Top books read 2nd quarter 2007 April - June

For those of you who participated in our first quarter survey and any newcomers, here is the place to post your top five (if you have five) books read between April 1st and June 30th of this year. I realize I've started the thread a bit early but I expect to be a bit preoccupied towards the end of the month (besides, some of you might already KNOW your top books for the last three months).

Mine are (in no particular order)

1. The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
2. Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
3. Black Girl White Girl, by Joyce Carol Oates
4. Angelica by Arthur Phillips

Poetry: Overnight by Paul Violi
Short Fiction Collection: Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan (YA)

My top books for this quarter are
1. The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
3. Thunderstruck by Erik Larsen
4. Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith
5. The beautiful cigar girl by Daniel Stashower

I spoke too soon, it seems; I'm editing this as of the 23rd of June:

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (4.5 stars)
Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay* (5 stars)
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (4.5 stars)
Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (4.5 stars)
Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay (5 stars)

All fantasies, now. (I had one historical novel on my first list). Not hard to tell where my interests lie these days.

Mine would be (not necessarily in order):
The Brothers K by David James Duncan
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
A Path with Heart by Jack Kornfield
Called to Question: a Spiritual Memoir by Joan Chittister

I might be cheating on time a little, can't remember exactly when I finished one or two of these.

interesting question, i had to think about it a bit. i wouldn't be able to tell you what order these would go in, but i'm thinking the best five would be:

invitation to a beheading by nabokov
forty signs of rain by kim stanley robinson
a game of thrones by george r.r. martin
night by elie wiesel
aztec by gary jennings

1. The Book Thief by Mark Zusak
2. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
3. You Can’t Catch Death by Ianthe Brautigan
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
5. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

You know, this was not a quarter in which I read a lot of books that hit me as 'favorite' right now. A couple are mentinoed simply because they are favorite books, but generally the new books I read were not all that impressive - I liked most of them, yes, but favorites? Not so much.

Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane
The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner
The Last Colony by John Scalzi

I also read half as many books in this quarter as I did in the first quarter. Interesting.

Had a good quarter with reading:- 5 favourites -

On Beauty by Zadie smith
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
The Kite Runner by Khaled Husseini

Here are my picks for the second quarter:

Final List:
1.Nineteen Minutes Jodi Picoult
2.Never let me go Kazuo Ishiguro
3.The Corrections Jonathan Franzen
4.The sword and the scimitar David Ball
5.House of the Spirits Isabel Allende

My second-quarter picks are:
1. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
2. A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The last one was a re-read, but such a wonderful classic I have to put it on the list.

Since the start of April, I've finished a total of five books (there's an off chance I'll finish a sixth by the end of the month, but don't count on it). Rather than give simply the full list of what I've read this quarter, I'll list the books I read this quarter that I liked enough to vote for:

1. David Hackett Fisher's Washington's Crossing
2. Lynn Sherr's Failure is Impossible
3. Dava Sobel's The Planets, though this is a borderline case. I liked it, but I'm not sure how much I want to nominate it.

My picks, not in any particular order, are:

The Secret River by Kate Grenville
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Later, at the Bar (touchstone doesn't work) by Rebecca Barry

I expect to be able to add At Large and at Small by Anne Fadiman, but I've just started it.

I read some great books so far in the second quarter, but I've narrowed this down to only those books I gave a 4.75 or 5 rating (and the month of June's not over yet, so I may add or change things later):

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - 4.75
The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg - 4.75
The Road by Cormac McCarthy - 5
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho -5

I read a lot of pretty good books this quarter, but only two got a 5-star rating:

The Man Who Cast Two Shadows by Carol O'Connell (noir mystery)
Caesar, Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy (biography)

and three got a 4-1/2 star rating:

Innocent in Death by Robb (romance)
The Watchman by Crais (mystery)
Singer in the Snow by Marley (sci-fi/fantasy)

I didn't read many "blow me away" novels, but here are my top 5 with my fave on top going to the bottom:

Lover Revealed by J.R. Ward
Wide Awake by David Levithan
Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale by Holly Black
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

I would say Lover Revealed was also the biggest surprise for me since I didn't really expect to even like the book and wound up liking it more than any others I've read this year.

The Glass Castle was pretty tied with Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters books, but I finally picked it because it really had more of an impact on me. It was one of those books that you continued to think about afterwards.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
A Woman in Jerusalem by A. B. Yehoshua
Shadow Baby by Alison McGhee

I haven't been ranking my reads, other than to make some notes when I've finished the book. I find it very hard to give star ratings, but these I enjoyed the most.

I only have 2: The Knitting Circle and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Both were great. I think I might be adding what I am currently reading now at a later date. I am reading the latest Oprah selection, Middlesex which I am thorough enjoying.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Dark Angels by Karleen Koen
Doubt by John Patrick Shanley
The Perfect Royal Mistress by Diane Haeger

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Will you be reviewing Persuasion? (I'd ask how it was, but the fact that you posted it here kinda answers that, doesn't it?)

I started Emma recently, but I doubt I'll get it done by month's end.

<topic=on>

In no particular order...

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

#19, I'm new here, just joined last night. I hadn't thought of reviewing Persuasion, since I figured so many people already had (but I may be wrong, I haven't checked). It's a bit less lively than Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibilty, or Emma, but the characters are really strong and the romance is much more mature. And as usual, Austen gives a wonderful portrait of society.

Thanks. I'll have to move it up a few spaces on my to-be-read list.

I'm happy with each of them, but here's a stab at a rank order:

1 Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen
2 The Secret Life of Houdini by William Kalush
3 Beautiful Cigar Girl by Daniel Stashower
4 American Plague by Molly Caldwell Crosby - 1878 Yellow Fever Plague

Top four, in no particular order.

1. Dark Room by Andrea Kane
2. White Night by Jim Butcher
3. Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
4 Raven Black by Ann Cleeves

And, I'm saving my fifth in case I like At Large and at Small by Anne Fadiman, which should be here tomorrow.

No particular order...

1. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
2. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
3. Red Azalea by Anchee Min - the touchstone won't load for this but it's a non-fiction account of growing up during China's Cultural Revolution. Reads like a novel, really interesting.
4. When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka
5. The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

I guess you can really see I've had an Asian literature project going on the last few months.

1984 - George Orwell
The Josephine Bonaparte Trilogy - Sandra Gulland
The Serpent Bride - Sara Douglass
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Can't actually rank them, and there are others I'd include. I seem to have had a fairly good three months of reading.

Here are my top 5 of the second quarter, in no particular order:

1. Skellig by David Almond
2. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
3. Griffin and Sabine trilogy by Nick Bantock (they're short art books so I'll count them as one)
4. Blankets by Craig Thompson
5. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

The next quarter's Top 5 will be more difficult since it's summertime (I'm a school librarian) and I took 17 books home yesterday to add to my "to read" pile. I'll have lots to choose from!

I think that I can give my favourite books of the second quarter.
Tied for first place
1.The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
1.The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
Both authors tell a good story with wonderful use of language.
In no order
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
Many readers didn't like this book -which has an affinity in it's surreal plot line to the movie "Borat" It is very funny and tasteless at the same time.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte- I must have read this book many times and still find it fresh each time.
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
A heartbreaking story told very well.

1. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
3. Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead
4. Same Kind of Different as Me by Denver Moore
5. ?

So far in no particular order -

Keeping Watch by Laurie R. King - a semi-continuation of the characters we found in Folly it's the story of Alan Charmichael and how he came to be in the business of rescuing abused kids & moms and the complications that arise in his latest case. Very well done.

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter – the story of a law professor whose father (an eminent Judge) dies suddenly and leaves behind clues to the cause of his very public downfall and disgrace. Multilayered with a very long story arc.

The Madness of a Seduced Woman by Susan Fromberg Schaffer – the story of a woman made out of control by love, obsession and mental illness and how that combination drove her to murder.

The Eighth Dwarf by Ross Thomas – an espionage thriller set in the wake of WW2 and the race to capture a known assassin. Each government wants him for their own reasons, but who will find him first? Love Ross Thomas.

hmm...will have to dwell on the 5th.

Well - the quarter is not over yet -- but I think I can safely do this:

1. Middlemarch - George Eliot
2. A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul
3. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
4. The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
5. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

I reserve the right to change depending on the last 10 days of the month!

1.) The Book Thief
2.) The Thirteenth Tale
3.) All Over but the Shoutin
4.) Rebecca
5.) Fahrenheit 451

Something old (4) ...something new (2), something borrowed (from the library-3) and something that made me blue (1). A good mix.

I have read 17 books so far this quarter, and could possibly read at least 2 more (possibly 3 or 4). I can't pick just 5. I have marked as excellent in my book journal the following: Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, The case of the missing books: a mobile library mystery by Ian Sansom, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress, Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres, Looking for Alaska, All Over but the Shoutin', The Road, Ethan Frome and Gramercy Park. And who knows what I could add by the end of next week :) It has been a very good quarter of reading for me.

bookworm12 - Are you trying to tell us something? Is there a wedding in there somewhere? :)

Fiction:
Shining Through by Susan Isaacs
Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith

Memoir:
The Children of Willesden Lane - Beyond the Kindertransport: a Memoir of Music, Love and Survival by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen
Return to Paris by Colette Rossant (Wonderful food writing)

I'm not sure about my fifth book yet (I'll edit it in later) but having just finished On Chesil Beach, I have my top four for this quarter:

Akhenaten by Dorothy Porter
Dedalus book of Finnish fantasy
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Toddler-hunting by Taeko Kono
Spleen by Olive Moore

Edited to add my fifth choice

I'm afraid I now have six: the four I mentioned above in #12 and two more.

Mentioned above:
The Secret River by Kate Grenville
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Later, at the Bar (touchstone doesn't work) by Rebecca Barry

And now:

At Large and at Small by Anne Fadiman (as expected)
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

I will have to try to narrow this down.

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell
Ask the Dust by John Fante
Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty
Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

>MrsLee
No no, just a joke. No marriage on the horizon, reading is my true love.

In order of reading:

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
The Sunset Limited, by Cormac McCarthy
Old Filth, by Jane Gardam
A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
Citizen Vince, by Jess Walter

I am in the process of reading "The 100 Greatest Books" (and no, I did not decide which books ended up on the list), which are listed in alphabetical order. I am currently on "Ethan Frome" by Edith Warton

1. The Basic Eight, by Daniel Handler
2. The Accidental Mind, by David J. Linden
3. Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers
4. Queens in the Kingdom, by Jeffrey Epstein and Eddie Shapiro
5. Hot Sky at Midnight, by Robert Silverberg

1: DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore by Alan Moore
2: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
3: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
4:Train Man by Nakano Hitori
5: Ock Von Fiend by Luke Edwards

I knew I posted too early. Since I posted Message 24, I've read two books that are better than the first on the list. Here's my list of the five best books of the quarter, in no particular order.

1. White Night by Jim Butcher
2. Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
3. Raven Black by Ann Cleeves
4. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
5. Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin

I've read so many really good books lately that it's difficult to choose, but I'll give it a go:

1. Ronia, The Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren - 10/10
2. The Plucker by Brom - 10/10
3. Broken Skin by Stuart MacBride - 9/10
4. No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong - 9/10
5. The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly - 9/10

There are a whole host of 8/10s snapping at their heels, including such fare as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin to name but a few.

Considering that this quarter I've read 34 books and listened to 10 audio books, that's a pretty good haul (incidentally, there are several more 8/10s and a handful of 7/10s too, so I've really done myself proud with good reading this quarter!).

Only three

1) Austerlitz
2) The English Patient
3) The life of insects

In my earlier message (#14), I listed two that got a 5-star rating:

The Man Who Cast Two Shadows by Carol O'Connell (noir mystery)
Caesar, Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy (biography)

and three that got a 4-1/2 star rating:

Innocent in Death by Robb (romance)
The Watchman by Robert Crais (mystery)
Singer in the Snow by Marley (YA sci-fi/fantasy)

I'm going to have to add one more, Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis, which got a 4-1/2 star rating also for being one of the better Falco mysteries. I think if I have to bump one of the first 5, it would be either Innocent in Death or The Watchman.

Well, I am so glad that I waited until the end of June to write my top five because I read an excellent book during this last week. My 2nd quarter choices are as follows:

-The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (5/5)
-The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (5/5)
-Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (5/5)
-The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (5/5)
-Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (4.5/5)

Go for some variety then.

Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction
The Year's Best Science Fiction: 2001 : Nineteenth Annual Collection
Down and Dirty
Wild Cards Aces High
The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighteenth Annual Collection

I have 6 books in my top 5 this quarter. I gave up for now trying to cut one; I'll try later.

In no particular order:

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Case Histories: A Novel by Kate Atkinson
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
Away by Amy Bloom

cabegley - can you say more about The Bounty? It sounds interesting.

I only have three books worth listing. I hesitated to include Montessori's book because it's a terribly difficult read. But, considering I've copied out a ton of quotes, and I keep thinking about it, and it has changed how I look at the world...

1. The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori (1949)
2. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (1999)
3. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (2001)

After a first quarter with three nonfiction picks in my top five, I've had a second quarter where fiction takes four of the top slots.

These are in no particular order:

- Boomsday by Christopher Buckley
- Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
- At Midnight on the Thirty-first of March by Josephine Young Case - probably my overall favorite of the quarter (reviewed here).
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- John Donne: The Reformed Soul by John Stubbs.

1.The Other Side Of the Bridge by Mary Lawson
2. The Birth House by Ami McKay
3. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
4. By The Time You Read This by Giles Blunt (still reading)

(in no particular order)

#52, teelgee--The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty was fascinating. Captain Bligh has been painted as a tyrannical villain in most popular fiction, but in reality (at least according to Alexander's research) he was a fair, compassionate captain and was completely taken by surprise by Christian Fletcher's mutiny (it seems as if Fletcher was a bit unhinged). The book covers the voyage of the Bounty, the mutiny, the life of the mutineers before capture, Bligh's extraordinary 3600-nautical-mile voyage in a dangerously overloaded 23-foot open launch after he and his loyalists were forced off the Bounty, the search for the mutineers, their trials, and the lives of the principals post-Bounty. I highly recommend it.

Here are my top picks from the 2nd quarter:

1. Stardust: Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie, by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
2. Dance Dance Dance, by Haruki Murakami
3. Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett
4. The Hanged Man, by Francesca Lia Block
5. The Talisman, by Stephen King and Peter Straub

From a "quarter" filled with good reads, here are 5 in no particular order. (There may be others I have missed)
Time Travelers Wife
Truth & Beauty
Posession
The March
The long emergency

The Sea Wolf-Jack London
Lost!-Thomas Thompson
Faust-Goethe
Diary of a Nobody-George Grossmith
McTeague-Frank Norris

I was pleasantly surprised by Lost!, considering it was a book I picked out randomly at the library when I was looking for books involving the ocean and it hadn't been checked out for many years. It's the true story of 3 people trapped on a capsized boat and their conflicts (often religious). I highly recommend it, but if you are interested do not read the reviews on Amazon because they will ruin the book for you!!

Bit behind, but here I go...

1. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
2. Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
3. The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
4. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
5. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card