Tag Archives: book lists

Weekly Geeks

Posted by melydia on December 4, 2009 1 comments

I’m getting WG 2009-43 in just under the wire – it’s due today. This time around we’re revisiting the best books published this year. I don’t read much recent stuff, especially since I stopped signing up for ARCs quite so often, but amazingly I did manage to pick up four titles in 2009. So here are my picks, in order:

  1. Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton – Excellent. I devoured it in about a day.
  2. When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris – Probably my second favorite of his books.
  3. Silverstein and Me by Marv Gold – A touching memoir about my favorite poet.
  4. The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire – Funny and tragic, but not all that great. If I’d read more than ten books published this year, this book would not have made the list.

So there you have it.

Ten Best Books Adapted to Film

Posted by melydia on October 10, 2009 None comments

Super Tremendous has rated the 10 Greatest Books Adapted into Movies. It’s hard to tell whether this is based on the greatness of the movie, the book, or the adaptation (that is, how faithful the movie is to the book). I personally love to see movie adaptations of the books I read, even if I didn’t particularly enjoy the book, so this list is right up my alley.

Caveat: I have not read/watched all of these listed, but that’s never stopped me from offering my opinion in the past.

#10 Jurassic Park: I enjoyed the movie but have not read the book. From what I hear, most of Crichton’s books read like movies anyway. (And this has been true with ones I have read: Timeline and Airframe.)

#9 Forrest Gump: Loved the movie, haven’t read the book. Heard the book was a real disappointment, actually.

#8 Breakfast At Tiffany’s: Neither read nor seen.

#7 One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest: Ditto.

#6 Schindler’s List (Based On The Novel Schindler’s Ark): Great movie. Haven’t read the book.

#5 Apocalypse Now (Based On The Novle Heart Of Darkness): Thought the movie was mind-numbingly boring, and considering my dislike for maritime fiction, I don’t see myself reading the book any time soon.

#4 Goodfellas: Neither seen nor read.

#3 Jaws: Ditto.

#2 The Godfather: Finally one where I can weigh in completely! The movie was pretty good (though I hear the second one is better – one of these days I’ll get around to watching it) but the book was complete pulp.

#1 Gone With The Wind: I read this around the same time as The Godfather, during a “reading books that have been made into movies I haven’t seen” kick in early college, after which I proceeded to watch all the movies. (Another selection from this time period was Silence of the Lambs.) I actually rather enjoyed the book. Yes, Scarlet is terribly unlikeable and the African-American characters are all offensive stereotypes, but I still liked it for what it was. The movie was okay, even if they cut out most of Scarlet’s husbands and children. Not something I’d read (or watch) over and over again, but it was fun the first time around.

And there you have it. Some I’m surprised were left out: The Princess Bride (GREAT movie, kind of meh book), Lord of the Rings (great movies, reportedly great books, though I haven’t read them), Silence of the Lambs (both were excellent), the Harry Potter series (some good, some not, but decent overall), etc. What are some favorites you’d like to see on this list?

Reading Challenge Revisit

Posted by melydia on July 13, 2009 None comments

I was browsing back through some old blog entries, looking for new stuff to subscribe to (I did mention I’m a total Google Reader addict now, didn’t I?) and came across this post about the What’s in a Name reading challenge. Funny that I should see this now, considering I’m in the middle of one of them (The Fall of the House of Usher) and have finished reading the rest. Nice.

The 2008 BookCrossing Top 100

Posted by melydia on January 7, 2009 None comments

Courtesy of BookCrosser stinalyn, I bring you The 2008 BookCrossing Top 100. (Actually it’s the top 120, due to some mega ties.) I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read. Sorry for the long entry; I linked to my reviews where I could, but sometimes I just had to comment.

1. Harry Potter (series) by JK Rowling – Though the quality declined somewhat as the series progressed (my favorites remain books 1 and 4), I have no objections to this choice.
2. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien – My husband’s all time favorite.
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
5. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
8a. The Stand by Stephen King
8b. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
10a. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
10b. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
12. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
13. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell – Read this years ago. I remember liking it, though I’m not so sure I would were I to read it now.
14. The Chronicles of Narnia (series) by CS Lewis – I’ve read the first book, thought it was kind of meh, never bothered with the rest.
15. Discworld (series) by Terry Pratchett – I’ve read The Colour of Magic but have thus far not been inspired to seek out any of the other books.
16a. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
16b. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
16c. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (series) by Douglas Adams – Excellent. One of the few series I’ve read multiple times.
19a. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien – It gave me narcolepsy, hence my reluctance to tackle LOTR.
19b. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
19c. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
19d. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott – Received this in a gift exchange in fourth grade. Everyone else got toys. I was so disappointed I never even read it. (This was before I started reading for pleasure with any regularity; that wasn’t until college.)
19e. Atonement by Ian McEwan
19f. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
25. His Dark Materials (series) by Philip Pullman
26. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
27. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
28a. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
28b. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
30a. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
30b. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd – On my TBR pile.
30c. Watership Down by Richard Adams – This was on my TBR pile for many years, but I could never get into it.
30d. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
34a. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
34b. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
36a. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
36b. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
38a. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
38b. Persuasion by Jane Austen
38c. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – One of the few books that actually so engrossed me I literally gasped in one place.
38d. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
42a. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – Interesting that this book singly appears on the list as well as the series as a whole.
42b. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger – I read this for a class and enjoyed it. I’m not sure I would now; I think it’s something you have to read by a certain age to really appreciate.
42c. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
42d. Anne of Green Gables (series) by Lucy Maud Montgomery – I read the first book back in grade school. I remember liking it okay.
42e. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
42f. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
48a. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery – Uh, see above.
48b. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
48c. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
48d. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – Very good, but then, I’ve got a thing for dystopia novels.
48e. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
48f. Stephanie Plum (series) by Janet Evanovich – I read the first and second books and while they were reasonably entertaining, I felt no desire to read any more.
48g. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
48h. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – Excellent. I’ve read both Alice books at least three times.
48i. Les Mis̩rables by Victor Hugo РI confess I read the abridged version, but I really liked it.
57a. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
57b. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
57c. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
57d. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
57e. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer – I’ve read Everything is Illuminated and it was pretty meh, but I hear EL&IC is much better.
57f. L’Etranger by Albert Camus
57g. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie – Honestly, after reading The Satanic Verses, I’m not all that interested in reading any more Rushdie.
57h The Dark Tower (series) by Stephen King.
57i. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
57j. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
67a. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown – I wonder how many people were annoyed by this book’s presence on a “best of” list.
67b. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
67c. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley – On my TBR pile.
67d. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
67e. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – Read this in high school and hated it.
67f. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
67g. The Little House Books (series) by Laura Ingalls Wilder
67h. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank – Read this in high school and loved it. Very sad.
67i. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
67j. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
67k. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
67l. Thursday Next (series) by Jasper Fforde – See my comments above. I wish this list didn’t include series and their first books separately.
67m. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
80a. Artemis Fowl (series) by Eoin Colfer – Only read the first book. It was okay.
80b. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
80c. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
80d. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – Good book, but the movie is terrible.
80e. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
80f. Emma by Jane Austen
80g. Outlander/Cross Stitch (series) by Diana Gabaldon
80h. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
80i. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
80j. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas – Weird. I was positive this was on my TBR pile but, looking at the bookshelf, it evidently is not. It should be.
80k. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
80l. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
80m. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
80n. PS, I Love You by Cecelia Ahern
80o. The Giver by Lois Lowry – Read this while visiting a prospective graduate school and was so sucked in I finished it in a single day (unheard of for me at that time), and had to pick up another book at the airport because I hadn’t expected to run out of reading material so quickly!
80p. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
96a. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card – I read this years ago and enjoyed it. I now have the rest of the series on my TBR pile, so I’ll be rereading it soon.
96b. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman – On my TBR pile.
96c. Dune by Frank Herbert
96d. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
96e. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
96f. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
96g. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
96h. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding – I got a huge kick out of this book.
96i. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen – Read this in high school and remember enjoying it.
96j. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – Very good. Huck is awesome.
96k. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
96l. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
96m. Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
96n. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
96o. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier – The movie was pretty boring, so I doubt I’ll be reading the book any time soon.
96p. Dracula by Bram Stoker
96q. Earth’s Children (series) by Jean M Auel
96r. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg
96s. It Had to Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
96t. Marley and Me by John Grogan
96u. Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up by JM Barrie
96v. The Green Mile by Stephen King
96w. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
96x. The Vampire Chronicles (series) by Anne Rice – I quit after The Tale of the Body Thief. I enjoyed them, but the quality noticeably decreased with each successive installment.
96y. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Books read in 2008

Posted by melydia on January 1, 2009 2 comments

1. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin
2. Getting in Touch with your Inner Bitch by Elizabeth Hilts
3. Dear Jane Letters by Amanda Hamm
4. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
5. Death Note, vol. 2 by Tsugumi Ohba
6. Stories by O. Henry
7. Death Note, vol. 3 by Tsugumi Ohba
8. A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville
9. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
10. Death Note, vol. 4 by Tsugumi Ohba
11. Dracula by Bram Stoker
12. The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult
13. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
14. Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody by Michael Gerber
15. Dragons by Catherine M. Petrini
16. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
17. Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore
18. Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-bye! by Cynthia Heimel
19. The Invisible Heart by Russell Roberts
20. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
21. The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions by Kenji Kawakami
22. The Great Fetish by L. Sprague de Camp
23. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
24. The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
25. Best-Loved Short Stories by various
26. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
27. What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard P. Feynman
28. James Herriot’s Cat Stories by James Herriot
29. Broca’s Brain by Carl Sagan
30. Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist
31. This Book Will Change Your Life by Benrik
32. The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov
33. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
34. Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
35. Sudden Fiction edited by Robert Shapard
36. Waiting for Gertrude by Bill Richardson
37. George W. Bushisms edited by Jacob Weisberg
38. What Goes Around Comes Around by Con Lehane
39. Nation by Terry Pratchett
40. Kingmaker by Alexey Braguine
41. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
42. Stiff by Mary Roach
43. Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
44. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
45. Scum Manifesto by Valerie Solanas
46. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
47. Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto
48. We Thought You Would Be Prettier by Laurie Notaro
49. The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart
50. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
51. Kiss Me Like a Stranger by Gene Wilder
52. Brush Up Your Mythology! by Michael Macrone
53. If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell
54. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
55. Why Don’t Your Eyelashes Grow? by Beth Ann Ditkoff
56. The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham
57. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Books listened to in 2008
1. The Client by John Grisham
2. Velocity by Dean Koontz
3. The Firm by John Grisham
4. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
5. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
6. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
7. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
8. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
9. Sepulchre by Kate Mosse
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
11. The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
12. From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz
13. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
14. Freakonomics by by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
15. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
16. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
17. Candide by Voltaire
18. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
19. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler (abridged)
21. On the Beach by Nevil Shute
22. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
23. Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
24. Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
25. The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
26. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
27. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
28. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
29. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
30. Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
31. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
32. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
33. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Books started but not finished
* Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (skipping audiobook)
* The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (uncle!)
* Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King (horrible audiobook narrator)
* Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner (boring)
* The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (horrible audiobook narrator)
* Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much by Anne Wilson Schaef (too busy)
* Cleopatra VII by Kristiana Gregory (boring)
* Jack the Bodiless by Julian May (boring)
* A Writer’s Time by Kenneth Atchity (not what I was looking for)
* The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (no sympathy for the main characters)
* Fiction Writer’s Workshop by Josip Novakovich (not what I was looking for)

What’s in a Name

Posted by melydia on October 31, 2008 None comments


Okay, so I told myself I wouldn’t be participating in any more reading challenges. After all, the Reduce My TBR Mountain challenge has been really effective but also has made me kind of obsessive. So instead of pushing myself to read such quantities of books, I’m going to read a specific few. This is a year-long challenge (throughout 2009, that is), where the books are based on title. I chose exclusively from my existing TBR pile, so I had to stretch it a little here and there. The titles may change should I come across something more suitable. Here are the ones I plan to read for each category:

  1. A book with a “profession” in its title: The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
  2. A book with a “time of day” in its title: Seize the Night by Dean Koontz
  3. A book with a “relative” in its title: The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
  4. A book with a “body part” in its title: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
  5. A book with a “building” in its title: The Fall of the House of Usher and other tales by Edgar Allan Poe
  6. A book with a “medical condition” in its title: Give Me a Break by John Stossel (okay, so maybe that’s stretching it a touch. It was that or Xenocide by Orson Scott Card, though Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard sure sounds like a medical condition!)

Anyone care to join me? For more information, visit the welcome page.

Books read in 2007

Posted by melydia on January 1, 2008 None comments

1. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
2. Cover the Butter by Carrie Kabak
3. Gullible’s Travels by Cash Peters
4. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
5. The Seven Towers by Patricia C. Wrede
6. The Husband by Dean Koontz
7. Hal Spacejock by Simon Haynes
8. Blue Springs by Peter Rennebohm
9. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
10. Ambercore by Troy Williams
11. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
12. The Hindi-Bindi Club by Monica Pradhan
13. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
14. Hick by Andrea Portes
15. Eats, Shites and Leaves by A. Parody
16. The Stand by Stephen King
17. Ana’s Story by Jenna Bush
18. Bill the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison
19. Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos
20. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
21. Anybody Can Write by Roberta Jean Bryant
22. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
23. Bill the Galactic Hero on the Planet of the Robot Slaves by Harry Harrison
24. The Good Guy by Dean Koontz
25. The Echelon Vendetta by David Stone
26. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
27. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
28. The Pelican Brief by John Grisham
29. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
30. Neuromancer by William Gibson
31. Thinner by Stephen King
32. Not a Happy Camper by Mindy Schneider
33. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
34. Mistress Masham’s Repose by T.H. White
35. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
36. The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
37. The Weatherman by Steve Thayer
38. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
39. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
40. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
41. Nine Tomorrows by Isaac Asimov
42. Berserker by Fred Saberhagen
43. Death Note Volume 1 by Tsugumi Ohba
44. Jim Henson’s Designs and Doodles by Alison Inches
45. Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan

All in all, I averaged about eight days per book. Not bad, not bad at all. My increased commute time meant more audiobooks too, a trend that will doubtless continue through 2008.

Books listened to in 2007
1. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
2. Pompeii by Robert Harris
3. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
4. How I Write by Janet Evanovich and Ina Yalof
5. 1776 by David McCullough
6. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
7. Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner
8. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
9. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
10. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
11. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
12. Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
13. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
14. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
15. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
16. Animal Farm by George Orwell
17. Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
18. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
19. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
20. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
21. The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner
22. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
23. Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
24. The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips
25. The Planets by Dava Sobel
26. Don’t Know Much About the Civil War by Kenneth C. Davis
27. Superstition by David Ambrose
28. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
29. Ticktock by Dean Koontz

Books started but not finished
* The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams
* Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
* Witch Hunt by Ian Rankin
* Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear
* Disclosure by Michael Crichton
* Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
* The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
* Blood Music by Greg Bear

Books Read in 2006

Posted by melydia on January 1, 2007 None comments

1. St. Vidicon to the Rescue by Christopher Stasheff
2. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
3. Maybe Baby, edited by Lori Leibovich
4. Mommy Knows Worst by James Lileks
5. The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
6. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
7. White Oleander by Janet Fitch
8. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
9. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
10. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
11. Ready, Okay! by Adam Cadre
12. Myth-Ion Improbable by Robert Asprin
13. Something M.Y.T.H. Inc by Robert Asprin
14. Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding
15. Before the Mask [Dragonlance Villains Series Vol. 1] by Michael and Teri Williams
16. Infernal Devices by Philip Reeve
17. Indelible by Karin Slaughter
18. The World of Pooh by A.A. Milne
19. One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
20. Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
21. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
22. The Door Within by Wayne Thomas Batson
23. Young Female, Traveling Alone by Anne-Marie M. Pop
24. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
25. The Assassins Gallery by David L. Robbins
26. The Rise of the Wyrm Lord by Wayne Thomas Batson
27. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
28. A Little Twist of Texas by Linda Raven Moore
29. The Death of Common Sense by Philip K. Howard
30. Magic Kingdom for Sale — Sold! by Terry Brooks
31. Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity by John Stossel
32. Elsewhere by Will Shetterly
33. Nevernever by Will Shetterly
34. Stardust by Neil Gaiman
35. Somebodies and Nobodies by Robert W. Fuller
36. Sole Survivor by Dean Koontz
37. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
38. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card
39. Why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer
40. No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty
41. Ringworld by Larry Niven
42. The Final Storm by Wayne Thomas Batson

I plowed through books much more quickly this year than last, averaging a stunning 8.7 days per book. (Well, stunning for me, anyway.)

Books listened to in 2006
1. Seizure by Robin Cook
2. Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz
3. Jump the Shark by John Hein (abridged)
4. Dr. Death by Jonathan Kellerman (abridged)
5. Marker by Robin Cook
6. Shadow Fires by Dean Koontz
7. The Innocent by Harlan Coben (abridged)
8. Two Plays for Voices by Neil Gaiman
9. Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult
10. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
11. Paint It Black by Janet Fitch
12. The Pact by Jodi Picoult

Books started but not finished
1. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
2. The Illuminati by Larry Burkett
3. The One Who Waited by Erika Griffin
4. Bait by Kenneth Abel

Books Read in 2005

Posted by melydia on January 1, 2006 None comments

1. Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
2. The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio
3. Be Cool by Elmore Leonard
4. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
5. Lamb by Christopher Moore
6. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
7. The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams
8. 1984 by George Orwell
9. Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
10. In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner
11. Wolfpointe by Rick Buda
12-17. Harry Potter 1-6 by JK Rowling
18. Me, Dead Dad, & Alcatraz by Chris Lynch
19-21. Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
22. And She Was by Cindy Dyson
23. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
24. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
25. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
26. Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
27. The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
28. Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott
29. On Writing by Stephen King
30. The Last Juror by John Grisham
31. One for the Money by Janet Evanovich
32. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I averaged about one book every eleven days, which is about right for me.

Books I started but couldn’t finish:
* A Void by Georges Perec
* Abuse of Power by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
* One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty [I still plan to give this one another chance]
* Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor

Most Challenge Books

Posted by melydia on June 16, 2005 None comments

Judging by the Top 100 Most Challenged Books 1990-2000, it seems people are most offended by sex, sexuality, nudity, and puberty. Violence, drugs, and magic also make good showings, but sex really takes the cake here. I’m not sure what the issue with puberty is, since that’s something that happens to everybody no matter what, and is even more awkward if you don’t get any kind of warning or explanation beforehand.

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