2010 - Your Best Five Reads of Q2 (April - June)

Following in avaland's tradition, what were the 5 best books, fiction or non-fiction, you read in the last 3 months? Please share with any comments you care to add!

Copied from another thread:

Strangely, although I felt I didn't have a good reading quarter, when I look back I see a lot of excellent books. It's just that I read a couple of duds too.

For fiction, I really enjoyed The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, The Violins of Saint-Jacques by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi, and The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah. I'm not sure, though, whether any of these will make it to my best of the year list. I am hoping to finish my first tome of the summer, Terra Nostra this month; it is a remarkable book, but I'm not sure what to make of it.

Nonfiction really takes the prize for this quarter. Ngugi wa Thiong'o's memoir, Dreams in a Time of War, Charles Bowden's remarkable portrayal of Ciudad Juarez in Murder City, and Mary-Kay Wilmers's exploration of her fascinating family and their varied roles in the history of the 20th century, The Eitingons all make my best-of-the quarter list and all have a shot at best of the year. I also really enjoyed Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat.

If I had to narrow this down to five favorites, it would be:

Murder City
Dreams in a Time of War
The Eitingons
The Feast of the Goat
The Violins of Saint-Jacques

I'd choose the following five books as my best of the quarter, which were all 5 star reads:

Troubles by J.G. Farrell
The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
The Plague by Albert Camus
A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor by John Berger

I haven't been reading crud exactly, but only two of the books I read in Q2 were 5 star. Here are the top 5 (not counting one of the 5 star books, which was a reread):

Neverwhere by Gaiman (on audio) 5 stars
Something Rotten by Fford (audio) 4.5 stars
A Murderous Procession by Franklin 4.5 stars
Fantasy in Death by Robb 4.5 stars
The Ides of March by Wilder 4 stars (but I think I'm going to re-rate it as 4.5)

The reread: The Sparrow by Russell (on audio) 5 stars

ETA well, heck! I forgot it wasn't quite the end of the quarter yet and just finished a pretty strong contender (A Great And Terrible Beauty by Bray), though I think I'll keep things as they are. For now.

My best of the quarter (in no particular order):

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
An Unfinished Life
Strength in What Remains (NF)

Honorable mention to:

Olive Kitteridge
Stones Into Schools, Promoting Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan (NF)

Here are my favorites from the second quarter, basically in order but all worthy of 4-5 stars:

Cutting for Stone
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lottery
Blame

Like rebeccanyc, I feel like I've had a pretty lackluster reading quarter, but there are a couple of fantastic standouts. Also like rebeccanyc, the best of the quarter were nonfiction reads. In order:

1) The Brontes by Juliet Barker. One of the biggest, most comprehensive, most interesting, and most compulsively readable biographies I've ever read. I've raved about this book to everyone around me (many of whom aren't the least bit interested in the Brontes). Absolutely wonderful, best book of the quarter by far.

2) The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley. Also fascinating and funny.

3) The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig. He's so good!

4) Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope. Book 4 in the Barsetshire series, with appearances by all the characters I've come to know and love (or loathe).

5) The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.

I feel like I have had a really good reading quarter.

Probably won't have any changes:

1. Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

2. Stealing Fire by Jo Graham

3. This Must be the Place by Anna Winger

4. The Shadow Pavilion by Liz Williams

5. Things Unborn by Eugene Byrne

6. New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear

I’ve read some 30-40 odd books this year so far. I mostly read classic books, plays and mysteries. A lot of the books I read are little known books that (in my opinion) deserve a wider readership. Here are my top four ‘new’ reads,

1. The Queen of Hearts. Wilkie Collins. An excellent collection of short stories.

2. London Lavender. E.V. Lucas. A collection of loosely connected vignettes. A little known gem of a book.

3. A Kiss for Cinderella. J.M. Barrie. A play which is surprisingly realistic despite being a romantic fantasy.

4. The Remains of the Day. Kazuo Ishiguro. The narrative flows wonderfully. Hats off to Ishiguro.

If anyone is interested they can check out my reviews at my 50 book challenge thread here,

http://www.librarything.com/topic/80925

I've had a good quarter, with several books that could have made the list. I've narrowed it down to (in the order I read them):
Rascal by Sterling North
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

I will be finishing Lonesome Dove by Wednesday and it will definitely qualify, at the top of the list and probably as an all time favorite. Others:

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson

Four of the five were June reads. What a month!

I've come across several good reads this quarter. My top five are:

1) The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti by Christina Rossetti

2) The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or How violence develops and where it can lead by Heinrich Böll

3) The Face of War by Martha Gellhorn

4) Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

5) The Fourth Plague by Edgar Wallace

I have had a great second quarter for reading this year. It took some work but I have narrowed my top five for Q2 as follows:

Cool Water by Dianne Warren
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaetan Soucy
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

These are my favorite five books from the second quarter of 2010.

The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
The Forge of Christendom
Beyond Totalitarianism
The Age of Wonder
Rebecca
Notes From the Underground

I was happy enough in the reading of all of them, and am very happy with what they have left with me. But the ones I got really excited about were the last two thirds of Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy.

I think that I have had better quarters.

Robert

My favourite five reads from the second quarter:

This is How- M.J Hyland
Trespass- Rose Tremain
Naming the Bones- Louise Welsh
The Icarus Girl - Helen Oyeyemi
Less than Angels - Barbara Pym

My top 5:

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine
Jane Austen for Dummies by Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This is hard, as I had at least 10 books that would qualify, but today my list is:

Ride The Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson
Flesh House by Stuart MacBride
A Quiet Belief In Angels by R.J. Ellory
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The White Mare by Jules Watson

I seem to be lost in the past . . .

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

And here are my favorites from the second quarter...

The Plague -- Albert Camus
The History of Love -- Nicole Krauss (reread)
Paula -- Isabel Allende
Grayson -- Lynne Cox
The Beekeeper's Apprentice -- Laurie R. King

Most of these were 4-star books. I had a plethora of close contenders.

It's hard to limit it to 5, but here goes:

By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives by Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Wit: A Play by Margaret Edson
The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers
and my favorite:
The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3: Subversive Stories about Sex and Gender edited by Karen Joy Fowler

Oh, Fun Home - how nice to see that book here, Joyce. I LOVED it when I read it a few years ago, my intro to graphic novels. Love Alison Bechdel.

I was surprised graphic novels could be so poetic, in that with the decreased number of words used each one has to be perfect. And in Bechdel's work, they are.

In the order I read them:

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan
The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst
Feed by Mira Grant

In the order I read them:

Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman
Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

Unusually light quarter

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen (E/R)
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Never Learn Anything from History by Kate Beaton
Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander
Roast Figs, Sugar Snow by Diana Henry (cookbook)

Ah Heartburn, you'll never think of All the President's Men the same way again.

It's also amazing how many lines from Heartburn got recycled into her films, even as recently as Julie & Julia.

Nora Ephron's such a great, funny writer. Recently I saw a review of a book by another sister. The unheard of one, was how I thought of her, Hallie. Anyone know how she is? Is she funny like Norah and Delia?

Looking back I had a pretty good quality quarter. My top three are:

Cloud Atlas
The Yiddish Policeman's Union
City of Thieves

Of the 16 books I read my top five are:

No Name by Wilkie Collins
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
Uncle Dynamite and Jeeves in the Offing by PG Wodehouse
The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff

Here are my top five (in order read):

Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Still Life and A Fatal Grace and The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

Convoy by Dudley Pope
A good WWII story of the Battle of the Atlantic.

The Heritage Trilogy by Ian Douglas
Top notch military Sci-fi books. Full a action and he weaves in a lot of Marine Corp History on tradition. And shows it being added to as the nature of warfare changes. (2 1/2 to 3 stars for each).

The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Chronicles Series #1) by Bernard Cornwell
Book one of King Alfred war against invading Danish in the 5th century. Not one of Cornwell better ones. But plan on reading more in this 5 volume series.

In the order I read them

The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
Please don't come back from the moon by Dean Bakopoulos

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Played with Fire Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest Stieg Larsson
The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor

2nd Quarter favorites-

Gasoline by Quim Monzo
Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Home by Marilynne Robinson
Ergo by Jakov Lind

>1 PaperbackPirate: thanks, Paperback Pirate for creating the thread. I have a lot going these days and I'm not getting around LT like I used to.

In no particular order:

**Touch by Adania Shibli (no touchstone!) (Palestinian, T 2010) short impressionist vignettes told from the viewpoint of a very young girl living on the West Bank.
**Deep Hollow Creek by Sheila Watson (Canadian, 1992, originally written circa 1938) A young teacher comes from the city to a mountain community in British Columbia and is changed by the experience. Vivid sense of people & place.
**A Taste of Honey: Stories by Jabari Asim (US, 2010) Connected stories laced with humor and affection yet very thoughtful (and often riveting).
**The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout (Algerian, T. 2007) Profoundly sad tale of one bookstore owner who holds out against the forces of extremism.

>36 avaland: Seeing as Lois only listed four, I'll do 6! Could not decide which to drop :)

In the order in which I read them:
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
House of Mist by María Luisa Bombal
Touch by Adania Shibli
All the Living by C. E. Morgan
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

This last quarter went by really fast. Here are the books I read that rated 4.0 or higher:

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez
In the Company of Angels byThomas E. Kennedy
Blindness by José Saramago
The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

>37 akeela: ha ha! We did both list Touch, didn't we? And the Jelloun and Ogawa are older favorites of mine (and I have the Bombal in the pile...)

These are in the order read:

The Walk by Richard Paul Evans
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
Lift by Kelly Corrigan
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Road of Lost Innocence

Great subject!

My five:
The Canal by Lee Rourke
Adventures Among Ants
A Castle in Romagna
Siamese by Stig Saeterbakken
I Curse the River of Time

This was harder than I expected.

My top three, easy choices are:

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

The final two are:

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

But they sit just a hair's breath ahead of in order of preference (enjoyment)

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God by Etgar Keret
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
Seige at Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell
The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton
Tinkers by Paul Harding