Nervously trying 50 books in 2007

I have a horrible track record of following through on reading lists - the minute I say I am going to read a specific book next I lose all interest in reading it. Therefore, I am just going to set myself the challenge of reading 50 books in 2007 without specifying which 50 those are. I hope this is not considered cheating and I dearly hope that setting a specific reading goal does not kill my interest in reading altogether!

(The darn touchstones are not loading for many of these - I apologize!)

My 2007 Reads So Far:

January 2007
(1) Passage to Dusk - Rashid al-Daif
(2) Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India - Gyanendra Pandey
(3) The Stone of Laughter - Hoda Barakat

Review (Finally!)

February 2007
(4) Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

Review

(5) Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners
(6) Perfume: The Story of a Murder - Patrick Suskind

March 2007
(Somehow nothing finished in March? Maybe I read a lot of journal articles or something here.)

April 2007
(7) What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England - Daniel Pool
(8) Children of the Alley - Naguib Mahfouz
(9) The Ottoman Lady: A Social History from 1718 to 1918 (Contributions in Women's Studies)

Review

(10) The Friendly Jane Austen: A Well-Mannered Introduction to a Lady of Sense and Sensibility
(11) The Kin Who Count: Family and Society in Ottoman Aleppo, 1770-1840

Review

(12) The Jane Austen Handbook: a Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World - Margaret C. Sullivan

Review

May 2007
(13) The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation
(14) The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press

Review

(15) Jane Austen in Hollywood
(16) The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender, State Policy, And Popular Culture, 1865-1946

Review

(17) The Cairo Trilogy - Naguib Mahfouz
(18) Miramar - Naguib Mahfouz
(19) Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920

http://www.librarything.com/work/1644317/reviews/16228375

(20) Adrift on the Nile - Naguib Mahfouz
(21) Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon

http://www.librarything.com/work/3158431/reviews/16228379

June 2007
(22) The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
(23) The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
(24) Cat Getting Out of a Bag and Other Observations (I'm counting this even though it's barely a book, since I only counted The Cairo Trilogy as one book and it's HUGE!)

Review

(25) The Reach of a Chef - Michael Ruhlman

Review

Edited to add links to reviews

June 2007 (cont.)

I've also completed two little books by Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey - Donald and the... and Donald Has a Difficulty, but these are so short that its really not fair to count them. Fun though.

How was Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners? Entertaining?

Welcome. Nothing about this challenge is fixed in stone, and certainly nothing suggests that you have to make a list of 50 particular books and stick to it. It's basically a self-imposed challenge to see if you can read any 50 books (or any other number you'd like to choose) in a year's time. So, enjoy!

There's nothing wrong with "little books" either. You've probably got some pretty thick ones too that can offset them. So go ahead and count them! Most of the rest of us do ;-p

June 2007 (cont.)

(26) Donald and the...

Review

(27) Donald Has a Difficulty

Review

Short, but I guess I can count them since many of the books I have read are so long.

(28) The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart

Review

Edited to add a link to review

July 2007

(29) Storm Front - Was looking for a fun distraction for a few hours

All my books are making me cranky right now. I am reading The Plot Against America, which deals with anti-Semitism, Backlash, which deals with feminist issues, and Food Politics : How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, which is pretty self-explanatory. I need to find a nice fluffy book that talks about how everything is great or I will start biting off the heads of everyone I talk to. :)

(30) Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut

Review

Edited to add a link to review

(31) The Stranger - Albert Camus {re-read}

(32) The Plot Against America - Phillip Roth

Meh. I was really disappointed in this book. I am so intrigued by alternative histories and I had wanted to read this one for a long time, but it really did not do anything for me. I think that the only reason I finished it was because I wondered how it would end.

August 2007

(33) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling (Ok, why is the actual book not the first thing that comes up as a touchstone?!? Why does it not come up at all???)

(34) The Whore's Child and Other Stories - Richard Russo. Great short stories - I especially loved the title story and "The Mysterious Life of Linwood Hart." Now I really want to read more Russo.

(35) Syria and Israel: From War to Peacemaking - Moshe Ma'oz

My Lame A** Review

(36) For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women - Barbara Ehrenreich

Review

(37) Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure - Emma Campbell Webster

Review

Yikes. I am going more slowly than I had hoped. I need to read a little more if I am going to hit 50 by the end of the year.

Edited to insert links to reviews

Finished August with a great read:

(38) Angelica by Arthur Phillips

Reviewed at: http://www.librarything.com/review/20395508

September 2007

(39) The Island of Dr. Moreau - H.G. Wells

That Ehrenreich book looks good. What did you think of it?

It WAS good - here's a link to my review on LT:

http://www.librarything.com/review/19977420

My one piece of advice - get the updated version, since there is 30 years of history that I missed out on by getting the old version from the library. If anything, I think the issues that Ehrenreich addresses have only gotten more important over time.

(40) The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class by David Kidder

I enjoyed this book so much and learned a lot of little bits of information about science, religion, art, music, literature, and history. I did not read it as intended - one page a day over the course of a year - but I don't think that diminished my experience. I now have about 1000 more areas of knowledge that I would like to explore!

(41) Blindness by Jose Saramago

I bought this for my boyfriend a while ago and neither of us got around to reading it until I started my 'Around the World' fiction challenge. This was a great book - incredibly well-written and thought-provoking - but very hard to read. Harrowing - it made me think about how fragile social norms and morals really are. Not for the faint of heart, I guess.

Funny that two weeks ago I really thought I would not make it to 50 this year and now I only have a little way to go.

Hi, fanny ~ so many interesting books you've read so far! I'm particularly interested in What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew and The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class.

I read Angelica too but didn't find it quite as charming as you did, though I gave it a 4 star out of 5 rating. I loved The Egyptologist, which had a similar theme of how the truth can be distorted without ever a lie being told knowingly.

(42) After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Still processing this book...

I can't even explain it but I feel like I really loved this one. Sparse, understated, a growing undercurrent of menace that (almost) never seems to go anywhere. Experiments in perspective. Totally unresolved.

Going to re-read in a week or so and see if I can't articulate it better.

Edited on 09/16/2007 to say: I changed my mind. I am simply going to appreciate the fact that I really enjoyed this book for reasons that are mostly impressionistic and that I can't articulate it. Need to stop over-thinking things. If I liked it, I liked it.

(43) Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

Review

(44) The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 1) by Lemony Snicket

Review

(45) Palestine by Joe Sacco

Forgot to put this one up when I finished it.

Here's a link to my review:

http://www.librarything.com/review/19977389

(46) The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot and Left by David Crystal

Edited to add link to review

(47) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Really enjoyed this. Review to come.

Edited to post link to review

(48) The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Half Jane Eyre, half Wuthering Heights?...
I'm not sure that I thought this book was terribly original or that the plot twists were actually all that "twisty", but I have to confess that I could not put this book down.

Edited to link to review

(49) The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

Continuing on my theme of weird and depressing, I guess. I need to get in gear and review some of my recent reads.

Review

(50) Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet

Just ok. Laughed at some bits and it wasn't bad overall, but I didn't think it was that great. I liked all the references to "The Omen" film, though - have loved that movie since I was a kid. :)

Edited to add Review

(51) Darkly Dreaming Dexter: A Novel - Jeff Lindsay

Review

Finished two completely different books today:

(52) Syria: Fragile Mosaic of Power - Martha Neff Kessler

(Sorry, it seems that neither of these touchstones are ever going to load)

Review

(53) Sharp Objects: A Novel - Gillian Flynn

Review

Congratulations on making 50 - and then some.

Thanks, I've really picked up the pace since I decided that I (gasp!) might prefer reading fiction for a while. I always thought I was an anti-fiction person, but recently I've had a real thing for it. Of course, I have had a slew of three-star books and even though in my rating system that means they were "ok," I tend to give three stars to books that a feel a little let down by. Perhaps it's grade inflation and I should adjust my scores!

(54) The Rest Falls Away: The Gardella Vampire Chronicles - Colleen Gleason

A terribly cheesy vampire-slayer romance novel set in Regency England. I'm almost ashamed to have read it, but I heard it was good and I wanted some light reading for a change.

Review

I've just given up on two books - Fatland: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World - which I don't really feel bad about because it was kind of boring and not really any new or interesting information since I've read a few other books about food and nutrition and marketing - and Abyssinian Chronicles, which I feel really bad about giving up since it was a group read for the 'Reading Globally' group and I really wanted to enjoy it. But I just couldn't get into it - I tried and tried and it just wasn't any good.

So now I am not reading anything, which is a really weird position for me to be in. I NEED something good to read!

I've not read much lately, but what I've read has been very good - I could recommend Lost Paradise by Cees Nooteboom (Can't get those touchstones quite right) and The Bridge Over the Drina by Ivo Andric, the first short, the second long, both great books.

(55) Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories - Ghassan Kanafani

Review

(56) The Reptile Room (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 2) - Lemony Snicket

Review

Oh man, am I glad I stumbled across your thread! I read the late-70's version of For Her Own Good about five years ago and found it excellent--but had no idea English & Ehrenreich had updated it! Now I might have to read it again! Thanks!

(57) My Lobotomy - Howard Dully

Just finished. An amazing read - sad, but never sensationalist, despite the shocking subject matter.

Review

Next I think I'll be going to either The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly or Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace, which was an Early Reviewers Book that I requested, did not get and then was able to get from the library with no problem. Take that, silly algorithm! :)

(58) The Wide Window (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 3) by Lemony Snicket

Review

(59) The Miserable Mill (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 4) by Lemony Snicket

Review

(60) The Austere Academy (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 5) by Lemony Snicket

Review to come

(61) The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly - definitely one of the best books I've read in the last month or three. I loved the way it incorporated classic fairy tales, mythology, and ancient history and offered a new and interesting twist on these stories. The ending was so touching, I teared up.

Review to come

The Book of Lost Things looks interesting - age appropriateness? Good book to share with a teen or pre-teen? Or too adult?

Hmmm... There is some violence, but it is dealt with thoughtfully. Lots of death and danger. There are no sex scenes, but some implied sex, and some implications of homosexuality/pedophilia (I'm not equating the two, but one character in the book does). It is similar in tone to some of the later, darker Harry Potter books, I think (but not in subject matter really).

I think it is definitely appropriate for a teen, maybe like 12 and up, but I have no kids and its sometimes hard for me to gauge what's ok. It did win the Alex Award, which is apparently an award for adult books that teens like...(Kinda random idea for an award) My boyfriend's 14-year-old brother read it as an assigned book for high school and really enjoyed it (and he is not a reader at all). If you're unsure, I would suggest reading it first yourself - I could not put it down and finished it in a few hours.

I may try to read that first - I'm looking for "bridge" books that will move my voraciously reading 13 year old from the pap written for her age group (mostly fantasy pap in her case) to more complex and thoughtful books. Stuff we can read together is ideal.

I know the move is inevitable, but there is a whole world of sharing "grown up" literature with my kids that I can't wait to experience.

(62) The Ersatz Elevator (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 6) by Lemony Snicket

(63) Stardust by Neil Gaiman

(64) The Vile Village (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 7) - Lemony Snicket (F)

(65) The Hostile Hospital (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 8) - Lemony Snicket (F)

(66) The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

(67) The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death photographed by Corinne May Botz

None of the touchstones are loading for this one

#49 None of the touchstones are loading today, period.

(68) The Dispossessed by Ursuala K. LeGuin

(69) The Cat Who Came in From the Cold by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

(70) The Latke Who Wouldn't Stop Screaming - Lemony Snicket

These are so short they hardly count, but I really enjoyed both of them - both Xmas gifts.

(71) The Carnivorous Carnival (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 9) - Lemony Snicket (F)

Probably the last book I will complete this year. Oh well. :)

Hey, you made it to 71 books ~ congrats! And you thought you couldn't do it. Not nervous anymore, are you. :-)

Happy New Year!