Tag Archives: bookcrossing

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

BookCrossing

Posted by melydia on November 29, 2007 1 comments

BookCrossing, in a nutshell, is the art of sharing books. Similar to Where’s George in concept, this website provides you with a unique BookCrossing ID number for your book, which is then used to track the book on its journeys. How it travels is a matter of serendipity: passed between friends, sold on eBay, whatever. The fun part is when people find your books and leave a journal entry on the site, letting you know where the book is and, if read, what they thought of it.

Releasing, as this kind of sharing is called, takes on a variety of forms. People start bookrings, wherein a book is passed from person to person through the mail. Some trade via the post or at local gatherings. Others maintain Official BookCrossing Zones, more or less a lending library with BookCrossing labels, all over the world. (Hunting for books is also a joy; I doubt I ever would have discovered the delight that is Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, had there not been an Official BookCrossing Zone there.) A friend of mine totes a wagon full of books to various events, which she calls her Mobile BookCrossing Zone.

My favorite form, however, is the traditional wild release, where you leave a book in a public place for someone else to find. It’s fun to think up unusual locations, or places that somehow relate to the title of the book being released. Whenever I drive to visit my family, who live over 700 miles away, I release books along the way. Most books are caught, but very few people leave journal entries, even anonymously. There are loads of reasons for this, of course: no internet access, want to read it first, simply forget about it, etc. However, when someone does journal a book you released, it can be the highlight of your (and their) day. For example: my favorite journal entry, from a recent Road Trip Release at a gas station.

I would like to note that despite all this giving away, my to-be-read pile has done nothing but grow since I joined BookCrossing. BookCrossers are generous to a fault. It’s also vastly expanded my reading interests.

To see all the BC books that have passed through my hands over the years (as well as a running tally of books read this year), visit my bookshelf.

Reposted from my CCS blog.

A Little Twist of Texas by Linda Raven Moore

Posted by melydia on August 19, 2006 None comments

A Little Twist of Texas by Linda Raven Moore: This is the true story of Moore’s month-long solo motorcycle trip from Silicon Valley, California, to Fort Worth, Texas. As with any adventure, things don’t turn out quite as planned but it’s a good read nonetheless, and perhaps made better for all the unexpected twists. This is different from most travel writing I’ve come across, in that Moore manages to be a tourist no matter where she goes. Her descriptions of all the Tinytowns and Nowheresvilles she encounters are as enchanting as if she were exploring Paris or Tokyo. Though there were parts where her seemingly limitless credulity got a little exasperating, it was refreshing to witness someone so enthusiastic about life and so unabashed in her wonder at the world around her. It was surprisingly inspiring and reminded me that the world is really only as mundane as you make it. It’s been a long time since a book touched me in this way. It makes me want to go on a journey of my own.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

© 2010-2024 kate weber All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright