Tag GoodReads

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

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Cover of "The Girl Who Fell from the Sky&...

Cover of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

I’m trying to figure out how to get goodreads to update my blog, but it’s not gonna happen. And I hate the thought of not posting about a book that I read!

This book came from Sarah and it was a sweet little read! My Goodreads review: I really enjoyed this book. it was a quick read but I really liked the development of the characters and the plot. She did a great job packing a punch into a nice sweet book.

Goodreads summary: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky: This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, here is a portrait of a young girl – and society’s ideas of race, class, and beauty.

A sweet book I can heartily recommend!

P.S. – THIS IS MY 100th BLOG POST on this site! Sarah posted once, so I guess it’s my 99th! 🙂  Good times.  Still not enough comments, though!!! C’mon friends!

Off to read! (Today’s theme: Happiness!)

Half-Full

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Factura Electrónica 2011

Here comes the second half! Image via Wikipedia

It’s hard to believe that 2011 is half over, now that July (and some steamy summer weather) has arrived.  I know that writing my “end of 2010 letter” in February probably makes mid-year creep up sooner, but nonetheless, it is amazing how fast the time goes.

I set a goodreads reading goal for 2011 of 55 books.  I’m happy to say I’m ahead of the game, with 30 books read at the halfway point!  And much summer reading time still to come!

I’m half-done with book 7 of Harry Potter.  Unfortunately, the library audiobook was missing a disc (ugh) so I’ll be reading a little bit of the book again.  It’s just so good.  And I’m so excited to make the deadline of getting all the books read before the movie comes out halfway through July!

I’m still reading way too many book blogs.  It can overwhelm.  And it impinges on book reading time!  I’ll have to start culling my blogger feed.  And the book blogs only make my to-read list longer on goodreads!  Not a bad problem, I guess, but I think for now I’ll work on the pile of books by my bed.

I just finished my third book by Katie Fforde, and they were fun but not the best fluffy British books I’ve ever read.  I love Jane Green books; Marian Keyes is light and fun; and you know of my love for all things Binchy.  I’d put them all before another Katie Fforde book.

I’m looking forward to a great second half of 2011 – the first half has had some downers so it can only get better, right?  Since my glass is always half full, I know it to be true!

Happy July, all!
Off to read…

Tra La!

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Ah, one more May blog. 🙂 

It was a good holiday weekend full of hard work!  Not a lot more reading done, unfortunately, but I did finish “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” and it was enjoyable.  As I said on Goodreads, I was hesitant to read it, thinking it would be sad and heavy, but it really wasn’t!  It was sweet and told mostly from the perspective of a 12 year old boy and the 50 year old man he becomes.  It was nice.

I started listening to “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” today, and it starts out hard to listen to!  It starts out with the Prime Minister being visited by the Ministry of Magic and then Snape meeting with Bellatrix and then a lot of newspaper headlines.  I don’t think we see Harry until chapter four (maybe three), so it just feels different than the other books.  Thankfully it’s shorter than the last few, so I should be able to rip through it!

I also downloaded my second library e-book!  A Diane Mott Davidson book, just for fun.  I’ll have to see if I can get the last few books on my Spring Reading Thing list from the library.  Not many left!  Yay!

Well, not many days of work left, that’s for sure.  It’s amazing how much better I feel after time away.  I am dreading the next three days – well, maybe dreading is too strong, but I’m really hoping for strength to get through them.  I have a LOT to do!

But now, I’m off to read!  Blogs before bed!

Frigid Spring Friday

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"And have you a pale blue dress on?"

"And have you a pale blue dress on?"Image via Wikipedia

Well, not too frigid and beautifully sunny, but cold for spring!

I finished listening to “Jane Eyre” this week – and wrapped up the Jane Eyre challenge on Goodreads!  Kind of a silly little challenge, but fun.  I had to pick my favorite quote, and there were pages and pages to choose from!  I didn’t read beyond the first page of choices and really liked the third quote down.  Lazy or not, it grabbed me.  I’ll even add it to my book quotes page :).  It was: “I would always rather be happy than dignified.”  It’s always good to choose happiness.  As I said on my goodreads review, I really love the language in these old books.  I love when they say the door was “unclosed” rather than plain old “open.”  I love it when they take paragraphs to set a scene or describe someone’s character.  I’m very glad I read it.  I’m sure I’ll see the movie and I’m looking forward to that, too. The only frustration I had with the audiobook was the quality of the CDs.  Many had scratches and the last CD seemed especially bad.  So the climax when I should be learning about what happened to Mr. Rochester was frustrating to listen to.  I miss my iPod for downloading audiobooks.

Another book on my Spring Thing list that I finished this week was “Mockingbird.”  It was a YA book about a girl with Asperger’s Syndrome and told from her perspective.  At first I was frustrated with the fact that it was another book about a person with ASD who was dealing with tragedy.  But I got a little hooked by her voice and the way it was written so that I could really hear her voice.  I had a little tear at the end, although I was racing to finish the little thing so I could return it to the library on time.  It’s worth reading.  It is a lot less cryptic than “The Serious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,” in that you know almost immediately what is going on.  But it is a YA novel, so not too surprising.

So last night I started a Maeve Binchy book called “Heart and Soul.”  I haven’t read a Binchy book in ages and it just feels like coming home!  I even turned on the light early this morning so that I could read a little before I started my day!  And I”m going to read a little now before heading out for the evening!  Woot Woot!  I’ll have to look at the list of all her books and see if I have missed many.  Don’t think it’s possible!

Heading out tonight to a late movie!  Hope I can stay awake!  I’m looking forward to seeing “Cedar Rapids.”  It’s gotta be a LOT better than the last one I saw in the theatre – “Take Me Home Tonight.”  Wow.  That music video advertising that movie got me inside, but it wasn’t really worth it.  Oh well.  Any night at the movies is a good night!  The most recent netflix movies I’ve seen are:  “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and “Life as You Know It.”  Yesterday “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” came in the mail.  I think it’s a Woody Allen flick.

Gotta love movies and books!
And now… off to read!

Monday meandering…

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Decorative header displayed before Chapter I f...

Decorative header displayed before chapter 1 from Jane Eyre Image via Wikipedia

I’m so looking forward to crawling into bed in a few minutes and reading some more in “One Day” before bed.  We drove to Des Moines this weekend and I got to sit in the backseat and read… something I haven’t done in a LONG time!  I’m usually the driver, so being driven and being able to read in the car (thankfully that hasn’t changed) is a blessing!  I’m really liking the book, and I’m about half done.  I’m also almost done withe “Brava, Valentine” on audio – put in the last CD before I got out of the car on Friday – and then I’m going to try “Jane Eyre” on audio!  I’ve never read it and I signed up for the goodreads challenge to read it before the movie comes out mid-March.  My second goodreads challenge, for the record!

I skimmed through my blog reading and came across a list of contemporary books (1983-2008) that may become classics.  It was a list created by Entertainment Weekly, so not too high brow, maybe.  I’ll post it and welcome your thoughts on it.  I skimmed the list (lots of skimming tonight) and think I’ve read less than 20 of the 100. I love lists.  🙂

It’s Marissa’s birthday today.  Hard to believe that she could be 23 years old.  We had a great weekend celebrating together and since she’s moving home I’m looking forward to a whole bunch more quality time with her.  Technically she’s moving into mom and dad’s home, but it will still be close and nice to have her around.  I think I’ll starting thinking of the ‘guest room’ at my house as Marissa’s room.  That’s exciting.

So, what are you reading?  What have you finished reading?  Have you ever read “Jane Eyre”?  What do you think of these ‘contemporary classics’?  Any that you will put on your TBR list?

Well, off to read!

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)