A list of books that I’ve read since the start of this blog. Some might be missing but if you really CARE you’ll find a more complete listing HERE.
9.9.2009 Sleepless in America: Is Your Child Misbehaving or Missing Sleep by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
8.8.2009 The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
7.23.2009 The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane – Katherine Howe
6.23.2009 One for the Money – Janet Evanovich
6.8.2009 Kiss My Tiara: How To Rule the World as a Smart Mouth Goddess – Susan Jane Gilman
6.7.2009 Marilee – Mary Francis Shura
5.28.2009 The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq – Helen Benedict
5.1.3009 America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines – Gail Collins
4.20.2009 Disquiet – Julia Leigh
4.19.2009 The Midwife’s Apprentice – Karen Kushman
3.27.2009 Fool – Christopher Moore
3.3009 Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression – Mildred Armstrong Kalish
2.7.2009 The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman
Us in the graveyard, we wants you to stay alive. We wants you to surprise us and disappoint us and impress us and amaze us.
2.1.2009 Heart-Shaped Box – Joe Hill
1.18.2009 The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seems to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.
1.3.2009 The Sisters Grimm (Book One) The Fairy -Tale Detectives – Michael Buckley & Peter Ferguson
I’ve learned one thing in this life of mine. Look out for yourself. Everyone else will just end up disappointing you.
12.25.2008 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
12.19.2008 Winter Fire – Jo Beverly
Obligatory winter romance read!
12.4.2008 Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
11.29.2008 – Reading Like A Writer: A Guide For People Who Love Books And For Those Who Want To Write Them.
Reading Chekhov, I felt not happy, exactly, but as close to happiness as I knew I was likely to come. And it occurred to me that this was the pleasure and mystery of reading, as well as the answer to those who way that books will disappear. For now, books are still the best way of taking great art and its consolations along with us on a bus.
11/15/2008 – Summer Reading – Hilma Wolitzer
11/6/2008 – Elsewhere – Gabrielle Zevin
10/26/2008 – Finding Your Own North Star – Martha Beck
9/25/2008 - Literacy and Longing in L.A. – Jennifer Kaufman & Karen Mack
8/20/2008 - The Audacity of Hope – Barack
That is one thing that makes me a Democrat, I suppose – this idea that our communal values, our sense of mutual responsibility and social solidarity, should express themselves not jst in the church or the mosque or the synagogue; not just on the blocks where we live, in the places where we work, or within our own families; but also through our government. Like many conservatives, I believe in the power of culture to determine both individual success and social cohesion, and I believe we ignore cultural factors at our peril. But I also believe that our government can play a role in shaping that culture for the better – or for the worse.
8/17/2008 - The Children of Henry VIII – Alison Weir
8/8/2008 - The Rule of Four – Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason
Like all things in the universe, we are destined to diverge. Time is simply the yardstick of our separation. If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from and original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.
7/12/2008 – Warriors: Into the Wild – Erin Hunter
7/ 8/2008 - Lord of my Heart – Jo Beverly
6/17/2008 – The Six Wives of Henry VIII – Alison Weir
4/28/2008 Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
4/21/2008 The Giver by Lois Lowry
“do you understand why it’s inappropriate to use a word like ‘love’?” Mother asked
Jonas nodded. “Yes, thank you, I do,” he replied slowly
It was his first lie to his parents.
4/14/2008 Lamb The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
“What do you know?” snapped Gaspar in a distinctly unenlightened way. “You’ll be working off your karma for a thousand years as a dung beetle just to evolve to the point of being dense.”
3/10/2008 The Wonder of Girls: Understanding the Hidden Nature of our Daughters
If you neglect teaching your own version of a sacred role, you may be neglecting the spiritual life of your daughters. It is possible you are feeding them, clothing them, buying them things, giving them a good, solid education – but not helping them discover a deep framework for their existence as girls and as women.
3/6/2008 The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
But young hearts mend easily, and hearts that own half of England have something better to do than to beat faster for love.
2/2/2008 Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
“One thing about being pretty, people put up with your annoying habits”
1/18/2008 tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
“Death ends a life, not a relationship”
“Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back. Sometimes it is only in your head. Sometimes it’s right alongside their beds.”
1/13/2008 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
“Faith is only a word, embroidered”
12/29/2007 Queen Victoria: A Personal History by Christopher Hibbert
‘God knows,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘ how great my wish is to make this Beloved being happy and contented.’
11/6/2007 The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
“I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I’m tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that’s been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?”
“The house envelops us, watches us, contemplates us as we make love in it for the first time, the first of many time, and afterward, as we lie spent on the bare floor surrounded by books, I feel that we have found our home. “
10/20/2007 I Hear Voices: A Memoir of Love, Death, and the Radio by Jean Feraca
I had never before realized how each of us has just so many breaths, a finite number, an allotment assigned to us like the number you get in a bakery or a butcher’s shop. And the more we use them up, the more each of these breaths becomes a thing unto itself, discreet as a shaped note
9/13/2007 Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Balinese don’t let their children touch the ground for the first six months of life, because newborn babies are considered to be gods sent straight from heaven, and you wouldn’t let a god crawl around on the floor with all the toenail clippings and cigarette butts. So Balinese babies are carried around for those first six months, revered as minor deities.
Four simple questions have shaped the spiritual journeys of pilgrims and seekers for thousands of years.
8/10/2007 The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
7/27/2007 The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life by Dr. Robin Stern
6/27/2007 – Watership Down by Richard Adams
“The primroses were over.”
The ‘I Hear Voices’ book looks and sounds really good.
I think I could quote lines and lines from Watership Down. I love how this is the opening line of the book, and at the very end he finishes with “…where the primroses were just starting to bloom.” Even John enjoyed it.
Do you want to read that Vinyl Cafe book? I’m going to be too busy for the next couple of weeks. Maybe that’s enough time that someone else might see this and be able to get a copy too.
I can’t remember which one I sent so you’ll need to co-ordinate and remind me so that I don’t go reading the wrong one and our discussion ends up making even less sense than usual. Heh. Well…me reading the wrong one would be funny.
Handmaid’s Tale was excellent. I also liked Atwood’s The Robber Bride. That was an incredible multi-character novel.
Amoeboid: Are you talking about Stuart MacLean’s Vinyl Cafe? If so, send it here.
Yep. Them’s the ones. Email me your snail mail and next time I’m in a used bookstore, I’ll pick up whatever they have and send them off.
The gaslight effect by Robin Stern. Did you read the book? I was wondering what you thought of it. I just started reading it, but I’m already familiar with the subject.
Lion Taming: The courage to deal with difficult people including yourself, by Betty Perkins, MS.
So far, deep sighs and gratitude, for this author’s perspective on the subject(s), is all I can express at this time.