Category General Book Talk

A non-Plinky post

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You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been using “blog starters” for some posts.  I challenged myself to write more in August – not too successfully, but maybe 75% of the days saw some kind of writing – and I found Plinky.  It’s an EASY way to make a creative looking blog!  I certainly don’t ever upload any images or media of any kind to my posts… maybe I should challenge myself to do that!  Plinky makes it so easy!  I was excited enough to find a site called “tagxedo” and I made a picture for my gravatar.  I think.  We’ll see.  I know that it’s working with Twitter.  It’s a pretty cool feature.

Anyway, right now I’m reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and as you know, it’s awesome.  I read it (or listened to it) a few years ago – maybe even four years ago – and loved it.  I’m enjoying reading it with my eyes even more, although the dialogue can get a little confusing, can’t it!?  On the audiobook it flowed better or something.  But it’s still super enjoyable.

I haven’t read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years in a while… I’m three chapters behind at this point.  Maybe this weekend I’ll get some reading done.  I think I’m watching too much TV and reading too little lately.

So my writing challenge was a so-so venture in August.  I blogged, wrote haikus and journaled in my book.  But not every day.  It’s already mid-September, so maybe I’ll have to set an October challenge for myself.  I really want to learn some beautiful accordion music so maybe that will be my challenge.  I also hope to read the Harry Potter books… must get busy!!! Anything that you are planning to challenge yourself with before the end of 2010?

And now, off to read!

Banned and Challenged Classics – How many have you read?

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from  http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/index.cfm

Each year, the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms.  See Frequently Challenged Books for more details.

According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.

The titles in bold represent banned or challenged books. For more information on why these books were challenged, visit challenged classics and the Banned Books Week Web site.

The titles not in bold may have been banned or challenged, but we have not received any reports on them. If you have information about the banning or challenging of these titles, please contact the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Ferragosto

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I created an Italian holiday for myself last week and the weather wasn’t too cooperative!  Very very sultry and a little stormy, so I spent a lot of time inside the cabin with books and movies!  Not a bad way to spend time!  So I read a few books early in the week.  I finished “Water for Elephants,” which I really enjoyed; I read “The Next Thing on My List,” and “Away.” The movies I watched were “Days and Clouds,” “Il Postino,” “The Night of the Shooting Stars,” and “Under the Tuscan Sun.”  The first three were Italian and the first two I’d seen before!  I love “Il Postino.”  And “Under the Tuscan Sun.”  I can watch that over and over again.

I really liked “The Next Thing on my List.”  It was a book I’d picked up several times but couldn’t bring myself to read, because the premise is that a girl named Marissa dies in a car accident.  Too creepy.  Anyway, she has a list of 20 things to do before her 25th birthday – so the girl who was driving the car decides that she needs to complete the items on the list.  It wasn’t a great book, but I like lists so enjoyed it.  I also had the book “Flip-Flopped” by the same author and realized after 50 pages that I’d read it before.  “Away” was a book about an immigrant who learns that her daughter may still be alive so she attempts to get back to Russia via Alaska.  I also have a book of short stories by that author and have read a few throughout the week.

Now I’m reading “Beatrice & Virgil” by Yann Martel (author of the Life of Pi).  It’s weird.  No chapters.  It’s about Henry who is a writer and Henry who is writing a play.  And a donkey named Beatrice and howler monkey named Virgil.  And taxidermy.  And the Holocaust?  I’ll let you know if I figure it out when I’m done.  I’m halfway through it.  And then who knows what will be next.  I still have quite a pile at home and a few more from the library.  So many books.

Nicole Baart is doing an online book discussion about Donald Miller’s “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” and I’d like to join!  Maybe I’ll run to B&N tomorrow and see about it.  I read part of a Donald Miller book and had bought a few but they went down with the flood.  Interesting author.

Well, off to read!

Next!

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I finished another book this morning.  This summer I have found myself staying in bed for HOURS in the morning to read.  I stay up way too late, watching movies or whatever, and fall asleep reading pretty quickly, so in the morning I’ll read for literally two hours before getting out of bed.  It’s a little ridiculous and indulgent, but I love it.

This morning I finished “Everything She Thought She Wanted.”  I’d read (or listened to) another book by this author and it was ok.  I liked this one better.  I liked the characters in the book and I was interested in what was going to happen.  If anything, I would have liked a little more insight into what was going to happen and the thoughts that went into the final decisions, but overall I would recommend the book.  It was one of those bargain books from B&N.  Gotta love a bargain!

So now I have a pile of books that I’m bringing with me for the week because I can’t decide what’s next.  It’s either “Water for Elephants” (most likely), “The Virgin of Small Plains” (a free book I got a couple of years ago) or “South of Broad” (the free book I got this year).  Or maybe it’ll be “The Sleeping Beauty Proposal,” which mom got free at work.  She said it was laugh out loud funny.  That sounds fun.  I also have to finish August’s O Magazine – maybe before September’s comes!  🙂

My goal for August is to write something everyday.  It might be a letter or a journal or a haiku or a blog.  So I signed up for Plinky, which is word prompts and kinda fun.  I set them up to post to this blog, so if you see random weirdness (whoever you are!) now you’ll know why.

Well, off to read!  Wonder what it’ll be…

The American “Dragon Tattoo” movie

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-27/dragon-tattoo-movies-new-female-lead/

I haven’t been following this, but here it is.  Popped up in a Twitter or something.  So now I know.  Who won’t be Lisbeth and who will be Mikael.  Will I see these movies? Not sure.  Will I watch the second Swedish movie when it comes to the Wehrenberg?  I think so.

How about you?

Off to read!

Magazines

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I’m about half done with August’s Oprah magazine!  I haven’t been this caught up in the ten years I’ve been a subscriber!  Crazy.

I am faithful to the O Magazine.  As I said, I’ve been a subscriber for ten years and my current subscription will run out in February of 2012.  I read it cover to cover and use book marks, take notes of things to look up (books, music, websites) and keep them all on a shelf.  I love almost all the columnists – especially Lisa Kogen and Martha Beck.

I just started reading Eating Well and enjoy it a LOT but it doesn’t take a lot to sit down and read it – and then it ends up being kind of a reference in the recipe book cupboard.  I discovered it when I received vouchers for lots of free magazine subscriptions for my Northwest Airlines points.  So I get Wine Enthusiast (which costs almost $80 a year????), Travel & Leisure (who has the money for those trips?), W (a waste of paper) and Eating Well.  I renewed Eating Well and will continue to enjoy it.  I just put out many issues of the other magazines in the recycling this morning.  I know I should have donated them somewhere, but for the sake of getting them out of the house they are now recycled.

Once I subscribed to the New Yorker.  I thought it would be fun to get a literary magazine, but I found that I didn’t read it that often.  The O Magazine is one that I’ve stuck with – and now have a rule that I won’t subscribe to any others because I don’t have time for any others.  Now that the subscriptions to those crazy magazines are starting to expire my paper clutter will also diminish a bit, right?

I used to love reading Cricket when I was younger – about 12.  I still like to go and look at them in our elementary library and I always encourage kids to check them out.  They are “literary,” too, so not interesting to many.  Just story geeks.

Are there magazines that you are a faithful reader of?  How do you read them – cover to cover or by looking at the table of contents for what interests you?  What do you do with them when you’re done?  What’s the craziest magazine subscription you’ve had?  Or one that you wish you were brave enough to get?

Well, off to read!


Summer Reads

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I’ve been bad at this blogging this summer!  But I guess from what I read on the blogs I follow, it isn’t too unusual to take a blog vacation.  I just haven’t been blogging that long to take a vacation from it!  Oops.  Oh well.  Here we go!

I had to check out my goodreads list to see which books I’ve read since I last blogged.  It’s been quite a few:  “Firefly Lane” (Kristin Hannah), “The Beach House” (Jane Green), “Love Walked In” and “Belong to Me” (Marissa de los Santos), “The Other Woman” (Jane Green), “The Girl Who Played with Fire” (Stieg Larsson), “Best Friends Forever” (Jennifer Weiner), and “The Stormchasers” (Jenna Blum).  I just started “Other People’s Weddings” yesterday.

So.  I liked “Firefly Lane” better than “Best Friends Forever,” and for some reason they felt similar to me.  Best friends.  Different family backgrounds.  Estrangement.  Kids to grown-ups.  I also thought that the “mystery” feel in “BFF” was very hokey, especially after reading Millennium #2.

I liked “Love Walked In” better than “Belong To Me,” although I loved them both.  I loved the character and the writing style.  I was glad that there was another book about the main character in “Love Walked In” because I wanted to keep getting to know her.  They were great reads.

I liked “The Beach House” better than “The Other Woman.”  They were very different books by Jane Green – one about an eccentric woman who takes in boarders to help maintain her life on Cape Cod and the other about the contentious relationship a woman has with her mother-in-law.  I thought the daughter-in-law was pretty uptight and ridiculous a lot of the time, although I did have some empathy for her.  I wouldn’t want to deal with a MIL like that, but it was a little crazy.

I really liked “The Stormchasers,” and can’t wait to discuss it in book club with others who have read it!  I don’t want to give any spoilers so am not going to talk about it much here.  Read on!

After I read “Other People’s Weddings” I hope I can pick up that Pat Conroy book I got in the mail – “South of Broad.”  Seems like a summer read, so I’ll hopefully dive into that.  Still  have quite a pile TBR by the bed!  I bought “Eats Shoots and Leaves” at a used book sale and can’t wait to pick that up, either.

So what about you???  What have you been reading and what are your thoughts about the books you’ve been reading this summer?

Can’t wait to hear!

And now, off to read before company comes!

July 1

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Just barely.  It is almost July 2 already!  Time just keeps flying…

Last night, June 30, we met to discuss “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”  I haven’t started the second book yet, but Jess was more than 2/3 done and feeling like she didn’t want to put it down!  It’s definitely going to get read this weekend.  I can’t wait.  But I think we had a good discussion last night, even though the page numbers in the questions didn’t correlate with the paperback copies of the book, so we had to guess sometimes what they were asking.  The movie comes out on DVD next week so maybe we’ll meet again and watch the movie after we’ve read all the books.  Our goal is to discuss the second book by the end of July.

So since I read that first book I’ve read a few Oprah magazines (I’m so ahead of the game!) and some lighter books – which I thoroughly enjoyed!  I was ripping through them quickly for a while!  But then i did more magazine reading (and baseball watching) and didn’t get as much reading done.  Now today I started a Jane Green book from the library (curse you, library, for your temptations!) and I’m half done.  I would like to re-read the 7th Harry Potter book before the movie comes out in November – I have no memory of the plot of that book.  It was the last book I read before the flood and my brain changed for a while (maybe forever?) and it is just gone.  So I’ll re-do.  Gladly.  I loved those books.

So my pile of books to read next include:  “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” “Best Friends Forever,” “The Stormchasers,” “South of Broad,” “Everything She Thought She Wanted,” and now, “Other People’s Weddings.”  Hard to choose where to start.  So I chose Jane Green.  “The Other Woman,” about a woman’s mother-in-law from hell.

I must say, I like blogging.  It’s probably boring for those who read (if anyone reads – wink wink) but I missed writing these last few weeks.  No excuses… just busy with kiddo stuff.  Gracie and Rees were here one Monday and last Monday I was feeling a little punky.  I think it was allergies, as the meds seem to be helping.

And now I’m so excited about heading to the lake – I’m bringing three books along and if I read them all (unlikely) there is a walmart close and I can find something else!  As I remember about our trip to FL in March, it’s hard to read a lot when your eyes are closed and you are worshiping the sun.  So we’ll see what I get read.

I haven’t finished packing yet, but I’m going to get up early.  So… off to read!

Book ramblings…

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Well  I ran out and saw the movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” last Tuesday, and it was good – well-made – but terribly simplified from the book.  The book is complicated, as I might have said before, and this movie focuses in on parts of it.  I’m glad that I read the book and I can’t wait to read the second.  I heard that there is another movie in the works already – maybe coming out this summer?  I talked with two people today who saw the movie last night and hadn’t read the book.  I’m not sure if they will read it after seeing the movie, and I wonder if it would enhance it either way?  The book is a lot less graphic than the movie was – a lot more “matter of fact” about what was happening.  I saw the preview of the movie and didn’t know if I’d even like to read the book – and there was a point in the book when I wanted to put it down and stop reading because I thought it was going to get too scary, but it didn’t.  It just kept going and kept me in there, wanting to know what was going to happen.

So, that’s that.  Can’t wait for more people to finish the book to have the discussion! **Hint Hint**

In the meantime I’ve been reading ‘Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah.  I’ve read a book or two by her and they are nice easy reads with unique stories.  This one is ok but I am a little frustrated with the characters.  Hmmm.

I found the Rochester Public Library Book store Blog and they are having online contests each month for “bluestockings.”  Evidently, Bluestockings are intelligent, educated women – so it’s the name they’re giving to women in book clubs.  July’s contest is to take a picture depicting beach books. I’m not sure I really get it, but I’ll keep following it and see if it’s something we can do.

I also emailed Jenna Blum last week about her book signing at Borders in Ridgeview or wherever.  I wasn’t able to go, even though it’s been on my calendar for months.  😦  I asked if she was going to come to Rochester and she asked that I contact B&N and recommend that they contact her publicist, so I did!  I hope they do!  She said she’d be around MN the month of August so hopefully we can get something to work out.  I ordered her new book, “The Stormchasers” and look forward to reading it.  She’s such a hoot.

Well, I’m going to finish “Firefly Lane” tonight or in the morning so that I’m ready when my package from B&N arrives!
Off to read!

“The Girl…”

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with the Dragon Tattoo” is the book we’re reading now.  It took me about 50 pages to get into it, but now I can’t wait to sleep in and read in the morning!  The movie is coming to Rochester next weekend.  It looked “hard,” so not sure it’s my type of book or movie, but it’s keeping me interested.

Getting ready for a Girls’ Night Out on Thursday!  I’m very excited for the sequel to Sex and the City.  I remember that Sunday night feeling I’d get every Sunday June to October – “my” time, me and the girls.  And I remember how sad I was during the whole second part of the sixth season, knowing that it was nearing the end.  I cried at the end of every episode as it got close.  And the first movie did not disappoint at all – the smart writing continued and the girls were just larger than life.  This movie looks like it will be a blast as well!  I just cannot wait.  Although I can wait until Thursday rather than a midnight showing… just think it’ll be more enjoyable during regular living hours!

Well, off to watch more SATC episodes and then to read!  🙂