Posted: 2016/03/14 | Author: gr4c5 | Filed under: books, Confessional, Good, Life, list | Tags: books, challenge, lists, Michael Benson, Neil White, reading |
Has anyone else noticed this? My reading has gotten out of control. And when I say out of control I mean Out.Of.Control. Case in point: in 2013 I only read four books off the Challenge list. Natalie Merchant, my sister, my job and a friend all made book recommendations that I took. Four books. In 2014 I read ten books off the Challenge list. Five were all about running and five were gifts or recommendations. Ten books. In 2015 I read fifteen off Challenge list books. Fifteen books! We are only 2 1/2 months into March and already I have read nine off-Challenge-list books. This has GOT to STOP. At this rate I will never, ever finish the Challenge list. I keep spending time with books I shouldn’t. I’m pulling my hair out. You just can’t see me.
As of right now I am currently reading two books that are not on the Challenge list. Both are books that should have been Early Review books. So, here is the plan: I am going to finish up those books (In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White and Why the Grateful Dead Matter by Michael Benson) and then return to reading from the list as much as possible. I need to stop reading titles not indexed in the Lust books, drop books that have nothing to do with the Challenge and reload the ones that do. The end.
Posted: 2013/09/02 | Author: gr4c5 | Filed under: Confessional, E-Books, Early Review, Fiction, Graphic Novel, Life, NonFiction, Poetry | Tags: biography, books, challenge, Early Review, Fiction, lists, NonFiction, reading |
I’m a day late with this…
The list is now really getting shorter! Summer is over just like that. And so is Year Seven. Here are the remaining books for October and November. Just two short months to go.
- Deafening by Frances Itani – October
- Going Wild by Robert Winkler – October
- Guardians by Geoffrey Kabaservice – November
- Ocean of Words by Ha Jin – October
- Panther Soup by John Grimlette – November
- Southpaw by Mark Harris – October
- Time, Love, Memory by Jonathan Weiner – November
- What you Owe Me by Bebe Moore Campbell – November
ON DECK FOR SEPTEMBER:
- At Home in the Heart of Appalachia by John O’Brien
- Burma Chronicles by Guy Delise
- Child that Books Built by Francis Spufford
- ADDED: City in the Sky by James Glanz
- Light Infantry Ball by Hamilton Basso
- Old Friends by Tracy Kidder
- Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
FINISHED:
- Abide By Me by Elizabeth Strout
- Adventures of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol
- Ancient Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day by Philip Matyszak
- Apollo: the epic journey to the moon by David West Reynolds
- Apples Are From Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins
- Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton (I started this last year. No, sorry – two years ago)
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath
- Author, Author by David Lodge (audio)
- Beautiful Swimmers by William Warner
- Before the Knife by Carolyn Slaughter
- Bellwether by Connie Willis
- Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengist (audio)
- Beyond the Bogota by Gary Leech
- Big Mouth and Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates
- Billy by Albert French
- ADDED: Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
- Brass Go-Between by Oliver Bleeck
- Breakfast with Scot by Michael Drowning
- Brush with Death by Elizabeth Duncan
- Brushed by Feathers by Frances Wood
- Burning the Days by James Salter
- Camus, a Romance by Elizabeth Hawes
- Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd
- Cat Daddy: What the World’s Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love, and Coming Clean by Jackson Galaxy
- Cat Who Ate Danish Modern by Lillian Jackson Braun
- Churchill, a life by Martin Gilbert
- City of Thieves by David Benioff
- Conspiracy and Other Stories by Jaan Kross
- Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
- Death in Verona by Roy Harley Lewis
- Descending the Dragon by Jon Bowermaster
- Diamond Classics by Mike Shannon
- Difficult Young Man by Martin Boyd
- Dining with Al-Qaeda by Hugh Pope
- Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
- Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope
- The Evolution of Jane by Catherine Schine
- Edward Lear in Albania by Edward Lear
- Fanny by Edmund White
- Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
- Final Solution by Michael Chabon
- Fixer by Joe Sacco
- Flamboya Tree by Clara Olink Kelly
- Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco
- Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Zabat Katz
- Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Gerald Martin
- Galton Case by Ross MacDonald
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
- Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem
- God: a biography by Jack Miles
- Gold Coast Madam by Rose Laws
- Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
- Good City edited by Emily Hiestand
- Good Thief’s Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan
- Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas by Chris Ewan
- Good-bye Chunk Rice by Craig Thompson
- Grand Ambition by Lisa Michaels
- Her by Christa Parravani
- Hole in the Earth by Robert Bausch
- Hole in the World by Richard Rhodes
- Home Before Dark by Susan Cheever
- House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferre
- Iliad by Homer
- Idle Days in Patagonia by William Hudson
- Imperfect Harmony by Stacy Horn (for LibraryThing’s Early Review program
- Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
- Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith
- Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis
- Lives of the Painters, vol 2, 3 & 4 by Giorgio Vasari
- The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz
- Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou for the Early Review Program
- Mortality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
- No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
- Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin
- Of Human Bondage by William Maugham
- Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
- Outbreak of Love by Martin Boyd
- Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
- Path Between the Seas by David McCullough
- Patrimony: a true story by Philip Roth
- Playing for Keeps by David Halberstam
- Points Unknown edited by David Roberts
- Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson
- Ready for a Brand New Beat by Mark Kurlansky
- Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell
- Rosalind Franklin: Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox
- Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff
- Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
- Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham – did not finish
- Star Beast by Robert Heinlein
- Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
- Suzy’s Case by Andy Siegel (as recommended)
- Tatiana by Dorothy Jones
- Tattered Cloak by Nina Berberova
- Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith
- Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith
- This is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakawila for LibraryThing
- Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- True Crime: Real-Life Stories of Abduction, Addiction, Obsession, Murder, Grave-Robbing and More edited by Lee Gutkind (Early Review)
- Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery
- Viceroy of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin
- When Blackbirds Sing by Martin Boyd
- Wholeness of a Broken Heart by Katie Singer
- Widow for One Year by John Irving
- Women of the Raj by Margaret MacMillan
- Working Poor by David Shipler
- Year in Provence, a by Peter Mayle
POETRY COMPLETED:
- “Golden Angel Pancake House” by Campbell McGrath
- “Lepanto” by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
- “Listeners” by Walter De La Mare
- “Mandalay” by Rudard Kipling
- “Road and the End” by Carl Sandburg
- “Sea-Fever” by John Masefield
- “Winter” by Marie Ponsot
- “In My Craft or Sullen Art” by Dylan Thomas
- The Long Hill” by Sarah Teasdale
- “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
SHORT STORIES COMPLETED:
- “Here’s a Little Something” by Dan Chaon (from Among the Missing)
- “Big Me” by Dan Chaon (from Among the Missing)
- “Servants of the Map” by Elizabeth Barrett (from Servant of the Map)
- “The Cure” by Elizabeth Barrett (from Servants of the Map)
- “In the Land of Men” by Antonya Nelson (from In the Land of Men)
- “Goodbye Midwest” by Antonya Nelson (from In the Land of Men)
- “Ado” by Connie Willis (from Impossible Things)
- “At the Rialto” by Connie Willis (from Impossible Things)
- “A Tiger-Killer is Hard To find” by Ha Jin (from Bridegroom: stories)
- “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town” by Ha Jin (from Bridegroom: stories)
- “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri (from Interpreter of Maladies)
- “A Temporary Matter” by Jhumpa Lahiri (from Interpreter of Maladies)
- “A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies” by John Murray (from A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies)
- “Watson and the Shark” by John Murray (from A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies)
NEXT YEAR:
- House of Morgan by Ron Chernow (as previously mentioned)
- Rose Cafe by John Hanson Mitchell
Posted: 2012/10/30 | Author: gr4c5 | Filed under: audio book, Confessional, Early Review, Fiction, Life, NonFiction | Tags: books, Fiction, insane moments, lists, NonFiction, reading, resolutions |
November marks the seventh anniversary of the crazy idea I would read everything indexed in Book Lust by Nancy Pearl. Subsequently that idea mushroomed into reading everything indexed in More Book Lust and most recently, Book Lust To Go as well. Let’s do a little math, shall we? In six years I have read 583 books. That is approximately 97 books a year. If I continue at that rate I will finish the Lust Challenge when I am 93 years old, give or take a year or two…..
I had this conversation with someone a few days ago and without warning the thought that I might not finish this challenge depressed me. Not because of my own mortality but because of all the interesting books I will miss. I had a horrible thought – what if I spent a considerable time slogging through something I found only mildly interesting while I missed out on something completely riveting? What a not nice thought. I shared this ugly-ugly and my companion stridently changed the subject. What if you were to consider November a “new” year and you list out the books you are planning to read? This, of course, would not include LibraryThing and the Early Review program. It would not include the “strays” (as I’ve taken to calling them). Those are the books picked up for no other reason than a good suggestion or an intriguing cover. Accountability. I like it. It gives me structure. So, without further ado, here is the conservative list for Year Seven 11/2012 – 11/2013 in alphabetical order, of course:
- Abide By Me by Elizabeth Strout
- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Among the Missing by Dan Chaon
- Apollo: the epic journey to the moon by David West Reynolds
- Arctic Grail by Pierre Berton (I started this last year)
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath
- At Home in the Heart of Appalachia by John O’Brien
- Beautiful Swimmers by William Warner
- Before the Knife by Carolyn Slaughter
- Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengist
- Beyond the Bogota by Gary Leech
- Brass Go-Between by Oliver Bleeck
- Breakfast with Scot by Michael Drowning
- Burma Chronicles by Guy Delise
- Burning the Days by James Salter
- Camus, a Romance by Elizabeth Hawes
- Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd
- Cat Who Ate Danish Modern by Lillian Jackson Braun
- Child that Books Built by Francis Spufford
- Churchill, a life by Martin Gilbert
- Conspiracy and Other Stories by Jaan Kross
- Deafening by Frances Itani
- Death in Verona by Roy Harley Lewis
- Diamond Classics by Mike Shannon
- Dining with Al-Qaeda by Hugh Pope
- Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
- Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope
- Edward Lear in Albania by Edward Lear
- Fanny by Edmund White
- Final Solution by Michael Chabon
- Fixer by Joe Sacco
- Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco
- Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Gerald Martin
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
- Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem
- Going Wild by Robert Winkler
- Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
- Good Thief’s Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan
- Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas by Chris Ewan
- Good-bye Chunk Rice by Craig Thompson
- Grand Ambition by Lisa Michaels
- Guardians by Geoffrey Kabaservice
- Hole in the Earth by Robert Bausch
- House of Morgan by Ron Chernow
- House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferre
- Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
- Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith
- Light Infantry Ball by Hamilton Basso
- Lives of the Painters (vol 2, 3 & 4) by Giorgio Vasari
- Mortality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
- No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
- Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin
- Ocean of Words by Ha Jin
- Old Friends by Tracy Kidder
- Panther Soup by John Grimlette
- Points Unknown edited by David Roberts
- Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson
- Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell
- Rosalind Franklin by Brenda Maddox
- Rose Cafe by John Hanson Mitchell
- Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff
- Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham
- Southpaw by Mark Harris
- Tattered Cloak by Nina Berberova
- Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith
- Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith
- Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- Time, Love, Memory by Jonathan Weiner
- Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery
- Viceroy of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin
- What you Owe Me by Bebe Moore Campbell
- Widow for One Year by John Irving
- Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
- Working Poor by David Shipler
I’ll update this list May 1st, at the halfway mark. I haven’t spelled out which books I will listen to on CD. This also doesn’t reflect when I’ll read them either. All I know is that I will continue to read whenever and wherever I can. Standing in line at the grocery store, trapped in the backseat of a moving vehicle, before bed, in the bath, while my kisa watches hours of football, with a glass of wine, during storms, by candlelight and sunlight, on vacation, while I’m sick, or waiting for the pasta water to boil. I will skip the books that bore me to tears. I will start books early and finish them late. This is my new year’s resolution.
Posted: 2012/10/02 | Author: gr4c5 | Filed under: Confessional, Early Review, Fiction, Life, NonFiction | Tags: art, audio books, books, Fiction, greek, NonFiction, reading, science fiction, women |
October. What I can I say about October besides it is a yin yang of good and bad. Three different friends celebrate their anniversaries in this month so it is a month of love for some. My cousin passed away October 10th last year. A new dark cloud anniversary for some. Kisa and a friend and I head to Monhegan for a week. It will be good to be homehome. In fact I’ll need to post this early in order for it not to be almost two weeks late. What else is October? Halloween. Pumpkins. A return to cozy knee high leggings. Kisa and I are already talking about buying and burning wood. The stove didn’t see much action last year. Here are the books:
- Hackers edited by Jack Dann ~ in honor of October being computers month. Disclaimer ~ I had to place an interlibrary loan on this one so I’m not sure I’ll actually read it in time.
- Persian Boy by Mary Renault ~ a continuation of the Alexander the Great series. Note: I am not reading the third and final book of the trilogy.
- Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper ~ a continuation of the Leatherstocking series. Nope. I’m just saying I’ll read it when I know I won’t. If the preceding book was “attempted” the following book won’t even get a chance. New rule.
- The Outermost House: A year of life on the great beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston ~ in honor of October being animal month
- Dialect of Sex by Shulamith Firestone ~ in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness month and strong women (I started this last year and didn’t finish it in time).
- Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari ~ in honor of October being art appreciation month.
- And for audio: The Man From Beijing by Swedish author Henning Mankell ~ as a wild card book.
For the Early Review program on LibraryThing I am reading Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee by Thomas Craughwell. I’m pretty excited about this one. Historical cooking with a Founding Father. You can’t go wrong!
Posted: 2012/02/03 | Author: gr4c5 | Filed under: Early Review, Fiction, Life, NonFiction | Tags: books, classic, Early Review, Fiction, librarything, NonFiction, reading |
I feel like I should be singing that diet song that Jennifer Hudson sings – you know the one about it being a new day, a new dawn or a new whatever? Every February I see a chance to refresh, renew, in other words start the fukc over. Think New Years resolutions only a month late. But. But! But, I have my reasons. I was born in the month of February so to me, this month IS my new year. I shouldn’t be here so every year that I am is like starting over. But, enough about all that. Here are the books:
- Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban in honor of Hoban’s birth month. I plan to read this on a smoke break. LOL
- Personal History by Katharine Graham in honor of February being Journalism month.
- Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer in honor of February being a big month for history.
- Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien to continue the Lord of the Rings series that I started with The Hobbit last month.
I did get notification that I got an Early Review book from LibraryThing. That’s cool. What’s even cooler is that it’s a book about the Coast Guard. Having just come from an very, very classy veteran’s (air force) funeral for my uncle I am interested to explore the history of my father’s military branch.
Edited to make a correction: I misspelled Mrs. Graham’s first name as Katherine. My apologies.
Posted: 2012/01/30 | Author: gr4c5 | Filed under: Book Reviews, Life, NonFiction | Tags: 2012, book review, inspiration, january, leisure, NonFiction |
Kralik, John. A Simple Act of Gratitude: How Learning to Say Thank You Changed My Life. New York: Harper, 2010.
My first “off schedule” read for 2012. Why? I was boarding a plane & heading across the country for a funeral. Flying + funerals = Frightened me lately. I needed something to distract me from the twelve plus hours we would be traveling. As for the who, what, where, when and why details I’ll leave them for another day and another place.
So, back to the book review. I chose A Simple Act of Gratitude because it looked like something I could devour on a cross-country flight. I was determined to start it on the east coast so that I could finish it and return it on the west coast. A Simple Act was that kind of book.
If you haven’t heard of this book the premise is simple: typical lawyer is losing his grip on the good life. He is going through a divorce, his company is failing and is about to be evicted, his girlfriend just broke up with him and his seven-year-old daughter has to sleep in his grungy, cramped, falling-apart apartment every time she comes to visit. He’s losing touch with friends and family because he has nothing good to say about anything or anyone. He’s even gaining weight. Then one day he has an epiphany and this is where I get a little confused. On the back of the book it describes how a thank you note from John’s ex-girlfriend inspires him to set out to write 365 thank you letters in a year, one for each day. That’s all well and good – to give the girlfriend credit – until you read page 17. On page 17 John is hiking alone on New Years Day when he is inspired by the memory of his grandfather and a story about a silver dollar and the moral of the story amounts to this, if you thank me for the silver dollar I just gave you another silver dollar will come your way. It’s that promise of “good things to come” that supposedly prompts John to write all those letters.
Regardless of who inspired John in the first place, the ex or the grandfather, amazing things do start to happen after John writes a few letters. It inspires him to write more and more and more. His life slowly starts to turn around. John’s journey to gratitude IS inspiring. He makes so many transformations you are prompted to put pen to paper yourself…just to see what happens.
Favorite lines, “I wanted to be more than another lawyer slinging hatred for a living” (p 13) and “I was way past the weirdness of writing a thank-you note to a cat lady” (p 58).
Posted: 2012/01/03 | Author: gr4c5 | Filed under: General, Good, Life | Tags: books, fantasy, Fiction, reading |
Happy freakin’ New Year!
I am making the resolution to clean up the blogs from 2011. In reviewing everything I read through the year I am noticing some that didn’t get tagged properly, some that weren’t put into the right categories and, horror upon horrors, one that didn’t even get published! WTF?! By all counts I *think* I read 65 fiction titles, 25 nonfiction titles, 12 Early Review/Librarything books, 2 for-fun books and 9 poems. This is, of course, cheating because I included the “attempts” as finished. As promised, I did get at least 50 pages into each failed read.
So, what about 2012? I am still off the reading schedule but have come up with a temporary plan. Kind of like when the plane breaks down and you realize you have to drive to your destination. Think “Trains, Planes & Automobiles.” You need a new map. No, wait. That line was from “Tommy Boy.” Wrong movie. Anyway. So, here is the plan of attack for January 2012:
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit or There and Back Again and finish The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates. That’s it. Not a crazy ambitious reading list for such a long month, but I’m taking one road at a time and not mapping out the entire journey like I usually do. This is a different year so I’m looking forward to reading a little differently as well.
Happy New Year!
