4 posts tagged “books”

If nothing else on Vox, I've enjoyed being able to easily keep track of the books I've been reading throughout the year. I've never kept such a list before, though I wish I had. It's actually interesting to look back to see what was filling my time over the months when I wasn't immersed in work. I spot some trends in 2007. Like the fact that I apparently couldn't get enough historical novels to satiate me-- I even had to sprinkle in some period non-fiction. And I read far more non-fiction than I think I ever have in the past. I tend to go in waves with that.

And thanks to Jodi's introduction to BookMooch, I was able to expand my purchasing power a lot. For some reason the library just doesn't attract me like it usedta could.

Here's the list.

Hands down this is one of the most inspiring and deeply disturbing books I've read. I am an absolutely worthless book critic, and my inherent lack of ability simply won't allow me to appropriately convey the multitude of things that should be said here. All I can say is that any pre-dispositions you may have to Dave Eggers as a result of McSweeney's, just torpedo them. If you read his personal story, you may have a sense for how capable he is of cutting to the quick of emotion. I've not really followed Eggers, but now I'm circling back to catch up.

Read this book. And then go here. And then let's all get together and decide what the fuck to do, because the story of Valentino Achak Deng is really not all that unusual-- which ought to make all of us profoundly moved.

What Is the What

Dave Eggers

I don't usually do memes, so now I am.

Nod to Crom47 by way of Red Pen for this one. I've been saving it up for just this sort of occasion.

Instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you have read a bit from but never finished, italicize the ones you might want to read in the future, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10-foot pole, and do not do anything to the ones you’ve never heard of.

(Like Red Pen), I'm also using a light text for books I've heard of but don't really have any specific plans to read, although the 10-foot pole condition does not apply. I am starring the ones I've read that I'd recommend highly.

And I am putting in purple any of which I've seen the movie.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride And Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) **
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) **
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Brontë)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) **
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (E. Brontë)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)  
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) **
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
42.The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) **
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Gift & Award Bible NIV (Various)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb) **
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver) **
52.  A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) **
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brahares)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

To begin 2007, I would like to humbly recommend to all a book that is remarkably researched and written:

They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967

David Maraniss

I don't wish in any way to treat this book with levity, but it is simply filled with overlaps and coincidences and haunting reminders of the past and telling lessons for the future. I also want to share that I first started this book early last year, and simply couldn't get into it. Not sure why; it's just dense and detailed in a way that I found cumbersome at the time. I needed some distance. Coincidentally, Vrabel recently began to read another Maraniss book about Roberto Clemente, and then found my copy of Sunlight and sat it down in front of me. I decided to give it a second go, and plowed through the remaining 400 pages in about 8 hours. We'd also just been to see The Good Shepherd, which I highly recommend, so I was in the right frame.

It's a book we all really need to read, I believe. I've read many good books on the American-Vietnam War. This one, however, is one of the best.

Peace.