|
Number |
Author |
Title |
Published |
Rating |
Mini Sum |
Comments |
|
1 |
Susanna Clarke |
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell |
2004 |
 |
Magicians bring back English magic. |
Cool book. Well-written & fun to read. The footnotes are
classic. |
|
2 |
Diana Wynne Jones |
Howl's Moving Castle |
1986 |
|
Girl cursed by witch moves into a magician's moving
castle. |
Very enjoyable. Quick read. Looking forward to the
movie. |
|
3 |
Mercedes Lackey |
Firebird |
1996 |
 |
Story inspired by Russian fairy tales. |
Conventional fantasy hero questing against evil sorcerer. Utterly
predictable. Mindless but ok for what it is. |
|
4 |
Anne Rice |
Interview with the Vampire |
1976 |
|
Vampire tells (after)life story. |
I'd been meaning to read this (& possibly more of the Vampire
Chronicles) for a while. |
|
5 |
Dave Eggers |
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius |
2000 |
|
Gen Xer tells about parents' deaths & raising
brother. |
It starts strong, but the 2nd half is not good. The most clever
bit is the before the narrative starts. |
|
6 |
Charles Dickens |
Hard Times |
1854 |
|
Industrial Revolution was hard times for workers. |
Dickens rocks. |
|
7 |
Sarah Vowell |
Take the Cannoli: stories from the new world |
2000 |
|
Essays about the US by NPR writer. |
S.V. is always good, but for me "The Cloudy Day Patriot" was a
better book. It had more I could relate to. |
|
8 |
J. D. Salinger |
The Catcher in the Rye |
1945 |
|
Depressed boy thinks people are phony. (no kidding?) |
Not the worst book I've read, but I don't love it. Now I've read
it, so the Mardi Gras group can stop teasing me. |
|
9 |
Kij Johnson |
Fudoki |
2003 |
|
Japanese empress tells stories of a journeying cat turned
woman. |
Not really a sequel to The Fox Woman. Just tangentially
related. Both are really good & I'm not sure which I like better. I
think this one is better. |
|
10 |
Margaret Atwood |
Surfacing |
1972 |
|
Woman looks for father & thinks about patriarchy in rural
Quebec. |
Good. Sometimes weird. I enjoy her newer stuff much
more. |
|
11 |
Sinclair Lewis |
Main Street |
1920 |
|
Liberal librarian marries and moves to narrow-minded prairie
town. |
Still timely 80 years later. Why, oh why, leave D.C. for G.P. at
the end? She was free, but she returns. Dumb. Or the part that's really
not timely anymore. |
|
12 |
Arundhati Roy |
The God of Small Things |
1997 |
|
Traumatic events in Indian twins childhood. |
Beautiful execution. Story is unraveled deliberately - slowly, but
purposefully with cycled themes & symbols. Not an upper - the twins
reunite as miserable adults at the homestead & remember the death of
their childhood. |
|
13 |
Lemony Snicket |
A Bad Beginning: Book the First |
1999 |
|
The first in a Series of Unfortunate Events in the Baudelaire
children's lives. |
Props for the use of 'unfortunate' in series title; it's a useful
word. Snicket's Definitions are excessive. In this context that means this
book reads more like a dictionary than a story. The movie is better and
funnier. |
|
14 |
Anne Rice |
The Vampire Lestat |
1986 |
|
Lestat tells his story in the 2nd Vampire Chronicle. |
I liked it more & more as it progressed. I look forward to
reading more of this series. |
|
15 |
Ken Kesey |
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest |
1963 |
|
A new patient tries to overthrow Big Nurse's tyranny in the
asylum. |
Very good. There are lots of stories about mental institutions
that are a lot like this. This one is a worthwhile read. |
|
16 |
Michael Crichton |
State of Fear |
2004 |
|
People try to stop environmental terrorists. |
It takes a lot of the book to find out where he's really going
with it all. But it's exciting & in total it's a great argument for
reason. |
|
17 |
Thornton Wilder |
The Bridge of San Luis Rey |
1927 |
|
When 5 die in bridge collapse priest seeks to prove it was an act
of God by investigating the victims. |
I wasn't super excited about it, but it was worth
reading. |
|
18 |
Anne Rice |
The Queen of the Damned |
1989 |
|
After Lestat's concert wakes the 1st vamp, the origin of vampires
comes to light. |
Good, although I liked the 2nd Vampire Chronicle better. I found
the legend of the twins & the stories of vampires' pasts more
compelling than the contemporary story. |
|
19 |
Cecil Castellucci |
Boy Proof |
2005 |
|
Hollywood teen learns to let friends into her life & finds out
what she wants to be. |
I saw the author speak at ALA & it seemed like a book worth
getting. Good coming of age tale. Cute. |
|
20 |
Jeffrey Archer |
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less |
1974 |
|
Men lose $1 mil. from bad stock & plot to get it back from
corrupt CEO. |
Fun book. The last heist blows the 1st 3 away. Thanks, Grandma,
for recommending it. |
|
21 |
Rick Yancey |
The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp |
2005 |
|
Teen gets mixed up in a modern day battle for
Excalibur. |
This was an ALA reviewer's copy. Would be good for teen boys, less
so for me. |
|
22 |
Christopher Castellani |
The Saint of Lost Things |
2005 |
|
Italian Immigrants suffer in Delaware. |
Another reviewer's copy from ALA. Uninspiring. Hey, so this was my
first bookcrossing.com release
into the wild. Cool, huh? I'm sure there's great karma in sharing mediocre
books with the world. |
|
23 |
Jean M. Auel |
The Clan of the Cave Bear |
1980 |
|
Homosapian girl grows up with Neanderthals. |
Ayla is disgustingly perfect. The story often drags on
descriptions of random things. Secondary characters are difficult to keep
track of, because they aren't developed, but they're referred to as if the
reader should recognize every clan member. Still, it's a fairly unique
concept, and the narrative is readable. |
|
24 |
Neal Stephenson |
Cryptonomicon |
1999 |
|
Multiple time lines converge on WWII security codes. |
Very long book, but ultimately worthwhile. |
|
25 |
Alexandra Fuller |
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight |
2001 |
|
Memoir of childhood farming in Africa. |
Feels quite alien to me, but a very good read. |
|
26 |
Jonathan Safran Foer |
Everything is Illuminated |
2002 |
|
Guy goes to Ukraine to find people who saved his grandfather
during WWII. |
1st book club book - looking forward to the discussion on 9/14.
Sammy Davis Junior Junior cracks me up - officious bitch - lol! much
later: enjoyed movie, but it cut & shifted the story like movies
usually do |
|
27 |
Jodi Picoult |
My Sister's Keeper |
2004 |
 |
Teen sues parents for medical emancipation when her terminally ill
sister needs her kidney. |
Total disappointment. The more I think about it, the more I hate
it. For a book (supposedly) about controversial subjects, she writes half
the friggin book about high school romance of fairly minor characters
& manages to completely avoid saying anything useful or interesting
about anything useful or interesting! I kept thinking it was going
somewhere, but no. The ending is a cop-out. The whole book is spent
fighting for this girl's right to choose & she's killed her so no one
has to make hard choices. Anna's such a friggin saint/martyr & Kate is
miraculously saved. Worst miracle ever. |
|
28 |
Banana Yoshimoto |
Kitchen |
1988 |
|
Japanese friends mourn losses & fall in love. |
This book is beautiful. The writing is very tight. Definitely
re-readable. |
|
29 |
Mark Haddon |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time |
2004 |
|
When the neighbor's dog is murdered, autistic teen solves the
mystery. |
What a cool book! Not only are the story and characters
compelling, the point of view is truly unique. |
|
30 |
Gregory Maguire |
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister |
2000 |
|
Retelling of Cinderella set in medieval Netherlands. |
I'm not sure there's anything new to say about Cinderella.
Enjoyable book, but not as clever or original as I had hoped. |
|
31 |
Jose Saramago |
Blindness |
1997 |
|
Everyone goes blind; society falls into chaos. |
Brilliant. Saramago totally deserves his Nobel Prize. |
|
32 |
Elizabeth Kostova |
The Historian |
2005 |
|
Cursed academics must research Dracula or perish. |
Very academic & tame for a vampire story. In parts it bounces
between narrators abruptly. It has a solid (if slow paced) story
throughout, but it could easily have been 200 pages shorter. |
|
33 |
S.E. Hinton |
The Outsiders |
1967 |
|
Classic coming of age tale involves class conflict, belonging, and
loss. |
Yep, classic. What stupid book took its place in the middle school
curriculum so I'm just reading it now? I could wish for less corny jargon
though. |
|
34 |
Margaret Atwood
|
The Penelopiad |
2005 |
|
What Penelope did during the Odyssey. |
I'm a sucker for this kind of retelling. I didn't know about the
hanged maids, but that's probably because I never read the whole Odyssey
& they didn't put that part on 'Wishbone'. Sorry English
teachers. |
|
35 |
Christopher Paolini
|
Eragon |
2002 |
|
Unoriginal fantasy written by a kid. |
As a reader I shouldn't have to make allowences for the author's
age. The book is unoriginal, and that fact that he can use a thesaurus
doesn't make it well-written. I can't finish this. |
|
36 |
Alice Hoffman
|
Pracical Magic |
1996 |
|
Witchy women are unlucky in love. |
Ok, but I couldn't really get into it. Very different from movie
& I think better, but I wasn't crazy about the movie
either. |
|
37 |
Nick Hornby
|
How to Be Good |
2002 |
|
London doctor tries to cope with her husband's spiritual
conversion. |
It's clever, but not hilarious. The characters disappoint me,
because their thinking is narrow. For people who want desperately to be
good, they suck at it. |
|
38 |
Barry Schwartz |
The Paradox of Choice |
2004 |
|
Psych prof explains how more choices stress us out. |
This is my annual nod to nonfiction.
Interesting. |