Booker Prize Longlist 2013 Announced

Could anything pull me out of a blogging hiatus faster than a Booker Prize list?  I think not!  Just as a quick reminder, the Booker Prize is a literary prize chosen from a citizen of the British Commonwealth, including Ireland and Zimbabwe.  Here is the list for 2013:

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

 The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

 Harvest by Jim Crace

 The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris

 The Kills by Richard House

 The Lowland by Jumpha Lahiri

 Unexploded by Alison Macleod

 Transatlantic by Colum McCann

 Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

 A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

 The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

 The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

This is quite a list.  It looks pretty impressive.  The only author I've even read on this list is Lahiri, so I feel like I really should make a stab at this one.  Have you read any of these or see any that you would like to try out?

"Best of 2011"

Thank you to all who joined in for a fun "12 to 2012" read-a-thon on New Year's Eve.  Thankfully, I finished the final two books I needed to complete my Goodreads' goal for the year.  For the past four years we've been in Hawaii, surrounded by friends, food, and fireworks (and more FIREWORKS), so I knew that it would be a blue holiday if I didn't do something that I loved.  While I read, I introduced my mother to Downton Abbey (which she had never heard of), and heading to a movie or going out was completely out the window.  After that point, all my mother wanted to do was watch Downton Abbey and I could stay and read!  It was a really lovely evening.  Thanks again to all who joined in!  It's always fun meeting new people and meeting up with friends I've known for awhile.

As for 2011, I had to stew on my "Best of" post this year.  When I thought back over the year, it felt like it went so fast that I couldn't think of a single book that knocked me off my socks.  That's not true though.  Once I really went back over my 100 (Woo hoo!) books that I'd read, about fourteen jumped out at me. 

In order from the beginning of the year until now, here are my top ten reads of 2011:

This was such a Gone With the Wind meets Jane Austen sort of twist, that I couldn't help but grin.  There were some fun name dropping and Austen-related story lines that you would only catch if you were a fan, but overall it was just a really good Austen-reading good time!  (Review:  Pemberley Ranch by Jack Caldwell)

I was actually a little shocked when I saw the mixed reviews on this book.  The sweetness of the story, with the gut-wrenching twist to it was a surprise and a beautiful gift all at the same time.  This was one of those reads that I couldn't put down.  (Review:  Things I Know About Love by Kate Le Vann)

 

This was no light read.  Considering that it took me an hour to read 15 of these weighty pages, it took me over 8 months to finish.  Even then, I skipped some of the chapters (on horticulture and such).  I loved that this biography really took me into Wharton's world, in a very academic sort of way.  I had missed the depth that Hermione Lee provided here, and considering what a fan I have always been of Wharton's work, this was an amazingly insightful read that taught me more than I ever thought about the author, the time period, and the other artists with which she surrounded herself. (Review:  Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee)

How could I NOT mention Anna and the French Kiss this year?  Having read both of Perkins's novels in the same year, I really was in for a treat.  I found the teenage voice in this novel to be spot on with what I knew of my students (and what I remember of my own teenage years).  The romance felt real, the tension created was palpable, and the location a delight.  What was there not to like about this read?  (Review:  Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins)

I really debated about whether or not Shadowfever would make my "best of" list this year.  Although it drove me absolutely batty with its constant jerking me around (is he or isn't he, is she or isn't she), I really got into this series and had to give Moning credit for creating a story that I felt like I simply couldn't predict.  In some cases you don't mind predicting what will happen, but when you can't and it all makes sense somehow, it's a treat.  These were not for the faint of heart, but for friends that could handle it, I was out recommending this series left and right!  (Review:  Shadowfever by Karen Marie Moning)

So here's the surprise read of my year, Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe.  The name dropping and anecdotes in this autobiography were infectious and tantalizing.  I've never really been a rabid fan of Rob Lowe, but always kind of appreciated his acting (and let's not forget his handsome face).  This was actually one of my first audio books that I listened to after returning to school and I found myself, many a night, not wanting to get out of my car.  What a great Hollywood and human tale!  I highly recommend this autobiography if you haven't read on in awhile.  (Review:  Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe)

Here was another shockingly fun read this past year.  Although I really enjoy poetry, I couldn't have imagined that a little book of poetry would win me over as much as this one did.  With all of its cheekiness and "bro" oriented storytelling, I really enjoyed these poems.  They have some great classical connections, but I can't exactly take them into  my classroom.  Regardless, for my own personal reading, I found them a little naughty, a bit ironic, and very funny!  (Review:  Broetry by Brian McGackin)

Yep.  Both Perkins novels made my "best of" list this year.  For sheer enjoyment, originality, and modern storytelling, Perkins really gets my vote.  Lola was a bit quirky, but every bit as vulnerable (if not more so) than Anna.  I love the originality in her stories and yet the way she brings the YA chick read into out times.  Altogether, I just really enjoy her novels!  (Review:  Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins)

I don't know that my year would be complete without a great Austen-esque novel by Sharon Lathan!  This year I thought that Miss Darcy Falls in Love came out of nowhere, with its stand alone qualities, to recapture more of that Austen story and time period that I so love.  I'm an obvious fan of all things written by Lathan, so no surprises here that another of her books would make my top 10 list.  (Review:  Miss Darcy Falls in Love by Sharon Lathan)

My final choice this year was a delightful British Chick Lit. novel, Carrie Goes Off the Map by Phillipa Ashley that I recently read and reviewed.  This is now my third by Ashley, and I really have grown to love the escapist nature of her novels.  When I need a bit of a reprieve from my own busy life, Ashley's novels with their strong female characters and romantic tension really fit the bill.  (Review:  Carrie Goes Off the Map  by Phillipa Ashley)

This has been one of the most intense years of my life, professionally speaking.  Because of that, I noticed that most of my personal reading has been escapist reads.  I didn't want to be pushed and I didn't want to read with a pen!  It was interesting to see that come through here in my list this year.  

As for 2012, what are my goals?  Well, I've decided to forgo reading challenges once again.  I have no idea when my career will slow down, so I'm riding the wave for now and getting out of debt!  It really is all good, but super busy, so I take life one step and one day at a time.  I did, however, join the Goodreads Challenge and have given myself another 100 books to push myself with during this upcoming year.  I look forward to seeing what my list will look like next year!

"New" Classic List?

Hi from Idaho! It's a little traumatic since my cousins are growing up way too quickly and I seem to be watching it all happen. Scary.

Anyway, I re-read Twilight this past week, purely out of a selfish indulgence and need to read something that I had already read before so that I didn't have to engage my totally dead-head brain.


Doc and I are in a hotel in Rexburg tonight (THANK YOU DOC for coming with me to keep me sane!), so I'm going to settle in and read a little before going to bed.

Okay, so I noticed on one of the many book blogs I follow, that Entertainment Weekly has posted a "new" classics list. I thought I'd post it for your viewing pleasure...if you like seeing how much there is out there yet to read! Maybe I'm the only one to feel like mount "TBR" (to be read) is always looming over me. :) Anyway, I'll post the list here, and will bold the ones I've managed to read (for my own way of seeing what I've done).

Until later...bye from Idaho!

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)

Banned Book Week

With this being Banned Book Week, I've been thinking a lot about what censorship means today. I guess because I'm such a book nut, the idea of taking someone's opinions in reading and forcing them on someone else just seems so wrong! Granted, I have books I don't suggest reading, but taking away people's freedom of choice over one's own perception of right and wrong seems downright evil. Playing judge and jury for another human being, without it being your position is pretty scary ground to tread.

Anyway, enough of my soapbox! One of the blogs I follow posted this list and I thought it might be interesting/fun for you to consider. Many of these books have also appeared on the banned book list. Anyway, I hope you're all finding more time to read than I am as of late, but I do see more reading in my near future! :) I'm still trying to decide if I want to watch the VP debates between Biden and Palin tonight...scary.

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them! :)"

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

And so there you have it--49 read. As I've mentioned before, I've concluded that I can never die if only because I have too much to read...oh, and of course, do (I felt obligated to include the "do" portion). :)