Categories as they stand right now:
1. 1001 Books to Read Before You Die
2. Non-Fiction
3. Pages to Film
4. Memoir/Autobiography
5. Women Writers
6. Around the World
7. Some of my Favorite Authors
8. TBR

Edited to striked out the TBR category.

Message edited by its author, Aug 18, 2009, 1:17am.

I. 1001 Books to Read Before You Die
1. Enduring Love by Ian McEwan.
2. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
3. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
4. The Human Stain by Philip Roth
5. A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
6. The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway
7. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon *
8. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Read Mistry's Family Matters last week. Loved it as I suspected I would. Mr. Mistry has an incredible way with truth and realism in people and location. It was a painfully beautiful story. I loved A Fine Balance when I read it many years ago and reading this made me realize I have missed out in not picking up the other things that have been published by R. Mistry since then.

Message edited by its author, Jul 18, 2009, 7:05pm.

II. Non-Fiction
1. Leap by Sara Davidson
2. Organize Your Life by Ronni Eisenberg
3. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
4. Watchdogs of Democracy by Helen Thomas
5. Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle
6. Boom: Voices of the Sixties by Tom Brokaw
7. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
8. Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum *

Message edited by its author, Jan 16, 2009, 12:54am.

So are you reading them one category at a time or just listing them that way? I'm just sort of adding them as I go.

III. Pages to Film
1. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
2. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
3. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
4. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
5. A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl
6. Cider House Rules by John Irving
7. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
8. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Updated after reading A Mighty Heart 7/29/2009

Message edited by its author, Jul 29, 2009, 1:46am.

IV. Memoir/biography/autobiography
1. No More Words by Reeve Lindbergh
2. Waking: a memoir of trauma
by Matthew W. Sanford (1/15/09)
3. Secrets of the Flesh by Judith Thurman
4. Cringe by Sarah Brown
5. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
6. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
7. Listening is an Act of Love by Dave Isay
8. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

Finished American Prometheus August 28th, 2009. (Yes, still going - among other reading.)

Message edited by its author, Sep 1, 2009, 2:56pm.

Just listing them this way...

V. Women Writers
1. Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga) by Stephenie Meyer
2. Enlightenment for Idiots by Anne Cushman
3. Gods in Alabama by Joshlyn Jackson
4. Oh My Stars by Lorna Landvik
5. The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel by Meg Waite Clayton
6. Eflatun and the Magic Mirror by Kathryn Kranzler
7. Body Surfing by Anita Shreve
8. Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

Edited to show that I read Veronica.

Message edited by its author, Jul 18, 2009, 7:11pm.

VII. Some of my Favorite Authors
1. The View from Mount Joy by Lorna Landvik(1/07/09)
2. You Suck by Christopher Moore
3. Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
4. Second Glance by Jodi Picoult
5. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
6. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
7. Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
8. Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

Message edited by its author, Jan 16, 2009, 12:51am.

Are you going to see the films along with reading the books? What a fun category!

I haven't really decided yet, Nancy. I'm usually disappointed by the films to be honest. :) I don't think there has ever been a movie that I've liked as well as a book with one exception - The English Patient.

BUT - There are a few in this category that I've already cheated and seen the movies ahead of the books! I love the movie Practical Magic. So I'm very biased on this one already. I liked Remains of the Day very much as well. I despised Breakfast at Tiffany's so I'm hoping that Capote's book will redeem itself and I'm thinking that it will. (Waiting for the hate mail from this comment!!! LOL) I also very much enjoyed Cider House Rules. SO. I've seen several of them already! I usually don't do this. If there is a movie coming out and I know there is a book it is based upon, I will more often than not, wait until I've read the book first.

Bet you weren't expecting THAT sort of answer. Got an opinion???

Your book to film list is a great reminder that great books sometimes make for pretty good film ... Shipping News is one of my favorites in both print and celluloid. Same for Cider House Rules.

I agree though that there are many, many more examples where it is not the case. I've not seen Breakfast at Tiffany's but the recent spate of movies about TC lead me to guess I wouldn't be a big fan of his writing either.

I actually thought In Cold Blood was an amazing piece of writing. I don't know if you saw the movie or not - the movie Capote is actually what I'm referring to here. If you hated it due to having to sit and watch the rather annoying portrayal of his personality, etc. which won Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar then I can understand your reticence, but his writing was terrific in that piece. He was just a bit of an odd duck.

I'm hoping Breakfast was simply an awful adaptation. :)

Message edited by its author, Feb 19, 2008, 11:36pm.

You tagged it on the movies ... I saw both Capote and Infamous (with Toby Jones as TC) and found both portrayals highly annoying. Probably a really childish reason to ignore an author's life's work. We own In Cold Blood but it was one of my husband's purchases. Maybe it will make its way onto a list some day

I do hope you enjoy Breakfast at Tiffanys. I'll watch for your report. I'll also be watching to see if Death in a Prairie House is worthwhile. I read Loving Frank last summer -- great characterization of Mameh Chaney and great grounding in the descriptions of Taliesin, but not too insightful as far as FLW's motivations -- architectural or personal.

Seems I forgot to list my Around the World Category.

VI. Around the World.
1. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
3. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry *
5. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
6. Saturday by Ian McEwan
7. A Room With A View by E. M. Forster
8. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson *
Edited to show I finished Family Matters.

Message edited by its author, Jul 18, 2009, 7:12pm.

And finally VIII. TBR
1. Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar
2. Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
3. Have You Found Her: A Memoir by Janice Erlbaum *
4. Wear Your Life Well by Merilu Henner
5. Organize Your Life by Ronni Eisenberg
6. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
7. Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult *
8. The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

Edited to show I read Happier.

Message edited by its author, Aug 18, 2009, 1:16am.

Being stuck at home sick with the flu is certainly helping me get through the books...

finished The Alchemist today.

Changes for the list are forthcoming. I brought some boxes of books back to the house that have been in storage... found several that have not been read yet. A relief that I won't have to buy so many for the challenge but it means I need to do some reorganizing.

I'm also reading the Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth for the online broadcast with him over the 10 weeks/10 chapters that he's doing with Oprah. So that has slowed things down a bit during the past couple of weeks. Have to get refocused!

One of the changes made to my list tonight was to replace the Nikki Sixx autobiography, The Heroin Diaries with Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope because Obama's book is one that I already owned (and found in my box of books from storage today - a money saver!) and had been wanting to read, and you can't beat the timeliness.

I'm also going to swap out one of my print to film books for A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl because I found that in the box as well. Now I just have to decide which of those not yet purchased I should drop, knowing that some day in the future I'll probably pick it up anyway. LOL...

Another change to be made is in the biography/autobiography category again. A friend loaned us the book Waking: A Memoir of trauma by Matthew Sanford. So I'm dropping the Charles Schulz and Peanuts: a biography at this time. I don't want to pay for the hard copy right now anyway. Someday. *sigh*

Jumping up and down over here because I think I finally finished filling out my list.

Now I'm writing them all out in my notebook and checking off the ones I have access to so the next time I'm at a bookstore I won't just buy without knowing what I really need. I'm trying to use my brain for a change with money.

I've been pretty caught up with A New Earth of late, and just reading a few pages here and there from Listening is an Act of Love (sorry but the Touchstone doesn't work on that one so I've stopped trying) for the past few weeks. So I need to start multi-tasking again. Thought I'd pick up something that doesn't take a lot of heavy-duty brain power and dive in this weekend. I'm hoping Practical Magic will be that book for me as I've seen the movie so many times. *crosses fingers* I suspect, however, that the two are nothing alike! lol...

Finished reading Practical Magic yesterday afternoon. Loved it. I fell in love with the movie so long ago and have seen it so many times, I wondered if this would be one of the rare cases where the book did not measure up for me, but the book fleshed out some characters that didn't get enough time in the movie (Sally's daughters). I didn't get enough characterization in the book of Jimmy - the villain - but I liked Alice Hoffman's treatment of him much better than Hollywood's.

Still deciding what to read next in fiction. Still working on Tolle with the Oprah online group. And still reading Life of Pi aloud with HBB. This is slow because he is only home on the weekends and we only read at night before we go to sleep.

Message edited by its author, Mar 22, 2008, 5:52pm.

Read Body Surfing on March 24. Forgot to mention it here but did do a review on my book blog.

Little behind posting what I've read in this thread...

On April 13th I finished reading Marilu Henner's Wear Your Life Well: How to Use What You Have to Get What You Want. I posted a review on the book. It was an ARC from the publisher.

On April 16th or thereabouts I read Enlightenment for Idiots by Anne Cushman which was an ARC from LT. There is a review here and also on my blog, as well.

A couple of days ago I finished reading Listening is an Act of Love by Dave Isay. And it was fabulous, but I have to say that the power of hearing these oral histories on NPR is so much better than reading them. And so I subscribed to the podcast. I recommend this to anyone else who is interested.

Tonight I finished reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. I have a couple of weeks of the online course left to view and had been reading only the chapter that we were doing that week, but I was getting so close to finishing that I couldn't stand it anymore. I just wanted to get to the finish line. Any of you who have read or are reading, know that this is actually pretty ironic - my need to get to the end or reach the goal rather than simply enjoying the process. I'm laughing as it is occurring to me.

And I guess that pretty much has me caught up with where I am. But I'm way behind on my reading. I wanted to have about 25 books read by the end of April. Fat chance, I'd say.

Finished reading Bloodsucking Fiends and put up a review on my blog which I'll copy here soon.

Read the sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends which is entitled You Suck. Haven't written a review yet because I'm reading The Wednesday Sisters in my spare time and will get back to that review when I've finished this one. I'm in the middle of physically changing apartments (my husband has a second home for during the week when working and found a better location so I'm moving him). All of my downtime is being spent reading this awesome ARC. :D

I just finished reading The Wednesday Sisters today. I hope you are enjoying it as much as I did.

I loved it! I just finished slapping a review up on the book. I thought it was great. Thanks for the comment. :)

I finished reading Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea a couple of day's ago and found it one of the most fascinating and inspirational tales I've ever read. I'm hoping to have a review up today or tomorrow. (well, in addition to this comment. :D)

Message edited by its author, Jun 4, 2008, 1:07pm.

So over the past couple of months I have read several things and a few of them were on the list here...

I read Kafka on the Shore and found it far more readable than the first Murakami I attempted (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle).

I read The Magician's Assistant and loved it completely. I found it very difficult to put down and will read far more Patchett whenever the opportunity presents itself (as soon as I'm finished with this challenge, for example).

I read Love in the Time of Cholera and found it faster and yes, somewhat more readable than 100-Years of Solitude, but as always, I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I've also been re-reading the Stephenie Meyer vampire series so that I can read number 4 in sequence and while the story is fresh.

And finally, while on vacation in New Mexico, I picked up Jodi Picoult's Second Glance. I'm in the middle of this and Eclipse contiguously.

Finished Eclipse a few days ago and went quickly into Breaking Dawn so I could finish the series. I' really wanted to finish it because I knew that spoilers abounded and I didn't want to trip over one or more before I actually read the book so I've been very fastidiously staying out of the review sites and away from magazine or online articles about the book ever since its release. I've heard/read several grumbles in headlines about disappointments in the conclusion of the series and so I had my worries and doubts, but didn't get too worked up about them.

I didn't have any serious problems with the story's resolution. Will I see the movie adaptation of the first book this winter? Probably. And as with all adaptations, I'm sure I'll be disappointed.

On with the rest of the challenge. (you know, if I'd been plowing through the rest of the books as quickly as I just read through this series (three of which were not included in the 888, I could have been done with the challenge by now. *sigh*)

Finished Ian McEwan's Saturday today and when I came to cross it off the list I realized, it wasn't a part of this challenge. So I found a place for it. This was my first McEwan novel. I've heard many opinions of his work from many different places and tried to go in as unbiased as possible.

I liked this book. It was one day in the life of a man as he interacts with a wife he loves deeply and his children. He also goes about his work as a neurosurgeon and has a most important encounter with a gentleman when he has a car accident that impacts everything else about his day. This is a piece of post 9/11 fiction and so there are also undertones of a war preparations and uncertainty surrounding it.

It took me forever to read it because it wasn't something I could just sit down and lightly breeze through. I wanted to give it the attention it deserved. This fact has me semi-rethinking his other book on my list with the quick passage of time and what I still have left on this list. *sigh*

Well, I'm far from completing the 888 challenge as I start the new year. I began it in early February and realize there was plenty of time to finish had I really tried.

But I read some authors and discovered some books that I wouldn't have had I not made the attempt. So I'm really glad that I did try it. In looking over the books that I didn't finish, I think I will probably go ahead and finish it off and read them when I have the chance this year. And I believe I'll look around at what other challenges are out there because I like the fact that I read something new when I do them.

What I had left:

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar
The View From Mount Joy by Lorna Landvik
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
The Human Stain by Phillip Roth
A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
A Room With A View by E. M. Forster
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl
Cider House Rules by John Irving
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence by Matthew Sanford (1/15/09)
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
American Prometheus by Kai Bird (8/28/09>
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

Message edited by its author, Sep 1, 2009, 2:57pm.