Do the 2009 TBR challenge

1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
2. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
3. Madame Bovary by Flaubert
4. The Boat by Nam Le
5. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
6. The Ancestor Game by Alex Miller
7. Geography by Sophie Cunningham
8. The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide
9. The Story of Tibet by Thomas Laird
10. The Assassin by Margaret Atwood
11. Nine Lives: True Spy Stories From Mata Hari to Kim Philby by Fitzroy Maclean
12. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
13. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
14. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale
15. The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman
16. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
17. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
18. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
19. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

The latest book I finished on my TBR list was The Book Thief. Review to come soon but loved it – one of the best books I’ve read this year.

My TBR Lite List, completely crossed off:
1. A.R. Ammons, Garbage

2. Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

3. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools

4. John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath

5. Mary Roach, Stiff

6. Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

I finished Garbage by A.R. Ammons on October 12. It’s a book-length poem, all written in couplets. It’s about literal garbage (what goes into the landfill) but also about the author’s aging, and more broadly about what at first we value in adulthood and then don’t value anymore as we get older. (Things that are not valued any longer are: garbage.)

The book is short but it too me a loooong time to read. The couplet style, and also the author’s strange punctuation (nary a period in sight, colons sprinkled liberally throughout, the overall effect being that every chapter was one long run-on sentence) were always getting in the way, for me.

Right, Im crossing off books 7 & 10 even though I havent read thm all the way through. Ive read about 1/2 of the first anf 1/3 of the second, and its enough for me to know that I dont want to read anymore, and Im not going to force myself for the sake of it, when there are so many other books out there I would enjoy more!

However, it still leaves 4 on my list, one a month… not sure Im going to get through all of them plus a bunch of Jill Mansell books I have awaiting me (plus all the Jodi Picoult books I am desperate to get!)Will have to make time to read during the day if Im going to fit it all in…

1. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
2. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
3. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
4. The Accidental – Ali Smith
5. 26a – Diana Evans
6. Eve Green – Susan Fletcher
7. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
8. My Best Friend’s Girl – Dorothy Koomson
9. Status Anxiety – Alain De Botton
10. The Psycology of Childhood – Peter Mitchell
11. When Will There Be Good News? – Kate Atkinson
12. Deception Point – Dan Brown

My TBR Lite List:

1. A.R. Ammons, Garbage

2. Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

3. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools

4. John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath

5. Mary Roach, Stiff

6. Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

I finished Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach on August 15.

If you donate your body to medical science or scientific research, what happens to it? Mary Roach follows this question to some very interesting but sometimes gruesome answers. Some are used, as we would expect, at medical schools for dissection in anatomy classes, or for continuing ed classes for surgeons to practice new techniques on. But other cadavers end up in other sorts of research: at forensics labs, at auto-crash-test labs, all sorts of other kinds of research. The book is written with a nice blend of tacftulness and humor.

This book is not for everyone—I am used to reading over my lunch break, but this was not the kind of book I could read while eating! (The forensics lab chapter was the grossest. And a brief history of the guillotine and related experiments was almost as bad.) But if you can stomach the subject matter, Stiff is actually a very entertaining read.

Have already started book #6—the end of this Challenge is in sight!

All the way through this book, I kept thinking I must slow down and savour it because as soon as the 3rd one’s released there’s no more of this. But I couldn’t. I was compelled to read as much of this story as I could as often as I could. Only one more and then this man’s literary magic is lost to the world forever:(

This is the 2nd time I’ve read this book. I read it not long after it came out and I couldn’t really work out what all the fuss was about. I thought I should give it another shot.

I know most people rave about this book (including Oprah) but apart from the section on Bali which I found enjoyable my opinion hasn’t changed from last time. I can’t put my finger on why. The writing was ok, she seems nice enough… Maybe some books and some people just don’t go togther.

1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
2. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
3. Madame Bovary by Flaubert
4. The Boat by Nam Le
5. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
6. The Ancestor Game by Alex Miller
7. Geography by Sophie Cunningham8. The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide
9. The Story of Tibet by Thomas Laird
10. The Assassin by Margaret Atwood
11. Nine Lives: True Spy Stories From Mata Hari to Kim Philby by Fitzroy Maclean
12. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
13. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
14. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale
15. The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman
16. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer17. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott18. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer19. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

For the past several months, I have been working on both “Minders of Make-Believe” and “Fortress of Solitude”. Neither one is what I had been hoping for, and both are proving to be much slower than I had wished.

I think I thought “Minders…” was going to be literary analysis, why the people who decide what “classics” are choose what they do. Instead, it’s a very dry history of “who’s who” in children’s literature. Which, I guess, is all new information to me, and good to know. But not what I had in mind.

“Fortress…” came heavily recommended. But nearly a third of the way into it, and it’s still not going anywhere. And not in a “going somewhere, but I don’t know what it is or why” sort of way, but in a snotty lit-trit-chure fashion where the point seems to be that it’s not going anywhere at all, that life is ust a futile series of incidents without much direction on the protagonist’s part. And… well… I’m over it. That’s not how I live my life, and I’m entirely bored with reading that kind of story, as well.

So I’ll finish both of them. But hopefully the rest of the list will go faster again, once I get through this slow and painful selection of readings. Better luck next year picking titles, I guess.

The third Diane Duane book (which has been listed as ‘coming soon’ for three years now) isn’t complete yet. She’s got seven chapters on line and abandoned it some two years ago.

Well, crud. Now what?

Imriel nó Montrève de la Courcel has grown up and returned to Terre d’Ange, agreeing to marry the Alban princess Dorelei. He cannot do this with an open heart as he he has fallen in love with his cousin Sidonie. This cannot be openly consummated however, despite their God’s prefect to “Love as thy will,” because his mother and her father were both traitors.

This love for another proves to be Imriel’s undoing as a bear-shaman, Morwen, uses it to distract him long enough to allow another to kill Dorelei who is nearing her birthing time.
Heartbroken, he wanders back to Terre d’Ange where he takes up with Sidonie once more.