2011 Book Ideas

Here is a list that Sarah compiled for possible book club books.  She owns most of them or wants to read them.  Our plan for the next few weeks is:
1) Walk and discuss “Sarah’s Key” and “The Magicians” (by Lev Grossman)
2) “The Virgin of Small Plains” by Nancy Pickard and that book that Jess loaned Sarah and I reserved at the library OR Meg Wolitzer’s book OR “The House on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet”

And then we’ll figure out the order of the below…

“The Art of Racing in the Rain”
“The Glad of Small Things” (A.Roy)
“The Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” (D. Eggers)
“The Magicians” (Lev Grossman)
“Half Broke Horses” (J. Walls)
“A Reliable Wife” (R. Goolrick)
“Lark and Termite” (Jayne Ann Phillips)
“The Poisonwood Bible” (Barbara Kingsolver)
“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” (D. Wroblewski)
“The Unbearable Lightness of Scones” (Alexander McCall Smith)
“Plain Truth” (Jodi Picoult)
“The Hummingbird’s Daughter” (Lus Alberto Urrea)
“White Tiger” (A. Adiga)
“The Virgin of Small Plains” (N. Pickard)
“The Little Giants of Aberdeen County”
“The Women” (T.C. Boyle)
“The Inheritance of Loss” (Kiran Desai)
“Brooklyn” (C. Toibin)
“Prayers for Sale” (Sandra Dallas)
“Home Safe” (Elizabeth Berg)
“Back when We Were Grown Ups” (Anne Tyler)
“The Book Thief” (Zubak)
“House Rules” (Jodi Picoult)
“A Softer Place to Land”
“The Wives of Henry Oades”
“Hunger Games” (Series)
“Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet”
“The Red Leather Diary”
“The Latehomecomer”
” The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”

Others on my TBR list include:

“What is the What” (Eggers)
“The Center of Everything” (Moriarty)
the one about “Major Pettrigrew”
the one about “Ceecee Honeycut”

 

and I’ll edit and add more later… It’s late!
Off to read!

Bloggiesta 2011!

All right, it’s Bloggiesta time!  I don’t think of myself as a true book blogger, but I think of my blogging as a way of talking about the books I’ve read not in a review format.  I use goodreads to keep track of the books and my ratings of them, and I am thankful for that site!  I think of this blog as a way for the book club or anyone interested to talk about the books we’re reading, what we want to read, and when we’re going to read them.   I’d also love to hear about your favorite book or writing blogs!

I learned about Bloggiesta from Bookwork with a View blog.  Through Mari’s site I clicked through to Maw Books and learned more about Bloggiesta – as well as discovered a WHOLE BIG LIST OF MORE BOOK BLOGS!  Yikes!  I guess it’s a nice thing to do on a cold weekend in January.  Find more favorites to add to my daily check and maybe organize this blog better in the meantime!

One thing I’m not very good at is tagging or categorizing posts on here.  I’m also not good at adding media to posts to make them more interesting.  So, a list of things to do would include:

1) organize the categories and tags
2) figure out other tools available in wordpress and use more of them!

Well, all this talk of fiesta-ing makes me crave a margarita!  Might have to do something about that!  And then…

Off to read!
Happy Bloggiesta!

2010

Well here we are, the last day of 2010.  It doesn’t seem that long ago that I got used to saying “twenty ten” – and now here we come “twenty eleven”!  Amazing.

I finished “Helen of Pasadena” in the wee hours… it was a fun, quick, smart romance.  It made me reschedule my appointment at the Genius Bar on Wednesday, because I had a hard time putting it down and getting out the door on time.  I turned out the light last night after finally admitting I was too tired to finish (12:40 AM) but a few minutes later turned the light on again and finished.  A fun book.  It is the book club pick for my Preston bookclub in January.  It will be fun to discuss.

Thanks to Goodreads, I think I have a pretty good list of all the books I read in 2010. In reverse chronological order they include:

  1. Helen of Pasadena
  2. Before You Know Kindness
  3. Shanghai Girls
  4. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Millennium, #3)
  5. When in Rome…: A Novel of Piazzas and Passion
  6. The Last Time I Saw You: A Novel
  7. How to Be Single
  8. Blessings
  9. Going in Circles
  10. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
  11. The Love Season
  12. The Cinderella Deal
  13. Beatrice and Virgil
  14. Away
  15. The Next Thing on My List
  16. Water for Elephants
  17. The Sleeping Beauty Proposal
  18. Everything She Thought She Wanted: A Novel
  19. Other People’s Weddings
  20. The Stormchasers
  21. Best Friends Forever
  22. The Girl Who Played with Fire
  23. The Other Woman
  24. Belong to Me
  25. Love Walked In
  26. The Beach House
  27. Firefly Lane
  28. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)
  29. The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and Friendship
  30. The Glass Castle: A Memoir
  31. Size 12 is Not Fat: A Heather Wells Mystery
  32. Chasing Harry Winston
  33. Peony in Love
  34. The Friday Night Knitting Club
  35. No Horizon Is So Far: Two Women and Their Historic Journey Across Antarctica
  36. The Cat Who Said Cheese (Cat Who…, #18)
  37. The Moment Between
  38. Slam
  39. The Help
  40. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table

Items of note in my “book world” in 2010:

  • I met three authors – Ann Bancroft, Lian Dolan and Jenna Blum.  I got to spend a lot of time with Ann and Jenna and they are both remarkable women and inspiring!
  • I read the three Millenium books and unexpectedly loved them all.
  • I read the book that inspired the start of the Cosmo Girls.
  • I listened to a few more audiobooks this year than I have in a while – although it used to be all I listened to in my car and with the death of my iPod I anticipate I’ll listen to more in 2011!
  • I plowed through a lot of books during my Ferragosto vacation.
  • 40 books = almost a book a week, which is very cool!

In 2011 I look forward to many more book club discussions, meaningful books, fun books, book blogging, and hopefully more meet-ups with authors!

Happy Wishes for a beautiful 2011!

Off to read!

A movie I do NOT want to see

The Life of Pi

On the other hand, I think this is a movie that I would not want to see.  It is so vivid in my mind and I don’t want it adapted to the big screen.  How would they do it???  It boggles my mind.  So, I’m guessing that it does somehow make it into a queue of mine someday – out of curiosity.

Water for Elephants

“Water for Elephants” trailer

I read this book this summer and really liked it!  I was a little late getting onto the bandwagon but wasn’t disappointed at all.  I look forward to seeing this movie!

Whew, December!

Not a single post in November.  Lazy?  Busy?  Hard to say… So I’m jumping back on the wagon…

December 1 I went to a book signing at J.Jill in Edina for “Helen of Pasadena” by Lian Dolan.  I’ve been a follower of the Satellite Sisters since the late 90s so it was exciting to meet one in person.  Lian is funny and quick, and I can’t wait to read her book.  I have heard only good things about it and will recommend it for our book club in January.

Currently I’m reading (plodding through) “Before You Know Kindness” by Chris Bohjalian. Plodding through mostly because I’m distracted by other things, like TV and movies and computer.  It is pretty good, although a bit ploddy sometimes.  I listened to “The Shanghai Girls” audiobook and loved that.  I like Lisa See’s books so far – my second of hers.  I have “Snow Flower and Secret Fan” on my iPod, too.  Sarah’s mom talked about how good it was, although it has graphic descriptions of foot binding in it.  Not sure how I’ll stomach that.  I also listened to a couple of fluffy audiobooks, which makes my commute more pleasant but gets me behind in my podcast listening!  🙂

Next I plan to read “Helen of Pasadena” and then “Sarah’s Key.”  I haven’t finished “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” yet, either.  I think it would be fun to re-read “The Tale of Two Cities” with Oprah’s book club, but we’ll see!

Are you ripping through books or finding other distractions during the holiday season?

Well, off to read!

Next!

All right, book readers!  Are we falling apart? 🙂  We’ll have to get a time on our schedule to get together and get a few books lined up to read.  I had planned to read all the Harry Potter books again, but since I don’t have #1 (I thought I did, but it’s #2!) I doubt that will happen within the next six weeks.  We’ll see.  Right now I’m enjoying “Going in Circles” about a woman who joins a roller derby league, and then I’m going to read “Blessings” by Anna Quindlan for my book club at work.  I have one copy left from the Book Club in a Bag, so we could read that and discuss that as well!  Just let me know…

Sarah was talking about getting a Nook or Kindle… did that happen?

Well, off to read!
Yeah!
Danette

A non-Plinky post

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!

A Strong Voice

Although it’s foremost in my mind because I’m re-reading it, this book does have a strong voice that has stayed with me since I read it the first time years ago…

Oskar is a quirky little boy who wears heavy boots because of the big awful. He is brilliant and funny and sweet and sad.

Powered by Plinky