My categories and books are:

I've never read anything by ...
1. Haruki Murakami - "Dance, Dance, Dance"
2. Dawn Powell - "Come Back to Sorrento"
3. Elizabeth Gaskell - "North and South" (Sept.)
4. W. Somerset Maugham - "Of Human Bondage" (Mar.)
5. Cormac McCarthy - "The Road" (Nov.)
6. Walker Percy - "The Moviegoer"
7. Kingsley Amis - "Lucky Jim" (Mar.)
8. Muriel Spark - "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" (Sept.)
9. Neil Gaiman - "American Gods" (May)

I Love This Author, but I've Never Read ...
1. "Jailbird" - Kurt Vonnegut
2. "The True Deceiver" - Tove Jansson
3. "Fever Pitch" - Nick Hornby
4. "The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster" - Kaye Gibbons (Nov.)
5. "A Walk in the Woods" - Bill Bryson (Nov.)
6. "A Dirty Job" - Christopher Moore (Mar.)
7. "Something Rotten" - Jasper Fforde (June)
8. "Lisey's Story" - Stephen King (Dec.)
9. "Diary" - Chuck Palahniuk (Apr.)

Short Story Collections (Single Author)
1. "Deportees" - Roddy Doyle (Jan.)
2. "The Girl on the Fridge" - Etgar Keret (June)
3. "The Complete Stories of Truman Capote" (July)
4. "Complete Stories" - Flannery O'Connor
5. "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" - Alan Sillitoe (Aug.)
6. "Bad Behavior" - Mary Gaitskill (Jan.)
7. "Stories" - Katherine Mansfield
8. "The Anything Box" - Zenna Henderson (May)
9. "Complete Stories" - Dorothy Parker (Sept.)

Classics I "Should Have" Read by Now
1. "Hard Times" - Charles Dickens (Sept.)
2. "Don Quixote" - Miguel de Cervantes
3. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" - Oscar Wilde (Sept.)
4. "The House of Mirth" - Edith Wharton
5. "Mrs. Dalloway" - Virginia Woolf (June)
6. "Captains Courageous" - Rudyard Kipling (July)
7. "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" - Thomas Hardy (July)
8. "Nineteen Eighty Four" - George Orwell
9. "The Stranger" - Albert Camus (Sept.)

Memoirs/Personal Essays
1. "Eat, Pray, Love" - Elizabeth Gilbert (Jan.)
2. "Ten Thousand Sorrows" - Elizabeth Kim (Nov.)
3. "Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods--My Mother's, My Father's and
Mine" - Noelle Howey (Jan.)
4. "Jesus Land" - Julia Scheeres (July)
5. "A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love and Faith in Stages" - Kristin Chenoweth (June)
6. "The Big Rumpus" - Ayun Halliday (May)
7. "Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All" - Christina Thompson (Sept.)
8. "Mean Little Deaf Queer" - Terry Galloway (June)
9. "Possible Side Effects" - Augusten Burroughs (May)

Linguistics/Language
1. "Empires of the Word" - Nicholas Oster
2. "The Power of Babel" - John McWhorter (Oct.)
3. "Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic"
- Elizabeth Little (Feb.)
4. "The Story of English" - McCrum/Cran/MacNeil
5. "The Story of Yiddish" - Neal Karlen
6. "The Way We Talk Now" - Geoffrey Nunberg (Aug.)
7. "The Language Instinct" - Stephen Pinker
8. "The Genius of Language" - Wendy Lesser
9. "Do You Speak American?" - MacNeil/Cran (Dec.)

Newberry Winners I Haven't Read
1. "Number the Stars" - Lois Lowry (Jan.)
2. "The Giver" - Lois Lowry (May)
3. "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" - Elizabeth George Speare (Feb.)
4. "The Graveyard Book" - Neil Gaiman (July)
5. "M. C. Higgins the Great" - Virginia Hamilton (Oct.)
6. "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" - Mildred D. Taylor (Oct.)
7. "Maniac Magee" - Jerry Spinelli (Mar.)
8. "Holes" - Louis Sachar (Mar.)
9. "Bridge to Terabithia" - Katherine Patterson (Apr.)

I Think We All Learned a Little Something Today
1. "The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of
Molokai" - John Tayman (May)
2. "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping" - Judith Levine (Feb.)
3. "Don't Know Much About Geography" - Kenneth C. Davis (July)
4. "Guns, Germs and Steel" - Jared Diamond
5. "The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible" - Jonathan Kirsch (Nov.)
6. "The American Way of Death" - Jessica Mitford
7. "The Culture of Fear" - Barry Glassner
8. "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew" - Daniel Pool (Sept.)
9. "Lily Dale: The Town That Talks to the Dead" - Christine Wicker (Nov.)

Saw It, Picked It Up, Felt Like Reading It Now
1. "Uglies" - Scott Westerfeld (Jan.)
2. "The Girls" - Lori Lansens (Jan.)
3. "The World's Shortest Short Stories" - Steve Moss (ed.) (Jan.)
4. "Jemima J" - Jane Green (Feb.)
5. "In the Woods" - Tana French (Mar.)
6. "Lullabies for Little Criminals" - Heather O'Neill (Mar.)
7. "Life on the Refrigerator Door" - Alice Kuipers (Mar.)
8. "Crush" - Jane Futcher (June)
9. "The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery (Aug.)

Message edited by its author, Dec 20, 2009, 3:12pm.

Hello Madhatter...I am new to this challenge also. I have to say that I like your categories. As for being able to put a book in two categories I think that I read somewhere that you can have up to nine books that cross over. I am going to atempt to read 81 different books, but I have some books that will cross over if needed, I look at them as being my cheat sheet if needed. Good luck and happy reading.

No it's not cheating it's called overlapping. And you can overlap categories or even Challenges. I'm doing 999 and 100 at the same time and I'm overlapping books in both challenges.

You already have some great books listed. Quite a few people on this challenge are Etgar Keret fans. I especially like your last category - I've had to sign up for the 100 books challenge so I can put those books somewhere. I read my first Haruki Murakami last year and loved it - Norwegian Wood. Which book are you starting the challenge with?

Thanks for the comments and info!

Rather than having the same book in more than one place on my list, I was thinking of ending up with more than 9 in one category, and so moving one to a different category that also fit.
I am going to try to read 81, but that seems like a tall order. :)

Avatiakh - I already have "Dance Dance Dance", so I'm starting with that. I've heard great things about Norwegian Wood and The Wind Up Bird Chronicles though.

I don't understand these touchstones ... why do some authors and titles turn into links while others don't?

Linguistics category - nice! And I completely understand and identify with your saw it, picked it up, had to read it now category.

6> As far as I can tell, some of it has to do with how fuzzy the title is: lots of books are "Collected Stories..." but there will be far fewer "Empires of the Word." It can take a while for LT to come up with matches, and sometimes what it brings up first isn't the one you want. Also, it seems to reference work pages already on the site, so if nobody lists a particular title in their catalog yet, it won't find a match.

Shauna,
Some people don't bother to put the touchstones in. If you have a book title and enclose in or an author in then the touchstone will be activated.

FYI - A couple other classics to suggest Picture of Dorian Gray,Count of Monte Cristo,Robinson Crusoe,Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,The Scarlet Pimpernel, Peter Pan, and The Red Badge of Courage. these were on my possibles list for my classics category. If I can't make it through the ones I already have on my list, I may still use these as replacements.

Good luck with your challenge!
Cheli

Shauna,
Some people don't bother to put the touchstones in. If you have a book title and enclose in or an author in then the touchstone will be activated.

FYI - A couple other classics to suggest Picture of Dorian Gray, Count of Monte Cristo, Robinson Crusoe, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Peter Pan, and The Red Badge of Courage. these were on my possibles list for my classics category. If I can't make it through the ones I already have on my list, I may still use these as replacements.

Good luck with your challenge!
Cheli

Message edited by its author, Jan 24, 2009, 12:19am.

And many many times, the author touchstones do not work at all. You may try to touchstone them and you will see the author's name show up in red on the right side of the screen. I have no idea why.

Anyway, I just wanted to say hi - you've got an interesting bunch of books here. I read The Power of Babel a while ago & loved it. John McWhorter (ooh, non-functional touchstone!) is one of my favorite writers on language. I'm slowly chugging through Empires of the Word right now. Also reading a different collection of Keteret short stories, The Nimrod Flipout - I'm connecting better with some than others, but overall I really like the stories.

The latest Newberry Medal winner was just announced ("The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman) and that got me thinking about Newberry books I loved, which drove me to a list of past winners, which made me notice all the well-loved-by-other-people titles that I hadn't read, and that prompted me to change one of my categories. Besides, "Books That Have Been on My Shelf forever" would fit 2/3 of my library.

Message edited by its author, Feb 4, 2009, 3:11pm.

I've been noticing Newbery books lately too, and I've seen that some people are reading them all as a challenge. I can't stand to get rid of my other categories (I've already changed and revised them at least five times), so maybe I'll just make a bonus Newbery category.
BTW, I have to star your thread on the basis of your user name alone :) although I do also think your book choices look very interesting.

See, this is why my bookcases are overflowing. I have hundreds of books sitting there that I want to read, and I put a bunch of them on my 999 list, but I keep picking up other books (in the bookstore where I work, used bookstores, thrift shops, my own bookshelves) that catch my eye and demand my immediate attention. I've already filled in three spaces on my "misc" list and we're barely a month into the new year!

I changed the my 8th category from "Books Recommended to Me". The first book was on the old list, the 2nd I'm reading now and didn't really have another place for.

I just gave up trying to squeeze them in and created two bonus categories. I figure if I get 81 books read, I'm good, but the whole point is to read books that a) stretch my horizons, and b) get off my TBR list.

She slinks off before they figure out this is coming from the person who's added 125 to the TBR list since January

I love your last category. Mine's basically the same, but not nearly so creatively titled.

You've got lots of great books there, and I am intrigued with the book Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic. I've added it to my BookMooch wishlist.

Good luck on your challenge!

>15. Me too! Me too! Your categories are both funny and flexible. I'm sticking with what I've got, but learning for next year! I've got you starred and will keep checking back in. BTW, you should hook up with juliette7. She's reading Newberys as well. Happy reading!

Oops! It's juliette07

Message edited by its author, Feb 13, 2009, 1:22pm.

*whew* I haven't checked in in a while and I couldn't find my 999 thread!
I got off to a good start in January but February ... not so much.
I'm about to be unemployed, and book geek that I am, I'm thinking less about the economy and more about how much time I'll have to read!

Thanks for the notes all. Bonnie - how do you star someone? And I'll definitely check out Juliette's list. =)

At the top of the message, next to the red X, is a star. If you click on the star it will turn yellow. Then you can sort Talk by "your starred".

Wow, madhatter22 - sorry about the about to be unemployed situation. I hope it's not so.

I may lose my job this year too depending on if our company can survive. The froze our pensions so they won't have to pay $3 million into the pension fund this year to stave off more layoffs, but we're on 32-hour weeks - effectively a 20% pay cut.

But like you, as a book geek, I'm thinking about how much more time I'll have to read - heck! I read for 2 hours yesterday in the middle of the day.

I saw on Juliette07 that you found her! Yeah! Glad I could match you up. Hey, just a suggestion, but you might want to note the book you've just finished in your latest posting. I have so many threads starred that I just "jump to the first unread" and won't know what you're reading unless you tell me there. But, it's your thread so feel free to ignore me. :-) Enjoy your extra reading time!

I just finished Tana French's "In the Woods". I don't usually read mysteries, but maybe I should rethink that. It's been a while since I've read a book that I just couldn't wait to get back to. A very fun and engrossing read.
I'm wondering if I'd like her second book as much, or what else is out there that's similar ...

I don't read mysteries much anymore either, 'cas I'm usually disappointed with the resolution, or the writing isn't all that good, but this one was, huh? There are lots of mystery experts out there. The last one recommended to me that I read was Spellman Files which was about a quirky family who were all in the "private detective" business, but spent most of their time spying on each other. Main character is trying to gain her independence. Funny, but not really much of a mystery at all.

I'll have to check that one out Bonnie. It does sound interesting. :) And yes, I'd recommend In the Woods.

I just knocked two more off of my Newberry list: Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli and Louis Sachar's Holes. I suspect that if I ever do read all the Newberry winners, there will be a few I'll be dragging myself through just to complete the list. Neither of these books were in the category.

Jerry Spinelli's poetic prose hooked me right away; the book was beautifully written. Some of the story was a little hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-lesson, but it is an intermediate book. Overall I really liked the story, and loved the characters. (J.S. can draw great characters - I appreciated that in Stargirl as well.)

I enjoyed Holes even more. I thought the story was great, and it completely held my interest, all the way through, which I find rare when reading YA or intermediate fiction. (Both books hit me with scenes or events I didn't see coming, and I think that's one of the marks of a great kid's book.)

Yes, those are both great books for kids--and their parents! ;-) I just read The Book Thief today and it's interesting that this book is also considered YA. There's a huge difference in readability, though, among these three. Spinelli and Sachar are extremely popular with 3-5th graders while The Book Thief, with its more serious subject matter--not to mention all the figurative language--probably wouldn't appeal until highschool. I've had several parents of middleschoolers (who are voracious readers, by the way) say they couldn't get their kids interested in The Book Thief, but they loved it.

I've heard good things about The Book Thief. One more for the list!

Oy. Not even 1/4 of the way throught the year, and 2/3 of my "extra" book category is full! I'm away from home right now. I thought I'd be gone for 4-7 days, and I only brought 2 books. Now I'm going on 3 weeks and I'm trying to find things that fit my categories in thrift stores (without buying anything I really want to keep - 'cus I won't have room to get it home) or my mom's shelves (on which I've found some good things, but not much in my categories).

Right now I'm reading Of Human Bondage, which I'm absolutely loving, but it's in a huge hardback collection that's not very comfy for taking to bed at night. So for bedtime I had to scrounge up something that was both literally and figuratively lighter, and there went another place on the "extra" list.

Of Human Bondage was amazing. Some of the best writing I've ever read on those feelings of wanting to get out and "start your life" (as a high school or college senior, when starting your working life) without knowing exactly what it is you want to do, and on the incomprehensible things we do for passion. The main character is touching and maddening and so realistically drawn.
This book could have also gone on my "Authors I've Never Read" list, and now I want to add Somerset Maugham to my "I Love This Author but I've Never Read ..." list.

Gosh! You make me want to go back and look at this book again! :-)

Just finished Lucky Jim. For some reason it was really hard to get into at first. For the first few chapters I just couldn't seem to get a hold of the characters and the plot, even though the writing was clear and the story wasn't complicated.
It was very funny though, and the dialogue was great (and I could very much identify with having to deal with a self-centered, incompetent boss=) so I kept reading, and soon I couldn't put it down. I loved the main character, loved to hate his nemesis, and laughed all the way through.

This was on my "Authors I've Never Read" list, and I'm very glad that Kingsley Amis has written so many more books. I'll definitely be on the lookout.

Wow. Progress slowed waaaaay down in April. I finished 20 books the first 3 months and then only 2 in April, one being started and mostly read in March, and the other being a thin Newberry book.

I did read half of another book in April, but put it down to read "American Gods" while some friends were reading it. Neil Gaiman was on my never-read authors list and I liked the book but don't think I'll be running out for more. (Though I'm still interested in reading Coraline and The Graveyard Book.) I was loving the story through over half the book, but it seemed to lose steam. (Funny - I was thinking early on that you can really see the debt he owes Stephen King in his writing, and then he pulls one of those Kingy lackluster endings.)(But nowhere near It bad =)
I love mythology and folk and fairy tales though, so it was fun to recognize some of the gods and heroes from those stories. Overall I did like it.

I just finished John Tayman's "The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai". I loved this - I'd highly recommend it. Much of it read like a novel, with great stories and and fascinating characters. The writing was never "textbooky" - even in the medical and political details. Unbelievable all the needless suffering so many people went through.

Finished "The Big Rumpus" yesterday. I adore Ayun Halliday. She's not only smart and hysterically funny, she's brutally honest. Anyone who is or was or is thinking about being the mother of small children should read this book.

Read The Giver - one of my favorite Newberrys so far!

Does this challenge ever make anyone else a little grouchy? I keep seeing books I want to read that don't fit into any of my categories except the 'misc.' category, which only has 2 slots left.
I'll feel annoyed that I "can't" read what I want to, then remind myself that nobody's holding a gun to my head and pick up something from my list. And then I feel very accomplished when I cross off another title, and can't wait to get to the next one. =)

Yes! Once I created my categories, I immediately resented my own self telling me what to do. I mostly handled this problem by ignoring or changing my categories, not something I would recommend, but it was the only way I could stick with the challenge. I don't think I'm going to feel the same sense of accomplishment that you are though!

I loved The Giver, btw. I've read it a few times--so deserving of the Newbery!

Annoying as the categories can be, and as often as I just go and read "off list", this challenge has caused the general quality of my reading to go up quite a bit. I'm actually thinking about what I'm reading and since we all have a finite number of books we can read in a lifetime, that's no bad thing!

Some good books on here. I want to look for The Colony now.

"...I immediately resented my own self telling me what to do"

That cracked me up Bonnie, that's it exactly. And I agree, Ridgeway, the general quality of what I've read this year has definitely gone up.

CM - hope you like The Colony!

So I just finished reading Zenna Henderson's short story collection The Anything Box. It's out of print (as I think most - even all? - of her books are) but it's definitely worth looking for. (Although if you just buy one, her collection Holding Wonder is even better - I can read those stories over and over.)
I rarely read science fiction, but these books are just magical. A lot of the stories deal with magic actually, especially the magic that children who still believe in it can create. She also has a lot of stories about the meetings of people from different planets and how they react - with fear, fascination, miscommunication, kindness, mistrust ... closing off or trying to find common ground. The stories are mesmerizing and can be thought provoking, suspenseful, sweet, funny. I really wish her books were more readily available.

I was just looking at my list and thought it was funny that I hadn't read a single book on my "Classics I 'Should Have' Read by Now" list. What is it with these books?? There are countless classics that I'm not interested in, but I really do want to read these! Do they make me feel like I'm embarking on an English class assignment or something? :)

I'm also behind - I should've been at 27 by the end of April to be on course. Need to step it up!

Message edited by its author, May 23, 2009, 9:40pm.

What were your impressions of The Witch of Blackbird Pond? As an adolescent, I loved, loved, loved this book and still have fond feelings for it. A friend of mine, who despises all signs of romance or sentimentality in a book, makes a great exception for this one (she mocked my love of the Anne of Green Gables series mercilessly).

>36: There are just so many great new books coming out all the time that it's hard to go back to the classics, isn't it? I think it's sort of like watching a game (or true confession, a reality show) live versus one I've TIVO-ed. Even though you don't know the outcome of either, the first one can get my heart going in a way that the latter can't.

P.S. I really liked Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. Is that going to be your next Newbery?

D.P.S. I always chuckle when I read your category: I Think We All Learned a Little Something Today

RidgwayGirl - I was pleasantly surprised with The Witch of Blackbird Pond. As a kid I devoured anything to do with witches, but I remember always thinking that one looked boring for some reason. (book cover judging - terrible! =)
I can see why you have fond feelings for it. And I wouldn't call it overly sentimental at all. (Though I don't think I can understand anyone who didn't like the Anne of Green Gables series - at least the first few. =)

Bonnie - I haven't found a used copy of Roll of Thunder yet. (Trying to avoid buying new for now!) I put it on my list b/c it was the one one I was most interested in reading (another, like The Witch of B.P. that I can't understand why I didn't read as a kid!). Hopefully I'll find one soon, but if not there's always the library, which I should use more.

I just finished Augusten Burroughs Possible Side Effects. I'd only ever read Running with Scissors of his books. I liked that one o.k., but I didn't remember him being so funny! Some of his stories had me laughing out loud. I'll definitely be reading the rest of his books. (But not this year 'cus I'm not allowed to!! =)

I'm pretty sure I have two copies of Roll of Thunder.... If I do, I'll trade you if you want. I'm really surprised, though, that you can't find a used copy as it is fairly popular in schools. I would think that there would be lots of copies in your library too.

Uh-oh - only one space left on my "miscellaneous" list and the year's not half over!!

I was visiting a friend, and she told me I should read Crush, a book she'd loved in high school. I was plodding through Mrs. Dalloway and craving a fast read, and I'm a sucker for anything set in a boarding school, so I did. It's a YA novel set in the early '60s about a girl who is trying to understand her romantic/sexual feelings for another girl in a time and place where it's next to impossible to find a sympathetic ear. It was a quick read but much less fluffy than I thought it might be. I thought it was done well and felt honest. If you like YA coming-of-age type stories I'd recommend it.

And I did finish Mrs. Dalloway afterwards. It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying it, but a fast read it definitely is NOT. Her long meandering sentences had to be gone over carefully, and there were many that were so beautifully crafted they needed to be read and enjoyed twice. Or three times. (Yes, some had to be gone over because I lost the thread of what she was saying with all those asides, but I think I reread more for pleasure. =)
It was a lovely and amazing book, and I'll definitely be reading more Virginia Woolf ... just not right away. =)

I added a Sylvia Plath collection to my short story category. It was originally in my "I love this author ..." category, but got bumped. I'd forgotten at the time that it was short stories. I bumped Ray Bradbury from the short stories for now. I can't find a used copy of the collection I want, and I really should read these books I already have!!

I also added Mean Little Deaf Queer to my memoir category, because I just got it as a member review copy - my first! So Mama Lola will have to wait.

Message edited by its author, Jun 11, 2009, 1:24pm.

Argh!!! I was crossing Something Rotten off my list and somehow deleted everything below it!!! Luckily, I recently printed a copy. Unluckily, I only have a hard copy, nothing saved to a document, so I have to type it all out again. Grrrr. Saving the list after this.

Finished Mean Little deaf Queer and posted my review. I don't usually write reviews, but since this was a member review copy ... =)
In a nutshell, if you like memoirs, I'd recommend this one.

Eight more days in the month and I'm about eight books behind schedule. Tonight I had 2 hours that I could've spent reading that I instead spent watching ... um ... Jon & Kate + 8.
That's not helping.

Message edited by its author, Jun 23, 2009, 5:13am.

Finished The Girl on the Fridge. I can understand why some people don't get Etgar Keret - I'm not sure I always get him myself, but I always find him interesting, at the very least, and hilarious and/or thought-provoking at best. If you like short stories and enjoy the quirky and surreal, give him a shot.
**********************
I added King Henry VIII to my list. Renting the first 2 seasons of The Tudors has left me with a jones to "read more about it".
Are other people finding themselves idly organizing next year's list in their heads already? (Other than those rock stars who have already finished this year's list that is.) Before I added Henry, I was thinking I'd do a Shakespeare category next year, or maybe just plays in general ... and I bumped Jane Austen's Sanditon with the rationalization that I could do a whole Jane category next year. Getting way ahead of myself here ... =)

I was looking for books to add to Book Mooch and found an ARC of Kristin Chenoweth's A Little Bit Wicked that I got back in February and hadn't read. I'm a big fan, but with all these other books I have to read, I thought I should read something other than a fluffy star bio. When would I ever get to it? But before giving it away, I thought I'd look at the photos. Then I flipped through the book and instantly got caught up reading a story about a plane ride with the Flight Attendant from Hell. I flipped some more, read some more, flipped and read, flipped and read, until I realized I'd read at least half of the book! So I went back and started at the beginning. Now I'm a really big fan. If you like Kristin Chenoweth and/or star memoirs, read this one. It's funny and fun, honest and engaging and sweet - pretty much the impression you get of Kristin herself.

And now my miscellaneous category is filled - not quite halfway through the year! Of course I can always move this one to the memoir category if I pick up something else I HAVE to read instantly.

Another substitution - I'm catsitting for some friends and found a copy of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, so I switched it with Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I really want to read that one, but I haven't found a copy yet.

Anyway- - I adored The Graveyard Book. Great characters, great story and non-condescending. And you have to love a kids book that starts right off with a family being murdered.

I hadn't read any Neil Gaiman before this year, and now I've read two. And there are copies of Coraline and Anansi Boys sitting here on a shelf, calling to me, asking me to rearrange my list once more ...

Message edited by its author, Jul 17, 2009, 3:17am.

Finished Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Shattered. Wrecked. Heartbroken.
This could've been in my "finally going to read something by" category too. How had I never read Hardy? Amazing book. Only one criticism - the ending seemed almost tacked on. Or written by someone else? Or ... maybe just hurried. I think that's it. There was such a rush of events at the end. But the tone seemed different too. It was a little jarring - but not enough to ruin the book. Not Stephen-King-bad-ending bad.
Looking forward to reading more Hardy ... I know I have at least 3 of his sitting on my shelves already!

Message edited by its author, Jul 17, 2009, 3:29am.

Since I last wrote ...

Finished The Complete Stories of Truman Capote. I'd only ever seen "My Side of the Matter" and "A Christmas Story" in different anthologies, and from those two stories I wouldn't have guessed that so many of his other stories are in the surreal/fantasy/mystical vein. Great collection. "A Christmas Story" makes me cry every time, and I was happy to find two more stories about Truman and his childhood best friend.

Captain's Courageous has been a favorite movie for years, and I loved the book too. I was surprised that there were so many differences - mainly that Manuel is not a major character in the book.

Jesus Land was amazing. If you're a fan of non-celebrity memoirs, you need to read this. Having lived in California all my life, I was shocked at the level of racism still going on in the Midwest and South in the '80s.

Don't Know Much About Geography was somewhat disappointing. I didn't like his writing style much. (And I already have DKMA The Bible and DKMA History on my shelves!) There was a lot of interesting information, though my edition was from the early '90s so a lot has changed since then! It didn't make the whole book obsolete though, as much of it was on subjects that haven't changed like physical geography and early exploration.

Loved the stories in The Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner. Alan Sillitoe's writing and characters reminded me a lot of Roddy Doyle, who I'm a huge fan of. The stories were bleaker though, with a harder sense of humor.

Almost 3/4 of the way through the year and only 1/2 way through my list. More reading, less True Blood and Rescue Me. =)

>48, "More reading, less True Blood...." You could always read the series the show is based on and kill two birds with one stone. ;)

I've added Jesus Land to my wishlist. Thanks for the vivid description.

I saw a great adaptation of Tess on Masterpiece Theater. Worth looking for if you are interested.

Re: Jesus Land, and: If you're a fan of non-celebrity memoirs, you need to read this.

I love memoirs--although I'm much more suspicious of having my emotions manipulated by events that have been exaggerated, or even created for that purpose, since Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

Message edited by its author, Aug 27, 2009, 8:39pm.

Fanny - I was recently given a copy of the first Sookie book ... now how to fit in onto my list ... ? =)

Bonnie & Ridgeway - I'm a little more wary after "A Million Little Pieces" too, but I think the authors know they have to be more careful now. I guess you never know for sure, but really, I couldn't put this one down!

CM - Thanks! I'll definitely check it out. I've heard the Hollywood version (w/Nastassia Kinski??) wasn't that great.

I keep changing my list as books fall into my lap from Early Reviewers and Book Mooch. I'm also rethinking a few v. long books. Not that I'm going to read YA for the rest of the year just so I can finish, but I don't think I can realistically get through the 1000+ pages of Infinite Jest this year. =)

Since last time I've read:

The Way We Talk Now by Geoffrey Nunberg - Short, accessible, NPR-ready essays on language. It's about 10 years old, and it was interesting how dated the essays on the language of technology and computers were in many ways. Still, fun and fascinating reading for any language geek.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. This was an ER copy, so I wrote a whole review (not sure how to link). It took me a while to warm up to the characters in this one, but once I did, I loved it. One of my favorites this year.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All by Christina Thompson - Another ER, so there's a review elsewhere. It's a memoir/history/travel narrative of a WASPy woman who married a Maori from New Zealand. The history bits made me want to read more about the Maoris and other Polynesian cultures, but much of the memoir was repetitive and slow.

Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker - Dorothy Parker is one of my favorite authors and probably my favorite short story author. I'd read almost all of these in The Portable Dorothy Parker and I wasn't planning to have any rereads on my 999 list, but I had one of my favorite stories ("Horsie") stuck in my head like a song, so I read it, and then another, then another ... I'm re-amazed every time I read her. So sharp, so funny, so accurate. I can (and do!) read her stories over and over.

No 'True Blood' this week! Maybe I can get a few extra pages in. =)