Top Five Books first quarter of 2008

Once again, we are finishing up another quarter year and, as we did last year, I'm providing a thread for those who wish to see how their reads in the early part of the year trickle down into those 'best of the year' lists in December and January.

So, ladies and gentlemen of the LibraryThing literati, your top five books from January - March, pleeeease! The number five is suggested but not a rule.

I find it always very tough to make these lists and impossible to lump fiction and nonfiction together. In no particular order:

Fiction:
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga.
Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana
The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey
Tiny Deaths by Rob Shearman (an LT author)
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Nonfiction:
Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers, edited by Susan Morrison.
Fevered Lives : Tuberculosis in American Culture since 1870 by Katherine Ott.

Unless something really grabs me in the next week (doubtful), these would be my choices for top five first quarter:

The first three Pagan books by Catherine Jinks. Since they are a series and I've read them all since January, I am counting them as one.

Lady of the Lakes by J.C. Hall.

Discoveries by F.M. McPherson (an e-book)

Romeo and Juliet Together (and Alive) At Last by Avi. Yes, this was a kids book but I really loved it.

Her Majesty's Dog Volume 8 by Mick Takeuchi. I finally got it in the mail yesterday and loved it as much as I've loved all the preceding manga in the series.

I haven't read as much as I would like this quarter (that pesky Real Life!), but I have read some excellent books.

Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano (with thanks to all the LTers who encouraged me to keep going)
The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth
The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric
The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan

I hope in the next quarter to read lots more books and to have the pleasant problem of trying to narrow the best ones down to 5.

As most of the books that I've read recently are series, picking just five books would be pretty tricky. I could, for example, just pick the entire Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon - that would be exactly five books. On the other hand, I liked Spin State by Chris Moriarty quite a lot. Michael Moorkcock's Elric books are some of the best fantasy ever written. Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books may not be great literature, but they are wicked fun. David Weber's Honor Harrington books are such rousing adventure and difficult to put down (even if he does need to learn how to end things). Last but not least, Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin the Maker are just outstanding.

My 9's this year are all classics.

Slaughter-house Five by Vonnegut
Little Women by Alcott
Pride and Prejudice by Austen

Both Slaughter-house and P&P I didn't care for at first, but near the end I was sneaking reading in at work and they affected me for days afterward.

Even getting it to ten was rough for me! : /

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Middlesex by Jeffery Eunginides
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Witch's Boy by Michael Gruber
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

My top five this quarter (in no particular order):

1. King Rat by China Mieville
2. A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay
3. City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer
4. Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan
5. Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson

Difficult to get to 5. That 5th one is eluding me.

5 stars -
1. John Adams by David McCullough - very emotional and educational and no doubt will be memorable as well.
2. Duma Key - Stephen King - the best novel he's written in years, maybe the best novel he's written period.

4.5 stars
3. The French Lieutenant's Woman - after a bit of a rough acclimation period, I was blown away by the power of the story.

4 stars, the most memorable of the 4-stars for Q1
4. The Forgery of Venus - Michael Gruber - interesting premise and terrific execution

The rest of the 4-star books -
Briarpatch by Ross Thomas
The Bridesmaid by Ruth Rendell
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
New England White by Stephen L. Carter

I love these threads! I read some great books this quarter.

In no particular order:
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
1984 by George Orwell

Honorable mention to Saturday by Ian McEwan.

I've read so much good fiction since the turn of the year, it's really hard to pick, but here goes:

In no particular order:

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Of course, if I finish War and Peace by the 31st, I'll have to amend this.

Nonfiction - I didn't read a lot of it this quarter, but I did love:

The Translator: a tribesman's memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
In Defense of Food : an eater's manifesto by Michael Pollan
The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

All in all, a great quarter!

Why do I even bother with author touchstones???

Well, I've read 22 books this quarter, but I'm not sure even five of them were good enough to mention as "top" books for the quarter - especially given that several of them were re-reads for me. The most impressive of the "new" books (to me) I've read this quarter were:

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov
The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

I've had a good quarter in both fiction and nonfiction.

Fiction:
The Road by McCarthy
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Hamid
Half of a Yellow Sun by Adichie
Lolita by Nabakov
In the Country of Men by Matar

Nonfiction:
Wild Swans by Chung
Dreams From My Father by Obama
Three Cups of Tea by Mortenson and Relin
Eat, Pray, Love by Gilbert

ETA: Ender's Game by Card

I've read 30 books during an outstanding 1st quarter, and these were my favorite novels:

Sway by Zachary Lazar

Life Class by Pat Barker

Beautiful Children by Charles Bock

The Terror by Dan Simmons

Lush Life by Richard Price

The Blue Star by Tony Earley

In no special order

The Remains of the Day
The Flame Trees of Thika
A Civil Action
The World without Us
The story of Lucy Gault

#13 whymaggiemay The Road is on my TBR pile... and with your recco it's going to be bumped up a few spots ;-) I just mooched Wild Swans on BM yesterday... it's cool you liked it, can't wait to get it now.

#11 teelgee I'm dying to get my hands on The Invention of Hugo Cabret!

I don't know if I have FIVE tops for the first quarter... I wouldn't put many of what I've read on a TOP book list. But definately put Middlesex on the top books list. I also thought The Store by Bentley Little was a really great scary-creapy book, though I got tired of it and was glad it was over.

The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee
Without a Map by Meridith Hall
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

1. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (8/10)
2. Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell (9/10)
3. Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar (8/10)
4. Cicero by Anthony Everitt (8/10)
5. Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day by Philip Matyszak 8/10

6. Tie between The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd and the latest Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer (both 8/10)

Edited to add Dreamers of the Day (no touchstone?) which was wonderful.

Fiction:
That Night by Alice McDermott
Duma Key by Stephen King
The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Nonfiction:
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
Life Lines: Holding on and Letting Go by Forrest Church
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
Candy Girl by Diablo Cody
More Book Lust by Nancy Pearl

1. The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke
2. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss
3. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt
4. Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
5. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

Top five books this quarter:

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
The New Kings of Nonfiction by Ira Glass
Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon
and
The Sparrow by May Doria Russell

In reading order:

1. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan - NF (touchstones have never worked for this book/author)

2. A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs - NF (due out in May)

3. The Best Day, the Worst Day by Donald Hall - NF

4. Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by the Famous and the Obscure - NF

5. Selected Stories of Richard Bausch by Richard Bausch - F

6. Mudbound by Hillary Jordan - F (again, no touchstones)

This is a fun exercise, just to go through my 17 books and see what my favs were. I am surprised to see so much NF, as I am mainly a F reader. But then again, most of these are memoirs.

I think if I finish The Translator this weekend, based on others recommendations, I am sure it would make this list.

In no particular order:

An Ordinary Man – Paul Rusesabagina
Looking for Alaska – John Green
Fire in the Blood – Irene Nemirovsky
Beaufort – Ron Leshem
Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl

Edited to update my list.

SqueakyChu Thanks... now you made my wishlist longer... I didn't know Paul Rusesabagina had a book! I had to run over to BookMooch and put it on my wishlist... :-D

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It is sooo good. I listened to it on tape and was mesmerized by his story. He's truly an amazing man. I understand what he said when he expressed being no hero; he used what he was best at to protect many people. He was lucky as well.

My top 5 for the quarter:
* Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England, by Alison Weir
* Persuasion, by Jane Austen
* The Children of Henry VIII, also Alison Weir
* The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur, by Daoud Hari
* Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

(Who says a quarter doesn't buy much?)

My top 5 are:
1. Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton
2. March, by Geraldine Brooks
3. Astrid and Veronika, by Linda Olsson
4. The Secret River, by Kate Grenville
5. What is the What, by Dave Eggers

For what it's worth, Cry, the Beloved Country was my first book of 2008 and right then I thought perhaps I'd read one of my top 10. We'll see if the feeling holds ...

Not in any order;

1. Non Stop by Brain Aldiss (Sci Fi)
2. Pork Chop Hill by S. L. A. Marshall (History-Korean War)
3. "The Black Ship" by Dudley Pope (Naval History)
4. The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell (Sci Fi)
5. Bill The Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison (Sci Fi/humor)

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Saturday, Ian McEwan
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Peter Hoeg

But that means leaving out The Uncommon Reader, The Poisonwood Bible and Voss.

And I gave all of Sonya Hartnett's books 5 stars; The Ghost's Child, The Silver Donkey, and What the Bird's See/Of A Boy. Sonya Hartnett is the Winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize for 2008.

And I really liked The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling my last book.

I'm only going to mention one of the sixteen books I've read so far, because it stands so high above the others: Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens is one of his best!!! and my personal favorite Dickens book.

In no particular order:

Fiction:

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett
The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
Intrusions by Ursula Hegi
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Non-Fiction:

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

This has really made me realise how many excellent books I have read in the last three months! More or less in order:

1. Teta, Mother and Me by Jean Said Makdisi (memoir)
2. The Book Of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
3. On Trying To Keep Still by Jenny Diski
4. Night and the City by Gerald Kersh
5. Little Big Man by Thomas Berger

ETA: I haven't finished The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen yet, but if it's all right I'd like to make it one of my top five - I think it'll slot in at number 4.

I would like to add The Road by Cormac McCarthy to my previous post of Middlesex.

1. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
2. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
3. When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman
4. The Bride by Julie Garwood (okay, nothing literary, but I simply loved it!)
5. Highlander Untamed by Monica Mccarty okay another romance, but it really was good! LOL!

I can only recommend one book read this quarter as "top five" quality:

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

But, I'm reading Sense and Sensibility right now, so hopefully I'll be able to add that to my list.

Its been a great first quarter for reading!

The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
The Card, A Story of Adventure in the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Also enjoyed Little Women by Louisa May Allcott and Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym.

The first three were absolutely wonderful.

1. Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson
2. Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
3. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4. The Subtle Knife & The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
5. Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann

In this order:

1. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (re-read, but I love it as much this time as the first time)
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
3. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

I'm now amending my earlier post (#4) to add a sixth book, What's for Dinner? by James Schuyler.

In no special order;

Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason - Jessica Warner (NF)

American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang

Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader - Anne Fadiman

The Giver - Lois Lowry

Rebeccanyc - tell me more! I have it from the library but have put off starting it.

I really haven't had a fabulous reading quarter to start the year -- some good to very good books -- but no 5 star ones.

1. The Secret River by Kate Grenville
2. Eventide by Kent Haruf
3. Fortune's Favorites by Coleen McCullough
4. The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
5. THe Grass Crown by Coleen McCulough

Amended my earlier post (#18) to add Dreamers of the Day (no touchstone?) by Mary Doria Russell, which was wonderful!

Edited to correct misspelling.

In no particular order, my top 5 books of the first quarter of 2008:

Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Night by Elie Wiesel

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

My top three so far are (in no particular order):

The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, from the Revolution to the First World War by Graham Robb
The Stones of Florence by Mary McCarthy
The Law in Classical Athens by Doughlas M. MacDowell.

All are nonfiction, which just struck me.

Notable this quarter:

Ada, or Ardor - Nabokov
Pale Fire - Nabokov

Nabokov's pretty much going to shove any others down to another league,

and

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris. This last one because it made me laugh hard and often.

citygirl, I've read Pale Fire a couple of times, even have a US 1st ed. of it, and it's sui generis, in a league of its own.

Truly. I just ordered Nabokov's autobiography. It should be as delightful as his fiction.

After much waffling I'm going to hit the submit button and set this in stone.

Fiction:

Shantaram-Gregory David Roberts
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn-Betty Smith
The Name of the Rose-Umberto Eco
Out Stealing Horses-Per Petterson
Zeroville-Steve Eiickson

Non-Fiction:

The Executioner's Song-Norman Mailer
The Bookseller of Kabul-Asne Seierstad
The Big Switch-Nicholas Carr
Nim Chimpsky-Elizabeth Hess
Agent Zigzag-Ben Macintyre

Wow, VisibleGhost, I thought Ben Macintyre's Agent Zigzag was great too, what a story.

teelgee, What's for Dinner? is a very strange but perceptive and sometimes funny little novel that is unlike anything else I've every read and is difficult to describe, except to say it probably won't be what you expect from the blurbs on the back of the book.

My top five for the first quarter, in no particular order:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (why no touchstone?!)
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie

It's been a good winter! :)

I haven't had such a good year so far. I gave a fair number of 4-star ratings, but very few books really leaped out at me. I also had many disappointments.

All my top reads are children's novels from the same two series. In the order I read them:

The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan
The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan
The Icebound Land by John Flanagan
The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

I haven't read any 5-star books this quarter, but overall I've been reading some good books. In the order I read them:

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Black Ships by Jo Graham
My Life in France by Julia Child
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte (not quite done, but will finish before Tuesday)

I have a lot of positive passion about just three:

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz

I haven't read nearly enough books this quarter to justify listing a top 5, but here goes anyway:

Black Ships by Jo Graham (4.5 stars)
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (4.5 stars)
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (4 stars)
Turnabout by Margaret Peterson Haddix (4 stars)
Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue (3.5 stars)

Obviously only the first two really have a chance of making it into my yearly top 5.

Well, I now have to add a 7th book, to #4 and #40 above, Lush Life by Richard Price, so I think I'll cheat and create two categories: New Books and Older Books.

New
Lush Life by Richard Price
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan

Older
Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric
What's for Dinner? by James Schuyler

Edited because apparently I couldn't count to 7!

rebeccanyc, I've read all of Price's novels, but I liked Lush Life even better than Clockers, which had been my favorite Price book for a long time.

1. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. Mary, Mrs. A. Lincoln by Janis Cooke Newman
5. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

In no particular order:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Cuentos Completos I by Julio Cortazar

Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams
Diary by Chuck Palahniuk
Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis

No particular order:

1. The Leopard by Tomasi di Lampedusa
2. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
3. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
4. Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill
5. Remainder by Tom McCarthy

Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert
The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

Triple tie for fifth place:
Lady Susan by Jane Austen
The Brontes Went to Woolworth's by Rachel Ferguson
The Translator by Daoud Hari

(If pushed, I'd give a slight edge to the Austen.)

Cariola, I really loved Mister Pip as well, and I can't even recall how many times I've recommended Ingrid Hill's novel Ursula, Under, a novel that needs rediscovering over and over again.

Best Reads:

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
3. The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil
4. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Biggest Dissapointments:

Bleak House by Charles Dickens
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
White Noise by Don DeLillo

Worst Read:
Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

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..and I liked Diary very much!

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
3. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
4. Oliver Twist by Dickens
5. Etham Frome by Wharton

Amandameale, glad you enjoyed Ursula, Under. I'm with Louis there. I was sent that book by the same editor that sent me Saving the World by Julia Alvarez (what? no touchstone? Geesh).

My top five fiction for the first quarter were:

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz
The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block
The Gathering by Anne Enright

I only have two nonfiction from the first quarter that I think will carry to the end of the year:

Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution by Lisa Jardine
London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd

although I am in the midst of John Adams by David McCullough and I'm sure that will be on my top 5 for the first half of the year.

Well now I have to add one to my message #11:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

cabegley, I read a great review of The Story of Forgetting and now, with the encouragement of your list, will go out and look for it.

I loved Story of Forgetting - excellent writing.

teelgee, wasn't Never let Me Go wonderful? I thought it was truly original and very moving.

>74 hemlokgang: Yes, I loved the way he unfolded the story so slowly.

In no particular order:

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
March by Geraldine Brooks

I have to admit that only a few books really left their fingerprint on me during the first three months of 2008. When I tried to list my top five books from memory, I could only list two. It wasn't until I went back to my spreadsheet that I picked out the other three books, based on the ratings I gave them.

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen
On Agate Hill by Lee Smith
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Here are my five top books for the first quarter in no particular order:

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity by Elaine Pagels and Karen King
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
The Murder of My Aunt by Richard Hull

All quite wonderful.

Not quite done with it yet, but certainly need to add The Story of Forgetting to my list. I second everyone's praise here. What a find. I love it when something unexpected lands in your hands.

It has been a great first quarter for reading.
My list in no particular order-but I had to list seven

Fiction
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahir.
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
Triangle by Katherine Weber
The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret

Non-fiction

The Translator-a Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari.
Assassination Vocation by Sarah Vowell.
The Caliph's House- A Year in Casablanca by Tahir Shah.
A Writer at War-A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army by Vasily Grossman.

Feet in the Clouds by Richard Askwith (although this was a re-read, it's going in because I loved it even more the second time round!)
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage

My choices for the first quarter (in no particular order):

Fiction
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante
The Classical Novels by Mary Butts
The Hidden Side of the Moon by Joanna Russ
Master of the Day of Judgment by Leo Perutz

Non-fiction
The Tongue Snatchers by Claudine Herrmann
Bisexuality in the Ancient World by Eva Cantarella
Sexual Ambivalence: androgyny and hermaphroditism in classical antiquity by Luc Brisson
The Romance Fiction of Mills and Boon by jay Dixon

(Oddly, the last two books only touchstone if one deliberately enters the wrong titles. The Brisson text should be Sexual ambivalence : androgyny and hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman antiquity and the Dixon title is actually The Romance Fiction of Mills and Boon, 1909-90's. The ways of the touchstone are mysterious and troubling but I have ceased to question them and mostly just go with the flow.)

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff
The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
The Glamour by Christopher Priest
Thursday Next in First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
Sula by Toni Morrison

Blonde - touchstone wont fix - this is not the right book - the right book is Blonde by Joce Carol Oates
The ha ha
Jane Eyre
White teeth
Ignorance - touchstone also wont fix - the book is ignorance by Milan Kundera

Honorable mentions

Waiting for the barbarians
The year of magical thinking
Middlesex

keren7, Blonde is an Oates I haven't read yet, glad to know you think so highly of it. I'm reading her latest collection at the moment.

avaland, is that Wild Nights? (Wrong touchstone showing.) It looked interesting, but a few reviews turned me off.

In no special order:

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs

I have just finished today one that will definitely be on my top 5 list for the next quarter, No Country for Old Men, and noticed The Road on many top 5's, I guess I'll be adding that to my tbr list.

edited for bad spelling

yes, Cariola, it is Wild Nights!. I'm nearly finished and I would say that it's not entirely successful but I have found it mostly entertaining nonetheless. I like that she tweaks these iconic American authors (and writes each story in the author's style or some part of it). It has elements of SF, fantasy and horror - so not for everyone.

I’ve not had a particularly great first quarter. Of the 26 I read, my favourites (combining F and NF to come up with five):

The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Come Away With Me Sara MacDonald

Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert
Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran Christiane Bird

#88

Blonde was a great read. I lent it to my friend and she just told me last night that she can't put it down.

I had three reads that I'd recommend so far this year.

A Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
and Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson

1. Diary of a Bad Year ~ J. M. Coetzee ~ ♦♦♦♦⁄1/2 ♦♦♦♦♦
2. The Soul Thief ~ Charles Baxter ~ ♦♦♦♦⁄ ♦♦♦♦♦
3. You Can’t Win ~ Jack Black ~ ♦♦♦♦⁄ ♦♦♦♦♦
4. Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife ~ Sam Savage ~ ♦♦♦♦⁄ ♦♦♦♦♦
5. The Barnum Museum ~ Steven Millhauser ~ ♦♦♦1/2⁄ ♦♦♦♦♦

#92 The Soul Thief didn't make it into my top 5, as I read so many good books this quarter, but it's in the top 10. Now I have to wait another 3 years+ for more Baxter! Boo.

(Does the W in your handle stand for "Wazzer"? :)

Ha! No. Maybe "wingnut"...

>94 ChazzW:
The West Wing? Or the Red Wings?

>94 ChazzW:
Would that be a right wingnut or a left wingnut? ;)

LizT, Kim has been one of my favorite for three score years.

Haven't had much time to read but, of the books I have read--in no particular order--these are my favorites so far (and this is only for this quarter, not for all time):

Kidnapped by Stevenson
Excavation by James Rollins
Subterranean by James Rollins
all five books of The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black
Memoirs of a Medieval Woman by Louise Collis - maybe not a favorite, but certainly interesting
The Mad Dog Connection, The Camelot Tapes, and Last Plane to Avalon - a trilogy by W. G. Tolliver

Went through a hard birth with my youngest daughter's second child, so my usual reading isn't as it should be, but:

The Secret Magdalene by Ki Longfellow
Julian by Gore Vidal
The Secret History of the World, as laid down by the Secret Societes by Mark Booth
The History of Doubt by Jennifer Hecht
A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael S. Schneider

#98 Malicious: Hope everything is OK with your daughter and the baby! I have not read a single title on your list, so on to my TBR list they go.

My top 5 would be:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy

and I'm including The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox even though I just finished it because it was such a wonderfully intricate story and so well told. Reminiscent of Bleak House but with more soul. :o)

My top 5:

Food and Faith: Justice, Joy and Daily Bread by Michael Schut
The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Doctored Evidence by Donna Leon
Captivating: Unveiling the Mysteries of a Woman's Soul by John and Stasi Eldredge

My top 5 (both fiction and non) for the first quarter:
Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt
Perfume: the Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Marie Antoinette: the Journey by Antonia Fraser

(and even though I know this thread isn't about this, my least favorite for the quarter is a toss-up between Nostromo and The Adventures of Augie March.

My top five for the first quarter of 2008:

1. The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Ninth Annual Collection edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
2. The One-Armed Queen by Jane Yolen
3. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
4. Sexy by Joyce Carol Oates
5. White Jenna by Jane Yolen

When you're stuck in bed, you can read a lot. Which to choose? These will not leave my mind.

1. The Secret Magdalene by Ki Longfellow
2. The Complete Guide to World Mysticism by Timothy Freke
3. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
4. Awakening Osiris by Normadi Ellis.
5. Smila's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg

My top 5 would have to be:

1. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
2. John Adams by David McCullough
3. The Kite Runner
4. Don Quixote
and
5. Anna Karenina

My top reads of the 25 i finished in the 1st quarter are:

Fiction:
Blindness by Jose Saramago
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo Jose Cela
S.: A Novel About the Balkans by Slavenka Drakulic

Non-Fiction:
The Scramble for Africa, 1876-1912 by Thomas Pakenham
The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world by Mark Kurlansky
Garbage land: On the secret trail of trash by Elizabeth Royte
No End Save Victory: Perspectives on World War II edited by Robert Cowley

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto

My top 5 for the first quarter of 08 would be (in no particular order):-

A Quiet Belief in Angels - RJ Ellory
No Country for Old Men - C McCarthy
Water for Elephants - S Gruen
Monster Love - C Topolski
The Road - C McCarthy

If I have to pick one of those as a favourite it would be No Country for Old Men.

Some of my favorite reads so far this year:

Armadillo by William Boyd
The Sweet Shop Owner by Graham Swift
Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
Like You'd Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard

Non fiction:
God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
Shultz and Peanuts by David Michaelis
Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

The Secret Magdalene by Ki Longellow
The latest Francesca Lia Block, book in my car and name escapes me
Maybe the Moon by Armistad Maupin
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain, uncensored

In no particular order, this year I have liked:

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke
A walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
The Other by Thomas Tryon
The Alienist by Caleb Carr

If I could include just one more (making it a top six) it would be The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

A good year so far I think.

Hard to pare this down! Some highlights:

The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
So Brave, Young and Handsome by Leif Enger
In the Woods by Tana French
The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

(Note: Touchstones seem to be a bit on the blink).

So far, these have been my favorites, but haven't had a lot of time to really sit down and read. I have a shelf full of books to read:
Three Cups of Tea
Territory
Night
Wheel of Darkness
Anthem; need a new copy, its been reread a lot

drangonsign

My top five read from January through March were . . .

The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
Buddhism for Mothers with Lingering Questions, Sarah Napthali
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, John McWhorter
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön

Honorable mentions to go From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, The World Without Us, and The History of Love.

My top five through March, in the order I read them:

1. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff
2. Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
3. Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer
4. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
5. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

If it weren't a reread, I would add The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner.

bell7, you must read in alphabetical order!

LOL. I didn't even notice! Guess I switched 2 and 3, though. :-)

Some old, some new...but all in the months described.

The Secret Magdalene by Ki Longfellow, brilliant
Crazy Good, the true story of Dan Patch , pretty good
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, read it years ago, but because of Lost, read it again. Fabulous.
Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow, also Personal Injuries
Been eating up anything and everything by Oscar Wilde
Hearts in Atlantis by King of course.

I've only just discovered this thread. Here are my top 5 from Q1, anyway:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Y de repente, un angel by Jaime Bayly
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
The Farming of Bones by Edwige Danticat
Los premios by Julio Cortazar (The Winners)

with a mention for Stephen Mitchell's version ofGilgamesh, which I loved.