Book Addiction

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, and for that I do have to apologize.  I was away all weekend in St. Louis for a good friend’s bachelorette party (I’m actually her maid of honor in the upcoming wedding), and I got exactly ZERO reading done this weekend… it was packed with festivities!  I had anticipated reading at least part of the six hour car ride there, but ended up spending most of that time lost in conversation, which is always nice.  So anyways, I did finish one book last week which I’ll be reviewing possibly tonight, but before that, I have to post about some giveaways and the fact that I decided to join another (!!!) challenge.

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So, the giveaways.  THREE bloggers are doing the Hatchette Book Group 14 book giveaway right now… this is INSANE.  You have the opportunity to win so many books!!  Go check out Bookroomreviews, Musings of a Bookish Kitty, and Bookshipper if you’d like to enter these amazing contests. 

Also, Dar at Peeking Between the Pages is giving away a copy of The Host by Stephenie Meyer.  Go check it out immidiately for a chance to win!  And hurry - this one ends Thursday!  This is a book that a LOT of people have their eyes on, so I’m sure there will be plenty of competition, but there’s always a chance that YOU could be the lucky winner!

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And last, my decicion to join yet ANOTHER challenge (when I’m well aware that I probably won’t be able to finish the ones I’m currently enrolled in).  It is the New Classics Challenge, hosted by Lost in a Good Story.  It just sounds like so much fun, and I already own a lot of these books.  The list is from Entertainment Weekly, and apparently they decided that all of these books will be considered the “best reads” from 1983 to 2003.  I’ve already read some of the books on the list, and I own several others, so I figured this is an easy challenge and hopefully a fun one too.  I’m going to color red the ones I’ve already read and then list at the bottom the books I plan to read for the challenge.

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 (199
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 (198
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (199
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 (198
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 (199
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000) - I am in the middle of this trilogy right now
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (198
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (198
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (199
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 (199
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 (199
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 (199
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (198
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

And here is what I’ll be reading:

1. The Road - Cormac McCarthy

2. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genious - Dave Eggers

3. Bel Canto - Ann Patchett

4. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

5. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

6. Holes - Louis Sachar

Ok, now it’s time for me to get some actual reading done… I haven’t finished a book in WAY too long.  I should have a review of Savage Inequalities up tomorrow, for anyone who cares.

I’ve decided to join Kristi’s What an Animal! reading challenge.  Here are the rules:

The rules are simple:
1. Read at least 6 books that have any of these requirements:
a. an animal in the title of the book
b. an animal on the cover of the book
c. an animal that plays a major role in the book
d. a main character that is or turns into an animal (define that however you’d like ;>)).

2. The animal can be any type of animal (real or fictitious)–dog, cat, monkey, wolf, snake, insect, hedgehog, aardvark…dragons, mermaids, centaurs, fairies, vampires…you get the idea…

3. Challenge runs from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009. You can still sign up after July 1st as long as you can get 6 books read by June 30th ;>).
4. Books can be fiction or nonfiction.
5. You may make a list of books at the beginning of the challenge or just list them as you find them.
6. Books may be swapped out at anytime (assuming you made a list to begin with).
7. Crossover books with other challenges is permitted and encouraged.
8. You don’t have to blog or write a review, but you can if you want to.
9. Sign up with Mr. Linky below. Please sign up with the specific post announcing the challenge if you are a blogger. If you do not blog, sign up with your name and leave the URL field blank. Thanks!
10. Have fun!!

And here is my list:

1. The Chronicles of Chrestomanci Volume 1 by Diana Wynne Jones (cat on the cover)

2. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (lizard on the cover)

3. The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan (birds on the cover)

4.  The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (horse on the cover)

5.  And Sometimes Why by Rebecca Johnson (beetle on the cover)

6.  God’s Politics by Jim Wallis (elephant and donkey on the cover)

My challenge shelf is definitely explanding at a rapid rate… hopefully I can actually complete the majority of these that I’ve been signing up for!

As if I’m not already signed up for enough challenges, I decided to do two more.  I am rationalizing this by the fact that all the books I’m going to read for both challenges are already on my TBR shelves, and I really just need an excuse to read them.  That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway…

The first one is Trish’s Classics Challenge.  I’m going to go the simplest route, and just read five classics.  Here are my selections -

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

2. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The second one that I’ll be joining is the Raved-About Reads Challenge.  I will be reading ten books that I have heard a lot about from many different people, have been meaning to read for a while, and have just not yet gotten to.  So here’s my list for that one -

1, 2, and 3. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

4. The Sister by Poppy Adams

5. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

6. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

7. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

8. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

9. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

10. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

The great thing about this second one is that it’s ongoing, with no deadline, so I don’t have to worry about making sure I read these ten by a certain time, and if I get sidetracked and start reading everything else I want to read, that’s totally ok.

I have officially completed the 2008 TBR Challenge!  This is the first challenge I signed up for when I started blogging in January, and the first challenge I have completed.  I changed my selections a few times, but here’s the final list (reviews can be found by clicking to the “2008 book list” tab):

1.  The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan

2.  Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

3.  Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

4.  Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

5.  Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel

6.  In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

7.  Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie

8.  Housekeeping _ Marilynne Robinson

9.  Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

10.  Gap Creek - Robert Morgan

11.  Cane River - Lalita Tademy

12.  ‘Tis - Frank McCourt

Overall, I would say my favorite on the list was Never Let Me Go, and my least favorite would have to be a tie between Cane River and Sense and Sensibility… and Housekeeping.  Wow, there were a lot of books I didn’t enjoy so much.  Oh well… at least I finished them.

Ok everyone, here is my list of books I’ll be reading for Renay’s Herding Cats challenge.  We are supposed to pick a minimum of 3 books from the HUGE master list, but I’m feeling a bit ambitious so I picked 6.  And here they are:

1. Inkheart - Cornelia Funke

2. The Girls - Lori Lassens

3. Atonement - Ian McEwan

4. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

5. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

6. The Road - Cormac McCarthy

And the best part is, these are all books I’ve had on my shelves already and have been desperately meaning to read.  Nothing like an interesting challenge to kick my reading into gear a little bit!  

So this is Renay’s challenge, which I just decided to join, called 342,725 Ways to Herd Cats.  Why she is calling it that, I haven’t a clue, but I love the idea of the challenge.  The point is to recommend 10 books that you love, she will create a master list of everyone’s recommendations, and then you must pick at least 3 books from that list to read for the challenge.  Fun, right?  Well, here is my list.

1. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell

2. Love Walked In - Marisa de los Santos

3. An Inconvenient Truth - Al Gore

4. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

5. Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld

6. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

7. House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus III

8. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - Rebecca Wells

9. Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson

10. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

I will let you all know when I decide which three recommendations I plan to read! (I’m hoping to find three that I already have in my massive TBR pile.)

I am officially joining Joy’s NonFiction Five Challenge.  I am a person who enjoys nonfiction as much as, if not more than at times, fiction, so this challenge is particularly exciting for me.  I have at least 15 or 20 nonfiction books currently in my TBR pile, so it was really hard to choose just five.  In fact, I was unable to choose just five, so I’m going with six (I would have liked to go with ten but I restrained myself).  Here is my list:

1. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools - Jonathan Kozol

2. Class Matters - correspondents of the New York TImes

3. Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion - edited by Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont

4. The Assault on Reason - Al Gore

5. We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists - edited by Melody Berger

6. Dispatches From the Edge - Anderson Cooper

So I decided today to join another challenge, mostly because it is going to be pretty easy and will definitely help me reach my goal of reading 100 books this year.  The challenge is The Novella Challenge and it is hosted by Trish over at Hey Lady!  The challenge is to read 6 novellas from April to September 2008.  A novella is defined as a short novel between 100-250 pages (well that is Trish’s definition anyways and it works for me just fine).  My list is as follows:

1.  Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

2.  Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie

3.  Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

4.  Shopgirl - Steve Martin

5.  The Pearl - John Steinbeck

6.  Maggie: A Girl of the Streets - Stephen Crane

I will get started reading these as soon as April hits, so wish me luck!

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

From the back cover:

To the outside world, they seemed to have it all.  Cassie Barrett, a renowned anthropologist, and Alex Rivers, one of Hollywood’s hottest actors, met on the set of a motion picture in Africa.  They shared childhood tales, toasted the future, and declared their love in a fairy-tale wedding.  But when they returned to California, something altered the picture of their perfect marriage.  A frightening pattern took shape - a cycle of hurt, denial, and promises, thinly veiled by glamour.  Torn between fear and something that resembled love, Cassie wrestled with questions she never dreamed she would face:  How could she leave?  Then again, how could she stay?

My thoughts:

This book was pretty ok.  I enjoyed the way Picoult started the novel; Cassie had amnesia for the first 100 pages from some sort of accident or event that we did not know anything about (and neither did she).  And slowly, as Cassie begins to remember the event that caused her to forget her entire past, she starts to remember.  And in the remembering, she tells us her story.  Picoult’s masterful story telling is at it again in this book; I really think she is an excellent weaver of stories and really illustrates her characters’ personalities so well that you understand them and sometimes even like the most flawed of characters.  But although I enjoyed the book and got through it very quickly, it wasn’t as good as some of her others.  There was not nearly as much suspense, not too many unanswered questions throughout, and it was definitely missing a twist, especially since I’m so used to major twists in Picoult’s books.  If you are a fan of hers, though, I would still recommend reading this one.

Rating:  85 out of 100.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

From amazon.com:

With more than five million copies sold, Flowers for Algernon is the beloved, classic story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of Algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse. In poignant diary entries, Charlie tells how a brain operation increases his IQ and changes his life. As the experimental procedure takes effect, Charlie’s intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment seems to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance–until Algernon begins his sudden, unexpected deterioration. Will the same happen to Charlie?

My thoughts:

Wow did I love this book.  Seriously, I had been wanting to read it for so long, but kept putting it off because for some strange reason, I assumed I wouldn’t like it.  But really, it is such an excellent story and I LOVED the character of Charlie.  None of the other characters were really fleshed out, but Charlie (obviously he was the narrator) was so wonderful to read.  This book was incredibly sad for me too, I found myself feeling very depressed about midway through the book and continuing throughout.  But still it is such an excellent story and I will be recommending this to everyone I know.

Rating: 95 out of 100.

And Flowers for Algernon is book 2 for my TBR challenge and book 1 for the What’s In a Name challenge.

Read Alessandra’s review here.

So I was browsing around on some other book blogs and I came accross this challenge which sounds fun and pretty simple, so I decided to go ahead and join.  The books that I will be reading for it are:

1.  A book with a name in its title:

Sarah by Marek Halter

2.  A book with a place in its title:

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan

3.  A book with an animal in its title:

Female Chauvinist Pigs - Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy

4.  A book with a color in its title:

Blood Orange by Drusilla Campbell

5.  A book with a weather event in its title:

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

6.  A book with a plant in its title:

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes  (also being read for the 2008 TBR Challenge)