so, because I have some more...).

Borrowed from Nanybebette's thread:

Please complete using only books you've read this year... Try to use titles only once!

Describe Yourself: Homebody

How do you feel: Can You Keep A Secret?

Describe where you currently live: Lullaby Town

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Manhunting, haha, nooo, ok, let's take it seriously: The City of Glass by Paul Auster

And I had to use the last year's titles, too, but otherwise ,it was fun. :)

Message edited by its author, Sep 5, 2009, 9:58am.

You continue to zoom along, readeron! I haven't started on the 50 state challenge yet as I am trying to get that 999 done. The only way that I have found to add to my wishlist is to click on the book in a thread. Then when the book pops up, it has a place that says Add to Wishlist. I only have 2 books on the wishlist so far. I tried to add them manually to the wishlist but utterly failed. I haven't read any Pynchon myself. Right now I am reading Greenwitch from the Susan Cooper Dark is Rising series. I am about halfway through (it's pretty short). For the September genre challenge, I am reading one of the John Sandford Prey books. I am thinking that it might be pretty scary. I hope not too scary. I will try to stick to reading in the daytime when I get to it. :)

That's a pretty good quiz there. I wonder if any of my titles will work. I will check it out.
--BJ

Thanks billiejean! I wish Reacher would zoom a bit more too in this book, but must admit he doesn't excel in the latest chapters. He smashed a clock and some crockery right now but the main plot is just dragging on. I hope it picks up later though. This is my 4th book in the series (I read them pretty randomly) and so far my favorite is the first one, Killing Floor. I've read only one Sandford yet, Rules of Prey, it was a real page-turner, hope you will like it as much as I did! :)

Have a great day!

Message edited by its author, Sep 8, 2009, 4:40pm.

# 18 The Book of Dragons by Edith Nesbit



176 pages
4 stars

Eight funny and charming stories about dragons.

1.The Book of Beasts (Lionel finds a wonderful magical book.)
2. Uncle James, or The Purple Stranger (It's about an island where everybody is nice, except for Uncle James)
3.The Deliverers of Their Country (Hilarious, imaginative, original and charming story. My favorite one in the book.)
4. The Ice Dragon (Sealskin dwarves are pretty dangerous, but if you have friends, even they can be defeated.)
5.The Island of the Nine Whirlpools (Probably the cutest story in the book.) It starts like this:

The dark arch that led to the witch's cave was hung with a black-and-yellow fringe of live snakes. As the Queen went in, keeping
carefully in the middle of the arch, all the snakes lifted their wicked, flat heads and stared at her with their wicked, yellow eyes. You know it is not good manners to stare, even at Royalty, except of course for
cats. And the snakes had been so badly brought up that they even put their tongues out at the poor lady. Nasty, thin, sharp tongues they were too.

6. The Dragon Tamers (The poor beast gets tricked by almost everyone.:)
7. The Fiery Dragon, or The Heart of Stone and the Heart of Gold (Nesbit at her best again, I loved the piggies.)
8. Kind Little Edmund, or The Caves and the Cockatrice (Not bad, either.)

# 19 Echo Burning by Lee Child



432 pages
4 stars

A great beginning, a so-so middle and a great ending. Though the story slows down at about the 2/3, this change of pace is absolutely necessary: it prepares us for a perfectly unpredictable ending. Reacher is already sitting on the bus to leave the whole situation behind unsolved, when he suddenly gets scent and swings into action. In the last few chapters he really whizzes through the case with no particular effort.

Summary:

"Hitching rides is an unreliable mode of transport. In temperatures of over a hundred degrees, you're lucky if a driver will open the door of his air-conditioned car long enough to let you slide in. That's Jack Reacher's conclusion. He's adrift in the fearsome heat of a Texas summer, and he needs to keep moving through the wide open vastness, like a shark in the water. The last thing he's worried about is exactly who picks him up.

He never expected it to be somebody like Carmen. She's alone, driving a Cadillac. She's beautiful, young and rich. She has a little girl who is being watched by unseen observers. And a husband who is in jail. Who will beat her senseless when he comes out. If he doesn't kill her first.

Reacher is no stranger to trouble. And at Carmen's remote ranch in Echo County there is plenty of it: lies and prejudice, hatred and murder. Reacher can never resist a lady in distress. Her family is hostile. The cops can't be trusted. The lawyers won't help. If Reacher can't set things straight, who can? " /goodreads/

Message edited by its author, Sep 11, 2009, 7:48am.

# 20 When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro



4 stars
313 pages

"The novel's first half, though nominally set in London, moves back and forth between Banks's present and his past in China with a dexterity that recalls Ford Madox Ford's classic novel ''The Good Soldier.'' One scene, one moment, slips effortlessly into its antecedent; an aside or an afterthought buds into revelation. And Ishiguro's handling of time isn't his only echo of Ford; this too is a novel about its narrator's self-deception. Banks has always believed that his mother's outspoken criticism of the opium trade was responsible for his parents' disappearance. Somebody must have wanted them out of the way. Yet the plot has never been cracked open, and Banks sees his early career as merely a preparation for his own attempt to take up the trail in crime-ridden and polyglot Shanghai. It is a trail that, in the novel's second half, involves him in the eruption of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

On his arrival, Banks is taken by Shanghai's business community to be a kind of diplomatic fixer, as though the looming conflict were as easy to solve as a case of ''stolen jewels.'' This is a world in which people depend on the well-spoken consulting detective, in which Banks seems to be taken at his own valuation. Ishiguro has, however, suggested from the start that his narrator is rather an ''odd bird,'' and at this point begins to orchestrate an ever-growing dissonance between the detective's own judgments and those the book presents as ''normal.'' For Banks sees an equation between his parents' mysterious disappearance and the onset of the war, believing that his mother and father have remained trapped in Shanghai all these years, that their situation is the cause of the struggle. (...) Banks's quest is at once ludicrous and terrible, a journey in a landscape that seems to change along with his psychological state, but one that can nevertheless be plotted on a map of the actual battle." /Michael Gorra/

Message edited by its author, Sep 12, 2009, 5:57pm.

Hey, readeron!
I was not familiar with this book. I just read The Remains of the Day, which I absolutely loved. So I think that I will look into this one as well.
--BJ

It's not that I couldn't put it down, I actually read it in two days. But I didn't (couldn't?) read anything else till finishing this novel. An intriguing and suspenseful story. Hope you will like it, too!

#21. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon



226 pages
5 stars

A deeply moving story told from a 15-year-old autistic boy's point of view. Well-written, unique.

Yesterday finished rereading
#22 Nine Stories by J D Salinger



320 pages
3 stars

Amazon.com Review:
"In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.

The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. "A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed."

And some customer reviews:
"Nine Stories is a famous collection. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" has lost none of its power to shock. To experience the vitality and humor of Seymour's conversation with the little girl on the beach - the ending is sad and inexplicable, and of course the Glass family is terribly wounded as a result. This story is a must-read, but so is "For Esmé with Love and Squalor" (a moving story about traumatic stress and the healing power of love,) and "Teddy," a unique and funny story about a 10-year old genius who has a very old soul. "

"This is a collection of short stories and vignettes which act as snapshots of the lives of the characters within them. Some are rather short and feel a bit incomplete or idle, but I think this was intended by Salinger so as to not bog down the reader with overt themes or ideology and simply to show moments in peoples' lives. I'm thinking particularly of 'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut', 'Just Before the War with the Eskimos', 'Down at the Dingy' and 'Pretty Mouth and Green Eyes' when I say that some of the stories feel a little light on purpose. Still, they are well-written and worth reading."

"Published after The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nine Stories is quintessential Salinger. Having first read Salinger's collection of Nine Stories as a college student, these short stories have remained in my thoughts for years.

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (first published in the The New Yorker, January 31, 1948) tells the story of war veteran Seymour Glass, who commits suicide while on his honeymoon with his wife, Muriel, in Florida. While Muriel discusses fashion with her mother at the hotel bar, suicidal Seymour sits on the beach with an innocent young girl, Sybil, who becomes fascinated with him. Rating: A perfect 5/5.

"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" (first published in the The New Yorker, March 20, 1948) tells the story of suburban housewife, Eloise, still haunted by the death of Walt Glass, who was killed in an explosion during the war. As suggested by the subtle sideways glance of a drunken friend, Eloise has never recovered from Walt's death. This is a story as relevant today as when it was first published sixty years ago. Rating: 5/5.

"Just Before the War with the Eskimos" (first published in The New Yorker, June 5, 1948) tells the story of two high school classmates, Ginnie Mannox and Selena Graff, in a dispute over money. Ginnie and Selena play tennis together every Saturday, but Selena never offers to pay for their cab. When Ginnie confronts her, Selena explains, "It may interest you to know . . . that my mother is very ill." After meeting Selena's brother Franklin (who offers Ginnie half of his chicken sandwich) and his friend Eric at Selena's apartment, Ginnie has a sudden change of heart about the cab fare. Rating: 5/5.

"The Laughing Man" (first published in The New Yorker, March 19, 1949) tells a story within a story about a nine-year-old, who (along with his fellow "Comanches") would spend afternoons with "the Chief" (a Staten Island law student). At the end of each day, the Chief would tell them a new chapter in his on-going serial about a deformed criminal, which ultimately becomes the story of his doomed relationship with his summer girlfriend. Rating: 5/5.

"Down at the Dinghy" tells the story of Boo Boo Glass's peculiar young son, Lionel, who overhears a house servant, Sandra, refer to his father as a "big sloppy kike." Rating: 5/5.

"For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" (first published in The New Yorker, April 8, 1950) tells the story of Army Sergeant X (Buddy Glass?), who reminisces over a young girl, Esmé, who helped him to endure the squalor of WWII. He promises to correspond with Esmé and to write a story in her honor, but then suffers an emotional breakdown. This story becomes Sergeant X's recovery. Rating: 5/5.

"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" tells the story of two lawyers, in which one is distracted from a romantic evening with his love interest by his friend's midnight phone call about his missing wife. His troublesome wife, we learn, has failed to return home from a party. Rating: 5/5.

"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" tells the humorous story of a newly- hired art teacher at a correspondence "art academy," who falls hopelessly in love with a religious painting, the work of his sole pupil (a nun). Rating: 4/5.

"Teddy" (first published in The New Yorker, January 31, 1953) tells the story of a ten-year-old genius, Teddy McArdle. Revealing that he is wise beyond his years, Teddy discusses the very nature of existence with a graduate student, Nicholson, on board an oceanliner. Teddy recalls a previous life in which he was a man in India who was "making very nice spiritual advancement," but stopped praying upon meeting a woman. Teddy envisions his own death by being pushed into the empty pool by his sister. The haunting story ends with "an all-piercing, sustained scream--clearly coming from a small, female child." Rating: 5/5."/G. Merritt/

I really wanted to like this book more, too. Probably at the next reread I will... Presently I'm still struggling with A Girl's Best Friend. (Why is it 500 pages or so, why?)

My ratings:
"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" 4 stars
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" 2 stars
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos" 2 stars
"The Laughing Man" 3 stars
"Down at the Dinghy" 2 stars
"For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" 3 stars
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" 3 stars
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" 4 stars
"Teddy" 3 stars

#23. A Girl's Best Friend by Liz Young



512 pages
3 stars

Average chick lit. An entertaining story about love, friends and doggies.

Message edited by its author, Sep 17, 2009, 6:28pm.

#24. Eleven by Patricia Highsmith



5 stars
176 pages

A collection of 11 great short stories.

"Her stories range from the macabre to the suspenseful. What makes them particularly chilling is that many of them take place in otherwise mundane everyday settings with people who may be either quite ordinary or slightly bizarre, but to whom something extraordinary happens. These are stories that will capture the imagination of the reader. Some even reminded me a little bit of the stories of H. P. Lovecraft, as some of them contain a strong element of horror, crafted, however, in a most delicate, sublime fashion.

These eleven compelling short stories will keep the reader turning the pages of this marvelous little book. It is a book well worth having in one's personal collection. Bravo!" /Lawyeraau, Amazon/

"Patricia Highsmith is a wonderful story teller, and with Eleven she masters the short story genre. Her tales are not easy; its a world of strange and obssesive people who always push their obsessions to the limit, and you as a reader will feel involved in this claustrophobic world. So beware when you're reading it, you may feel someone strangely breathing on your neck." /Adriana Villanueva, Amazon/

I loved all the stories. Some reminded me of short stories of Roald Dahl, some were a bit like stories by Stephen King. Weird, odd, bizarre, creepy tales.

Contents:
1 The Snail Watcher
2 The Birds Poised to Fly
3 The Terrapin
4 When the Fleet Was in at Mobile
5 The Quest for Blank Claveringi
6 The Cries of Love
7 Mrs Afton among thy Green Braes
8 The Heroine
9 Another Bridge to Cross
10 The Barbarians
11 The Empty Birdhouse

#25 Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen



192 pages
4 stars

I haven't seen the movie. Kaysen's memoir is a fast read. Very moving, ocasionally quite creepy and/or depressing though.

"Kaysen writes a affecting account of her stay at McLean. No melodrama, just her observations are recorded. She has humanized a place that few people know about.
Kaysen also gives the reader insight into the ravages of mental illness and the diagnosis and treatments in use at the time (1967).
A moving account of a horrifying experience, elogquently told by a participant."/kepitcher, LT/

Hi, readeron!
I loved your reviews of the books of short stories. They both sound really interesting. I am still reading Dracula and I like it so far. I was looking ahead on the genre challenge and saw that the last category is women. Do you think that means chick lit? Or romance? Or literature by women? I have already picked out a book for western -- Dances with Wolves. Haven't even looked at the thriller one yet. I am hoping that I can borrow a book for that one. I am feeling the need to finish the 999 but I still have 15 books to go. I am off to see my girls at their respective colleges later this week and through the weekend. I am really excited! Hope you have a great day!
--BJ

Hi billiejean!:)

I didn't join in the Halloween challenge (probably next year, if it becomes a tradition:), because I just brought home some zillion books from the library (with deadlines, yes:), so I really didn't feel like rereading Dracula again in a rush (though I truly love the book:), I plan to reread it at a leisurely pace one day. The December category is actually something like Novels of Women's lives and Relationships (at least the Reader's Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction says so:) and I think they must be written by women. I guess this category is broader than romance (which has in the book a separate chapter), but may include chick lit which usually includes more facets of the heroine's life than a simple romance.

Here I found a possible list of authors for all genres mentioned in the book:
http://www.cmrls.lib.ms.us/ra_lists.htm

Thrillers are easy, there are legal thrillers and medical thrillers, sure you have around on your shelves a Grisham or something by Robin Cook (my favourite Cook is Terminal:)

My 999 challenge is a disaster!:) I'm working on it, but the progress is really hard to notice :)

Dances with wolves is a great choice, I've read it in Hungarian some years ago, but now I plan to read some old 'classic' like something by Zane Grey. The only other "western" I've read so far I guess is "The Ransom of Red Chief" by O'Henry.:) So this genre will really take me way out of my comfort zone:)

Thanks a lot for dropping by and hope you're having a great day! Happy Reading!

Message edited by its author, Sep 21, 2009, 1:48pm.

#26. Flowers in the Rain And Other Stories
by Rosamunde Pilcher



304 pages
4 stars

"Her stories explore universal themes like love and marriage, friendship, birth, death, and dreams coming true. All of her characters, children, young women, bachelors, newlyweds, older gentlemen and mothers and fathers, are so engaging and lifelike, you feel as if you want to befriend each and every resident of her Scottish and Cornish villages." /Mrs. Walkins, goodreads/

The author depicts the everyday joys of village life. 16 comforting, contemporary stories about relationships, love and hope. As to the genre: the book is a typical gentle read, I guess. Occasionally a bit too sentimental for my taste. Still, I quite liked it.

Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2009, 11:43am.

I'm currently reading The Blind Assassin, Watermelon and Our Elizabeth.

#27. Watermelon by Marian Keyes

4 stars
608 pages



Chick lit at its best. Funny, witty, cute.

"At twenty-nine, fun-loving, good-natured Claire has everything she ever wanted: a husband she adores, a great apartment, a good job. Then, on the day she gives birth to her first baby, James visits her in the recovery room to tell her that he’s leaving her. Claire is left with a beautiful newborn daughter, a broken heart, and a body that she can hardly bear to look at in the mirror. So, in the absence of any better offers, Claire decides to go home to her family in Dublin. To her gorgeous man-eating sister Helen, her soap-watching mother, her bewildered father. And there, sheltered by the love of her (albeit quirky) family, she gets better. A lot better. In fact, so much better that when James slithers back into her life, he’s in for a bit of a surprise." /goodreads/

Message edited by its author, Sep 27, 2009, 3:31pm.

#28 The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood



4 stars
648 pages

It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

A forgettable page turner. I'll probably reread it someday.

"This is chiefly the story of the Chase sisters, Iris and Laura, granddaughters of the benevolent founder of a button factory in the Canadian town of Port Ticonderoga. The girls grow up in the 1920's in a large 19th-century house named Avilion after the ''island-valley'' in ''Idylls of the King.'' After their war-wounded father exchanges his religious faith for disreputable rambles in Toronto and their mother dies of a miscarriage, the girls are more or less raised by Iris's old nursemaid, Reenie, a starchy font of home truths and old saws.

Iris is the older and more sensible of the two sisters; Laura the more alluring and ungraspable. ''Laura touches people,'' Iris explains. ''I do not.'' With her capacity for sudden, passionate attachments to people and beliefs, the younger sister is a bafflingly nervy girl who gets away with things: ''Laura had such a direct gaze, such blankly open eyes, such a pure, rounded forehead, that few ever suspected her of duplicity.'' Iris is obliged to watch out for her, and on one occasion even stops Laura from drowning herself. This stagy moment, as Iris recalls it, allows for the stark juxtaposition of one girl's self-destructiveness with the other's suppressed resentment:

''I couldn't get out of my mind the image of Laura, in the icy black water of the Louveteau -- how her hair had spread out like smoke in a swirling wind, how her wet face had gleamed silvery, how she had glared at me when I'd grabbed her by the coat. How hard it had been to hold on to her. How close I had come to letting go.''

(...)

When the Depression lays siege to the economy, even Mr. Chase's paternalistic ways can't save the button factory from labor unrest. The building is damaged by a fire apparently set by Alex Thomas, an orphan and ex-divinity student of shadowy origins, a prematurely hard-bitten figure whom the teenage Chase girls proceed to hide in the cellar and the attic. Here the novel most strongly exhibits its peculiar blend of the low and high, like a Nancy Drew story written by one of the Brontës. ''I didn't see him at first; he was behind the apple barrel. Then I could make him out. A knee, a foot. 'It's all right,' I whispered. 'It's only me.' ''

Economic rescue is extended to the Chases by the heavy hand of Richard Griffen, a competing industrialist and rising right-wing politician who scorns the mollycoddling employment practices of the girls' father. Eighteen-year-old Iris is presented to this cardboard villain like a fee and readied for the wedding by Richard's brittle, ambitious sister, Winifred, the novel's most appealingly awful creation, a sort of Miss Murdstone with plucked eyebrows. In the event, the groom seems more interested in the willful 15-year-old Laura, who goes to live with the Griffens after her father's death but is soon running away or getting into trouble at school or being dispatched to an asylum.

Laura dies -- we learn this on page 1 -- in 1945, at the age of 25, when her car plunges off a Toronto bridge. She leaves behind a science-fiction novel, ''The Blind Assassin,'' which becomes a great posthumous success. Atwood's enveloping novel of the same name alternates between the aged Iris's narration of all the aforementioned events and extracts from this book, whose interplanetary matter is presented as a story being told by a hard-bitten fellow on the run to a young woman who steals hours with him in his various hideouts: Alex Thomas and Laura Chase, we presume.

The less said about Planet Zycron the better; Atwood, alas, says plenty. (...)

We are assured by the aging Iris that Laura's ''Blind Assassin'' has given her sister's memory a certain cult status: fans leave offerings at Laura's grave and make graffiti from her novel's sayings; academics take a serious interest in the text. Iris tends her sister's flame with traces of the ambivalence she once showed in rescuing Laura from the Louveteau River and comments on the difficulties of her own aging with an endless, rote sourness that seems more adolescent than geriatric. (...)

Atwood has said that ''Writing is like life in that you don't know where you are until you look back.'' Unlike life, however, writing provides the opportunity to revise or abandon a journey even after it's been taken. Which might have been the best course here." /Wheels Within Wheels by THOMAS MALLON/

I'm also reading The Shell Seekers. To my surprise, it turned out to be a reread.

Message edited by its author, Sep 30, 2009, 8:55am.

#29 Our Elizabeth by Florence A. Kilpatrick
(Illustrated by Ernest Forbes)

148 pages
4 stars



I loved this little gem of a book. A really fun read, and very short.

Message edited by its author, Oct 7, 2009, 7:25pm.

#30 On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan



224 pages
3 stars

"The year is 1962. Florence, the daughter of a successful businessman and an aloof Oxford academic, is a talented musician. She dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, the earnest young history student she met by chance and who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Edward grew up in the country on the outskirts of Oxford, where his father, the headmaster of the local school, struggled to keep the household together and his mother, brain-damaged in an accident, drifted in a world of her own. Edward's native intelligence, coupled with a longing to experience the excitement and intellectual fervor of the city, had taken him to University College in London. Falling in love with the accomplished, shy, and sensitive Florence - and having his affections returned with equal intensity - has utterly changed his life. Their marriage, they believe, will bring them happiness and the confidence to fulfill their true destinies. The glowing promise of the future, however, cannot totally mask their worries about the wedding night. Edward, who has had little experience with women, frets about his sexual prowess. Florence's anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by conflicting emotions and a fear of the moment she will surrender herself to her husband in their honeymoon suite.

From the precise and intimate depiction of two young lovers eager to rise above the hurts and confusion of the past, to the touching story of how their unexpressed misunderstandings and resentments shape the rest of their lives, ON CHESIL BEACH is an extraordinary exploration of how the entire course of a life can be changed—by a gesture not made or a word not spoken." /fantasticfiction/

Hi, readeron!
You have read so many books!! I read The Blind Assassin. I thought that it was well-written but just so sad. So many unlikeable characters. It is the only Atwood that I have read. I have Alias Grace on my tbr and hope that it is happier. There was just a touch of hope at the end of TBA but such a small one.

I read The Shell Seekers long ago and liked it and it is the only book by her that I have read. I will have to look for this other one sometime.

My dog is loving the cooler weather. And so am I! Have a great day!
--BJ

Hi billiejean!

I think that The Blind Assassin is pretty overrated and it was quite difficult to find a review I can agree with. (Sometimes it's fun to communicate with quotations.) I just couldn't see the function of the stories within the story here. When I started to read the whole book as some mystery about the two sisters it suddenly became quite a page-turner though.:)

I have The Robber Bride, The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake by Atwood on my TBR, and I could reread Surfacing someday, because I think I was maybe too young to fully appreciate this novel when I first read it. Before reading more Atwood, however, I think I'll need loads of light and fluffy reads!:)

Thanks for dropping by! Have a wonderful day!

Message edited by its author, Oct 3, 2009, 8:22am.

I agree that it was also a page-turner for me towards the end, but I didn't love it like so many do. I finally finished Dracula. Trying to decide what thriller to read this month. It should be a fun read for the genre challenge. :)
--BJ

readeron, I enjoyed your review of The Blind Assassin - I've never read anything by Atwood, but am having trouble deciding what to start with, or if I'd really enjoy anything she's written. With your comments about approaching it as a mystery between the sisters, it sounds pretty appealing, so maybe I will start here.

ETA - did you post the review? I wanted to go give it a thumbs-up, but couldn't find it listed. I'm adding the book to my wish list.

Message edited by its author, Oct 4, 2009, 1:38pm.

Hi billiejean and sjmccreary!

> 61. I think I planned to read some Kellerman or reread a medical thriller by Robin Cook this month for the genre challenge. Not sure yet, I'm still waiting for ideas to decide. I loved Dracula, probably in October I'll read some scary too from the Halloween list:)

> 62. Sorry, but there's a misunderstanding here. I just wish I could write reviews like that! I actually quoted (copied) a review from the internet about The Blind Assassin, but I did so because I liked the review too.:) I hope you will like the book, I found it hard to get into the stories first, but sure it is worth a read!

Thanks for visiting my thread! Happy reading for you all!:)

#62 Oh, I see now that you were quoting someone else - you even listed the source and author. Sorry about that. I'm not sure when I'll get to it, but I've added the book to the wishlist so at least I won't forget about it. I think there is going to be an "Atwood in April" group read over in the 1010 Challenge group next spring, so I might plan to pick it up then.

This group read sounds great, I think I'll join in!:)

Great! I'll look for you! What do you think you'll be reading?

I think The Handmaid's Tale is a must read, with its several nominations and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. I'm also intrigued by the reviews about The Robber Bride. I think I will choose as my mood dictates then!

#31. The Shell Seekers by Rosemunde Pilcher



554 pages
3 stars

So many people love this book, I feel quite embarassed finding myself disappointed with it. I agree with this reviewer:

"Why do I feel so bad about being critical of this book? Mostly, I think it's because many friends and readers I know love this book. But, I also think my stupor of thought is a result of a former self once being able to love this book. My tastes have changed.

It's frustrating, because I think the themes Pilcher wrote about are serious enough to do well. Inheritance, greed, sentimentality, playing favorites with children, staying in a loveless marriage, putting a relationship that never fully developed on a pedestal because it escaped the inevitable boredom, irritation, and complacency that all relationships eventually go through. These are things you don't usually find underneath a flowery cover.

(...) the characters, written as people who you should like (Penelope, Olivia, Richard), or who you should not like (Nancy, Neil, horrible grandmother and husband) didn't have motives - or at least any that I understood. (...) Why in the world would Penelope stay in her never-should-have-happened-marriage when the author has done her best to describe her as a free-spirit? (...) Why were Neil and Nancy so shallow and greedy? Because they were genetically like their father and grandmother (who were also inexplicably bad)? Why did Olivia get such a free pass from her mother? (...) So many more questions that have no satisfying answers." /Lucy, goodreads/

To be honest, I've found even Penelope and Olivia annoyingly cold, selfish and headstrong, though I understand that the reader is clearly supposed to adore them. Odd.

#32 Hell House by Richard Matheson



288 pages
4 stars

"An aging millionaire seeking proof of life after death employs an unusual team of investigators to probe the mysteries of the supposedly haunted and evil Belasco House." /FantasticFiction/

Well-written, creepy enough. I would like to read more by this author.

Message edited by its author, Oct 7, 2009, 7:37pm.

#33 Poirot's Early Cases by Agatha Christie



256 pages
4 stars

"Still in the formative years of his career, Hercule Poirot faces a most taxing case: who killed Lord Cronshaw? Was Coco Courtenay's death on the same night a mere coincidence? And did she deliberately take an overdose of cocaine? No sooner has Poirot revealed his astonishing powers of deduction than he is faced with seventeen other mysteries to test his soon-to-be-famous 'little grey cells'. As a matter of courtesy to a group of young people, he endeavours to solve the gruesome murder of a woman whose body they have stumbled upon whilst locked out of their flat, and with his usual precision and elan he discovers exactly how 'Mary, Mary quite contrary' makes her garden grow..." /fantasticfiction/

#34 Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore



256 pages
5 stars

Enjoyable and undemanding, just what I needed.

"The premise is fairly simple... A young man, Travis, conjurs a demon on accident while cleaning the accolyte candles at a Catholic church. He is stuck with the demon, who does not have to tell him how he can be sent back to Hell. He tries various methods of returning his demon friend to the underworld such as reading cantations from spell books and running him over with his car. The young man wanders the United States in search of a way to be rid of his scaled friend, while the demon Catch proceeds to eat various victims in every place they stop. They finally come to the unsuspecting town of Pine Cove California.
The story takes off from there, jumping back and forth from different perspectives as the town tries to deal with this demon menace.
Moore has an easy to read, yet very witty and sarcastic writing style" /josh, goodreads/

Message edited by its author, Oct 14, 2009, 10:57am.

#35. Seventh Heaven by Alice Hoffman



256 pages
3 stars

"Seventh Heaven by Alice Hoffman is a most unusual coming-of-age tale. Here, it is not just one youth who matures into self-discovery and understanding, but a whole community of neighbors—children, adolescents, and adults. The catalyst comes in the form of Nora Silk, a vibrant, independent, freethinking divorcee who moves into the neighborhood with her two young sons. Twenty months later, everything and everybody has changed." /msbaba, LibraryThing/

"During the steamy summer of 1959, a sleepy Long Island suburban community is transformed by the arrival of Nora Silk, an attractive young divorcee, and her two young sons."/fantasticfiction/

Hi, readeron!
I keep going out of town and falling behind on LT. You are really reading lots of books. And they all look like good ones, too. I have never read a book by Christopher Moore, but I see that lots of people on LT really like them. I am going to order some books on amazon for birthday presents, I so decided to order a book for me, too. :) I am going to order Patriot Games to read for the thriller category, because I like the movie. I hope I get it in time. Have a great day!
--BJ

Hi, billiejean!

I think I'll read more books by Christopher Moore, his style is really enjoyable and he can create so quirky characters! For the genre challenge I chose Prey by Michael Crichton, it was quite an intriguing page turner.

Happy reading!

#36 Prey by Michael Crichton



4 stars
320 pages

An entertaining and intriguing page turner.

"In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles -- micro-robots -- has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey." /FantasticFiction/

I read this thriller for the 2009 Genre Challenge.

#37 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh



336 pages
3 stars

"The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmain family and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recgonize his spiritual and social distance from them." /fantasticfiction/

I am planning to read this book in November! Thanks for the review.
--BJ

#38 Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth



288 pages
4 stars

Hilarious.

"Along with Saul Bellow's Herzog, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint defined Jewish American literature in the 1960s. Roth's masterpiece takes place on the couch of a psychoanalyst, an appropriate jumping-off place for an insanely comical novel about the Jewish American experience." /goodreads/

#39 It by Stephen King



1104 pages
4 stars

"They were teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now it is calling them back to Derry, Maine--a force they cannot withstand, an evil without a name..." /fantasticfiction/

"The intricacies of the characters, the town and their relationship to each other is fascinating. In this novel, the horror and monsters are secondary to the subplot about small town evil."/lalaland, LibraryThing/

I just finished re-reading It. I still find it a great story.
The novel won The British Fantasy Society Award in 1987. (The movie was a huge disappointment, as usual.)

Message edited by its author, Nov 4, 2009, 7:55am.

#40 Villette by Charlotte Bronte

656 pages
4 stars



"It's a masterpiece of atmosphere and characterization with acute psychological observations. A fascinating, and in some places completely surreal, book." /Audrey, Goodreads/

"Another semi-autobiographical tale from Charlotte Bronte, based upon her time spent teaching in Belgium. This is not a novel of page turning excitement, but a lovely tale of one woman's battle to maintain her independence.

It's very interesting how the author brings characters in and out of her tale, and ties them all together in the end." /Misfit, Goodreads/

#41 Bittersweet by Danielle Steel



3 stars
384 pages

"India Taylor, with four wonderful children, believed in commitment and sacrifice, just as she believed in Doug, the man she had married 17 years before. She had chosen his life instead of the career as a photojournalist she once had, and it was a choice she had never regretted - until now." /fantasticfiction/

"Like the rest of her novels, Steel's 46th testifies to the insatiable appetite for unrequited love and the success of TV's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Meet India Taylor, the coulda-woulda-shoulda been a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist if it wasn't for her meddling husband. Although they met in the Peace Corps 20 years prior, Doug insisted she put down the camera, pick up a broom, and raise four kids in the comfy Connecticut burbs. However, after 17 years of carpooling, Little League, and Doug's revelation that he's happy with a platonic marriage, India moves on to greener pastures. She finds her cash cow in the form of Paul Ward, a.k.a. "Lion of Wall Street," who has a yacht called the Sea Star and likes to coo such things as "I think I'm a little crazy, but I love you." Although he may be senile and she is still married, the duo seem destined for each other as Paul slowly helps India reclaim her past and follow her passion. What's not to love about Danielle Steel? She starts so many sentences with the word and that you start to do it yourself. And there's a run-on quality to the narrator's consciousness. But she drips glamour, drops famous names better than Robin Leach, and makes those pages fly so fast they cool your face on the hottest beach." /goodreads/

Personally, I think the review by goodreads is a bit harsh.:) It was quite an average romance.

Could you tell me where on the internet I could find the genre of women? I was thinking that you knew a particular source. I am reading a Western now (still haven't read the thriller yet), but I am trying to figure out December. Was it some kind of Readers Guide? Thanks!
--BJ

Hi billiejean!

The chapter can be found in The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction by Joyce G. Saricks. You can find the book by google book search (typing in google 'google book search' first and typing the book's title only after you've got in google book search - hope the explanation makes sense.). Here you can read parts of the chapter (and almost the whole book) moving inside the text using the little icons that appear on the top of the page (ok, it's more complicated to explain than to do:).

Another possible source is this link:
http://www.cmrls.lib.ms.us/ra_lists.htm
Here you can find only a list of authors for each category.

Have a great day and happy reading!:)

Thanks! I am at the exciting conclusion of my Western, so I will try to check out the Women category in the next couple of days.
--BJ

I think, I'll try to read some western soon, as well. This year simply doesn't seem to be long enough to me for all the categories. And I just keep neglecting my reading plans...But as we know "the wand chooses the wizard", so who knows, maybe the book chooses the reader, too:)

#42 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling



4 stars
608 pages

"Harry is waiting in Privet Drive. The Order of the Phoenix is coming to escort him safely away without Voldemort and his supporters knowing if they can. But what will Harry do then? How can he fulfil the momentous and seemingly impossible task that Professor Dumbledore has left him with.

In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectactular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited." /fantasticfiction/

#43 Answered Prayers by Danielle Steel



3 stars
416 pages

I'm suffering from a serious case of 'Danielle Steel overdose'. To cure myself I restarted The Alexandria Quartet.

From Publishers Weekly:
"One thing remains unchanged in an ever-changing world, as evinced by Steel's 56th novel: the author's middle-aged principals never look their age or run to fat. After a childhood marred by unspeakable abuse, New Yorker Faith Madison has everything a woman could want: marriage to an investment banker, two nice daughters, a lovely home. Now that her daughters are grown, however, Faith is faced with empty-nest syndrome. Her answer? Go back to law school. Her boorish husband, Alex, tells her she can't; when she runs into childhood friend Brad Patterson at a funeral, he reassures her that she can. Brad is in a similarly stifling marriage on the West Coast, and the two begin firing off e-mails of friendly support. Neither is aware of the growing depth of romantic feeling between them. Both being churchgoers, once they do become aware, how will they reconcile what they want with the fact that they are each being married to someone else? Alex and Faith's retro attitudes about her return to school are a little too pre-1960s for 40-somethings living in the current year, and the e-mails exchanged between Faith and Brad are vapid in their painful mundanity ("...Otherwise, nothing new here... Send me another email when you have time"). Steel seems to assiduously court the currently lucrative CBA market. Brad gives Faith rosary beads rather than the usual diamonds and some readers may find her protagonists' relationship maddeningly chaste, but the smooth plotting and practiced heartstring tugging achieve the desired effect."

Message edited by its author, Nov 18, 2009, 12:30pm.

#44 Justine by Lawrence Durrell
(The first book in the Alexandria Quartet series)



256 pages
4 stars

***spoiler alert***

"A young Anglo-Irish writer, L. G. Darley, was reflecting on his life in Alexandria, Egypt, around the time of World War II, and on his three great loves: Melissa, Justine, and Clea. Darley resided on a Greek island and was writing and gaining perspective on his love affairs.

He first recalled Melissa, a poor cabaret dancer who sometimes engaged in prostitution. They had begun their love affair as "fellow bankrupts": He was a writer who could not write and she, a dancer with no talent. They had nothing in common, except that they had both been through Alexandria’s "winepress of love."

While living with Melissa, Darley met his second great love, Justine, who attended one of his lectures on Alexandria’s famous poet, Constantine Cavafy. Justine, "solitary student of the passions and the arts," was a modern incarnation of Cleopatra. She captivated men with her esoteric searchings into the nature of knowledge and with her magnificent body. After the lecture, Justine invited Darley to her home, so that he could meet her husband, Nessim, a fabulously wealthy Coptic banker, who also shared in her metaphysical speculations.

Although Darley respected Nessim, he could not refrain from falling into an affair with Justine. She ruled his mind to such an extent that Darley sought insight into her nature from the novel Moeurs, written by Justine’s ex-husband, Arnauti. In Moeurs, Arnauti had created an emotionally complex character like Justine, who had been sexually abused by an uncle. Arnauti failed to unravel Justine’s secrets and Darley, too, was tormented by the decline in Justine’s affections and by his belief that Nessim had learned of the affair.

Tensions reached a climax at a duck shoot that Nessim arranged at Lake Mareotis. Darley feared that he would be murdered by the jealous husband. Instead, another body was found floating in the lake. The corpse turned out to be Capodistria, the relative who had abused Justine. When the hunters returned to shore, they discovered that Justine had fled. Darley felt as if the whole city had crashed around about his ears. Later, Darley heard through Clea that Justine was working on a Jewish kibbutz in Palestine and that Capodistria was still alive.

Darley took a job teaching English at a school in Upper Egypt for two years and kept in only limited contact with Melissa, who was in a clinic trying to cure her tuberculosis. Melissa died before Darley could see her for a last time. He agreed to adopt her child, who was the outcome of Melissa’s brief liaison with Nessim after Justine’s departure.

By the end of the novel, Darley had drawn closer to Clea, a lovely artist who was recovering from a lesbian affair with Justine. Together Clea and Darley analyzed the events that had transpired, recalling the wisdom of their enigmatic literary friend, Percy Pursewarden, who had recently committed suicide." /Alexandre Meirelles/

"The city of Alexandria, Egypt, in the years between the First and Second World Wars is hauntingly evoked in Justine, the first novel in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. In fact, it might be more accurate to describe Alexandria as a central character in Justine rather than as a setting. The emphasis on place pervades the novel's formal qualities. Durrell, like a number of his fellow modernists, does not rely on a conventional linear narrative—within Justine or within the quartet—but shifts continuously between past and present. One result is that the story seems to have substantial physical, but not temporal, boundaries. The novel achieves many of its effects with images, so that it often reads more like poetry than narrative. The foregrounding of place in the novel encourages us to consider the extent to which our actions, and even our natures, are determined by our surroundings. Insofar as these features of Justine represent the patterns of memory, the book is an exploration of how we understand and recall experience. Also central to the novel is Durrell's notion of love. Justine, whose title alludes to the Marquis de Sade's novel by the same name, attempts to redefine love, or to define it in modern terms. But in many ways, the relationships the narrator describes—in which sexual desire as well as knowledge and narcissism play a large part—raise more questions than they answer about the nature of love.

Durrell's purpose in giving the city of Alexandria such an important role seems to be twofold—to evoke the city with as much poetry and precision as possible and to suggest that human identity is largely shaped by place. Using rich and lyrical language, Durrell presents Alexandria as both beautiful and squalid. Light filtering "through the essence of lemons" (p. 14) and the "sad velvet broth of the canal" (p. 91) are juxtaposed with "huddled slums" (p. 43) and houses of child prostitution. Alexandria seems to exert a psychological or spiritual grip over its inhabitants. Where one is born or chooses to live, the novel implies, is not just a trivial biographical fact but a determining factor. The city's inhabitants are subjected to its quest for "a responsive subject through which to express the collective desires, the collective wishes, which informed its culture" (p. 175). Characters' actions and thoughts become manifestations of, and can even be explained or justified by, the city's own temperament. Justine is characterized repeatedly as a "true child of Alexandria" (p. 27), implying that this fact dictates her behavior. For Durrell, Alexandria represents, among other things, sexual freedom, as well as skepticism, intellectualism, and exhaustion. Yet it remains unclear whether we are meant to totally absolve the characters of individual responsibility. While their actions frequently appear to be prescribed by the "collective desires" of Alexandria, it is difficult not to hold the characters accountable for the harm their actions sometimes do to others.

Place, as opposed to chronology, is also the organizing principle of the novel's structure. Like such modernists as Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust, Durrell's experiments reflect the idea that chronological time does not necessarily correspond with lived experience or our memory of it. In Justine, there are no references to specific dates, although a rough chronology may be constructed in retrospect, and the narrative moves back and forth in time, often without explicit transitions. The narrator, who is never named, explains that it is important for him to record events not "in the order in which they took place—for that is history—but in the order in which they first became significant for me" (p. 115). The novel follows an internal logic, juxtaposing images and ideas in the same way that poetry does, rather than setting out events in a chronological order as history does.(...)" /Penguin Reading Guides/

Message edited by its author, Nov 23, 2009, 11:19am.

#44 Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell
(The second book in the Alexandria Quartet series)



256 pages
4 stars

"On the Greek island, Darley completed his manuscript, presumably Justine, and mailed it to his friend, Balthazar. Balthazar knew the secrets of his fellow Alexandrians. After reading Darley’s book, Balthazar traveled to the island to set Darley straight and present him with his own commentary — the Interlinear — penned between the lines of Darley’s manuscript. The Interlinear provided Darley with new information regarding the characters about whom he had written. One revelation was that Justine’s true love was Pursewarden. Darley was stunned. He was forced to take a new perspective on his reality, an essential task for one who aspired to be a writer. After Balthazar departed, Darley picked up an old photograph and stared at the images of his friends. He was ready to begin the torturous process of reassessment by examining the many facets of his friends’ personalities." /Alexandre Meirelles/

"Balthazar sees the events described in "Justine" from his own point of view, and, having often more information or just different sources than Darley, his versions of events add to or change the descriptions from the first volume. New characters are introduced, and those, who were merely mentioned or hinted upon (Pursewarden, Mountolive, Leila, Narouz), become central, and their preoccupations and emotions are at the first plane. These shifts, instead of clarifying things that were blurred and mysterious in "Justine" make the narrative even more slippery and allusive. New avenues open for each event, tales within tales are discovered, which need their own explanation, and the atmosphere is even more dreamy... The motivations of ome characters, especially Nessim, seem to change completely from what Darley perceived, as new events are revealed. The search for the truth obviously cannot end here, so the reader needs to proceed to "Mountolive".

Alexandria becomes even more of a main character in this novel, and definitely the one with the strongest and versatile personality. Most of the other characters, struck by destructive love (again the analysis of love is one of the main themes, although the secret service intrigue gets more momentum), are impressionable, prone to spontaneous, sudden behaviors, and transient. The climactic event, as the hunting party was in Justine, is this time the carnival ball, where the reader roams the streets together with the characters in disguise... and is a witness to another death." /Aleksandra Nita-Lazar, Amazon/

#45 Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell
(The third book in the Alexandria Quartet series)



320 pages
4 stars

"This novel is told from the perspective of a British diplomat who is assigned to Egypt. Here again we have the same events and character viewed from another angle - this one looks hard at the political and larger social influences on the events from the other novels. Also of note is the fact that there are still new discoveries as the novels progress - not just discoveries about the events that have happened, but actual new events that advance the plot. This whole series of novels is surprisingly complex in scope and organization. Still a very enjoyable read - not what you would expect from seeing basically the same story over and over again." /Claysim, goodreads/

"Mountolive is a welcome new point of view on the events, after Justine and Balthazar. It helped me put things together before I read Clea. I can even say that I found it 'refreshing'." /A Customer, Amazon/

#46 Clea by Lawrence Durrell
(The fourth book in the Alexandria Quartet series)

288 pages
4 stars



"Darley left his island retreat to return to Alexandria and was nervous about seeing Justine again. She was much changed. The collapse of the conspiracy had made her a recluse, and a slight stroke had diminished her beauty. Darley realized he had grown beyond her narcissistic type of loving. He was more in tune with the gentle Clea, who, like him, was struggling to become an artist. Clea and Darley began a love affair amid the shelling of World War II.

Inexplicably, Clea and Darley drifted apart. They decided to separate, but, before doing so, they went on one last excursion. Accompanied by Balthazar, they traveled by boat to a nearby island. As Clea was swimming underwater, Balthazar accidentally released a harpoon which went through Clea’s hand and pinned her underwater. Darley sprang to save Clea’s life by hacking off her hand.

Although the two separated, they seemed likely to reunite. Both resolved their artistic problems: Darley was able to start writing and Clea was painting extraordinary paintings with her artificial hand. She wrote to Darley that she was "serene and happy, a real human being, an artist at last." Darley too felt as if "the whole universe" had given him "a nudge." /Alexandre Meirelles, shvoong/

#47 Ukridge by P G Wodehouse

4 stars
256 pages



"The ten stories in Ukridge revolve around Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge's none-too-successful schemes to make some money." /goodreads/

#48 Számok (Numbers) by Viktor Pelevin



301 pages
4 stars

"Pelevin's macabre sarcasm reaches its peak in Numbers"

"Stepa, the young protagonist and a member of the country's nouveaux riches, owes his luck and business power to the number 34. It determines all his moves and decisions but, the greater hopes he pins on it, the worse he gets entangled in a sinister plot of the number's enemies, the diabolical servants of the number 43." /english pravda/

I found myself laughing out loud a lot while re-reading this book!

#49 Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill



400 pages
4 stars

"Heart Shaped Box is a ghost story. It's born from a fresh and cutting-edge angle and never stops from the first page to the finale. Hill creates a great sense of foreboding terror and the ghost in question is both memorable and deeply malevolent. Tension arises from well fleshed out and realistic characterisation, which also allows Hill to pull some emotional kidney punches. Original horror is a treat, and Heart Shaped Box is certainly original and is also well crafted too. A story which will remain in your thoughts for some time after you put it down. Recommended." /SonicQuack, LibraryThing/

"Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet.

I will "sell" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder. . . .

For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts—of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What's one more?

But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing.

And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang . . . standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. . . ." /fantasticfiction/

Message edited by its author, Dec 6, 2009, 11:32am.

#50 I Am Legend by Richard Matheson



317 pages
4 stars

"Robert Neville is the last living man on earth ... but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive like this?" /fantasticfiction/

"Without losing the horror, it presents vampirism as a disease whose secrets can be unlocked by scientific tools. The hero Robert Neville, perhaps the last uninfected man on Earth, finds himself in a paranoid nightmare. By night, the bloodthirsty undead of small-town America besiege his barricaded house: their repeated cry "Come out, Neville!" is a famous SF catchphrase. By day, when they hide in shadow and become comatose, Neville gets out his wooden stakes for an orgy of slaughter. He also discovers pseudoscientific explanations, some rather strained, for vampires' fear of light, vulnerability to stakes though not bullets, loathing of garlic, and so on. What gives the story its uneasy power is the gradual perspective shift which shows that by fighting monsters Neville is himself becoming monstrous--not a vampire but something to terrify vampires and haunt their dreams as a dreadful legend from the bad old days."
/David Langford/

Did you see the movie I am Legend? I hate to say it, but I liked the movie better than the book. That almost never happens for me.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but am definitely looking forward to it. Thanks for the recommendations!

#51 Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years by Sue Townsend



416 pages
4 stars

"At the age of 30 1/4, Adrian is an offal chef on the verge of breaking into television, his wife has left him and their three-year-old son and returned to Nigeria, and a rough-looking boy appears to be stalking him. Pandora is a rising star of New Labour, known by the tabloids as "the people's Pan". Adrian's sister Rosie is now an obnoxious teenager, and the older generation of Moles and Braithwaites are still behaving badly." /isabelx, LibraryThing/

"It rather annoyed me that adulthood and fatherhood hadn't changed one iota of Adrian's naivete and idealism. Otherwise, it's a fun romp, as usual. I'm especially taken by William Mole and Archie Tait." /Illyria, goodreads/

#52 The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie



368 pages
4 stars

"British actor and comedian Hugh Laurie's first book is a spot-on spy spoof about hapless ex-soldier Thomas Lang, who is drawn unwittingly and unwillingly into the center of a dangerous James Bond-like plot of international terrorists, arms dealing, high-tech weapons, and CIA spooks. /.../ Laurie played Bertie Wooster, the clutzy hero of the P.G. Wodehouse comic novels /..../. The lineage from Wodehouse's Wooster to Laurie's Lang is clear, and, if you like Wodehouse, you'll probably love The Gun Seller."/Amazon/

"Cold-blooded murder just isn't Thomas Lang's cup of tea. Offered a tidy sum to assassinate an American industrialist, he opts to warn the intended victim instead - a good deed that soon takes a bad turn. Quicker than he can down a shot of his favourite whiskey, Lang is bashing heads with a Buddha statue, matching wits with evil billionaires, and putting his life (among other things) in the hands of a bevy of femmes fatales. Up against rogue CIA agents, wanna-be terrorists, and an arms dealer looking to make a high-tech killing, Lang's out to save the leggy lady he has come to love...and prevent an international bloodbath to boot." /fantasticfiction/

Message edited by its author, Dec 13, 2009, 5:21pm.

#53 The Princess Bride by William Goldman



336 pages
4 stars

"It's a tongue-in-cheek fairytale of love, life, action, death and life again. Featuring the obligatory handsome Prince and supremely beautiful princess, it also boasts a Spanish sword wizard, the Zoo of Death, a chocolate-coated resurrection pill and lots of villains, who span the spectrum from evil, through even more evil to (gasp) most evil. And then there's Fezzik, the gentle giant addicted to rhyming.
William Goldman--who's won two Oscars for his screenwriting (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men), and has endeared himself to dentists and their patients planetwide through his novel Marathon Man--has always claimed he merely abridged this text, extracting the "good parts" from an inventive yet wordy classic by Florinese literary superstar, S Morgenstern.

It has, however, been whispered in certain circles that Morgenstern himself is a figment of Goldman's ultra-fertile imagination./.../

Completely delightful, suitable for cynics and romantics alike. Suspension of disbelief optional." -- /Lisa Gee, fantasticfiction/

"The Princess Bride is a true fantasy classic. William Goldman describes it as a "good parts version" of "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure." Morgenstern's original was filled with details of Florinese history, court etiquette, and Mrs. Morgenstern's mostly complimentary views of the text. Much admired by academics, the "Classic Tale" nonetheless obscured what Mr. Goldman feels is a story that has everything: "Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."
Goldman frames the fairy tale with an "autobiographical" story: his father, who came from Florin, abridged the book as he read it to his son. Now, Goldman is publishing an abridged version, interspersed with comments on the parts he cut out.

Is The Princess Bride a critique of classics like Ivanhoe and The Three Musketeers, that smother a ripping yarn under elaborate prose? A wry look at the differences between fairy tales and real life? Simply a funny, frenetic adventure? No matter how you read it, you'll put it on your "keeper" shelf. -- /Nona Vero, goodreads/

#54 The Reader by Bernhard Schlink



216 pages
3 stars

The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading and shame in post-war Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: what should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"

/.../ Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre and post-war generations, between the guilty and the innocent and between words and silence. /R Ellis, Amazon.com/

"Bernhard Schlink’s style is one which tells the story instead of showing it. The courtroom scenes could have been dramatic, emotional, and revealing had Schlink used dialogue to show us what was happening. Instead he simply tells the reader what is going on - a dry recitation of facts which left me oddly detached." /writestuff, Librarything/

"I expected something really complicated and dense considering the seriousness of subject matter, but found I'd read half of it in only an hour." /CC, goodreads/

"First, the big mystery of the story is obvious within a few pages but the story teller doesn't figure it out for 15 years." /sheila, goodreads/

"It felt too much like it was written to be studied at G.C.S.E or for a book group to discuss." /dayends, LibraryThing/

OK, I admit that it was a disappointment for me, as well.

#55 Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler



197 pages
5 stars

"You don't read Tyler for nail biting suspense or for complex plot twists, you read Tyler because she draws you in with her unforgettable characters. As their thoughts and memories spin around in your head, you stop looking for the obvious action, and concentrate on what is going on just beneath the surface." /Dana Schwartz, Bookreporter/

"Charlotte - who narrates this story - is planning to leave her husband. As the book opens, she goes to the bank to get some money and becomes involved in a hold-up. The armed robber, whose name is Jake, takes Charlotte as a hostage and escapes.

A dramatic start to a novel which then proceeds to a fairly typical Anne Tyler story. In other words it's very much a character-based plot in which reality is slightly suspended... and yet because she writes so well, it all seems believable at the time. Jake manages to steal a car and he and Charlotte set off for Florida. Charlotte gradually gets to know Jake as they travel, and as readers we get to know Charlotte, since alternate chapters take us back to her past. She reflects on her life from her childhood up to her marriage, and then gives some glimpses into her married life, eventually revealing the reasons why she was going to leave her husband at the start of the book.

As is usual with this author, most of the characters are somewhat eccentric and also slightly caricatured. But slowly, cleverly, their motivations are revealed and appear to be entirely reasonable. I found myself developing sympathy for them all, even including Jake. It's easy to judge a bank-robber and hostage-taker as being a terrible criminal, but Jake is obviously quite human, and - in his own way - a moral person who does what he thinks is right. What justification could there possibly be for robbing a bank? This does actually become clear towards the end of the novel.

But the book is really about Charlotte. Her life has been fairly traumatic, although she's quite a cheerful person who copes remarkably well with her enforced captivity by Jake. /.../

I find Anne Tyler at her best in this kind of novel, basically just two people in a car talking and remembering. The plot - such as it is - is a vehicle (so to speak!) for character-development. The stories and flashbacks are interspersed with stops for food and petrol, coping with car problems, wondering if the police are going to catch up with them. Just the right amount to hold our interest and remind us of the unlikely scenario in which the book is set." /Ciao!/

Message edited by its author, Yesterday, 6:15pm.