A challenge?

Could I read all of the selections and vote? Time is tight!

The Lost Man Booker prize of 1970

Would I want to?

Top Selling Hard Covers of 2009

Publisher's Weekly has published a list of the top-selling books of 2009.

Top 5 Fiction

The Lost Symbol: A Novel by Dan Brown (Doubleday)
The Associate: A Novel by John Grisham (Doubleday)
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam/Amy Einhorn)
I, Alex Cross by James Patterson (Little, Brown)
Ford County by John Grisham (Doubleday)

Top 5 Non-fiction

Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin (Harper)
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think about Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment by Steve Harvey (Harper)
Arguing with Idiots: Hoe to Stop Small Minds and Big Government by Glenn Beck (Threshold)
Liberty & Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin
True Compass: A Memoir by Edward M. Kennedy (Twelve)

How many of these have you read? I have only read The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which I very much enjoyed.

Seeking inspiration

It's February 17th and my year of reading is already flopping. Sigh . . .I need some inspiration. It's too early to call the whole year, but 7 books by February 17th may be my worst start in recorded history. It's not for a lack of books on my nightstand or on my shelves. I'm not in a relaxed place though. I think I read best when I am feeling more relaxed.

I'm going to plug in to a site - www.flashlightworthybooks.com; I need to find that next great book that I won't be able to put down!

In the interim, I think I will pick The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowel back up again; I'm halfway through and recall tht I was enjoying it. :-)

A new year of reading - what is the plan?

It's 8:35am on New Year's Day, 2010. I'm up way too early and without a hangover, SO, I have time to reflect on the year of reading ahead.

I am going to call 2009, "the year without reading." Technically, this is not true, of course. I would have to be dead or recently blinded and not learned braille yet for there to ever truly be a year without reading. But, overall, I felt like I read less than usual in 2009.

I did have two magnum opuses (opuses being more common in the English language than "opi"; he he) in my reading list:

World Without End by Ken Follett, 1024 pages (I read it on the Kindle - 20,000+ clicks!)
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, 1488 pages

Books like that can take a bit of time. Each book was for a bookclub, so they were on a deadline as well, which perhaps cut down on my simultaneous, multiple books reading.

My book total for the year was 73.

Here is a sampling of my favorite books (in alphabetical order, by author's last name), read in 2009 :

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
People of the Book: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks
Valeria's Last Stand by Marc Fitten
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
City of Refuge: A Novel by Tom Piazza
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaeffer & Anne Barrows
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

My LEAST favorite book of the year was Netherland by Jospeh O'Neill. God, that was awful. My entire neighborhood bookclub hated it as well.

Surprisingly, Jodi Picoult's Handle with Care falls in the least favorite category as well.
Here is my LibraryThing review of the book:
I am a huge Jodi Picoult fan and have read every book she has written. Handle with Care was disappointing. If you have read My Sister's Keeper and hated that pointless ending, you will hate this one as well. Picoult is a very formulaic writer and the formula usually works, but here, Picoult just lacked original detail. Handle with Care is another book featuring a relationship between a sick sister and a healthy sister, decisions that tear a family apart - it felt too similar to My Sister's Keeper, but it was not as well told, the characters were not as compelling/likeable. I'm worried now. I hope Picoult's next book is better!

So, 2010. What is the plan?

In the wee hours of this first day of January, as I lay in bed, preparing to sleep, I finished off an advanced reader copy of The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux. It was interesting and inspiring and filled with literary references. One way I enjoy reading is to flow from one book to a literary reference, or to another book by the author. So, perhaps I will do that.

I think I will choose Ten Poems to Set You Free, Roger Housden, because I NEVER read poetry. And I can buy it right now on the Kindle. :-)

Have a Happy New Year of reading!!

What's on my nightstand

I've been having trouble keeping up my reading pace these past several months. Is it just that I do not have the right books on my nightstand?

New Stories from the South 2008 - ZZ Packer, ed.
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
The White Queen - Philippa Gregory
Something Incredibly Wonderful Happened: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Us - K.C. Cole
That Old Cape Magic - Richard Russo
The Heart of a Child - Patti Brady
Firefly Lane - Kristen Hannah

I'm about half-way through the Russo book. I tried to start both the Collins and Gregory books, respectively too depressing and not my favorite English time period. The others I haven't started.

What are YOU reading that I should be reading? :-)

Babs' Five Favorite Reads of All-time (so far)

The beautiful thing about favorite reads is that they do not have to be anything but that; they don't have to be best-sellers or classics or award winners. Just favorites

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - I received this as a gift, in beautiful hard copy, the Christmas after I turned 10. I love this book! It's lost its dust jacket along the way, but I still have the same copy, from my Aunt Ruth in 1983.

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - I wanted to be Scarlett O'Hara when I was growing up. And I always thought Vivien Leigh and my Aunt Kim shared a resemblance, so I thought it could be in the family. ;-)

Inferno by Dante Alighieri - An utterly, fascinating, amazing read. When I was a child, I dreamed of reading it in the original Italian, on the opposite page from the English in my copy.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand - Yeah for Howard Roark! Introduced me to the objectivist philosophy - happiness as moral purpose - being the facet I liked the most. ;-)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - Hilarious and idealistic - "One man, scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this." One of my favorite quotes of all time, and seriously, brings a tear to my eye every time I read it.

My June Reads

Hmmm . . . I may not have logged all of my books last month, but this is what I have:

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell
Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America by Linda Furiya
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee
My Life in France by Julia Child
Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation by J. Maarten Troost
Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together by Ron Hall & Dencer Moore
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

7 books, 2192 pages

That's 55 books through June, so I am still on pace for 100 by the end of the year.