stricklerracing's 50-book list - And I'm off!

I am pretty new to this, but was told of this excellent 50-book challenge group by my girlfriend and thought "I can do this!" Then I learned that pop-up books and brochures on Guntown Mountain don't count. But after recovering from the disapointment, I still believe I can do this.

So, as off April 1st, here is my list of books:

1) Shakespeare - Bill Bryson
2) Chickenhawk - Robert Mason

Good luck!!

3) Freakonomics by Steven Levitt

#1 Of course you can do it and we are all hear rooting for you.

4) House to House by David Bellavia

I've read Bill Bryson's Shakespeare. It was interesting how he kept making fun of Shakespeare biographies as he was writing a biography on Shakespeare.

I have to agree. It is kind of an interesting point. I'm not a huge fan of Shakespeare, but I thought I'd give it a whirl and it was pretty good.

#5) Chickenhawk: Back in the World: Life After Vietnam by Robert Mason - I've read a lot of books on Vietnam, but I've always wondered what happend after they left. No book I've read until now has actually given me the satisfaction of knowing what happened when they returned.

If you like Chickenhawk, you will love this. It tells of his life while writing the book and his life after, which he spent in prison for drug smuggling. Not only is it a great book about life after Vietnam, but it also tells the story of a prisoner from his point of view.

6) Pure Drivel by Steve Martin A title has never been more appropriate. I picked this up because I like the first two stories and being only 100 pages or so, I thought I could probably finish it off by the next day and get me back on track for my 50 books.

Pure Drivel was one of the hardest short books I've ever read. There are times when it seems that Martin writes the first thing out of his head. The sentences make no sense whatsoever. I would recommend his other books, but this one is, well...pure drivel.

#7 - Stick to Drawing Comics Monkey Brain!: Cartoonist Ignores Helpful Advice by Scott Adams - Despite what we were taught in elementary school, I do judge a book by its cover. This one was flashy, had a lot of color and a cartoon on it, so naturally my hand was instantly driven to the library shelf.

Overall it was pretty good (confirming my cover belief). Adams put together about 300 of his blog articles together and talked some about his Dilbert strip. It had me laughing and kept me reading.

#8 - The Pleasure of My Company - by Steve Martin - This was much better than Pure Drivel. There was an underlying theme and it was very creative and never really ventured into the weirdness that Drivel did. I could feel myself in the subject's shoes and at times I thought to myself: "Yeah, I know how he feels."

#9 - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King - This is a great book for anyone who likes to write or is thinking about writing. Its not your ordinary grammer book. He incorporates stories from his life into how to (and not to) write. I would recommend it to anyone who likes to write.

#10 - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction by Jon Stewart - A pretty funny look at how our government works (or doesn't work). I wish my schoolbooks were like this when I was younger. I might have actually paid attention in class.

#11) The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman - A good book about friends growing up in Savannah, GA. It describes their adventures as kids and reminded me of when I was growing up. The ending is shocking, however.

#12) Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda - I got this hoping it would be as good as his first book, but I was a little disappointed. Although there were some times that it did make me chuckle a little bit and were interesting, most of the book is filled with speeches that Alda has given at graduation ceremonies and other various public outings.

#13) African Diary by Bill Bryson - A decent short read. It seems mostly to be a plug for CARE, as the proceeds go to support their efforts. Bryson could have made this into another really good book like "In a Sunburnt Country", but his short time in Africa and his plans to make this a donation to CARE undercut what a great book this could have been.

#14) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Another good short book. I managed to finish this one in a couple of hours. Although it's short, it can tug at your emotions, as I was feeling sorry for Button and had to keep on reading to see how it ended.

#15) World Made By Hand by James Kunstler - A pretty good book about what happens when the world runs out of oil. Despite Kunstler not really believing that Americans can zip up their britches without the help of oil, its still a decent book.

Some parts are unbelieveable, however, and border into scifi, but he is a great writer with dialogue.

#16) Sackett by Louis L'Amour - I listened to this on audiobook believing it to be the first in the series when it was actually the seventh. Woops :). I guess I'll just have to back and read the previous six.

#17) House Broken: How I Remodeled My House for Just Under Three Times the Original Bid by Richard Karn - I just happened to pick this up at a used bookstore a couple of weeks ago. Although it contains some really cheesy humor, this book, written by the actor who played Al Borland on Home Improvement, follows Richard Karn and his wife as they remodel their home. He grew up in a family of carpenders and prior to his job on Home Improvement, he was an apartment building manager.

His writing style reminds me a little of Bill Bryson (maybe its the beard thing) and I learned a lot about remodeling homes. In fact, I like it so much, I ordered Karn's other book: "Handy at Home: Tips on Improving Your Home from America's Favorite Handyman."

#18) Horatio's Drive by Dayton Duncan - The story of the first ever cross-country road trip via automobile. I listened to it on audiobook and it was great to listen to while driving.

#19) Native Dancer, the Grey Ghost, by John Eisenberg - The story of Native Dancer's racing career and the people behind him. It gave some good insight into the way racing was in the 50s and how training techniques are different than today. It was well written and not only was a good racing story, but a good history narative as well.

#20) Epilepsy and Seizures: Everything You Need to Know, by Dr. Donald Weaver - A well written book about epilepsy, what causes seizures, the different types of epilepsy, and what people who have seizures and know people with epilepsy should know.

Now YOU'RE clipping along!

#21) Notable Kentucky Trivia, by Robert Powell - This is a book full of tidbits and interesting facts about Kentucky. It's interesting, but the facts are randomly put in and not grouped together in any way.

For example, on one page, there is information on Casey Jones and how he got the name "Casey" and two pages later, after some facts having nothing to do with railroads, we learn his real name and ocupation.

Still, I learned something about my home state, however.

#22) Horse of a Different Color by Ralph Moody - The last book of the series by Ralph Moody, one of my favorite authors. He writes his memoirs in a style that will keep you turning pages.

Horse of a Different Color tells the story of when he was living in Kansas in his early twenties, dealing in cattle while trying to live out what he thinks are the last years of his life because of a misdiagnosis of diabetes. We live through his eyes as he works his cattle and shipping business.

In a time where authors consult a thesaurus for every verb and adjective, with misused metaphors, and wavey discriptions that could choke a horse, Moody (who wrote this back in 1966), has a writing style that I can always look back to for a good, easy read.

#23) A Field Guide to Cows - How to identify and appreciate America's 52 breeds by John Pukite - This book is pretty much what it says. It is a book about cattle breeds, their markings, traits and orgins. It was pretty interesting if you want to learn something about cattle.

#24) The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson -- This book has two subjects -- the 1893 World's Fair and the murders enacted by H.H. Holmes.

Larson did an absolutely fabulous job of putting you in the past and making it feel like it just happened yesterday.

If I drove to Chicago today, I would expect to see things just as written in the book, despite them having happened over 110 years ago. He does a fantastic job with the details and personal descriptions.

This book borders on the relm of "In the Garden of Good and Evil," with the exception that John Berendt makes you feel there because he is writing upon events which he experienced first hand. Larson manages to do the same thing, despite most of the area he talks about being gone and built over.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes history, true crime, or just good writing.

I'm halfway home! #25) Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron - This was a great book that I would greatly recommend to anyone! It is about Dewey Readmore Books, the cat who was shoved down the library book slot of a small-town library in Spencer, Iowa.

The story tells of his life growing up in the library and how he helped so many people cope with their problems, including the author, who was going through a tough divorce as well as the death of her brother and numerous health problems herself.

I would greatly recommend this book to anyone who likes cats or who just likes a good story. It is a quick read and I was glad to make it my half-way point.

Congratulations! At this rate, you can totally make 50!!

#26) Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose - Unfortunately I saw the mini-series first, so the whole time I was thinking back to the correlating parts of the show.

It was a pretty good listen (I listened to this one on audiobook) and put into perspective the cruel conditions that troops on the ground had to endure throughout combat.

#27) Generation Kill by Evan Wright - This is a good book about a reporter who was embedded for two months with 2nd platoon of the Marine Recon division. They were the first into Iraq and spearheaded a lot of the invasion.

Written by an editor of "Rolling Stone" magazine, it is well written, and even though he tends to be anti-war and most likely wasn't intended by the author, the book shows how troops need to remain in place in the Middle East until an endgame is finalized.

#28) A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke - This is a fiction account of a young Englishman who goes to France to set up English tearooms and the trouble he runs into for being an Englishman living in France. As soon as I saw it mocked the French, I instantly loved it! It was a little raunchy in spots, however, and I think that kept it from being a really good book.

#29) The Man Who Ran the Moon by Piers Bizony - Although Bizney's writing style is a little informal and sometimes grammatically wrong, the book is great in itself is great!

We've all read about the astronauts who made it to the moon and their stories. We've all read about the spacecrafter that were used, but no one has really said much about how it was all put together.

Bizney writes about James E. Webb, the director of NASA at the time of Mercury, Gemini, and part of Apollo. He talks about all of the politicking that went into the space program, the struggles that went on behind the scenes and the flaws that almost ground Apollo before it even began. He discusses the problems with contractors and how the capsule and Saturn V were flawed at the start of the program, but eventually fixed.

This is a great read for anyone who is as much of a space nerd as I am and for anyone who wants to know how NASA works behind the scenes.

#30) Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides - This is the true story of the soldiers who were imprissoned by the Japanese in the 1940s during WWII. The description in the book is so great that I could just see the events that took place.

I'm glad I listened to this (I checked it out on audiobook) because I never knew some of the atrocities that the Japanese did during the war. From shooting and decapitating soldiers for the fun of it, to starving the POWs to the point where five a day were dying, it awoke me to a part of the war that I was never aware of before.

I highly recommend it to anyone interested in war history or history in general.

#31) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - I thought I would take the time during Christmas to read this one. I am a fan of Dickens and had a good time with this. I might start making it a Christmas tradition.

#32) Rocketeers by Michael Belfiore - This was an interesting look at the privatizing of the space industry. I had no idea how far things has progressed in the public sector until I took a look at this book. It gives some interesting insight as to where the future of space travel is headed.

#33) Stooges Among Us - Lon and Debra Davis - This is a compilation of people's memories of The Three Stooges. Most of the stories come from people who knew the Stooges after they retired, but some of them - such as Moe's daughter and Larry's grandson - talk about the Stooges as they knew them during their performing years. I thought I already knew a lot about the comedy trio (actually there were six of them), but I learned an immense amount more with this book. I highly recommend it to any Three Stooges fan!

#34) I am America (And So Can You) by Stephan Colbert - This had to be listened to as an audiobook. There were some pretty funny parts and it was pretty short as far as audiobooks go. If you like America by Jon Stewart, you will like this.

#35) Lady on the Hill - How Biltmore Estate Became an American Icon by Howard E. Covington - This was a great book about the history of the restoration of Biltmore. Most people associated with the estate know about George Vanderbilt and what he did with the largest privately owned residence in America, but not too many know the history of the building after he died.

I found this to be a great read and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Biltmore.

#36) Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood by Donovan Campbell - I thought this was a great book on the war in Iraq. I've read a lot of war stories, some of which the author tries to embellish their roles and make themselves the hero of the book. Not this one. This is an easy to read description of the experiences that the author endured while fighting in Ramadi, with Campbell's mistakes and all.

The point of view is from that of a young lieutenant trying to keep his men safe during his time in Iraq. Its not filled with gory dipictions or moment by moment drama which fills so many other books. Unlike other war books, when Campbell can't remember the minute-by-minute drama, he says so instead of making it up.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read war stories. At 336 pages, it may seem a little long to some, but the page turning stature of the book makes it a short read.

Thanks for the review. This looks like a good book to read.
--BJ

#37) Sammy's Hill by Kristin Gore -- Normally this is not my type of book, but I was a fan of Ana Marie Cox's Dog Days and this was a recommendation from that.

The story is about a girl who works for a senator and tells about the relationships she has while her boss makes his way up the political ranks. I read it mostly because of the political aspects of the book, but my girlfriend found it funny when I would get mad when guys in the book mistreated our heroine.

Kristin Gore is the daughter of former VP Al Gore and was also a writer for Saturday Night Live. The book is well written and I'm probably going to check out the sequel Sammy's House whenever I get a chance.

#38) Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason -- I will have to say that this is the first piece of fiction that I have read with two authors. I was iffy about this book. It took me about 100 pages to really get into it.

First of all the "Rule of Four" that the characters find is only mentioned a couple of times in the book, so the title, even though eye-catching, is a little bit off-placed. Now down the the substance.

Rule of Four is a book that tries to capitalize on the success of the DaVinci Code. The thing that made the DaVinci code so interesting, though is that it was based up on something most people have heard of once or twice in their lifetimes -- Christianity. The Rule of Four bases its secrets in a book called Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (a book which supposedly really exists), something I'm sure that no one has heard about or cares about really. The main characters are obessed with trying to decifer riddles that are encoded in the book. Although the authors try to make a mystery novel about a book which has no author, the fact that the subject matter is a little hollow makes the book a little weak.

The central character is kind of shallow and after tragedy strikes near the end of the book, he swallows himself in self-pity to the point it wanted to make me scream.

This was the first book by these two authors, and although the subject matter was kind of dull, there were pieces of good writing which kept me interested and wanting to read more. I think the next book by this duo could be a good book but they just needed one under their belt.

#39) An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport by Kenny Mayne -- This book was a series of chapters about random sports by ESPN commentator Kenny Mayne. Each chapter talks about some part of his life and mocks a lot of sports. It was sarcastic and it was childish...I loved it.

#40) Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You Will Ever Need by Dave Barry -- I used to like reading Dave Barry's column in the Miami Herald so I thought this would be funny, and it was, for a while. After a bit, the same humor just got to be a little bit old, which tends to happen when humorists write books. It was a decent read for a while, but it is not something I would recommend purchasing. Get this one from the library.

#41) The Biggest Snowball Ever! by John Rogan -- A children's book about a boy and his friends who get stuck in a giant snowball and have to be dug out by their parents so they can get home in time for Christmas. Yes, it was filler. No, I do not feel guilty.

#42) Crazy Laws by Dick Hyman -- A pretty interesting book of laws around the country that don't really make any sense. Unfortuantely, if read all at the same time, some of them start to make sense.

#43) Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History by Jeremy Schaap -- An excellent book that sparked the movie. I listened to this on audiobook and the reader was great. The book taught me a lot about the history of boxing and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in boxing, history of the 20s and 30s or anyone who just wants to read a real life feel-good story.

#44) More Crazy Laws by Dick Hyman -- A short follow-up read to his previous book.

#44 Seems like almost every movie comes from a book. I haven't seen that movie, but I would like to read that book. I still haven't tried an audiobook yet, although I have been wanting to. Sounds like this was a good choice for audio. Have a great weekend and thanks for the review!
--BJ

#45) Last Stand at Papago Wells by Louis L'Amour -- A story of a cowboy and some strangers who are caught in an indian attack. Like all of Louis L'Amour's books, its pretty good.

Still have five books to go and seven days to read them in.

Yikes! Better get reading!! :)

#46) Whale Season by N.M. Kelby - A novel about a Jesus character who comes to the town of Whale Harbor and ends up killing people. It was supposed to be a dark comedy of sorts, but with characters from an ex-cheerleader who took over her uncle's strip bar to a mayor who barks at funerals, the story turns out to be rather odd.

#47) Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery by James and Deborah Howe - I decided to read one of my favorite series of books from when I was a kid. This is the first of six Bunnicula-series books written from the perspective of the family dog who deals with adventures, mostly started by the family cat, Chester. Great books.

#48) Bunnicula Strikes Again by James Howe - Probably the final of the Bunnicula series. It was as good as the others and had a heartfelt ending.

#49) The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book by Frank Warren - This is another of the PostSecret series of books where people anonymously send in post cards reveiling secrets of theirs. It makes you take a minute to think about your own life and how you are living it.

One more book to go and one more day to read it in! I do cut it close don't I?

#50) Free-Range Chickens by Simon Rich - This is a good book into the mind of Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich. It is full of funny situations which he makes up from going back in time to kill Hitler ("Officer, this man is trying to kill a baby!" "But its Hitler." "Who?" "Its complicated") to God's master plan for the world (Angel: "Why did you strike that man's horse with lightning?" God: "I like to see the look on people's faces.")

I finally made it to 50! Thanks Dawn for keeping me going!

#51) (Yes, I even made it to 51!) The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970 by Charles M. Schulz - This is a book of all of the Peanuts comic strips from 1969 and 1970. I am a big peanuts fan and loved this book.

If you're a Peanuts fan, I would recommend Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. It's a inside look to Charles Schulz's life from a boy to his death.

Congrats on reaching (over) 50 books! I knew you could do it!!

Congratulations on passing the 50 book mark!! And, by the way, I am a lifetime lover of Peanuts. I will have to check that bio out.
--BJ