Voracious_Reader's 2010 50 Book Challenge List

I am abandoning my 2009 list started last March for a fresh 2010 list. Hoping to hit more than 50 books read for 2010, I really am going to be more careful about both counting and reviewing every single book read.

I will not be reading them in the order provided below since I have a stack of loaners from friends to finish and return first. Those titles with a line written through them have been read and reviewed.

Here goes for 2010:

1. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
2. Brave Companions by David McCullough
3. Bible: Day by Day
4. Presidential Courage by Michael R. Beschloss
5. Consecrated Venom by Caryl Johnston
6. Witches and Neighbors by Robin Briggs
7. Surprised By Joy by C.S. Lewis
8. 15 days of Prayer with Saint Thomas Aquinas by Andre Pinet
9. Death Dance by Linda Fairstein
10. Press Pause Before You Eat by mintledrlinda::Dr. Linda Mintle
11. 1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger
12. A Collection of Love Gifts by Helen Steiner Rice
13. Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome by Rodney Stark
14. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
15. Discovering God: A New Look at the Origins of Great Religions by Rodney Stark

The list continues under Message 53.

I loved Rebecca, so suspenseful - i was sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time reading it! Hitchcock did a pretty good film adaptation of it as well...

Good luck with your challenge!

Thank you. You too!

I read Rebecca a long time ago and remembered liking it very much, but I was so young that I neither fully appreciated it nor remember it now. I'll have to look up the Hitchcock version too. Don't you just love Hitchcock films--such suspense and intrigue? My favorite is Rope.

That's a coincidence, Rope is my favourite Hitchcock movie too! I just love the way it's all one scene. My second favourite is Rear Window and third is probably Vertigo. I like the James Stewart ones!

Let me know how 1215 is! ^^

Will do.

Press Pause Before You Eat by Dr. Linda Mintle is definitely different from my normal fare. I don't tend to read self-help books unless they're of the financial sort so I wasn't entirely comfortable with the tone of the book at first. In the end, it was quite readable and easy to apply to one's life. The book was sort of an interesting mix of ideas. I haven't read any diet books before, but most of them probably don't focus on God as much as this one did. It was insightful, but it ran a little long and did come right up to the brink of being preachy at some points. I'd recommend it to anyone who was looking to reprogram their eating habits and wasn't hostile to religion playing a role in that change.

Best of luck with your list! Pinet's book sounds interesting, I look forward to hearing what you think of it. And, of course, it's hard to go wrong with C. S. Lewis.

A Collection of Love Gifts. It wasn't John Donne, Carl Sandburg or Donald Justice, but I enjoyed it anyway. I found it for 99 cents in a tiny bookstore and bought it on a lark not knowing how rewarding it actually would be. Sentimental and moving, this little book contained more insight into forming an intimate relationship with God than most of the "serious" religious and philisophical texts I've read over the years. Sometimes simple really is better.

Rebecca's on my list, too. I know so many people who have loved it, but I've only seen the movie. I've meant to read the book for years and figured this would be the year I do it.

How's it going? Any new reads?

Yes.

I just had a capital murder trial plead out yesterday. Thank God! This weekend I'll update on books. Things have been crazy here because of work. I need a vacation. How 'bout you?

Lawyer? Me too!

What type of practice?

The biographical information toward the beginning of the 15 Days of Prayer with Saint Thomas Aquinas was inspiring. Though Aquinas was kept a virtual prisoner for a couple of years by his own family members who wanted him to leave the priesthood, he didn't succumn to family or cultural pressures. Good book for a philsophy or religous reading groups. Loved reading the Aquinas quotations. Great reflection questions at the end of each chapter. Some of the analysis by Vrai and Pinet verged on navel gazing; though, I appreciated how much thought and passion they put into the piece.

Death Dance by Linda Fairstein--Great NY stage history and NY architectural details, but short on much of anything else. It started well, but didn't maintain the energy with which it began and I found myself more interested in the side stories than the main events.

Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome by Rodney Stark. Some don't enjoy Stark's books because of his "religious agenda" or a belief that he takes a "tendentious tone; yet, I have a different take on Stark. Simply, he doesn't tow the line so to speak and he speaks directly to and about particular theories or statements made by other historians and sociologists. "Cities'" thesis is that historical inquiries should concentrate more on quantifiable historical data, the analysis of which will yield historical and sociological information. I have a couple of complaints though. My first has more to do with me than his book. Stark conclusions about the rise of Christianity are based on data mined from other sources; I have no idea whether his sources are reliable and accurate. If the data isn't reliable and accurate, then the conclusions based on that data are questionable. Secondly, unless I am misunderstanding something, some of the population numbers that Stark uses in this book appear to be different from the ones that he used in his "The Victory of Reason." If I am not misunderstanding something, then I'd like an explanation as to the different figures being used. Has some further clarity developed as to one set of figures being more accurate than the others? Even with these concerns, I still thoroughly enjoyed Cities of God.

That sounds interesting. It's ironic that he focuses on quantifiable data, but it's data that might be unreliable. Kind of defeats the purpose of quantifying :)

Yeah, I've put a bunch of his source books on my bookmooch list because I'd really like to know what to think about the data. His ideas were really interesting. And his analysis of the date seemed accurate. It's just impossible to know if the starting points were accurate. If you read it, please let me know what you think.

I got The Unruly Queen by Fraser through bookmooch based on your review. It's gone in my rather long to-be-read pile.

I really enjoy reading Stark, though I haven't had a chance to look into his Cities of God yet, just Victory of Reason and God's Battalions. Interesting points. When I get around to looking at Cities of God, I'll have to do a comparison with Victory of Reason.

I'd be interested in knowing what your thoughts on it are. Regardless, I appreciated the endeavor itself and I like the writer's style.

Brave Companions by David McCullough is a mixed bag. It's a series of personality portraits--each chapter is about a different topic or person--that McCullough finds interesting or influential. The Chapters don't bear any immediate relationship to one another except a point-of-view and style that is almost sentimental.

With each chapter of the book, his narrative voice, his personality, is more and more present. I could see sitting on a front porch in a rocking chair drinking mint juleps or sweet tea and listening to him speak about these really interesting people he has studied or met, but the book is almost melodramatic. I can see why at least one of his works has been adapted to film (John Adams for HBO). It was too personal in ways to be enjoyable to me throughout as a straight forward history until I realized what his point-of-view was about history.

It's pacing, content and overall style is really more consistent with a conversation or narrative history, than a dry study--the sort of thing that I'm much more familiar and conversant with. One of my friends says McCullough's style is "folksy." That may be a good way of summarizing it. I gained much greater insights about McCullough, but not perhaps, history, in his later chapters. McCullough writes, "I never walk by without thinking of this--and of the historians who dismiss the role of personality in history, the reverberations of a single yes or no." p. 200. History is personal to him. It's something colorful and alive. The problem is that at times, then, the narrative can become much more illustrative of McCullough, than history. The Lonely War of a Good Angry Man and Washington on the Potomac were examples of this to me. How could you write about Washington in the 1980s and not even mention the famous tear down that wall speech and the subject of communism? The entire book is riddled with themes about the human spirit, about individualism and the human struggle for dignity.

Who he finds interesting isn't always who I'd find interesting or praiseworthy, but I find his way of writing and his choices entertaining. My interest is peaked. I'll definitely read his other pieces. His prose are impeccable even if I don't always appreciate his perspective or choice of subject matter.

What kind of topics are included? When I was commuting from Galveston to Houston, I listened to McCullough's 1776 and the abridged version of his John Adams bio on CD. I enjoyed both of them.

Each chapter is pretty much about a different person, e.g., Louis Agassiz, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Theodore Roosevelt, Miriam Rothschild, a bit about Washington D.C., a speech for the Middlebury graduation class of '86, David Plowden etc.. Most of the personalities he covers are American greats in politics, exploration, arts or environmentalism. He covers a couple of Europeans like Rothschild. It's worth a go. I'll send you mine if you'd like. I'll get it back from you next time we visit so that Bill can read it. Just let me know.

Hmm, tempting, but I have so many books in the to-be-read pile right now that I probably don't need to add another one.

You might like this Theodore Roosevelt bio I'm reading now, Theodore Rex. It's also more narrative than just scholarly (although it has tons of notes, so it seems well-researched). It's taking me a while to read it because it's pretty long and because I'm not always in the mood for history, but it reads well and isn't dry at all.

Cool. I'll check it out. I know what you mean about a long to-be-read pile. I've got a two books from a judge's assistant, multiple books from my mother-in-law and two from other friends to get through.

Books still make me giddy though.

Carly is Theodore Rex second in a series?

Stellar!. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith was so much better than I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be a fun Austen knock-off, but it was so much more than that. It's the coming of age story of a young woman born into a once wealthy, or at least comfortable, family that has hit a rather long financial and emotional rough patch. Smith deftly captures all of the characters of the castle and then some. The narrator is remarkably likeable and witty.

I can't wait to talk about this book with my Austen and Bronte loving friends even if it means buying them their own copies and bribing them to read it. Two of the book's main characters start a conversation about Jane Austen and Emily Bronte, asking who was the better writer. The question is never answered by the characters. I don't want to put any spoilers in the review, but frankly this book is a blend of Austen and Bronte--particularly in its ending. Also, I find it difficult to believe that it's a coincidence that the narrator's name is Cassandra, which is the name of Jane Austen's sister. I could definitely write an essay comparing the works of Austen and Bronte, especially Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Jane Eyre, but will refrain from doing so here.

The story was both really fun and really funny. Who wouldn't love a book with phrases like: I was really busy and tired out "...as Topaz developed a mania for washing, mending and cleaning at night, which stopped me from encouraging Rose to talk much--not that she had shown signs of wanting to, having taken to going for long walks by herself. This desire for solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times." p. 158.

Consciously naive, indeed!

Theodore Rex is the second one. I haven't read the first.

I Capture the Castle is fun!

I had never heard of it until very recently. I thought it was great.

Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence is a pleasant read even though the first 30 or so pages of the book is a bit like reading someone's description of a topographical map: lineage descriptions are too tedious. After the initial laying out of the Austen family tree, the pace of the book improves. Spence makes a case that her personal experiences and family history inform her writing much more than a string of classic plays or novels read as a part of her formal education. He certainly indicates that she took plot lines or names from a beloved book or family history and adapted them to her own works, but the significant issue to Spence is that she wrote about her own life and the lives of her family and friends under cloak of fiction. I'm not sure that that idea alone is all that ground-breaking, but the application of that idea to what is known of her life and her novels is interesting to consider. I wish we had more information about her life and that more of her original letters still existed. I assume the point of these sorts of pieces is to inspire readers to go back to the original works and read them with a different set of questions/information in mind. If that's the point, then Spence was successful.

That sounds pretty good. I wonder what her family thought of her borrowing names and incidents from their history?

It would appear from Spence's version, that when they knew they were entertained and forgiving, and, that those times that they didn't, she was probably better off for it. It seems as though some of the things she wrote had almost secret, in jokes etc. I enjoyed his book once I got into its rythm.

How's work going?

I'd recommend reading the foreword and introduction after the Tales; though, both are worth reading. By reading the intro first, I anticipated too much of the plots.

The first tale is A Simple Heart. The title speaks for itself. The story is about a woman who loves completely, selflessly and without hesitation. At first glance, she seems worthy of pity and appears to be a bit nuts. She's actually content and isn't really crazy even though she speaks to a dead, stuffed parrot that she comes to believe is the Holy Ghost. In this tale, Flaubert has a way of rendering the common beautiful-- whether he's describing things like the weather and sounds of a village or the life of a common, illiterate peasant.

The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller is about a wealthy man who loses everything, spends the rest of his life making penance and is finally willing to give all that he has for another. The story has a lot to say about human madness and passion. Not quite sure what I think of it yet.

The third tale, Herodias didn't work for me on any level. It is sort of anti-Semitic; it is choppy and difficult to follow, and is not interesting in any way. Plot-wise it is about Roman and Jewish politics and the killing of John the Baptist. I love history. I love religious history. I love historical fiction. This piece fails for me on all levels. It does, however, have one of my favorite sentences from all three tales: "So he stretched his arms toward Zion, rose to his full height and, with his head thrown back and his fists clenched, laid a curse on it, believing that words had real power." p. 69.

Curtis and Drabble made nice contributions to the foreword and introduction respectively. Both comment on the power of Flaubert's use of language or his literary style. For them, as they describe Flaubert sometimes laboring for a week at a time to finish just one sentence, "words had real power." The trademark Hesperus binding, thick paperback cover and sturdy pages will help this book hold up through multiple readings, but the stories themselves might fail to stand the test of time if Flaubert hadn't also written Madame Bovary.

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory boldly begins, "My father is Sir Richard Woodville, Baron Rivers, an English nobleman, a landholder, and a supporter of the true Kings of England, the Lancastrian line" and unyielding ambition drives the plot. Woodville, the White Queen, derives and defines her entire being from her family connections, i.e., from her parents, her siblings' marriages, from whom she marries and from what titles she gets her children. She is greedy for power, title, royal connections. And her greed drives her to be England's most powerful, royal family even if it requires the sacrifice of real happiness and freedom. Morality is rejected in favor of the politically expedient, resulting in the deaths of many. Even though she comes from the Lancastrian line, she marries the York King Edward IV.

Elements of the narrative were repetitive. Woodville, a descendant of the water goddess Melusina chants to her or casts spells. These repetitive passages are mistakes that just weren't caught by editors. They may be clumsy and distracting but are purposefully repetitive attempts to call forth a feeling of magic, that Woodville is casting spells or invoking Melusina's magic.

I'd recommend the book for a quick historical fiction read. It was amusing, but not enthralling.

Was the Flaubert an early reviewer book? I like the Hesperus editions as well.

Gregory's books are so popular, but I haven't read any--I couldn't decide if they would be well-written or not. After reading your review, I'm not sure I would seek any out.

The Flaubert book was an early reviewer pick.

If you like historical fiction, the Philippa Gregory book's are worth the amount of time they take to read, that is about an afternoon. They're sort of like a guilty pleasure. I've only read two of them: The Other Boleyn Girl and The White Queen. I finished The Other Boleyn Girl over a year ago and memory tells me that it was better than The White Queen, but I liked the time period of the second more. It seems like everyone writes about Henry VIII and his wives. It was nice to read something different (Plantagenet, Edward IV).

Five Principles for a Successful Life by Gingrich and Cushman makes a good gift book, which is how I received it. Cushman gave a speech at a function my mom was putting on. She was able to score a copy signed by Gingrich and Cushman along with a handwritten personal note on the inside of the cover written by Cushman.

Contributors to the book include Bill Clinton, Whoopi Goldberg, Rush Limbaugh and so on and so forth. The 5 principles are simple: dream big, work hard, learn every day, enjoy life and be true to yourself. For a moving story, Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture is strong. For powerful quotations, a variety of perspectives on what disposition/principles/sentiments are inspiring, 5 Principles is the way to go. E.g., "The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."--Michelangelo. It contains lots of great quotations, is well-written and makes for an easy read. Wish the application of its 5 principles was just as simple.

Pandora's Daughter by Iris Johansen--

Boring.

I almost don't want to be bothered with writing a review because I feel like I've already wasted far too much time on this book. Basically, it's about a fifteen-year old who grows up only to discover she has psychic powers and that her mother was killed for her own psychic powers. There's plenty of gratuitous sex, violence, violence and sex together, torture, poorly crafted two-dimensional characters, unnecessary characters whose purpose still evade me, crappy internal dialogue attributed to a middle-aged woman that would have been more appropriate for an over-sexed fifteen-year-old girl. It was very disappointing. It had been recommended to me by a friend who usually makes terrific recommendations.

Just because you like The Harry Potter series does not mean that you will like Twilight. One is a well-written epic adventure, the other is a sweet, but poorly written, romance. For the first 100 hundred pages of Twilight, I was thinking: "it's going to get better. Keep reading." I knew I was in for a rough ride when, on page 13, Bella thinks to herself as she walks into her new school for the first time, "I can do this, I lied to myself feebly. No one was going to bite me." No. I did not make that up. For the next 100 pages, I kept thinking: "this is why you don't read popular books." After the first couple hundred pages or so, it did get better. Or perhaps my psyche was so worn down at that point that I thought it was getting better.

The first book is all about the longing between the main characters Bella and Edward. She's a normal teen; he's a vampire. Once you get past the surface of the teen romance though, the book is really creepy (unintentionally). Edward is really like a father figure to Bella who is a clumsy accident-prone teen. She obsesses about him; she's willing to give up her life for him. He hangs out in her room at night and watches while she sleeps (without her knowledge); he listens in to her conversations with her friends (then makes fun of her for them). Meyer writes a female character who thinks of herself as strong, but her actions don't demonstrate strength or restraint. In fact, restraint and strength both originate with Edward, not Bella.

I'll keep reading the series, but my take on the books probably isn't' the one that Meyer intended. Even though the first part of the book was slow, I've been sucked in...see that wordplay there. I think I'll wait a while to read the second one, just to allow my brain to recover.

Not that I don't read other crap, but I just can't bring myself to read those.

I didn't think I could stomach them either, but 10 pages into the first book and I was totally sucked in!

Mind you, they're no Harry Potter.

Your resolve will be worn down...eventually.

I actually read it because of having seen the Twilight movie replayed on HBO.

Bookbugg...have you read all 4?

I devoured the first three in a row just before Christmas. I haven't read the fourth one yet mainly because I only have it in hardback and I don't want to lug it around! But have been itching to find out how everything ends so will definitely be reading it in the next few weeks.

Stephanie Meyer has another book out as well, unrelated to the Twilight series, called The Host - have you heard anything about it or whether it is supposed to be any good?

I've heard it's supposed to be written for adults, not teens, but that's about it.

I adore my cats and have been known to hop around the house with ours, quick at my heals, hopping and skittering around; however, Dancing with Cats by Burton Silver and Heather Busch is a weird little book. The strange thing is that three different people have given me this book.

The title says it all. It was amusing to glance through, but I do not need a copy. The book has the same tongue-and-cheek feel of Painting with Cats. It's funny, but strange too. It's got entries by purported spiritual healers and shows a bunch of people "dancing" around with their cats. I could have gone an entire lifetime without seeing the photograph on page 28. Wait a moment--scratch that. I could have done without not only the photograph on page 28, but also those on pages 88 through 94.

If you are my friend, please don't give me this book a fourth time or I will be tempted to count you an enemy. I'm already going to have nightmares about page 28.

OK, now I need to know what's on page 28.

And I'm totally reading Why Cats Paint (incidentally, a gift from Judge Kent) for one of the Dewey challenge categories.

The image of a guy painted like a black and white cat with his anus pointed toward the camera with a giant black fake tale protruding from the top of his ass is permanently seared into my retina as a result of page 28. Also he's hunched over more like Gollum than a cat.

:)

Happy Reading !

Ugh. Reading has slowed due to an upturn in crime and Titian: The Last Days progressing really slowly.

16. Handbook for Today's Catholic
17. Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence
18. Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert, Foreward by Margaret Drabble
19. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
20. Pandora's Daughter by Iris Johansen
21. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
22. Dancing with Cats by Burton Silver and Heather Busch
23. Titian: The Last Days by Mark Hudson
24. Romancing Miss Bronte by Juliet Gael
25. Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities by Alexandra Robbins
26. The Diary by Eileen Goudge
27. Five Principles for a Successful Life by Newt Gingrich and Jackie Gingrich Cushman
28. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
29. Anthem by Ayn Rand
30. Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

LIST CONTINUED IN MESSAGE 67

You've checked a lot off your list! I read part of Pledged when we were in law school--Allyson was reading it, I think.

Can you imagine attending an entire semester’s worth of art history classes only to have the professor discuss in excess of fifty paintings while showing you reproductions of only 5? Then you’ve already experienced the droning that is Titian: The Last Days. That characterization is overly harsh since the writing is actually quite good in some places. The lack of color pictures, or the less expensive but also less expressive alternative of black whites, is probably more the fault of the publisher than the writer, but the outcome for the reader is the same: Mark Hudson’s book is not nearly as captivating as it could be. The title misleads since the book isn't just about Titian's last days, as the book merely starts and ends with them.

Ample amounts of navel gazing by Hudson make me doubt some of his analysis and makes the fact that so few reproductions of the paintings being included even more irksome. For instance, he portrays Marsyas in the The Flaying of Marsyas as being in the shape of an upside down cross and analogizes the mythical death of Marsyas with the death and crucifixion of Jesus. That's quite a stretch. The Flaying of Marsyas is one of the scant reproductions tucked into the book's center. I held the book upside down in one hand, peered at the reproduction, squinted my eyes all while holding a vodka martini in my other hand--I just couldn’t see it. For me, the most interesting portions are those about Phillip V. Hudson obviously adores Titian and knows his works well, but that takes the book only so far.

I do appreciate the approach that Mark Hudson takes to Art History. He writes for a wider audience than just art critics and professors. He makes no bones about the fact that he isn't writing just for them. I'd be interested in reading some of his other books that don't rely so heavily on critique of either books I haven't read or paintings I haven't seen and can't find.

My college was without fraternities and sororities so everything I know of them comes from anecdotes related to me by friends, tv shows and movies. Alexandra Robbins goes undercover and follows four women through rush and their first year of being members of a sorority and Pledged relates the changes good and bad that occur for them as a result of their participation in “Greek Life.” What she relates is behavior appropriate to the Jerry Springer show, but fueled by even more drugs and alcohol and cast with pretty people. It was sort of entertaining, but I am not sure that I got that much out of it.

On the other hand, I am not entirely sure that the experiences described by Robbins are entirely confined to “Greek Life.” Perhaps the degree to which these young women were affected by eating disorders, experimenting with drugs and hypersexual activity might be unusual, but this sort of thing is rampant among college-aged students even without the pretence of these problems being confined to fraternities and sororities. Young people want to fit in and therefore they are terribly exposed to making poor decisions. When fitting in is the single most important thing in their lives, unless the majority or close to the majority of students in college are more concerned with academics than socializing, changing sororities and fraternities will be with much effect. A more interesting book to me would be one concerning why these young women and men feel compelled to injure themselves and what parents can do before they go to college to give them better skills to deal with being away from home for the first time.

Pledged contained few surprises. I appreciated some of the recommendations Robbins makes for cleaning house toward its end, but disagreed with some of the recommendations as well. I don't intend to go into what those were because I don't want to spoil the book.

Eileen Goudge's The Diary bores. Momentarily, while reading this short novella, I had a passing thought that I had narcolepsy, then I realized that skimming the book would be more satisfying. Conceive of an average lifetime movie plot concerning the discovery of a woman's diary by her now adult daughters; throw in a little sex, love rock and roll and small town religious folks as well as a cliched, approximately penultimate plot twist/discovery and you've got The Diary. It just wasn't my kind of chick lit. Honestly, I think a reasonably well-made movie would give the book more depth than the writer's style did.

Ugh. Sounds awful.

Sweet, poignant and lovingly crafted, but in need of some tidying, Romancing Miss Bronte by Juliet Gael is a quick, light read. Its strongest point is that it provides inspiration for further, serious study of the Bronte sisters.

The book starts with the famous Bronte sisters attempting to put their fine European educations to work. They aren't really suited to being governesses, which is the only semi-scholarly pursuit available for well-educated women, so they take on male pseudonyms and get published. Focusing on one sister in particular, the author of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, the novel explains her themes of sadness, longing and the overall tangible quality of the emotions she imbues her characters with by giving weight to Charlotte's own life experiences (some of which Gael imagines and some of which are very real). I could definitely see this being adapted into a screenplay/movie down the road.

I liked the story enough that the inattention to editing wasn't a deal breaker for me. The mistakes were distracting though. For example, on page 148, at the end of the second paragraph, there is a comma where a period should be; on page 188, Anne Bronte wishes Nichols "Good grant you a safe journey...", rather than "God grant you...."; on page 113, an upside down, as opposed to right side up, apostrophe makes it into the Guardian's office.

It was a fun read that I'll enjoy passing along to a fellow bookmoocher.

Which part of Pledged did you read when we were in law school Carlym? Was she reading it for a class or for fun?

American Wife is a thinly veiled satire of Laura Bush and her family, both the one into which she was born and the one into which she married. Its first two thirds were more interesting than the its last, as the main character's voice, the narrator, became progressively more preachy in tone. The voice of the writer leaked out through the main character's mouth toward the end of the book in the writer's poorly executed attempt to show her character's growth. That break with the very consistent voice of the first two thirds of the book didn't work for me. Having spoken about the book with some of my friends, some of whom are conservative and some of whom are liberal, I've found that most them felt the same way: the book dragged toward the end when it tried to become something other than just a fun read.

>60 Voracious_Reader:: I think I just started at the beginning and read part of it; I know I didn't finish, but I don't remember how much I read. Allyson was reading it for fun.

Ayn Rand's Anthem is dystopian fiction of a world ruled by collectivists/socialists. I'm sure that its egoism, captured by a character first rediscovering the word "I," then declaring himself GOD, was quite stunning at the time that it was released. It still should be, but I'm not sure that it is. Anthem really seems like a direct criticism of Plato's Republic. Some might see the style of the novella as crude; I see it as direct. It isn't as good as some of her longer pieces in terms of style, but, it's still quite credible as a philosophical statement. For a more emotional, less philosophical (less transparent in some ways), version of an argument against collectivism, consider Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron," a dystopian short story. Vonnegut and Rand couldn't be more different as writers, people, or in their politics, but I enjoy both of their works.

I enjoyed the Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, but didn’t completely fall in love with it. The last 100 pages dragged. My impression is probably fueled by my 21st century mind which is accustomed to the summing up of a mystery much more quickly than Victorian sensibilities permitted. Collins tells of an artist who falls in love with a woman of superior rank; she and a woman of lowly means—the woman in white— fall victim to a series of evil schemes; the artist and the brilliant Ms. Halcombe, half-sister to the woman of superior rank, right all the wrongs. The story is broken into pieces with each piece being told by a different character. It’s supposed to be like a court case where different portions of testimony, i.e., narrative to one event, would be given by different witnesses. For its time it was probably quite daring. I fell in love with the character of Marian Halcombe and wish that Marian could have found love with her equal, but there was no Mr. Darcy in the cards for this Ms. Bennett.

I have never read that one or even picked it up. Worth reading or not?

It is. It's long, but a quick read. I guess it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be, so I was a little disappointed. That's my fault, though, not the book's. It's interesting in terms of the way the story is told and what Collins thinks about the law and women too.

31. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
32. Gossip of the Starlings by Nina de Gramont
33. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
34. A Caregiver's Guide to Lewy Bodies Dementia by Helen Buell Whitworth
35. A Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
36. My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler
37. The Convent by Panos Karnezis

Azar Nafisi's memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran tells of a changing Iranian culture, one fraught with both external and internal turmoil, during the Iranian Revolution. She describes her own experiences there through the lens of literature, particularly Nabakov's Lolita, Henry James' Daisy Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Some portions of her analysis and the connections she makes between the pieces and the rapid changes she observes within her beloved Iranian culture are very sound. I connect with her reading of Lolita and Daisy Miller. She doesn't ask and answer as many questions as I would like with the Great Gatsby or Pride and Prejudice; though, I like those portions as well. There isn't anything she said about any of the pieces where I thought "She's absolutely nuts." In some instances, I wish she would have pushed further with her readings.

She strikes me as a very insightful, loving, brave woman who is very saddened by the politicizing of religion, the lack of women's rights in Iran, and continual upheavals and revolutions there. She wishes that others could gain insights about human experience through close readings of literature, bemoaning the lack of empathy and shortsightedness of "revolutionaries" in Iran. There's a recommended reading list in the back of her book. If you haven't read at least the four I've listed above, it will be very difficult to make heads or tails of her memoir.

Gossip of the Starlings I liked more than I thought I would, but not as much as I had hoped.

In haiku:
Young woman at school
Corrupted by her best friend
Survives, very sad.

It was a very quick read and was moderately entertaining. I found it very difficult to like or sympathize with many of the characters. It was sort of like watching a car crash in slow motion: you don't want to look, but you can't help yourself. The author had an uncanny ability to keep a dark tension throughout. Imagine boarding schools full of kids who have far too much freedom, time, money and lack any sense of morality (I mean both the students and the schools).

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is about a thief in California (John Gilkey) who compulsively steals books, particularly rare collectible ones. He’s so compulsive though that once banned from virtually all rare book stores he turns to stealing from libraries. He reads some of the books, but for him it’s really about being able to know that he possesses the books, that he’s been able to take them from someone else without paying. Although he has all sorts of time and reason to contemplate why he does what he does—he spends a good portion of the book serving a variety of jail sentences for fraud and theft related offenses—he has no insight into his own actions. He doesn’t even pretend to know that stealing isn’t ok.

It’s a very quick read that’s sort of like a long newspaper article about Gilkey and the dealers he steals from, as well as a memoir of sorts of the book’s author. I guess any piece of journalism that requires multiple years of research and long conversations with sociopaths is bound to affect the researcher in some way. It was low-key intone; it wasn’t riveting, but it was engaging. The title is sort of misleading to the extent that I don’t really think Gilkey loved books; he loved collecting things that he believed others saw as valuable because he was an empty shell of a person. The book has a lot of interesting moments, but the best part was a quotation from a judge sentencing another book thief to jail:

" In callously stealing, mutilating, and destroying rare and unique elements of
our common intellectual heritage, Spiegelman did not simply aim to divest
Columbia of $1.3 Million worth of physical property. He risked stunting, and
probably stunted, the growth of human knowledge to the detriment of us all.
By the very nature of the crime, it is impossible to know exactly what
damage he has done. But this much is clear: this crime was quite different
from the theft of cash equal to the appraised value of the materials stolen,
because it deprived not only Columbia, but the world, of irreplaceable pieces
of the past and the benefits of future scholarship."

It’s nice to hear a judge being so thoughtful and thinking of the victim(s) instead of only thinking about the Defendant. The theft of books shouldn't necessarily be treated any differently than the theft of money, but it's a nice quote.

That sounds pretty interesting. People are so weird.

I picked it up and finished it within a matter of hours. It was a fun read.

People really are so weird.

It's better than collecting jars of urine; my job exposes me to the most interesting folks. (:

My father-in-law has been diagnosed with Lewy Bodies Dementia (LBD) so we were rather lucky that A Caregiver's Guide to Lewy Bodies Dementia was offered as an ER book. I found it to be informative and pretty-well edited. It was sort of like a mix between self-help and medical explanation for the lay person. I would recommend it for anyone who is interested in finding out more about different varieties of dementia, particularly LBD. The one thing that it lacked is a sort of check list format that would permit someone at a glance to see what the different phases of LBD are and to see what symptoms their loved one has and what phase their loved one is in. I know that’s information that you can also get from treatment specialists, but I would have liked a quick at-a-glance list in the book too. My husband is going to read it and then we are going to give it to his mother. I hope she’ll find it as valuable as I did.

Collecting jars of urine? Theirs or other people's?

Their own. Does that make it better? :)

Still weird, but less creepy, somehow.

How was your Thanksgiving?

Busy.

Bill's Dad is really not mentally well. He seems physically ok though. We will be headed back to there in less than a month for Christmas with his parents.

On the upside, his sister just got engaged!

Heidegger and a Hippo... was ok. It seems like it would make for a fun stage act. The authors have a terrific ability to understand and explain complex philisophical ideas through puns and jokes etc. It dragged at points, but I'll still try their other book Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar at some point.

Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life is not for your mother. I found the ebook version on Amazon for a steal and just couldn't resist it. It's about Handler's hilarious, various sexcapades throughout her teens and twenties. She is one funny lady, but this one is definitely not for the faint of heart. I will certainly keep an eye out for her other books in used bookstores; though, I'd love to read more about her family than her sex life.

I read Plato and a Platypus earlier this year. I'm not sure I would bother with the Hippo one (although I think that title is better). Have you been watching Chelsea Lately? I can't really get into it. (And you don't want to give a copy to your mom for Christmas? :) )

I've never actually seen Chelsea Lately. Based on your assessment, I probably wont. It was a quick, entertaining read, but she's got a mean sense of humour. One has to be in the right mood. I, like you, am down with a cold right now. I spent the better part of the day sleeping and now I can't get to sleep. Damned, frickin' people who bring colds to work. (:

Ugh, I know--the girl next to me was really sick last week (some "11-day" flu-like virus is going around), and she's been at work this week coughing her head off. Aside from the fact that the coughing is driving me up the wall (and I can hear it with my door closed), I don't really appreciate the germ-spreading.

Final 2010 count...a paltry 28 books read.

Please follow my 2011 thread http://www.librarything.com/topic/106399 here.

Panos Karnezis's The Convent--I don't want to give away the plot even though it's pretty apparent where Karnezis' is headed by page 30 of The Convent. Let's just say that when a baby shows up in a suitcase at a convent that's out in the middle of nowhere; its only inhabitants are a handful of nuns; and no one comes to visit or goes to town with much frequency, that sort of narrows the field of likely suspects. Turns out the book really isn't about finding the parents of the baby, which makes more understandable the fact that none of the characters, with one exception, seem even remotely interested in establishing who the biological parents are. It's really about taking "virtue" to the point where it is no longer virtue but something else entirely. In it you get to see how two different female characters resolve very real moral dilemmas. It's a philosophically driven work that plays on their ideas about love, respectability and duty. It is melodramatic in some places but stylistically strong overall. I would recommend it, but it is not a light read.