Category Archives: book lists

Books Won Reading Challenge 2010 – recap

Posted by melydia on January 7, 2011 1 comments

Back in December of last year, I joined the Books Won Reading Challenge. I managed to read 7 of the books on my list:

1. Heresy by S.J. Parris
2. Hollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh
3. The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight by Gina Ochsner
4. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
5. Absolute Power by David Baldacci
6. Juliet by Anne Fortier
7. The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide by John McNally

This qualifies me for a “silver” medal, and in fact I tied for most books read according to the final standings. That’s kind of nifty. I’m not signing up again this year but it was a fun way to get some of the newer books off the shelf.

Year-end Book Roundup: 2010

Posted by melydia on January 1, 2011 8 comments

Books Read in 2010:
1. CauseWired by Tom Watson
2. Heresy by S.J. Parris
3. Dreaming Again edited by Jack Dann
4. Malice by Chris Wooding
5. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
6. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
7. No Greater Sacrifice by John Stipa
8. I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies) by Laurie Notaro
9. Stupid History by Leland Gregory
10. Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
11. The Blind Geometer/The New Atlantis by Kim Stanley Robinson/Ursula K. Le Guin
12. A Secret Atlas by Michael A. Stackpole
13. Bones of the Moon by Jonathan Carroll
14. BookCrossing Though Middle-Earth by Skyring
15. Death Comes as Epiphany by Sharan Newman
16. The Fire Within by Chris D’Lacey
17. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
18. Shakespeare’s Landlord by Charlaine Harris
19. Marooned in Fraggle Rock by David Young
20. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar
21. Brothel by Alexa Albert
22. A Golfer’s Tail by Roscoe Watkins
23. Juliet by Anne Fortier
24. Leaving Fishers by Margaret Peterson Haddix
25. The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld
26. Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary by Vivian Cook
27. Some Fools, A Turtle and Queen Elizabeth by A. M. Lascurain
28. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
29. The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight by Gina Ochsner
30. Don’t Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis
31. Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson
32. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
33. The Immortal Ones by John F. Ferrer
34. Time of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
35. Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson
36. Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
37. Jack Fell Down by Kenneth Underwood
38. Conversations with the Fat Girl by Liza Palmer
39. A Place to Die by Dorothy James
40. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
41. The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide by John McNally
42. Moominpappa’s Memoirs by Tove Jansson
43. Twilight: The Graphic Novel, vol. 1 by Stephenie Meyer and Young Kim
44. Heroes A2Z #1: Alien Ice Cream by David Anthony and Charles David
45. Knightscares #1: Cauldron Cooker’s Night by David Anthony and Charles David

Books Listened to in 2010:
1. The Taking by Dean Koontz
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
3. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
4. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
5. Hollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh
6. Messenger by Lois Lowry
7. The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz
8. The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
9. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
10. Absolute Power by David Baldacci
11. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
12. The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (abridged)
13. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
14. A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
15. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
16. Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella
17. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
18. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
19. Looking for Alaska by John Green
20. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
21. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
22. Holes by Louis Sachar
23. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
24. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
25. The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant
26. Good Harbor by Anita Diamant
27. Anthem by Ayn Rand
28. Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke
29. The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
30. Ella Enchanted by Gail Levine
31. Rules by Cynthia Lord
32. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
33. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
34. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
35. Paper Towns by John Green
36. Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
37. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Books Started but Not Finished
* The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (left on a plane – whoops!)
* Making History by Stephen Fry (couldn’t follow it)
* The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (never did encounter any plot)
* The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (it was just too stupid)
* Atonement by Ian McEwan (disc 4 of audiobook too scratched)
* Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner (disc 5 of audiobook too scratched)

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Reading Challenges for 2011

Posted by melydia on December 22, 2010 2 comments

The lovely and talented kel_light has inspired me to sign up for some reading challenges for the coming year.

Bewitched Bookworms

Whisper Stories in my Ear, hosted by Bewitched Bookworms, is an interesting audiobook challenge based on the number of hours you spend listening. This means I’ll have to start paying attention to the length of these books beyond the number of discs.

Speaking of audiobooks…

Teresa’s Reading Corner is also hosting a 2011 Audio Book Challenge. This one is in terms of number of audio books completed. Unless something drastic changes in my commute time, I fully expect to earn the “obsessed” badge on this one.

Last but not least:


MizB is hosting what appears to be a fairly casual Read’n’Review Challenge. I review pretty much every book I read as it is, so I figure I’m a shoo-in for this challenge. :)

Okay, so I admit that these aren’t exactly the most challenging of challenges for me. But to be honest, I am so behind on my reading – especially books sent to me for review – that I am wary to sign up for more, particularly if they require me to accumulate more books just to fit the theme. My TBR pile is already set to topple.

What about you? Are you participating in any reading challenges this year?

The 2011 TBR Pile Challenge

Posted by melydia on December 21, 2010 7 comments


2011TBR

I happened upon this 2011 TBR Pile Challenge over at A Novel Challenge and figured, “12 books is nothing. I can do this.” And so I’ve signed up.  At worst, it’ll get some oldies off the shelf to make room for newbies.

My list:

  1. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
  2. Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer
  3. Adventures by Mike Resnick
  4. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
  5. Jennifer Government by Max Barry
  6. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
  7. Suburban Safari by Hannah Holmes
  8. As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto
  9. Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions by John F. Burnett
  10. Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way by Bruce Campbell
  11. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke
  12. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

My alternates:

  1. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
  2. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

More Pet Peeves

Posted by melydia on September 10, 2010 10 comments

Check out the original list. Evidently I’m not done yet. Here are some more tips for writers who want to avoid irritating me their readers:

  • Avoid repetitive statements. He shrugged his shoulders. What else, pray tell, can one shrug?
  • Give your characters distinct names. I don’t mean unusual, necessarily, just noticeably different from each other. Once I had to quit a book after only a few chapters because I couldn’t keep Johnny, Jack, Jackie, Jerry, and Jimmy straight in my head. (No, I’m not making that up.)
  • Be consistent with your names. It’s fine to refer to Jack Smith as either “Jack” or as “Smith”. You can even call him “Smith” in the narration and “Jack” in the dialog from time to time. Just don’t switch back and forth constantly. Pick one and stick with it.
  • Have someone read your book aloud to you, preferably someone who’s never seen it before. Make notes while you listen, but don’t read along. Realize that this monotone is how every reader will “hear” your book in their head.
  • Careful with description. If the clouds around the mountain have nothing to do with moving the story forward, don’t spend three paragraphs on them. Readers don’t want to be stuck in a white room, but we also don’t care about the cuckoo clock’s personal history unless it becomes important later.
  • If you want to write a movie, write a movie. Don’t write a book. I cannot stress this enough.

Any more I’m forgetting?

My “Favorite” Conundrum

Posted by melydia on August 12, 2010 8 comments

How does one determine their favorite book or author? It’s a common question around lit-loving communities, and I never know how to answer.

If it’s the author by whom I’ve read the most books, then my favorite author would be Mike Resnick, Dean Koontz, J.K. Rowling, Katherine Neville, Jodi Picoult, Piers Anthony, Robert Asprin, Douglas Adams, Orson Scott Card, or Jennifer Weiner. But I’m not sure I’d count any of them as my favorite author (though I’ve referred to Mike Resnick as such many times just because I’m pretty much guaranteed to enjoy his stories). Aside from Resnick, Rowling, and Neville, I don’t see myself going out of my way to pick up anything else by these people. I’m currently on hiatus from Picoult and Koontz, and Anthony and I broke up years ago.

If it’s the book I’ve read the most times, then it would be The Gallery of Regrettable Food by James Lileks, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy” by Douglas Adams, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, or Santiago: a Myth of the Far Future by Mike Resnick. Sure, I’m guaranteed to laugh out loud every single time I read Gallery of Regrettable Food, but I’d like to think my favorite book would be something with a little more depth. So my problem there may be self-delusion more than anything else.

If it’s a book that really stuck with me for a long time, then it would be The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, Flatland by Edwin Abbott, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, or – most embarrassingly – the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. I refuse to consider any of the Twilight books a favorite because they are awful and I will never read them again. I wouldn’t mind claiming The Demon-Haunted World or The Time Machine, I suppose, but if they were truly my favorite, wouldn’t I have read them multiple times?

So tell me: what’s your favorite book or author? How can you tell?

Open post: to read or not to read

Posted by melydia on August 11, 2010 8 comments

This is an open post. Comments welcome and encouraged. (Not that they aren’t normally, but this time I’m actually asking for opinions.)

My to-be-read pile, generally referred to as Mt. TBR, is occasionally overwhelming. (Ignore the colors; the only one that means anything of interest is yellow, which is what I’m currently reading.) One of my 101 things in 1001 days is to get Mt. TBR under 50 books, even just temporarily. I’m over 150 days in and have not been able to reduce the size of the pile, despite having read over 30 books in that time.

So I’m thinking it might be time for a cull. The following are books I’m thinking of chucking unread. (And by “chucking” I mean wild releasing.) If anyone has any thoughts on any of these, please let me know. I’m willing to keep anything on the list if someone says it’s a good read. But for now, here are my maybes:

  • The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams – As much as I love Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency left me wanting.
  • Push Comes to Shove by Wesley Brown – I was lured in by the promise of a free book from Concord Free Press but the subject matter doesn’t sound like my cup of tea.
  • Virtual Light by William Gibson – Neuromancer was okay but hard to follow, so I’m not sure it’s worth it for me to read any more Gibson. (I also have Pattern Recognition on Mt. TBR, but a friend told me it was really good.)
  • James Herriot’s vet tales quadrilogy – I like Herriot just fine, but I have a feeling a bunch of touching stories about injured/sick animals might make me cry more than is strictly healthy.
  • Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead – As much as I like Arthurian legend, I’m not sure I really need to read another one unless it’s totally awesome.
  • The Monk by Matthew Lewis – A friend “lent” this to me years ago. I assume he never wanted it back since he’s since moved to Florida. It looks…dense. Is it good?
  • Rabbit, Run by John Updike – As far as I can tell, this is about basketball and a selfish man. Nothing in the Amazon reviews convinced me it was really worth reading.

So what do you think? Any of these something I should not pass up? Any that you’d like me to send to you if I do decide not to read it? (That holds for any of them except the Adams one, because that one belongs to my husband.)

And if you want to add books to Mt. TBR, well, I suppose that’s okay too. I’m always up for a good recommendation.

Pet Peeves

Posted by melydia on March 3, 2010 2 comments

Everyone has little things in books that bug them, ranging in reaction from minor irritation to a full-on “if this is there I will stop reading immediately.” Here are some of mine, in no particular order:

  • A man falling in love with a prostitute (a.k.a. the hooker with the heart of gold). It’s been done, people. Done to death.
  • Conflict/drama caused entirely by people not telling each other things. This drives me insane. Yes, I get that people have secrets, but too often characters hold back because (1) they have a martyrdom complex and don’t want to burden anyone with their problems, or (2) they think people just wouldn’t understand, and don’t even give them the chance to decide. It’s dumb, and it’s even worse when it’s the entire reason pretty much everything in the plot happens. If I can read a book and think “if they’d only told each other everything from the start, we could have avoided pretty much the entire story,” it really irritates me, and it’s a sign of weak writing.
  • Large amounts of foreign language. I was going to say it only bugs me when it’s not translated, but it also bothers me when people say things in a foreign language and it’s immediately translated into English. The occasional word is fine, but paragraphs or entire conversations get very tiresome. It’s a great word-padding trick for NaNoWriMo but I’d rather it were left out of published novels.
  • Conversations that are described instead of printed. Jane Austen was particularly bad about this, but she’s far from the only offender. The only exception to this is if the information would be a repeat of what the reader already knows.
  • Stories that don’t end. Now, I don’t need all the loose ends to be tied up, but I do need a story to have a satisfying (though not necessarily happy) ending. When it just stops and it’s left totally up to the reader to decide what happens (such as in The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber), I feel like I’ve completely wasted my time reading it. If I wanted to write my own ending, I would have written my own story. Finish what you start!
  • Authors that don’t do basic research. I’m not talking about little anachronisms in historical fiction; I mean truly basic information that anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the topic would know. James Patterson is a good example. He sets many of his novels in the DC metro area (which happens to be where I live) and then makes such glaring mistakes as inventing a mysterious city in Virginia called Church Falls and asserting that locals refer to the Smithsonian Institution as “The Smithy”. (We don’t. Seriously, nobody says that.) If you want to make up stuff, don’t set it in a real place. All you’re doing is irritating the natives.

I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of. What are your pet peeves in books?

The Trouble with Vampires

Posted by melydia on January 12, 2010 4 comments

So after yesterday’s discussion of romance novels it occurs to me that maybe I really am a generic trend-follower and the real draw for me, regardless of genre, is vampires. Case in point:

  • Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: These ate my brain* for a while during college. Interview with the Vampire (and the associated movie) remains my favorite, perhaps because of an affinity for Louis that Rice herself obviously did not share. (In an intro to the IwtV DVD, Rice referred to Lestat as her “dark lover.” Um.) The books declined in quality as time went on, and eventually I gave up without reading Memnoch the Devil and only bothered with a few of the spin-offs (The Vampire Armand, Violin, and Pandora, if I recall correctly).
  • Bram Stoker’s Dracula: I actually rather enjoyed the book (to which the movie was reasonably true), but it didn’t have a whole lot of Dracula in it. (More detail at my post on the Dueling Monsters Read-a-long.)
  • Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The film was fairly forgettable, but I really liked the series, to the point where I was perfectly happy watching back-to-back-to-back episodes during much of graduate school.
  • Van Helsing: Silliness to the extreme and felt more like fanfic than homage, but I loved it for what it was.
  • Twilight: Oh god, don’t get me started. Short version: this horribly-written series totally ate my brain* for several months in 2009.
  • Count Duckula: Probably my favorite recurring guest star on Dangermouse, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with him being a vampire.

So I guess this means I would probably enjoy The Lost Boys, Underworld, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Hellsing, Cirque du Freak, and Vampire Hunter D. The question is: where to start?

*ate my brain: overwhelmed my psyche, to the point where I was thinking about it practically nonstop and could not get enough of it. See also: short-term obsession. (To be fair, this also happened when I read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. So there’s that.)

Year-end Book Roundup: 2009

Posted by melydia on January 2, 2010 1 comments

Books Read in 2009:
1. The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
2. Give Me a Break by John Stossel
3. Banana Rose by Natalie Goldberg
4. The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
5. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
6. Tickled Pink by Rita Rudner
7. Fermat’s Last Theorem by Simon Singh
8. Naked by David Sedaris
9. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
10. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
11. The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron
12. What Makes Me a Muslim? by Catherine M. Petrini
13. Ten Great Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe
14. Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton
15. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
16. Centauri Dawn by Michael Ely
17. Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson
18. Out of the Fallout by Veronica A. Mullen
19. The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
20. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
21. The Ig Nobel Prizes by Marc Abrahams
22. Everything Here is Mine by Nicole Hollander
23. The Eight by Katherine Neville [reread]
24. The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter by David Colbert
25. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
26. Hotel World by Ali Smith
27. The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories by Tim Burton
28. Sideshow by Mike Resnick
29. The Three-Legged Hootch Dancer by Mike Resnick
30. The Wild Alien Tamer by Mike Resnick
31. Redbeard by Michael Resnick
32. Fermat’s Last Theorem by Amir D. Aczel
33. Eros Ascending by Mike Resnick
34. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
35. Eight Tales of Terror by Edgar Allan Poe
36. The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers
37. The Code Book by Simon Singh
38. Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
39. Silverstein and Me by Marv Gold
40. Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain by Michael Paterniti
41. The Fire by Katherine Neville
42. The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire
43. The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman
44. The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel by Rachael Antony
45. Stories to Read with the Door Locked by Alfred Hitchcock
46. The Unnameables by Ellen Booraem
47. In Odd We Trust by Dean Koontz

Books Listened to in 2009:
1. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
2. Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
3. Time and Again by Jack Finney
4. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
5. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
6. Everything’s Eventual by Stephen King
7. The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
8. Eragon by Christopher Paolini
9. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
10. Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz [reread]
11. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
12. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
13. Seize the Night by Dean Koontz
14. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card [reread]
15. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
16. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
17. Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
18. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
19. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
20. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
21. Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
22. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
23. Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card
24. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
25. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
26. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
27. The Stranger by Albert Camus
28. My Latest Grievance by Eleanor Lipman
29. When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
30. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
31. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson [reread]
32. Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
33. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
34. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

Books Started but not Finished
* Maple Sugarin’ in Vermont by Betty Ann Lockhart (not interested)
* Wacky Chicks by Simon Doonan (obnoxious)
* My Last Days by Lou Rowan (weird!)
* The Dragon and the Unicorn by A.A. Attanasio (too epic to understand)
* The New Diary by Tristine Rainer (nothing I hadn’t read before)
* The Queen’s Handmaiden by Jennifer Ashley (just didn’t grab me)

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