read 40 books in 2008

So good. As good as the last one? Yes, I think it may have been.

If I enjoyed all books as much as I enjoyed this one, I would never leave the house or pick up the vacuum again.

A Christmas gift from Mom.

Ah, the fug girls, how very very bitchy and wonderful you are.

Such a cozy read. I have had it for quite some time but had never read it (shocker!) so I put it in the Christmas box. When it came out this year, I took it upstairs and read the stories slowly to savour.

Two Anne excerpts welcomed as old friends and many new stories written for magazines. Some wonderful, some adequate but all in that great Montgomery style. Very cozy and heart-warming.

This may be my favorite of Meg Cabot’s books. I’d been a bit off her after Size 14 Is Not Fat Either and the last Princess Diaries book but this was quite a fun read.

Read it in less than a day too, which is saying quite a lot with the amount of free time one has and all.

I heard the author on NPR and thought he sounded charming. So I listed this on paperbackswap and one day it came to my house.

More engaging than I might have thought. It’s really a lot of short biographies of some renowned women (Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf), some who influenced the renowned (the Bronte’s aunt, the horrible “aunt” of Rudyard Kipling), and some who were just interesting.

I think I found these biographies particularly interesting since the focus of the story is the family interaction, not the life achievements. A different way of looking at people.

I’ve been working on two books for over a month now. Way slowing me down. Both of them are really fascinating and well-written and delightful but are taking me forever to finish as they aren’t exactly bedtime books, you know? This is the first of them.

Sarah Vowell has really found her milieu with these history books. I love her other essays but in this book she uses her odd voice and perspective to make this new and fresh.

I love history but I can rarely read it because it’s so often dry. And it makes me feel horrible about myself as a white oppressor, but I digress. But this is great. Readable, funny, sad…

And poor President Garfield! I’ll never forget who he and Chester Arthur are among all those bearded presidents again.

Much better than the last one. Not quite as good as the first one.
I’ve read all in this series that I have and I think I’m done now.

Two Princess Diaries shorts – Valentine Princess and The Princess Present
Not as exasperating as the recent full books but still pretty frustrating. I really hope that the final books bring some sort of satisfying resolution to the Mia/ Lily relationship because honestly, if Mia is overanxious and self-defeating, Lily is just a heartless bitch. One f the worst best friends in teen lit who doesn’t actually cross over to frenemy territory – at least not in Mia’s mind.

and Mutts 8.
Oh Mutts, so cute and cuddly.

I got a number of the strip compilations from Paperback Swap and have been tearing through them. interesting to see the early ones from the ‘70s and how much they are about reconciling the role of the housewife to the role of the liberated woman.

Fun to read but no need to search out the rest since a lot of them are being reprinted now in the paper.

• I’ve Got the One-More_Washload Blues
• Is This “One of Those Days,” Daddy?
• Keep the Home Fries Burning
• It’s All Downhill From Here
• If This Is a Lecture, How Long Will It Be? (This was my favorite, I’d never read these teen year strips.
• Family Business

Counting each and 1/2 book, that’s three books

Brief thoughts here

I’ve been totally bogged down in What Should I Do with My Life, which is fascinating and genius, but not always what I want to read when I’m about to sleep. It provokes too much thought.

But this short story got in as an easy to carry book when I was out.