jfetting's 100 book challenge thread 2013

Just a placeholder for 2013. No complicated goals this year; I want to read 50 1001 books, and I'm participating in the Author Theme Reads group so there will be a lot of French literature.

Note to self: you have 220 books marked "To Read" as of 12/31/12

Anxious to see what you will be reading in 2013 Doc. You always read some very interesting titles. Happy reading.

I haven't read anything in French since Year 12 many, many years ago. But I am looking forward to following your reading nonetheless!

Oh, I am definitely reading English translations of French literature. My high school French from ages ago is not up to the challenge of reading in French.

Whoops, misunderstood. Are you looking at new or older titles?

Good luck. I have always enjoyed reading your lists and looked forward to doing so again in 2013.

looking forward to your lists ... I always find something interesting!

Nice to see you here again! Looking forward to some French literature suggestions, I've liked what I've read there, but it hasn't been much...

Here's to another year of good reading!

A happy new year, and bookmarking you, looking forward to your thread this year!

Thanks all! Good to hear from you.

I finally finished my first book of the year! You'd think that long vacations would be perfect for reading lots of books, but not this year.

#1 Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende
Entertaining historical fiction novel about the settling of Chile by the Ines Suarez mentioned in the title and Pedro Valdivia. I really liked her style and have never read anything by her before. I think her most famous book is The House of the Spirits, which I've had sitting on my shelves for awhile and which I will now have to read.

Incidentally, how do other people handle Kindle books (or nook or whatever) in their libraries? I got a Kindle for Christmas (jumped over to the Dark Side, but I really like it) and I'm trying to figure out how to enter the books I download into my library. Just pick a random edition and go for it?

I'm not fussy about my library, so I just go for the first one that pops up when I enter ebooks.

Allende is one of my very favourite writers. She writes compelling stories and uses beatiful prose.

Yay, kindle! It's really convenient for some kinds of books (like current ones you can check out from the library and classics that are free), and I've found it a good addition to "real books". Anyway, I usually just pick a random cover and then tag the book kindle. But I'm not picky about that stuff either.

Just catching up on threads, bit late this year :) I haven't got an e-reader yet.. still not sure about the idea. However I do read short stories on my phone/tablet .. just not sure about a full novel, I love physical books.

Like the others, I just pick the most popular edition and then tag it Kindle.

Tagging sounds like a good idea - thanks!

#2 The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Surprisingly funny. It almost reads like a Wodehouse book. I loved it.

I agree with you with The Pickwick Papers ! After he wrote it, his books got all serious and perhaps not as good !?

I like the idea of tagging the ebooks, I was wondering how to do my ebooks.

#3 The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

My book club's selection for this month. It is the story of a writer who moves to Scotland to work on her novel about some failed Jacobite invasion. The book switches between the modern writer's story and the story she's writing, which some hippy dippy voodoo nonsense about inherited memories (you can inherit your ancestors' memories! Like you inherit their blue eyes or bad teeth or whatever! Except no, that's nonsense.)

Whatever. It was fun. Until the totally bullshit, unbelievable, ridiculous ending.

hehehe Not worth searching for then??

I wouldn't go out of my way to seek it out, but it is decent mindless fun.

Back to Allende, the only thing I have read of hers is Daughter of Fortune and like you Jennifer, I quite liked her style. Also I have seen that 'Daughter' is one of a trilogy. Does anyone know anything about that?
And there must be something wrong with me Doc because just from your strange little blurb of The Winter Sea, I kind of want to read it.
later,

edited to say Oh, and I have it in my library. (TWS)

Nice! Then I say by all means read it. Most people do not get as angry about false notions of chromosomal inheritance as I do.

I want to read Daughter of Fortune too. I want to read all her books, actually.

I have read all her books (I think). I loved every single one of them.

Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo

I read this for the Author Theme Reads group read this month, and I don't love it as unreservedly as many in the group love it. The descriptive/philosophical chapters are gorgeous, and I loved them. The nitty-gritty details of getting the boat motor out are less fun, and the end is just crap. There, I said it. The man vs. the sea theme is really well-done, but the relationships between the characters (besides Gilliat and the sea) are half-assed, and so the action that drives the last chapter is not really believable. I'd have skipped it all together. Gilliat (I know I'm spelling that name wrong) deserves better.

hehe I'm with Rainpebble ... your description of "hippy dippy etc" just made me go look up the title. And did you become a "Doc" recently? Or is that something I missed earlier? In any case congratulations!!

I got the PhD about 3 years ago, so not super recently. I should really update my LT profile; I think I still call myself a grad student on it. Now I'm a broke postdoc, which isn't all that different from grad student really. No committee meetings.

I'm definitely not the kind of doctor that actually helps people. Unless you need help designing a well-controlled genetics experiment. Or help with mouse embryo dissections. I'm good at those things.

Interesting about Toilers of the Sea. Since we tend to have similar reactions to books, I'll be curious to see my reaction. I don't think I'll get to staring it for another week or so.

don't be self-deprecating ... I have an MS in geology and some of my good friends went on to work on PhD's ... I considered it for a while, but the overriding need for money made the decisions for me. I witnessed the perseverance & determination (not to mention the never-ending buttkissing) necessary to finish a doctorate.

Now, see? No one told me about the never-ending buttkissing!
No wonder I couldn't get anywhere!

I don't know how it is at other universities, but the geology department at the University of Missouri was filled with a number of ... erm ... 'strong personalities' that demanded a certain amount of kowtowing and subservience before generously awarding an advanced degree. I can only assume that it is the same in other science departments and at other universities.

That is not to say that I don't have a tremendous amount of respect and even awe of some of the brilliant people I met and worked for.

Well, very late congratulations of the PhD from me. :) I've got my masters, and felt that was enough. :) No butt kissing was required from my fellow post grad students for their PhDs, I just couldn't deal with the politics beyond that, fighting for post doc positions, and academia was far less appealing once you're in the middle of it and you realise all the paperwork and committees and the infighting at that level. I hope your academic path is much more cheerful than what I was exposed to! Or that you're better as such things than I was/am. :)

My academic path has been filled with strong personalities, true, but I didn't see much of the butt-kissing. There is some humbling, shall we say, of the arrogant first year grad students who, after one or two summers spent doing 8-week research programs, consider themselves to be the second coming of T.H. Morgan. But kowtowing won't save you from that. And your thesis committee won't let you leave if you don't start arguing with them, heatedly and often.

Keep in mind, though, that I got my PhD at a large Midwestern research university. Things seem different on the coasts, and I know they're different in different departments at my alma mater as well. Basic science types are pretty laid-back comparatively speaking.

Here, the fighting for jobs comes after the postdoc; we're cheap (and I have an NIH fellowship, so I'm free) labor. My postdoc has been relatively politics-free, as well, although I'm the postdoc representative on the faculty recruitment committee and have my eyes ever been opened. I'm now very much considering making the jump to industry - paperwork and committees and infighting, indeed. Make it stop.

#5 A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin

Wow, that was good. I gave it five stars. It's one of those historical novels that is framed by a modern-ish character telling the story of his life to another character. Helprin's writing is beautiful and the descriptions of the Italian alps (and mountain climbing) are gorgeous. And scary for those of us who can't do heights.

#6 Collapse by Jared Diamond

I'm such a big fan of Jared Diamond. I loved Collapse, if you can love a terrifying book that basically says that we are all doomed. The nice thing about getting 33 inches of snow (almost 3 feet! Almost 1 meter!) is that there is lots of time for reading. And shoveling.

#7 American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

It'll come as no surprise to anyone that I absolutely hated this book. Two redeeming qualities 1) it was a really quick read since I skipped all the chapters where the protagonist graphically rapes, murders, and dismembers the various women (and some men) and 2) I liked the parts in restaurants where they ate totally insane and ridiculous food (radicchio with free-range squid?). But mostly I hated it.

#36 I'm also a Diamond fan, although haven't got to Collapse, yet, have just bought his new The World Until Yesterday, "explores how tribal peoples approach essential human problems, from childrearing to old age to conflict resolution to health, and discovers that we have much to learn from traditional ways of life", just in case you haven't seen it.

#37 Have always meant to read this but will happily move it further down the list, cheers !

Oooh a new one! I'm now person #15 on the waitlist at the library. Thanks for letting me know!

I very much enjoyed both A Soldier of the Great War and Collapse. There's an interesting connection (at least for me) between the books ... I read the first on a transcontinental airplane flight coming back from Italy and I read (actually I listened to it) the second on a cross-country drive ... for some reason books I read/listen to while travelling somehow stick better in my memory ...

@37 I hated American Psycho too (probably for different reasons) but your review made me a) Laugh and b) wish I hadn't skipped the restaurant bits :)

Free range squid! LOL! I have heard that American Psycho is deeply disturbing, although somehow a copy wangled its way onto my shelves a while back... Somehow, it never moves very close to the top of Mt TBR.

Jared Diamond is speaking next Monday in Sydney (http://www.cityrecitalhall.com/events/id/1442) but I think I've decided to skip. Don loves Guns, Germs and Steel, we've got a copy somewhere in the house that I must dip into.

I've had Collapse on my list for a while, it does seem interesting.

We had a blizzard like that when I was 8, which was perfect, because my siblings were still at home and I didn't have to do much shoveling (and of course didn't have work responsibilities).

Good to hear you liked the Jared Diamond books. I liked them too, but have recently heard people who are smarter than me say that he is silly and simplistic. I don't care--I still think he's interesting and I'm sure I've learned from him. I like the parts in Collapse where the Greenlanders perish because they don't want to eat fish, and also the part where the Tasmanians forget how to make fire (or were those details in a Brian Fagan book? Have you read Fagan? He's interesting too--try the Little Ice Age if you're looking for one to start with).

The Greenlanders/fish one was in Collapse, but I don't remember the Tasmanians and fire one. I will definitely add The Little Ice Age to my list; I love this sort of thing. Eat it right on up.

I think you'll like it. I also read his book The Long Summer and it had some overlap with the Little Ice Age. I used to come across him in various university studies--he's written a lot. Always meant to get to more of him, but somehow he's fallen off my radar. Now he's back on.

#8 Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

It's fantastic. Read it.

#47 I agree !!

#47 and 48. Me too. I absolutely loved it ... So much so that I deliberately avoided the recent film version: I have been disappointed by film adaptations of glorious books too often in the past.

Read it.

OK!

I don't think I'd like to see it filmed. Lots of walking around and eating and sex? Probably not as beautifully done as the book.

#9 The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Holy crap. This is thought to be one of the first novels EVER, written sometime around 1000 CE. 2/3 of the book is the life of "the shining Genji", son of an emperor (although inexplicably made a commoner - this seems to be thought of as a good thing that helps him be more important politically). By "life of Genji", I mean "endless series of rapes seductions of endless women by Genji". Then Genji dies, and his sons, grandsons, and nephews rape seduce different women. They (women, Genji, sons/grandsons/nephews) are constantly sending each other poems, written on minutely described paper, attached to flora of various types. Classiness of the writer is judged based on choice of paper texture, paper color, handwriting, ink, and branches. Also their clothes are discussed endlessly.

This goes on for 1186 pages.

Okay. I am so not reading that.

Yes - I think I will pass on that one too!

Wow I am imprssed you finished it! I never managed to get very far with it.. 10 year old girl kidnapping. Hmm

Well done jfetting for getting through The Tale of Genji, I read it some years ago and found some of the court customs and details interesting, but not for nearly 1200 pages !?
Maybe a lighter read next !

Thank you, thank you. I actually did find the court customs and details interesting at first, for about 200 pages, but that happened over a month ago. Then I got bored.

Yes! The kidnapping the 10yo girl, and raising her in his house and treating her like a doting uncle/father for 5/6/7 years or so, and then springing the "Oh guess what! You're my wife now! My bestest favoritest wife! Until someone younger and hotter comes along. Which should be in about 35 pages." This is gross.

No, I am not tempted, not even a little bit.

It has been on my shelves for yonks and I just can't make myself do it. But, BUT I also have an abridged version so I 'may' attempt that one.
I totally agree with you on the Haruki Murakami. Beautifully written and I loved it. Need to read more by him. And The Pickwick Papers is on my TBR listing for sometime in the next few months. My daughter in Dallas has been a huge Dickens fan since 5th grade and has read everything by him. Me? not so much. I have to work to read him. But I do as she enjoys discussing same reads with me.
Well, read on Doc & will chat with you....
later,
b

#10 Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Well, this isn't at all a lighter read, but it was much quicker - I managed to finish in an evening. It is a bittersweet little book set in 1987 about the loss of a beloved uncle to AIDS. One of his nieces gets to know his partner better, and there is some family drama, and a painting thrown in too. I liked all of it but the way the author insists (repeatedly, violating the Show Don't Tell rule) that the niece (age 14 when he dies) has be in love with her uncle. Sorry, but the relationship the author presents (by Showing) is much more a want-to-spend-time-with-favorite-cool-uncle sort of love than anything romantic (which the author Tells us is the case). If that was what she meant to show, she did a bad job. So I'm just going to ignore that.

Good call Doc.

You have hit the nail on the head with that one! I thought it was a good book, but just a bit off in some way.

#11 The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

I really liked her The House at Riverton. The Distant Hours is essentially the exact same book, but with a different sister killing the young man. Apparently she only has one story. It's a good story, and a quick and easy read, but don't expect anything new.

#12 The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Note: review may be a bit spoiler-y

So, so, so disappointed with this book. I loved both The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, so this book about a lit student who studies Austen and who has to decide between two guys should have been a winner. I was so looking forward to it.

Madeleine herself and her story arc are fine. I mean, she picks the wrong guy at first, but that is this particular plot, and has happened before, and it a prominent theme of Austen et al so that's fine. Mitchell himself and his story arc are also fine. Leonard's manic depression was well done, and believable. His story arc (besides the bipolar disorder) is just... wrong. Incorrect. Frustratingly so.

You see, Leonard is a scientist. A biologist. So'm I. And it bugs me that Eugenides went to enough trouble to research The Care And Training of a Young Biologist enough to throw around words like "restriction enzyme" and "Kimwipes" but apparently did not do enough research to know what the career arc of a talented scientist (as we are told Leonard is) actually looks like. The story was set back in 1982, not 2002, but other than the increasingly miserable job prospects, the basics of training haven't changed. A "brilliant" biologist like Leonard wouldn't have graduated and gone into a one-year non-degree granting "fellowship" at Cold Spring Harbor Labs Woods Hole Pilgrim Lake Laboratories, where he would have been provided with a stipend, an apartment, free food, and NO CONTROL OVER HIS OWN PROJECT. The young genius that we are told Leonard is would have gone immediately into a PhD program. At Stanford. Or Harvard. Or whatever. And worked with David Baltimore. Or Rudolph Jaenish. Or whoever. And been independent, scientifically.

What Leonard is, based on the descriptions, is a Lab Tech. Which is a fine thing to be and many bright young PhDs started with a year or two of partying teching before heading off to their PhD program, and many brighter young things STAY techs and then go to industry and make money. And then Leonard stresses about not having any money for grad school. Sorry, Mr. Eugenides, but your Leonard would have headed to a program at an R1 institute and gotten A) free tuition and B) a living stipend courtesy of the American taxpayer (and in case I haven't said it lately, thank you American taxpayers!). He'd still be dirt poor, but it isn't like you wrote, that he didn't have any choices poor baby.

/rant. Sorry. I did like the veiled (ish, not really) tribute to the great Barbara McClintock, one of my heroes. And having spent a month this past summer at the CSHL mouse course, Eugenides's description of the life and scientists at Pilgrim Lake (which I'm 99% sure is an imaginary version of Cold Spring Harbor, including a super-famous head scientist that tools around in an infamous Jaguar, just like Jim Watson does at CSHL) is pretty much correct, including being in the bar waiting for lab results in the wee hours. It's just that I know this stuff and these places and I've lived this life and seriously it isn't hard to get right and I get ticked off when authors get it wrong.

I was very interested to read your review as I, too, had enjoyed Middlesex and I had been thinking about reading this book. However, I think that I might defer it for a while - I know a couple of people who have had similar doubts about it to those that you express.

Bother, I own a copy of The Marriage Plot...

I know people who loved it, so maybe there is hope. It just didn't work for me.

Much like...
#13 Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

I am not the target audience for this book. I am not the sort of person who thinks that people who wander into the wilderness, unprepared, to live a life more real and free and whatever, are special special people who are better and higher and awesomer than the rest of us. If you must do this sort of thing, at least bring a map with you, and some supplies. Dying of starvation doesn't make you profound.

I felt the same way about Into the Wild. If people want to go live off the land (my own parents moved to West Virginia because of the hippie's back-to-the-land movement) or live in isolation that's great, but yeah, it doesn't make that person some sort of messiah (even when they ARE being smart and prepared about it).

Re: Into the Wild - I read it when it was first published, so maybe I don't remember it very well, but I didn't get that Krakauer was holding the guy up as any sort of example. I got more the impression that Krakauer thought he was a bit of a freak, and a not very smart one. I thought the story was really interesting, but there wasn't enough material to make up a book so the author went off on all sorts of tangents. One of those, about how seriously crazy you have to be to be a high-altitude mountain climber, has actually stuck with me all these years. I think. Correct me if I am correctly mis-remembering this book. My husband tells me I have a horrible memory.

Krakauer went on and on about how smart this kid was, how talented, how deep. I got the sense that he got a lot of flack when he wrote a story about McCandless for some magazine, people kept saying that McCandless was unprepared, irresponsible, and had a lot of hubris - all true! - but Krakauer thought that the kid was better than that. He also told a story about a crazy Alaskan thing he tried when he was a kid, so I think there might also be some fellow-crazy thing going on.

His other book, the mountain-climbing book, I forget the name - that one was great.

#70 - Okay, despite that, I took away from the book that the guy was a twit.

The other mountain climbing book was Into Thin Air -- awesome book! I read it non-stop in one go when my daughter was a baby. That's when I learned I could change a diaper one handed, while holding a book and not looking.

LOL! Maybe I'll look out for Into Thin Air instead of Into the Wild. :)

Into Thin Air will take your breath away. It is that good. I opened the covers of that book and could hardly allow myself a pee break until I closed them. But I think I will take a pass on Into the Wild.
Your review of The Marriage Plot was most interesting Jennifer. I loved Middlesex as well. But I am glad I took a pass on this one. It would have been over my head anyway so I probably wouldn't even have had to sense to know I didn't like it. IDK.

Doc; FYI: I went over to give you a thumb up on that review and couldn't find it.

Liked your review of The Marriage Plot. I totally understand your reaction and that's why I tend to not read fiction based on the music world.

Jennifer - I hadn't realized he was a scientist, or I would have skipped it. A good rule of thumb, avoiding fiction based on ones field. Too many details that will be overlooked and that will piss one off.

Belva - oh, I don't own a copy of The Marriage Plot, so I didn't post a review on its page. I'm happy about the virtual thumbs up, though! Thank you!

#14 Nana by Emile Zola

First off, this was an old copy I picked up for about $0.50 at a book sale, so the translation is old and terrible. "Feeding" instead of "eating", as in "When do we feed?". Ugh. And slang that got translated into some old-fashioned slang that I don't understand. It's terrible. For the rest, I'll pay the buck or two for the kindle version of the most recent translation. I can't take this.

Now on to the story. And there are spoilers, so if this is a problem for you, skip the rest. This is one of those Bad Woman stories - Nana is an actress and a courtesan, and is kept by a series of men. She goes up the social ladder (men-wise), and also has some lesbian partners, and spends dumpsters full of money. What I found interesting about Zola's treatment of this really, really, really popular storyline is that while the Victorians would have had Nana fall spectacularly from grace all by her lonesome, and Daniel Defoe would have had her triumph and prosper (everyone should go read Moll Flanders right now!), Zola has EVERYONE associated with Nana either die, go bankrupt, go to jail, die again, die more differently, go bankrupt more differently, lose their job/theater/horse stable, etc. Its just a bloodbath towards the end.

For the first 2/3 of the story, it was interesting enough and I didn't mind Nana - I inevitably root for the fallen woman in these stories - by the end of the book she's just this total evil heartless machine that eats all the men and women in her path and destroys them. It got boring.

#15 Eugenie Grandet by Balzac

1) These stories bug me, the ones where women sacrifice themselves/their fortunes/anything at all for deadbeats who have abandoned them. Knock it off, save your money. Living well is the best revenge. Forking over a million francs to save the reputation of some douchebag does not make a character a superior woman, and isn't proof of pure, devoted love. It's a sign of the stupid.
2) Balzac is a great writer and I love reading all the details he puts in to his stories.

#16 The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Super good. I really enjoyed reading the fallout-from-the-Holocaust story from a novel (to me) POV. I haven't read much from the generation of Germans who came after the war (those whose parents fought in the war, or were Nazis, or who either actively or passively collaborated with the Nazis).

I'm weak on post-war Germany as well. Definitely adding The Reader to my list.

#17 The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy

Ugh, no.

#78. Great review. Sometimes that's all you need to say.

A Tolstoy fail! And I've been meaning to read more Balzac...

Eugenie Grandet has the benefit of being pretty short - around 200 pages, maybe? With a large-ish font (in my copy).

I'll have to look into that one! I've only read his Pere Goriot which I rather liked, and I've got Cousin Bette on the shelves.

I loved Pere Goriot!

#18 Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (re-read)

A little Lenten reading. I agree with Lewis about some things, disagree with him about others. The chapter on the sin of Pride was particularly profound this time around. I needed the reminder, I think. And I've been happier since that reminder.

#19 The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal

Hilarious soap opera set in 1800s Italy. I loved it and gave it 5 stars. Stendhal inserts himself-as-author in quite a bit (addressing the reader directly, I mean) and is really very funny. I wasn't expecting that; I suppose I just assume that all these 1800s French novels are tragic in some way.

#20 An Unsuitable Attachment by the sublime Barbara Pym

Sometimes, instead of French soap operas or morality lectures, or crazy Wall Street psychopaths, you just want to read a book where nice, polite, normal everyday people do nice, polite, normal everyday things and have nice, polite, normal everyday interactions with other nice, polite, normal everyday people. Pym's genius is that she makes the above fascinating and funny.

I just have to start reading Pym. I'm so sure I would love it.

Oh yes, Pym is a delight!

There was one of hers, I think it was Crampton Hodnet, that just really really depressed me. I have to be in the right mood for her, but when I am she is perfect.

Will have to pull my Pym off the shelf--haven't tried her yet but sounds like my sort of thing.

And I'm very happy to hear your good report on The Charterhouse of Parma. I bought a copy years ago because a main character's name is Fabrizio, which is my husband's name. I've always been too daunted to actually read it though so wonderful to hear it's not a boring slog.

I am very tempted by The Charterhouse of Parma too. I bought a copy of the Penguin translation years ago but for various reasons have never got around to reading it.

#21 Juliet's Moon by Ann Rinaldi

A pretty good young adult book about the Missouri/Kansas conflicts in the Civil War. Apparently the Union soldiers rounded up a bunch of young girls - relatives of a group of rebels - and kept them in a federal prison in Kansas City. The building collapsed, killing many of them.

#22 The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

As interesting as all of Diamond's books, with helpful suggestions as to ways we can adopt some of the positive things about traditional societies (so not, like, infanticide or murdering the elderly or constant small-scale warfare) to make us happier, healthier modern societies.

Tiny rant: I seriously cannot get away from these Paleo diet people. They are freaking everywhere, including inside Jared Diamond's head. Every single time I hear someone start talking about our hunter-gatherer ancestors and how they only eat nuts, grassfed steak, and kale it makes me want to go into a room and eat an entire Heinemann's butter braid coffee cake and wash it down with a gallon of milk. These people are cultists, honestly. Apologies to any of you who are Paleo people; please do not tell me about your diet.

Never heard of the Paleo diet. Sounds like I am quite lucky! :)

Hear hear about the Paleo. I'm changing my eating habbits (but from nearly 100% fast food/cheese and no vegetables to 'normal food') and always run into people who still berate me for eating wrong because carbs/meat/processed or whatever.

What bothers me most with any of the strict diets (vegan, paleo, raw, etc...) is that most of them refuse to take income into account. Like, I'd love to only eat organic food, but that's just not within my means, nor is it ever likely to be. Boo to all food shaming.

I'm changing my eating habbits (but from nearly 100% fast food/cheese and no vegetables to 'normal food')

Yes! See this is a sensible diet plan and strategy and you aren't trying to convert anyone.

What bothers me most with any of the strict diets (vegan, paleo, raw, etc...) is that most of them refuse to take income into account

Yes to this too! I too would love to only eat local vegetables and fruits and organic humanely raised grassfed humanely slaughtered filet mignon and craft beers and whatever. But rice, potatoes, and noodles are cheap and they make groceries affordable. Boo to all food shaming indeed.

Cheese is bad .. but nice :) Still it's all about balance really and buy local when/if you can.

I agree! Boo to food shaming indeed! I just wish my husband would stop giving me those "looks" whenever I eat some chocolate!!!

Judy, tell him that chocolate is strictly medicinal.

Well, it would be the truth, wouldn't it?

"Food shaming"! What a great term.

Chocolate is certainly medicinal for me of late, very cheering stuff. :) And it's Easter, so the house has more than the usual amount of chocolate...

Yes! Medicinal! I have had a very long exhausting and stressful week at work, and so this morning I treated my condition with a dark chocolate sea salt donut. It was amazing and I feel all kinds of better.

#23 Germinal by Emile Zola

So, with the caveat that my n=2 thus far, Zola seems to follow this formula: he starts a book with the standard struggle-of-the-downtrodden, but its mostly upbeat-ish and matter-of-fact and not hugely depressing. Then about 2/3 of the way through he starts killing off characters left, right, and center, in increasingly insane and horrible ways, and by the end I'm left going "Wait... what? This is terrible. Life is awful. Did they really just rip a character's penis off and march through town with it on a stick? Did I really just read that? And the pony too - did you have to kill the pony? And the bunny? Someone make it stop."

So yeah. Sorry for the spoilers - dead penis, dead pony, dead bunny. Plus a lot more dead people. I need something positive and upbeat and cheerful. Or another chocolate sea salt donut.

You definitely need another chocolate sea salt donut no matter what the book content, as that sounds like something everyone needs. :)

A dark chocolate sea salt donut. I can only imagine how good that must taste.

I thought Germinal was fascinating. I remember the dead pony, not the penis (blacked that one out!) or the bunny. Definitely not upbeat, enjoy the medicinal chocolate!

#24 All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris

The proper way to recover from Zola. Enjoyable mindless fluff. If Sookie doesn't end up with Eric at the end of this series I'm going to have something to say about it.

#25 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Wow! Absolutely amazing. This'll probably turn out to be one of my top reads of the year. In ways it reminds me of Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (one of my favorites ever) in that it contains 6 different-yet-connected stories, all in very different genres. It starts out with a 19th-century sea voyage adventure tale, then switches to a bright-young-things post-WWI Evelyn Waugh-esque comedy, then an eco thriller, then a old-dude-involuntarily-confined farce, then a dystopian future w/ fabricants and clones, then a post-apocalyptic back to the land. The first five stories break off halfway through, then the sixth is told in its entirety, then the first 5 resume in reverse order. It is seriously great. I could have read an entire book based on any one of these stories.

I'm so looking forward to that one now. Thanks for your comments.

I loved Cloud Atlas too - certainly one of my all-time favourites.
I recently went to see the film - rather reluctantly, actually, as I was worried that the film might massacre the storyline. However, I was very impressed and felt that they captured the feel of the novel very well.

I'm still thinking about the stories and how they connect. Really incredibly imaginative and, probably, profound.

The movie was good? Really? Maybe I should watch it. The Sonmi-451 story was my favorite and I'm the most worried about them messing that one up.

Before seeing it I couldn't begin to imagine how they would address that story in particular but it did work very successfully.
I thought that David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, though totally different to Cloud Atlas, was equally marvellous.

Oh good! That book is sitting on my shelves waiting to be read. I'll try to get to it soon.

#26 Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

I'm on a bit of a Pym kick right now, it seems. But I need to slow down, or I will run out. J&P is one of her books about a vicar's wife and her unmarried 30yo spinster (omg) friend, and the standard matchmaking etc. I loved it, you will too if you love Pym.

Glad you likd Cloud Atlas. Mitchell is one of my favourite authors so I might be biased :) I think the film was great if you had read the book, might be confusing otherwise!

I would definitely agree with that - I haven't heard any views about the film from someone who hadn't previously read the book. I would expect a fair amount of bemusement!

Must get to Cloud Atlas soon.

Oh, I loved Cloud Atlas too, and am a bit unsure about seeing the movie... Hearing good things about it, though.

Have to agree with the Cloud Atlas fans. Haven't watched the movie yet, but am planning to soon.

Loved Cloud Atlas and yes- do see the movie.

#27 Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

Entertaining, metaphorical without being beat-you-over-the-head metaphorical. I liked the descriptions of the effects of different gravity on Martian landscape, and all the critters Ransom met there. I'm deliberately putting my scientist self away, who would otherwise start screaming about lack of oxygen on Mars, clearly the water would not be drinkable, etc. This is not the point.

#28 Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

Holy shit. You know, I have this hope that the surviving Stark children will all find each other someday and be able to be just not quite so darn alone in Westeros. But really, they're probably all going to get killed off. I'm unexpectedly sympathetic to Jaime Lannister now, and continue to be a huge Tyrion fan, and loathe Cersai/Joffrey/Tywin. Arya is a bit less boring, Sansa too, and my imaginary boyfriend Jon Snow is his usual awesome self. I wish Dany would stop mucking about with finding slave armies and invade Westeros already.

Some predictions (you heard it here first! I plan to gloat when I'm right, but given that I've only read the first three so any and all of these characters may be dead in the 4th or 5th books):

1) Despite meeting a character that claims to know Jon Snow's "mother", I'm still willing to bet money that he is actually the son of Eddard Stark's sister (who I think died in childbirth) and Rhaenys (?? You know who I mean - Dany's oldest brother). So he is totally a possibility for King of Westeros.
2) It'll come down to a final showdown between Daenerys, Jon Snow, and Tyrion Lannister for the Iron Throne. And I won't know who to root for.
3) Sansa is going to re-think the Tyrion thing. Or she is going to die. One of the two.

These are so fun, and SoS is the best so far, I think.

AT 71% read of this one I am feeling like there won't be anyone left to love by the end of it. But just a warning, our imaginations might have to fight each other for Jon Snow! Will I have the energy / stamina to read Book 4?????

Just make sure that you have the energy/stamina for both book 4 and book 5 in one go. Book 4 only gives you half of the characters, and book 5 gives you the other half...

my imaginary boyfriend Jon Snow is his usual awesome self

LOL! He is pretty dishy. :)

Book 4 only gives you half of the characters, and book 5 gives you the other half...

WHAT?!?!?!? How... but... damn it!

Yeah. Now imagine waiting 6 years between books because he had a writer's block.... (Not that I had to wait that long, I discovered the series just before the TV show, so I only waited about 6 months I think)...

Some of us have had to wait years between each book. but it is worth it as the series is so good.
Great to see people enjoying Martin's brilliant fantasy epic !
As for characters getting killed off, more shocks await you !!!

I don't know if I can take any more . . .

As for characters getting killed off, more shocks await you !!!

How about Cersei? Please? I cannot stand her.

She deserves an awful George RR death . . but something tells me she will be the last man standing!

#29 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

These work best when I stop trying to understand what is going on and just enjoy the ride. 5 stars.

. . . and just enjoy the ride.

Exactly!

#30 State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

So many people with good taste like this book, so I was looking forward to it. I am obviously missing something, because I would have called the book "State of Tedium".

#31 Cousin Bette by Balzac

A wealthy family's poor relation has her lover stolen by the family's beautiful daughter. She vows vengeance, to make the family suffer. She is aided in this attempt by the family's collective IQ, which I'd say hovers somewhere around that of a box of rocks. Does she succeed? Sadly, no.

I'm one of those who loved State of Wonder. What a shame you didn't enjoy it too.

Everyone with good taste loved State of Wonder. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood, I don't know.

#32 A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

I'm not going to complain too much, since I see what he did there and understand why he did it, but some quibbles:
1) A Tyrion-free book is almost not worth it
2) No one cares about the Greyjoys
3) Jaime Lannister has almost totally redeemed himself
4) Cersei is the only character whose POV chapters don't make her sympathetic.
5) I like how Sansa is learning scheming. I wish she had more chapters. Arya too. And Samwell Tarly.

#33 Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

Too much sitting around talking. Not enough interesting alien species. The descriptions of Venus were lovely though.

I have so much to look forward to with your #32. But I'm not going to be too happy about the lack of Tyrion!

judylou, it might help to think that if Tyrion is not in the book he is less likely to be killed (in typical Martin fashion )!!
Other characters were not so lucky !?

That one character, the one who was hanged, I really hope that character isn't really dead. Please, please, please, let that character not be dead.

Not saying (also can't remember) but you cannot be sure with Martin !

#34 That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

Lots of academic politics, theology, whining, and lectures on the roles of men and women in marriages. No space travel or different worlds or alien species. Hardly qualifies as part of a Space Trilogy, now does it?

1) A Tyrion-free book is almost not worth it

LOL, I think that's about when I stopped reading GOT myself. :)

Tyrion returns - read on !

I will!I will!

#35 The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Well, now, this is absolutely horrifying. I had no idea the extent to which the War on Drugs was a targeted war on poor black people. It is disgusting, but I think authentic. The plural of "anecdote" isn't "data", but the only encounter I'd had with racial profiling and drug charges was back when I lived in St. Louis and I was on jury duty. An older African American man was on trial for crack possession. Except, of course, there was no crack on him. Just, you know, near him. While he was walking down a street at night. While being black. Which, I suspect, was his real crime. And I remember arguing with someone after the trial about how ridiculous that was, and how I would not want to be sent to jail for five years based on such flimsy evidence, and they were all "You wouldn't be". And it is true. And such total bullshit. I don't know anyone in my demographic (white, middle class, college educated) who hasn't at some point used illegal drugs. And I don't know anyone in my demographic who has been arrested/tried/fined/whatever, even those who have been caught with some. And that, too, is such total bullshit. Something needs to be done. WE need to do something.

Horrifying is definitely the right word. What scared me the most was the mention of the cases that served to basically bar future discrimination cases. I think the first step spreading the knowledge. Really with every politician striving to be seen as tough on crime and continuing these laws and policies to show how tough they are, it's overwhelming thinking about how to fix this.

#36 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

Just awful. I hated it. If it wasn't a book club selection, I wouldn't have made it more than 20 pages.

#37 Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

Now this is better. My favorite Zola yet!

I hated The Professor and the Madman too, and I was so disappointed after hearing so many great things about it.

I know! Many, many people raved about it! But it is terrible. I can't decide which is my least favorite part - probably where the author speculates without any shred of evidence at all that the reason Dr. Minor did the whole crazy mutilation thing to himself was guilt over banging his murder victim's wife. Good job, Winchester! Way to slander the long dead WIDOW. He's all "Oh, now, there is absolutely no reason under the sun to think this, but it is sexxxay and scandalous so I'll use it". ASSHOLE.

Was The Professor and the Madman originally published as The Surgeon of Crowthorne? If so, I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I have seldom been as disappointed with a book as I was with that. I was so looking forward to a detailed and insightful history of the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary, but instead found myself wading through baseless supposition and scurrilous postulation.

Yep, same book. And this:

I was so looking forward to a detailed and insightful history of the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary, but instead found myself wading through baseless supposition and scurrilous postulation.

is a much better description of what I think as well. This is exactly right.

I think I'll take that book off my TBR list!

It's gone!

Good call, ladies. Life is too short.

#38 From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris

Fun mind candy. As ever.

I have been listening to the Sookie Stackhouse books as they are available from the library. They are just good fun.

#39 The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

Entertaining historical fiction fluff. I've said before that all her books are the same; this one is slightly different in that no one is murdered and so there is no need to guess which sister killed the guy. The big secret is pretty obvious from the beginning, though, to the point where when the author introduces a misunderstanding, it makes no sense because it is very, very obvious what is going on and the characters aren't idiots.

I read a Kate Morton book once and I haven't been tempted to read another.

If you've read one Kate Morton book, you've really read them all.

That's what I thought!

#40 The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

This book totally gave me flashbacks to Little Women, which makes repeated reference to it and the themes within it. Which is a bit strange, actually, given that the vast majority of little girls these days have not read Pilgrim's Progress and so probably won't get the references. Besides the nostalgia factor, it is a nice little allegory of the Christian journey.

#41 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Now this is a surprise. I was thoroughly unimpressed by State of Wonder, and so wasn't expecting much from this, but I loved it. Bel Canto is a gorgeous little book.

Oh no, I did like The Surgeon of Crowthorne! I guess I was into scurrilous gossip that week. :)

Bel Canto is a great little book, glad you liked that one.

as always J your reviews and comments make me smile .. so thanks

I have a copy of The Professor and the Madman but I guess I'll set it aside ... Winchester seems to be a bit of a hit or miss kind of author

I enjoyed State of Wonder but yes it was a bit tedious at times

ok ok I'll try Cloud Atlas again

skipped all the talk about GRRM etc. as I've not read past the first book, but fully intend to at some point.

I too am a fan of Sookie and have most of her series around here somewhere ...

your horror with The New Jim Crow ... you no doubt are aware of these blogs already ... I've read this blogger for a number of years. I don't always agree with him, but he does illuminate a number of issues. I also like John Scalzi's blog

Sookie is so much fun. I also love the tv show, although they are increasingly different. I spent much of my rainy cold and windy Memorial Day weekend with my brand new copy of True Blood season 5.

I took about a year between the first GoT book and the second, but then they really pulled me in which is why I spent the OTHER part of my rainy cold and windy Memorial Day weekend finishing

#42 A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

All caught up now! And, of course, really really really hoping that My Favorite Character isn't actually dead. It has been awhile since GRRM killed off a major character, though, and so it is entirely possible that MFC is dead, but no!

-- I'm kind of sad about Bran's storyline. The greenseer thing is cool, but if it means that Bran will end up in the same... position?... as the current greenseer that would make me sad.

-- Arya's, on the other hand, is awesome. I hadn't taken the whole Faceless Men thing literally, but apparently I should have. Super cool.

-- Poor Danaerys. She is too cool to be reduced to a marriage pawn, which is totally what happened to her here for most of the book. I like how so many of the rivals for the Westeros throne are all "ooh! I'll go to the East and marry the Targaryen with the dragons!".

#43 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Loved it! And I even figured out whodunit before the big reveal so I 'm very proud of myself there. I went through a big Agatha Christie phase in middle school, and I think it might be returning. These are just so quick and fun.

#44 Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac

Assorted thoughts:
1) I think Balzac may be my favorite French author. I love how descriptive he is
2) I hate these books where bad things happen to good people, and good people inexplicably devote themselves to the betterment of annoying losers, and then since no good deed goes unpunished, get thrown in jail, etc.
3) The rise and fall of the annoying loser in Paris was fun though.
4) By the end I was just skimming because Balzac was really piling on the awful.

#45 Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant

It is so short that I thought my kindle had only partly downloaded it. After all, the scoundrel is supposed to get his comeuppance, right?

#46 Pierre et Jean by Guy de Maupassant

Downer. But short.

#47 The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham

I'm a huge Maugham fan, and loved this book. It is part Bright Young Things (from Chicago! like me! But in Paris! Not like me!), part spiritual journey. Maugham inserts himself as a minor character/narrator, which could have been irritating but wasn't.

#48 Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Probably a very profound book about spirituality and life and finding yourself and whatever, and in a less flippant mood I would have maybe appreciated it more? It was nice and short though.

@165 "It was nice and short though" that made me smile :) I read it ages ago when I was much younger and impressionable but I am always more sceptical and flippant in my old age so not sure If I ever want to go back and reread.

Catching up here with you Doc. You are reading some fun stuff and 'er hem', not so fun (for me) stuff. Science fiction, dystopian, apocolyptic, etc.
Love Emile Zola though and found the story of his life to be of very interesting stuff.

Any of you read Jasper Fforde? Just curious.

cheers,

I've read Fforde's Thursday Next series and the Nursery Crime books. I go back and forth on Thursday Next. I really loved the first one I read, which was actually book four, Something Rotten, but my enjoyment of the series has shrunk rather than grown. I think part of it is that Fforde isn't really a natural at writing women and a series of this length can't live on literary jokes alone (I think I actually like the Nursery Crime books more, and maybe that's because the main character is male).

I worship Jasper Fforde. In my eyes, he does no wrong. I agree that the Thursday Next series appears to be slowly headed over the cliff, but Nursery Crimes is great for those of us who love police procedurals and, well, nursery rhymes. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the Shades of Grey series as well.

I'm enjoying the Zolathon, but I need to remember to balance him out with stories that don't end in tragedy for all concerned. I'm interested in his life, and can't wait to find out more about it. The movie won an Oscar, didn't it?

Jasper Fforde is awfully good fun, I've enjoyed all hs books to some extent (some of the Thursday Next books were weaker than others, but still fun). I haven't read his YA novel, something about dragons?

#49 Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson

I've had these recommended to me multiple times, I think even by some of you, and finally bit the bullet. So glad I did - I LOVE them. Kind of a bitchy Wodehouse-Austen hybrid. Absolutely hilarious.

I quite like Fforde but I think I have series fatigue. I picked up a copy of latest The Woman Who Died A Lot but its been so long I cant remember what has happened so that means a reread of 6(?) books and I don't have the energy.

That's the second good review I've seen of the Lucia and Mapp series today. I'll take that as a sign - just purchased all six for my kindle.

My favorite line:
"The hours of the morning between breakfast and lunch were the time which the inhabitants of Riseholme chiefly devoted to spying on each other."

#50 The Tailor of Panama by John le Carre

Not his best, but a mediocre le Carre novel is still better than 70% of what is out there.

Jennifer, have you read Our man in Havana by Graham Greene? The Tailor of Panama is a sort of homage to it, and equally enjoyable.

Not yet - I saw le Carre's acknowledgement at the back of the book that he was inspired by Our Man in Havana. I'll have to read it someday; I'm a huge Graham Greene fan as well as a huge le Carre fan so I'm sure I'll love it.

Hm, apparently I have an unread copy of Our Man in Havana somewhere in the house... I wonder where?? Will have to try it (when I find it!) with The tailor of panama, I've also liked the le Carre I've read.

#51 Rick Steves Snapshot Scotland by Rick Steves

Just got back from a work conference/trip to Edinburgh. Three days of developmental biology, three days of history and culture and scenery (seven days of drinking in pubs). This helped me find places to go, places to skip, and a little bit of history thrown in. I'm a PBS junkie, and Rick Steves' Europe is one of my favorite shows. Happy to see his guide books hold up too.

#52 The Book of Evidence by John Banville

I really enjoyed this. Its the story of a random murder, told from the point of view of the murderer. Great writing.

I'm a PBS junkie, and Rick Steves' Europe is one of my favorite shows. Happy to see his guide books hold up too.

Although I like his TV shows, I much prefer his books. I think in print he comes off as relevant and maybe even a little cool, while on TV he reminds me of a dorky Lutheran youth minister who mispronounces his way through Europe (with no disrespect to any dorky Lutheran youth ministers who might read this).

Scotland sounds like a blast!

I'm really looking forward to reading his book Travel as a Political Act. I think I'll love it.

#53 Summer by Edith Wharton

Not at all what I was expecting, but really good. Not very Wharton-like at all.

I'm really looking forward to reading his book Travel as a Political Act. I think I'll love it.

Oh, he definitely gets cool and not-dorky in that one!

#54 L'Assommoir by Emile Zola

AKA The Dram Shop AKA Drunkard

Much like the previous Zola novels I've read, this was a well-written, can't-look-away trainwreck of a story in which a family plummets to the depths of degradation and ***spoiler alert but not really since this is how ALL ZOLA NOVELS END*** everyone dies horribly. Also, this one should be read before Nana because the plummeting family is Nana's own, and this book includes her childhood.

I can't wait till Zola year is over. I'm glad I'm reading them, because he is an excellent writer and they're very important and blah blah blah, but I hate them. I'm just going to do the ones that are the 1001 list so that I can strike those off, and then never ever pick one up ever again.

#55 North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Gaskell goes a bit Zola in this one, killing off major characters left, right, and center, but overall I loved it. 5 stars. A little bit politics, a little bit romance, and Margaret Hale is a wonderful heroine for a Victorian novel. It is a lot like Pride and Prejudice but with mills and strikes.

#56 The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde

I think that Fforde is returning to form. Real Thursday is back, solving crimes and kicking ass. The only thing missing is Bookjumping, and hopefully that will show up in Book #8.

Good to hear. With all the negative reviews of FForde books I have been reading lately I can't bring myself to continue in the series, but maybe I should!

I'm glad you liked North and South! Part of it is that I'm a keen student of labor history, and I think this is one of the first semi-favorable views of labor unions in fiction, but also Margaret is really a nice heroine (and I'm a sucker for the love-hate relationships).

What I thought was interesting about the labor/management debates in N&S is that usually in fiction (and in real-life, sadly), clashes are presented as an all-or-nothing thing. Either labor is wonderful yet screwed over, and the management is evil and greedy. Or the management is hard-working and far-seeing while the workers are lazy and shiftless. I tend to be on the side of the worker myself, but I admired how Gaskell presented the complicated nature of the issues. Both the workingmen (Higgins, for example) and the owners (Thornton) are presented as sympathetic, and their motivations understandable and also sympathetic. Much more nuanced than, say, Germinal.

Have you seen the movie version of North and South? After I saw it I had to immediately go and read the book, it's well worth checking out!

~Long-time lurker, first-time commenter. :)

Yes, Gaskell was much more even-handed. I recommend her book Wives and Daughters which is quite long but so beautifully written, and she gets the personal psychology and behavioral stuff SO right.

I second the BBC North and South. I think it's actually a mini-series, and it's what led me to Gaskell as well. If you have Netflix Instant it's available to watch there.

I loved Wives and Daughters. I see nothing wrong with eating bread and cheese - that is a British class-ism that made no sense to me in that book.

Ok, the BBC miniseries is on my netflix queue. Thanks for the enabling advice!

And welcome, LibraryLover23! I didn't realize I had lurkers.

Psst - they also did a mini-series of her book Cranford! (It has Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, and Eileen Atkins!)

And yeah, I could live on bread and cheese. Plus you can make it sound instantly fancy - It wasn't cheese on toast, it was goat cheese with caramelized onions on a multigrain boule!

Just put the Cranford miniseries in my queue now, too, bc I also love that book. Lots of fun things to watch! Perfect when it is too hot to turn the lights on.

#57 To Marry an English Lord by Gail MacColl

Sadly, not an instruction manual.

#57 LOL!

:-)

#58 A Woman's Life aka Une Vie by Guy de Maupassant

That is it. I am done with the French realists. No more. Maupassant has managed to write a Realism novel that stars an entirely unrealistic woman who, to be frank, is so weak and such a pushover that really she deserves everything she gets.

#59 Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

So much better! I'll freely admit that I am much more of a Romantic than a Realist. This is one of my favorite plays, and no matter how often I see it, or read the play, or watch one of the movies, I'm a sobbing mess during Act 5.

#60 The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

For my RL book group. I missed the day that they picked the books for the next few months, and they have been so awful that I am seriously considering finding a new book group (except that next month is my pick, The Daughter of Time). The Lifeboat was boring, and stupid, and not even interesting enough to hate. I finished it, but it was a waste of my time.

That sucks about your book group! The Daughter of Time is such fun though.

#61 Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin (re-read)

Personal finance book, emphasizing frugality and simplicity and asking "Is this really worth the hours of life I am using up to pay for it?"

#62 The Red and the Black by Stendhal

Not as much fun as The Charterhouse of Parma, but still a great read.

#63 The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

I am an unapologetic Yorkist, and am infuriated by how poor, noble, ethical Richard is totally abused and slandered by the f'ing Tudor minions. So this book is obviously right up my alley, plus Tey is a very entertaining writer and so now I'm going to have to read all the rest of the Inspector Grant mystery novels. Yay for a new-to-me writer! It has been awhile.

#64 The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Good book, but the movie is better. One of the few for which that is true.

I think Tey is such a fun mystery writer. She's always got some extra angle that makes her books just a bit different from most mysteries. I think The Man in the Queue was the first Inspector Grant I read and I absolutely loved it. It's too bad she wasn't more prolific!

It is a bit hilarious to me that Daughter of Time was voted best mystery novel ever by the Crime Writers' Association, given how different it is.

It is much more "look at all this stuff I learned about Richard III!!". Which, admittedly, I love.

#65 Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

I am indifferent to both the book and the movie.

Josephine Tey is a great read. And I saw "The Thin Man" the other week for the first time, and *loved* it! Sadly I had to forgo the martinis my fellow viewers we guzzling in sympathy with the on screen characters, but it was great sober. The book was fun, but I have to agree, the movie is better.

#66 The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Jen: "Oh, I'm really excited to read this book about magician college! It is supposed to be like a cross between Narnia and Harry Potter! But with college kids!"
Jen's Friend: "Ohhhh. Hmm. Just a warning: you are going to hate that book"
Jen: "What? What are you talking about? How bad can it be?"

Answer: 0.5 stars worth of bad. Possibly one of the worst books I have ever read EVER and I hate it SO MUCH. I can't quite believe I finished it. So much potential! But told from the POV of one of the whiniest, most loathsome POS narrators EVER. Think about the douchiest 19-25 yo guy you know, the one who is a stereotypical Nice Guy (TM) (google it!) except he's not a nice guy, he's a whiny asshole. (Oh hey. Wait. That IS the stereotypical Nice Guy tm). We hear a lot about Mary Sues for women in relation to Twilight, especially. Quentin is a total male Mary Sue for the nerdy, overlooked, total f'ing douchebag category of dude. (Note: not all overlooked nerds are douchebags. Ones like Quentin, however, totally are). Quentin is brilliant. We know this, because Grossman tells us on every other page. He never DOES anything brilliant, so it is helpful to hear it repeatedly from Grossman OTHERWISE I'd think that Quentin is a talentless whiny hack.

Quentin is like so miserable. And jaded. and sarcastic. No one understands Quentin. He drinks a lot. In fact, the majority of the book is Quentin failing at things, whining, making out with girls (no girl in real life would touch Quentin with a ten foot pole), and getting shitfaced with his buddies, who are both outsiders and like way cooler than anyone else. They drink riesling, people. Yeah. I know.

So outside of badmouthing Quentin, what do I have to say about the book? It just isn't any good. Grossman both borrows heavily from AND mocks the very books without which, his book would never have found a publisher. We don't learn much about the world, or magic, and there isn't really any character development (unless you count death as character development). Not worth anyone's time or money. I won't be reading the sequel.

You really should post that to the book's page to counter the positive reviews and warn people like me to delete it from their wishlist!

It's so disappointing when books turn out to be that awful.

I hope that you're next choice is more rewarding.

I've dragged out a Tolkein I haven't read yet (The Children of Hurin) and I'm also reading Georges Perec's A Void which ought to win its translator Translator of the Year honors. Both are better.

I am really bummed about The Magicians though. Damn, damn.

Joyce, you really think I should post it? I usually don't because I'm intimidated by the awesome, well-written, well-thought-out reviews and I'm usually all "Yay so good" or "screw this guy. I hate this book".

I feel like you do about posting reviews. I am a bit afraid of posting negative reviews and a bit intimidated by the scope of some other reviews. But I am trying!

You should definitely post it! Actually the only time I'm likely to post a real review is if I found the book to be awful but it's somehow getting rave reviews from others. People need to be warned!

Joyce, you really think I should post it? I usually don't because I'm intimidated by the awesome, well-written, well-thought-out reviews and I'm usually all "Yay so good" or "screw this guy. I hate this book".

Seriously? I love your reviews. You should post all of them. There is always room for a quirky, quippy, short review. Impressions of books can be just as meaningful as some of those "well thought out" ones. Personally, I'm rather proud of one review I wrote that said "Ew. Just no." *(Mind you, it did get the controversial "this is not a review" flag, but that flagger obviously hadn't read the book.)

Of course I think you should post it! (and go back and post all your comments, silly!)

* BTW - and Jody Foster agreed with me. I can't remember the book, but it was the sequel to Silence of the Lambs. She refused to do the sequel film.

Actually the only time I'm likely to post a real review is if I found the book to be awful but it's somehow getting rave reviews from others. People need to be warned!

And we thank you for it. Personally, and I'm not sure why this is, but I prefer to read negative reviews about a book. I don't get a lot out of most rave reviews . . . they tend to be awfully gushy and meaningless. I find it very hard to write a good review about a book I love. Books I hate, however, are a delight to write, and I always get the most thumbs up for those too. I guess I'm just good at being really bitchy. My family would be so surprised (insert eye rolling emoticon here).

I feel like you do about posting reviews. I am a bit afraid of posting negative reviews and a bit intimidated by the scope of some other reviews. But I am trying!

Judy -- you've influenced me to buy more books than almost anyone at LT. The publishing industry wants you to post your reviews. Just sayin.

Judy, I think I agree with Joyce.

I tend to post all of my reviews, including the negative ones, to the particular book's page, as much as anything else just to feel that I am redressing the balance if the trend runs contrary to my own view.

When I think of some of the books that I have disliked recently I wish that I had read a negative review by someone whose judgement I trust. I might have saved some time and money, or at least had slightly more realistic expectations.

Soul sister! I thought the book was redeemed very slightly by the ending, which I liked, but it was a long dreary slog to get there!

I liked the bit with what Alice did. If only the book had been from HER pov. Although really, by the time I got to the end nothing was going to redeem this book, even if the last page was a single sentence saying "Go to www.magicianfreemoney.com, enter in the code QUENTINSUCKS, and we'll send you 1,000,000 dollars!".

Well, maybe that. I'd like that. Probably.

#67 A Void by Georges Perec

An entertaining little experiment. I am most impressed by the translator's work - it must be hard enough to translate books and keep them interesting and literary; it must have been damn near impossible to do so while maintaining Perec's little No-E trick. Well worth reading.

#68 Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carre (audiobook)

I really enjoyed this - about a Russian mobster who tries to go legit and get asylum in the UK, and the couple he ropes into helping him, and the spies who try to make it happen. The ending I did not see coming, but I probably should have.

#69 La Reine Margot by Alexander Dumas (audiobook)

What should one take along for an 18-hour road trip? An unabridged Dumas novel. Action-packed, soap-opera-y, hilarious. Catherine de Medici is portrayed as a non-stop, unapologetic evil poisoner who keeps trying (and failing) to off poor Henri de Navarre.

I may be the in the minority here, but I was bored stiff by the subplot regarding M de la Mole. Sorry, but Dumas portrays Henri de Navarre as so freaking awesome that it doesn't make any sense that Marguerite would take a lover as bumbling as de la Mole.

#70 The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkein

One of the works that Tolkein's son edited and published after his death, about the tragic doomed life of Hurin's son, Turin, who happens to be an obnoxious little shit. Way, way, way better than The Magicians though.

#71 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein (re-read)

What have I done? One crappy fantasy novel has led me to not just one, but two Tolkein novels, and now that I've started there really isn't any other option but to finish the whole damn series. I guess it is time for my every-few-yearly re-read of The Lord of the Rings.

I hadn't read The Hobbit since I was a kid; I've always preferred the trilogy and would just re-read that when I got a hankering to return to Middle-Earth. It is much more of a children's novel than I remembered.

#72 The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein (re-re-re-re-re-read)

Onword!

a re-re-re-re-re-read :-) I have books like that! Like soaking it a hot bubble bath

I agree--I've always preferred the trilogy to The Hobbit with its authorial asides--much more of a children's novel. I reread it for the first time in years before seeing the movie. I'm trying to hold off on a re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read of the trilogy. (probably a few re-s short, since my first read was in 1966).

It's hard to stop once you start, you know?

Ah, I'm in the minority, preferring The Hobbit. It's definitely a children's novel, but I first read it when I was 9, so that was for the best. It was the first novel I read myself that I just LOVED, and made me keep picking up novels to read on my own. I'm just not enough of a fantasy-reader to really love LOTR.

My parents read chapter books to us at night and I read loads of comic books, but somehow the first couple of novels i picked up were awful. Yet I felt I had to keep going out of peer pressure, since everyone in my family was a reader and since my dad was a librarian.

#73 The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein (re-re-re-re-re-read)

My least favorite of the trilogy, but still great. I have been known to skip the Sam & Frodo bit entirely and jump straight to the last book, but not this time.

#74 The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkein

And done. I have no idea where my copy of The Silmarillion is, so I am all done with my every-few-years-or-so re-read of the Tolkein books. I always enjoy my trips to Middle-earth.

I must admit that I always skip the Tom Bombadil chapters in The Fellowship of The Ring during my periodic re-immersions in Tolkien.

WHAT?!?!?! Oh, no no no. Tom Bombadil is the best! I'm still outraged that they cut him out of the movie, and the whole Barrowdowns scene.

#75 The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

I think I'm rebelling from all the mid-19th century French Realism I read the first half of the year, and going on a fantasy binge. I hadn't realized what The Name of the Wind is about, or that it is a fantasy novel, but I absolutely loved it. It almost is like The Magicians, if The Magicians was well-written and didn't completely suck.

The book is set up in the "Tell this wandering scribe your story", so we meet adult Kvotho (who seems like a mild-mannered, humble, demon-killing innkeeper) before we meet teenage Kvotho. So we know that Kvotho is famous and hiding, and it seems like the trilogy is getting us to know how and why. Super fun. I'm off to go reserve the next one from the library.

#76 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

A re-telling of King Lear in Iowa, from the point of view of Goneril (here called Ginny), so it is really quite different. I gave it 3 stars: the first half was great, and she really made me homesick. I didn't grow up in rural Iowa, but I was lucky to have grandparents who were farmers in rural Wisconsin, and the descriptions of the countryside and farm life made me homesick. However, then it all kind of goes to hell, and Smiley veers away from the Lear plot to introduce a Shocker! with Repressed Memories! that is completely unnecessary to the story and almost ruins it for me.

#77 Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

Easy mindless fun. Another where I prefer the movie.

re: #76 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

I read this a few years ago, and while I don't remember the details, I remember the feeling you describe. What feels like a good book goes off the rails.

#78 The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt

It took me forever to finish this book. I don't know exactly why it didn't work for me; I've really enjoyed some of Byatt's work in the past, but not this one as much. I couldn't stand Frederica, and when it began to dawn on me that she was the protagonist I lost interest. Stephanie's parts were good, and Marcus's, and even Alexander's until he became all Frederica-obsessed.

Another problem may be that this is clearly some sort of homage or re-do or whatever of D.H. Lawrence's novels The Rainbow and Women in Love - all of which are mentioned repeatedly, and Frederica and Stephanie can be seen as like the Brangwen sisters. Unfortunately, as you may or may not know, one of my most strongly held literary beliefs is that Lawrence REALLY REALLY SUCKS and these two novels ALSO suck a lot. And are tainting this book by association.

#79 The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell

This might be my favorite Wallander book yet.

#80 The Gates by John Connelly
Funny, clever young adult book about the opening of the gates of hell.

#81 A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

It started out so well! Much like Bryson's attempt at the Appalachian trail itself! But then went off the rails when Bryson decided that really, he just couldn't do it, and basically made some half-hearted attempts to hike different bits of it before ***SPOILER ALERT*** he and his buddy bail like a day into the 100 Mile Wilderness here in Maine. I'm not sure why this book is so popular, except that Bryson's other books are famous and fun (at least the one I've read, anyway).

#82 The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Another 5-star book, as far as I'm concerned. I really really really want the third one to come out soon. I can't wait to find out what happens.

#83 Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson

Interesting ideas on how to organize your life to cut down on wastefulness and excess, etc. Some seem to be more than I'd be willing to undertake right now, others I will try to incorporate into my life.

#84 Inferno by Dan Brown

Ok, I know. I do. They're terrible. They are all terrible. They are badly written, each chapter is about a page long, they are completely insane, there is no way that bad guys (or good guys) would go to so much trouble to hide their crimes/locations/etc in some sort of high-art treasure hunt. I know all these things. That said - mindless fun, you know? I like to look up the paintings and the buildings and whatnot. But for the most part I consider them harmless and entertaining.

Up until the last few chapters of Inferno (see what I did there? Standard Dan Brown B.S.)
Here be spoilers, people, I can't avoid them this time.

The Langdon girl, in this book, besides being young, beautiful, brilliant, and smitten with Professor Langdon despite the fact that he is A) about 25 years older than she is and B) her patient is also the (late) bad guy's girlfriend, and totally supports his evil behavior. There is a bit of nuance there, in the book, but not much, and honestly there shouldn't be any nuance on this at all!

Nuance on what? You may be asking. Nuance on the bad guy's crime. He released a virus (must have been some sort of retroviral construct) which integrates into the genome of the human host and becomes randomly activated in about 1/3 of the population and they become sterile. Everyone else will pass it on to their offspring, b/c this is apparently some sort of somatic infection that also goes germline which makes no sense to me AT ALL but hey, I'm just a scientist who makes DNA constructs and sticks them in mice so what do I know? The problem comes in where EVERYONE who is a "good guy" INCLUDING Langdon himself reacts NOT by going "oh my god! a nightmare! he just involuntarily sterilized 1/3 of the population for ALL TIME which is a BIG HUGE CRIME". Nope, they're all like "oh no. We're too late. What should we do? Should we do anything at all? Maybe this is for the best, really, what with overpopulation and all."

I just. I can't even. Screw you Dan Brown, and take your crazy bullshit politics with you.

hehehe hahaha

I have no intention of ever reading that one now! Not that I ever intended to anyway . . .

Agreed!

Yes, I think I shall give that one a definite miss!

After the DaVinci Code, I just can't read any more Dan Brown, no matter what the incentive. The ADHD of writing styles drives me CRAZY! Thanks for taking the hit for us. ;-)

231 sometimes bad reviews can be fun :) made me smile!

#85 Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy

I've always been a big Julius Caesar fan and this book didn't convince me to be otherwise. I'm more interested in politics than battle strategy, so I preferred the political parts to the war parts.

#86 We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Quick read, well-written, interesting and important story, fantastic narrator. Sounds like it should have been a 5-star book, but it turned out to be one of those books that I appreciate the author's skill rather than love the author's product.

#87 Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster

Forster's worst book. Skip it unless you need a short 1001 book to bulk up your list.

Considering that I hated A Passage to India which many people like, I think I'll skip this one unless I get desperate for 1001 books reads. And that won't be for a very long time!

Good choice. It is awful.

#88 The Fault in our Stars by John Green

I laughed. And then I cried. And then I cried some more. And then I cried harder. I'm not sure I even saw words on the pages of the last two chapters.

In between #87 and #88 I attempted and then gave up on The Casual Vacancy. After 50 pages I had no interest in reading the rest and so I just stopped.

#89 The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

Gorgeous book. I loved it. 5 stars. It is about a Chinese woman in Malaysia in the fifties, who had been a POW in a Japanese camp. She goes looking for this famous Japanese gardener to design a Japanese garden in memory of her sister who didn't survive the camp. Lots happens, and there are many descriptions of Japanese gardens. I love them too, and so just absolutely adored the book.

Yes! I loved that book too. All the different cultures represented made for an interesting mix. ANd the writing was beautiful.

Glad you enjoyed Garden of Evening Mists too! I love that kind of purely beautiful writing.

A fascinating mix of cultures, all of which I know very little about. I think I'm going to try to buy this book, I liked it that much.

#90 Shades and Shadows: a paranormal anthology edited by Terry Wagner

I received an ARC, so I wrote a real review and here it is:

This is what the editors are calling "paranormal anthology" - not necessarily ghost stories, though. Think more along the lines of Neil Gaiman or Stephen King. I find that most short story collections are something of a mixed bag - even single author collections - and this anthology is no exception. The quality of the writing is a bit uneven in that some authors clearly have more experience/talent/better editors. However, even where the writing isn't necessarily as polished, the stories themselves are imaginative and entertaining. The good ones are very, very good, and the bad ones easily skipped. For this reviewer, only two stories were real clunkers (sadly, the first story in the collection is one of these so if you, like me, find it hard to get through please keep going) and the rest highly enjoyable. Overall, I'd say the collection is well worth a read.

My favorites, all by authors I'd happily read more from:

"China Doll" by Ginger C. Mann - am I allowed to call a tale that includes tragic accidents and death charming? What about one with a kindly mysterious old man who fixes toys with magic, and helps a young girl to realize her own talents in that area? I think that's ok, right? So a charming little story, drew me right in.

"Child of the Underworld" by Marian Rosarum - If Nathaniel Hawthorne, Neil Gaiman and Edgar Allan Poe sat down to write a short story, this is the sort of thing they would come up with. Deliciously creepy and otherworldly and sad.

"Tombstone" by Scott E. Tarbet - hilarious ghost story about a cranky old farmer/murder victim who haunts his own property. Laugh-out-loud funny, especially if you happen to know any old farmers.

"The Death of Dr. Marcus Wells" by J. Aurel Guay - this is the one story in the collection that I wish had been expanded into a novella or even a full-length novel. Guay builds a world with a creepy Victorian vibe - think Drood-era Dickens - and then populates it with creepy viral monsters. The story is great fun, but there are enough unanswered questions that this reader, at least, hopes Guay will revisit this world and its stories in the future.

#91 A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

Kind of like an Irish version of All Quiet on the Western Front. Beautifully written but sad.

Hey! I'm late to the party but I've enjoyed skimming through your thread! It looks like we have quite a few books in common and similar tastes: a little fantasy, a little Balzac, a little LeCarre... and now a litle Sebastien Barry! I have A Long Long Way here as well, though it may be quite some time before I get to to it. I'm a book hoarder with towering stacks in my home. I usually wait until a book falls literally into my lap or at my feet befre I move it to the "now" stack! :-)

#92 On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Really? He really wrote a whole book about this and got it published? No. 1 star.

#93 The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan

Oh my goodness no. How could he have written something as good as Amsterdam, and something as acceptable as Atonement, and then write all this shit? Boo Ian McEwan.

another 1 star read.

Happily, they are short and can be read in about an hour. So there is one good thing about them.

I have only read two Ian McEwan books, On Chesil Beach and Saturday and I didn't like either of them. The thing is, every time I say I don't like McEwan, someone will say that I've got to try some other book of his! I have Atonement in my stacks but I'm keeping my expectations low. If, after Atonement I still don't care for him, I will have no problem saying that I gave it my best shot, but three strikes and you're out!

My issue with him so far is that his writing is too often described as psychologically thrilling when in essence, as Bob & Ray (Old Time Radio personalities) would say, these are really nothing more than "Tales of Anxiety!"

I have to say I'm intrigued by these negative reviews. I thought Atonement was pretty good but didn't like Saturday at all. Since they are short, maybe I'll give them a try to see if I hate them too!

There are like 11 McEwan books on the 1001 list. He is NOT THAT GOOD. So why? Same with that loathsome Coetzee character.

It is weird how some authors have ALL of their books on there and some are missing entirely. I'm totally avoiding Coetzee. From the reviews I've read here (yours included) I really have no interest in reading his books. My goal is just to get to 500 so I can easily skip him entirely if I want.

I think we definitely need a revised 1001 list!

I can sort of understand the all-the-books thing for someone who has had a major impact on literature for CENTURIES (Dickens, Dumas, Dostoevsky, Austen, the Brontes, etc). But McEwan? No one will be reading him 100 years from now.

#94 Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Each chapter is an episode in the life of a character from the previous chapter. Kind of like a boring terrible version of Cloud Atlas. So all the characters are interconnected fancy music industry types. If you like this sort of thing about these sort of people, you will like this book. I didn't. But - say it with me! - at least it was short.

ETA: A HA! It was a Pulitzer Prize winner. No wonder I hated it.

Actually, I really liked A Visit from the Goon Squad! It's been a couple years since I've read it; but I recall appreciating the different forms of each chapter in style and/language; and that each chapter was part of the same continuum without being the actual story line. I think, okay, I'll be honest, I know that I cried during the PowerPoint section!

But I know what you mean about reading something particularly good and then finding a similar, subsequent work to be sorely lacking. I loved The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield; but found Her Fearful Symmetry (by Audrey Niffenegger painfully bad. In fact, if the latter hadn't been a library book, I would have thrown it into the fire! You want Gothic Romance involving fog, twins, and a dark secret? Read The Thirteenth Tale! Don't be seduced by the siren call of a shiny cover! :-)

I find it so funny when I read your thread. I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with your comments on one book, and then the very next book . . . I am wondering how you could be so wrong :O) I have loved almost all of the McEwan books I have read; the same for Coetzee (although some of his books are too strange even for me!). But your comments on #238, 241 & 242 have convinced me to read those books which are currently on my e-reader!

Lol! Judy, I'm never wrong! ;-) Heads up - don't read The Fault in our Stars without a lot of tissues. It is a tear-jerker.

Tanya, I loved The Thirteenth Tale. It is fantastic. I've avoided most Audrey Niffenegger because all I've read of hers is The Time Traveler's Wife, and the only thing I liked about it was the Chicago setting - it takes place in the neighborhoods I lived in after college, and the bookstores/bars/concert venues are all real and places I loved. The plot? Less so.

I find it so funny when I read your thread. I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with your comments on one book, and then the very next book . . . I am wondering how you could be so wrong :O)

Judy - that's funny you write that, because Jennifer and I recently had a similar conversation on another thread. Let's see, if we both think that sometimes Jennifer is SO right, but other times SO wrong, I wonder if we're talking about the same books? ;-)

Sounds like a spread sheet is needed ??!!

The Jennifer Is Wrong spreadsheet? That sounds like fun.

#95 Room by Emma Donoghue

I hypothesize that this is a very good book. I made the mistake of listening to it on "enhanced" audiobook, with different people doing this different voices, and the narrator's voice either an actual kid, or an adult talking baby-talk. It got old fast. I like kids and all, but I don't like listening to 5 year olds for 9 hours straight.

Paper, not audio, for this one.

Oh, yuck! I liked Room, but when I read it I found that the child's voice didn't sound like any children I have ever met. The author said she used her own son as a model, so who am I to say, but my kids sure didn't talk like that. And I found it very annoying. To have to actually listen to it . . . big yuck!

Many years ago, I had The Time Travelers's Wife (by Audrey Niffenegger) in audiobook format, on CDs. The narrators, William Hope and Laurel Lefkow, weren't very good at playing themselves at different ages. The result was that just about every scene sounded artificial and not particularly credible. Anyway, about a third of the way through, I managed to lose the CDs and I **just didn't care**! That's not a very good sign :-/

Anyway, I did finaly get around to reading it earlier this year. I iked it better than I thought I would. The timelines were pretty tight; but there were a couple of unresolved points that bothered me e.g. How much did Henry's first girlfriend and father repectively **know**? There are intimations, but it's not really clear, much less **how** they knew.

I heard that Audrey Neffenegger is writing a sequel, but I think I'll pass. Something tells me that this is a case a la Bridget Jones wherein the author would be better off to leave well enough alone.

P.S. Interesting... The audiobook publishers have re-recorded this title using different narrators! Now the readers are Fred Berman and Phoebe Strole. I guess the hue and cry against the original production was heard!

I liked Room a lot, but I'm not sure I'd like it as an audiobook either. The child's voice was odd, but I took that to be a result of his odd life. Do you listen to many audiobooks? I've never been able to get into that format. I'm too used to tuning out "noise" and find I can't concentrate on them.

I usually only listen to audiobooks on long car trips, but my library does these e-audiobooks that play right on an app on my phone, which is nice, so I sometimes like to listen to them at work when I'm dissecting or doing microscope work for hours - tasks that are tedious and don't require creative thought. They have to be light, easy books though. I couldn't listen to Dostoevsky or the like. Humor works best. I really liked the audiobook version of the Narnia books, too (great for car trips!). The versions I "borrowed" from a friend with an Audible account were like Great British Actors Narrate Narnia, so that was fun.

Glad to have the warning about the Room audiobook!

If your library has any of the first 9 Dortmunder audiobooks by Donald E. Westlake, I highly recommend them. They're very funny and the reader is absolutely amazing (Michael Kramer - gives each character a distinct voice but managers to never let them become muddled). They're comic crime novels, and Westlake is also just a very talented writer/observer of humanity. They don't need to be read in order really, but What's the Worst That Could Happen should be read last).

I am a huge audiobook fan! My Personal Pantheon of All-Time Great Audiobooks (in alphabetical order by title):

1984 (by George Orwell; narrated by Simon Prebble)
The Ghosts of Belfast (by Stuart Neville; narrated by Gerard Doyle)
A Happy Marriage (by Rafael Yglesias; narrated by Grover Gardner)
In Cold Blood (by Truman Capote; narrated by Scott Brick)
Life of Pi (by Yann Martel; narrated by Jeff Woodman and Alexander Marshall)
Matterhorn: A Novel (by Karl Marlantes; narrated by Bronson Pinchot)
The Millennium Trilogy (by Stieg Larsson; narrated by Simon Vance)
Shantaram (by Gregory David Roberts; narrated by Humphrey Bower)
The Thirteenth Tale (by Diane Setterfield; narrated by Bianca Amato and Jill Tanner)
To Kill a Mockingbird (by Harper Lee; narrated by Sissy Spacek)

:-)

#96 Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

I loved it. Totally bizarre, naturally, but I loved it. As with all Murakami novels, this one had a lot about cats, classical music, food, and sex, and some bizarre supernatural-ish magical-ish bits.

#97 The Immoralist by Andre Gide

I find the strangest books using Amazon Prime's Kindle lending library. This is one of them. As far as I can tell, it is about a guy who gets married and travels with his wife to north Africa. He has TB, but recovers. Then there is a bit with a farm in Normandy, then Paris & childbirth, then his wife gets TB, then they travel again. Oh, sorry, should've done a spoiler alert? But then again, there is probably much, much more to the book than I got from it, and so you all should read it and tell me about what it really means.

#96 I loved Kafka on the Shore too. It was my first acquaintance with Murakami and it completely won me over (though the cats certainly helped).

The part with Johnnie Walker and the cats - I had to skip that part. Cannot handle animal cruelty at all. Other than that, I loved the talking cats.

#97 Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding

Good, but not as good as Tom Jones. Nowhere near as long as TJ either, for what its worth.

#98 Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett

So a couple years ago I read The Voyage of the Narwhal by Barrett like everyone else on the planet, and wasn't impressed. I had picked up three Barrett books at a library book sale for a buck each, and it has taken me this long to read another. I am trying to read all the unread, probably-won't-want-to-keep books on my shelves in preparation for the Life Changing End Of Postdoc Finding A Grownup Job and Moving Out Of Maine event that is going to occur within the next year, and so I read Ship Fever fully expecting to be indifferent to it and adding it to the pile of sellable books.

However. I was wrong. It is a fantastic literary collection of short stories either about scientists (historical or fictional characters) or inspired by science and I absolutely loved it and 5 stars and no way am I giving this up. Damn it.

#99 Divergent by Veronica Roth

So many thoughts. Ok, so first the overview: this is a less-good, less-well-thought-out, worser Hunger Games. But still not a terrible read and I am by no means going to abandon the trilogy.

More specific thoughts, in no particular order:

1) Dauntless (adj), Erudite (adj), Amity (noun), Abnegation (noun), Candor (noun). CONSISTENCY OMG WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS I AM ASHAMED THAT YOU ARE A FELLOW NORTHWESTERN ALUM, MS ROTH.

2) Things that demonstrate bravery, in real life: protecting people. Putting one's self in danger to save others. Speaking truth to power (or anyone) when truth to power (or anyone) gets you killed/imprisoned/disowned. Standing up for the bullied, to the bullies. Helping the sick who have infectious diseases and putting yourself in harm's way. Dealing with someone having a psychotic break who might kill you.

Things that demonstrate bravery in Divergent: getting tattooed. Dyeing one's hair a non-natural color. Piercings. Stupid reckless bullshit behavior like jumping out of trains, jumping off of buildings, ziplining, and wandering around railing-less ledges while drunk. Beating the living shit out of one's friends, peers, enemies, etc. Target practice. (Note: I am a big old coward and even I'VE been ziplining. Please)

So basically, of all the factions, only Abnegation and Candor are ACTUALLY brave and Dauntless is full of idiot psychopaths (except for the delicious Four. I admit to having a crush on Four BUT ***SPOILER ALERT*** he's really mostly Abnegation anyway since he's Divergent, right? Right). So I'm having a really hard time with this book because Griffindor Dauntless, despite having All The Braves, is really full of the not-braves, and we're supposed to admire Dauntless? Right? Because Tris totally does because she likes their hair and the jumping? I mean, Abnegation does sound boring and Faction With Cake sounds better than Faction Without Cake but Beating The Crap Out Of Your Friends is more of a bad thing than Cake is a good thing.

3) Beatrice is a very pretty name. Tris is the name of a widely-used chemical that goes into making very popular buffers used in biology labs. It takes A MILLION YEARS to get Tris to the right pH, and the day I started this book I spent about 3 hours getting my Tris the right pH and so I was really hating the word and then when she changed her name to Tris I almost stopped reading.

4) I'm sick of Smart = Evil and Stupid & Reckless = Brave and Good. Knock it off, already.

5) Poor world-building. Nothing really made any sense and then we got dropped right into the middle of the super-obnoxious "training" segment of Dauntless Initiation. Lots of details of fights and shooting and tattoos. Very few details about anything else.

6) The last quarter (starting with the Fear Simulations) got pretty good, which is why I'm continuing.

#100 The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

Beautifully written and very sad. Standard Irish lit fiction, based on what I've read so far. 4 stars.

#101 Sidetracked by Henning Mankell

The fifth Wallander novel is the best yet. I love this series so much.

>Great review of Divergent. Your #3 made me laugh out loud. :)

Also LOL re: Tris! I think I'll pass on that series.

I have been in such a reading slump lately, partly (mostly?) because I just got a functional TV and have been catching up on all the trashiness I have been missing all these years (The Tudors, etc). But I did finally manage to finish a book! Maybe this is the impetus I need to stop watching Sherlock and start reading again. I have the million page The Luminaries from the library and they probably want it back at some point. Anyway.

#102 At Home by Bill Bryson

Bryson's constant digressions and collections of randomness work best for me in this sort of setting (unlike A Walk in the Woods, when I actually wanted him to talk about hiking the damn trail!). Tons of fun. I learned a lot.

I'm reading and loving The Luminaries! It's long, but it's reading fairly fast if you can keep the enormous cast of characters sorted out.

In a surprising turn of events, I managed to read not just one but TWO books this weekend. YA, but given my inability to finish anything this month I'm happy.

#103 Insurgent by Veronica Roth

This one was way, way, way better than Divergent. I gave it 5 stars, actually, for sheer enjoyability and action and excitement.

#104 Allegiant by Veronica Roth

Not as bad as Divergent, not as good as Insurgent. The different storylines were a bit too much for Roth to keep track of, I think, but overall a very readable series. I still have a giant crush on Four/Tobias, and I will probably drag myself to see the movies when they come out.

Happy new year! And a very belated congratulations on reaching 100.