Between the Lines discussion

I'll be reading Coraline soon Beth - the description looks really interesting.

It was pretty good. Very creepy!

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity. Poet teaches at one of New York's best public liberal arts high schools for a year and slags off her class of kids as retards, moral imbeciles and intimidated nerds. Brought back my hatred of school (and teachers). The book made me want to spit.

Emily - If I Did It is nasty. Its an entire justification by OJ of how he was a wonderful husband, even when Nicole left him, but that she was such a dreadful human being who, despite her adoration of him, only got worse. It was interesting to read the events of the hour of the actual murder. The ghost-writer was very good. He was able to make OJ's lies obvious to the reader but not obvious to OJ, who okayed every page, but is such a narcissist he couldn't possibly believe that a sensible person wouldn't see just how wonderful he was.

150 - no I don't think so. I did use to read that though. That was my only qualification for getting a bookshop!

Everyone who is contributing to the list is really reading a lot though. Good books too. I like reading people's lists.

I think I will try to read 100 books for 2009 as well. I am not sure how many books I read last year but I will read a lot during school vacations.

Emilee wrote: "You can do it Wendy. It isn't that hard!"

Now the problemis backtracking and trying to remember all the books I have read since January. I already have a list of about 16 books though.

Emilee: Yes, I think Coraline was pretty scary. It was good, though.

Emilee, I don't read that many hours in the day but I am a very fast reader. The book I'm reading now though, Kangaroo, a wild-life tour of Australia needs reading really slowly, just a few pages at a time or else there is the temptation to skim over the descriptions of birds and trees to get to the action (there isn't any!)

If you remember the OJ trial, you would probably find the book interesting. If money isn't a problem, its worth buying because the money goes to the Ron Goldman family who have set up a foundation to help the victims of violent crime http://www.rongoldmanfoundation.org/. Otherwise try and borrow the book because its quite slight, a fast read. People like OJ are worrying. He is by no means a sociopath but he looks in the mirror and he sees not his reflection but the image dictated by his huge ego.

I only joined in mid February so I was able to get those books but it was the ones I finished before then that I am trying to remember when I read them. I am pretty sure that I figured them all out and am currently reading number 17:The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

I just finished #18 : Life: an Autobiography as Told by Jack Gunthridge, a book I won here on GR.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity.
21 Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia - wonderful. What religious ecstasy actually feels like from a journalist.

Completed books '09:
1. One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (amazing book from nobel prize recipient about life in a Siberian work camp)
2. Beginner's Greek (nice novel about love...)
3. Rebecca (Last night I dreamt of Manderlay...)
4. Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay (funny book about being a new mother)
5. The Rules of Attraction (my first Brett Easton Ellis - liked it a lot!)
6. Alias Grace (real life Canadian murder mystery)
7. The Social life of dogs (funny book about the author's dogs (some of them))
8. Anna Karenina (simply amazing!!!)
9. The Year of Fog (interesting book about a child gone missing)
10. The Forest (about the history of the New Forest in UK, told in short stories about the people living there, didn't like this one very much)
11. Middlesex (Amazing book!)
12. The Audacity of Hope (interesting - especially to see the differences between US and Danish/European politics)
13. Chicago (about Egyptians muslims - a very different read from what I'm used to)
14. Hogfather (a nice Discworld novel)
15. Stolen Innocence (one of the girls from Warren Jeff's people tells her story)
16. Death and the Penguin (great novel about a man and his penguin - and the mafia)

Currently reading New York Hampshire by John Irving.
Fallen a bit behind you guys - must pick up pace soon!

I justg finished number 18: The Giver. My literacy coach at my school gave it to me and it was awesome.

Emilee, I was just floored throughout the book. It was just so unbelieavable that a few men could control so many woman and children and ruin lives like they did - without anyone standing up. I found it very interesting to read - there are quite a few spelling mistakes in it, but the story is still too good to pass over, in my opinion. It really takes you behind the scenes...
Funny that you sold candles to one of the wives!

I just finished book number 20: Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity.
21 Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
22 White Tiger. Wonderful depiction of corruption and wiliness by a charmingly two-faced character in the darkness and in the light of India.

I just finished #19, The Last Chinese Chef.

I just finished book # 23. I am actually thinking this 100 books a year challenge is possible.

This is actually really neat seeing how many books we are reading but also getting great recommends from everyone!

Stolen Innocence sounds very interesting. Dang my TBR list is just growing!!!!!!!!

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity.
21 Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
22 White Tiger.

23 Call the Midwife: a True Story of the East End in the 1950s. I read the companion book to this last year and hadn't been able to get this in the US, but now I am in the UK with my terminally-ill mother I took the opportunity to find it. You wouldn't think that the world of the 50s was so different as it is now, but this depiction of the 50s, of bombed-out London, health care where antibiotics were the new miracle drug and children played safely in the streets because there were no cars is truly another world. This, though, is also the story of a young nurse living in and operating from an inner city convent of nuns dedicated to midwifery, good cooking, the odd glass of wine and full of the most eccentric characters. Its a wonderful book, history, memoir and a full of cockney humour.

Petra, I am thinking of you and your mother.

Thanks Emilee. I appreciate that. I am with my family but strangely I feel so alone right now. I don't think its going to go on much longer though.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity.
21 Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
22 White Tiger.
23 Call the Midwife: a True Story of the East End in the 1950s.
24 Hurricanes & Hangovers: and other tall tales and loose lies from the coconut telegraph.
This is a book full of stories, essays and ramblings from a good friend of mine who has had - continues to have, many adventures in the Caribbean and the States mostly accompanied by wine! Its a good plane book, or for anywhere you want to dip in and see the funny side of island life without feeling that you have to 'Begin at the beginning and then go on 'til the end. Then stop' as the King in Alice in Wonderland advised. As I said, I do know the author, and she is given to not just exaggeration but outright invention too, so take it all with a pinch of (sea) salt.

Emilee, your target is impressive! It means an average of 3-4 days per book.

Petra you are reading so quickly!

Petra: glad you have family with you. I am so sorry.

***sending hugs***

Emilee's Completed books for 2009:

1. Clockwork Orange (pgs 192)
2. Loving Frank (pgs 362)
3. Marley & Me (pgs 466)
4. Secret Life of Bees (336)
5. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (368)
6. The Comfort of Strangers (pg 128)
7. Moby Dick (pgs 700)
8. Emotional Blackmail (pg 272)
9. A Room of One's own (pgs 112)
10. A Seperate Peace (pgs 208)
11. Nanny Diaries (pgs 320)
12. Sacred Stone: The Temple at Nauvoo (pgs 166)
13. A Grief Observed (pgs 112)
14. A Child's Garden of Verses (pgs 72)
15. The Age of Innocence (pgs 336)
16. Emma (pgs 512)
17. Jane Eyre (pgs 507)
18. War of the Worlds (pgs 224)
19. Pride and Prejudice (pgs 352)

Mirela: 100 books is only about 2 books a week. However, I keep adding books not on my list. This I must stop! But I am on track for 100 books. If you count the books I've read to my son then I have read 61 books already this year. But I'm not counting the children's books. I do read my son a real novel those I count.

I really need to finish Prodigal Summer and Handmaid's Tale today.

YAY Emilee! Are you enjoying Prod. Summer???

Love it. I think I can finish it today if I get off the computer.

Glad you're loving it, that's one of my all-time favorites.

Fiona liked it too! I just love getting great suggestions from everyone!

I pushed it on Fiona. hee hee... Oh and Jeane helped!

I just finished this club's book The Handmaid's Tale, which was #24 for me. I can't believe how much I am reading!

24? That's excellent. I've been on the computer too much lately. I need to start reading again.

Completed books '09:
1. One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (amazing book from nobel prize recipient about life in a Siberian work camp)
2. Beginner's Greek (nice novel about love...)
3. Rebecca (Last night I dreamt of Manderlay...)
4. Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay (funny book about being a new mother)
5. The Rules of Attraction (my first Brett Easton Ellis - liked it a lot!)
6. Alias Grace (real life Canadian murder mystery)
7. The Social life of dogs (funny book about the author's dogs (some of them))
8. Anna Karenina (simply amazing!!!)
9. The Year of Fog (interesting book about a child gone missing)
10. The Forest (about the history of the New Forest in UK, told in short stories about the people living there, didn't like this one very much)
11. Middlesex (Amazing book!)
12. The Audacity of Hope (interesting - especially to see the differences between US and Danish/European politics)
13. Chicago (about Egyptians muslims - a very different read from what I'm used to)
14. Hogfather (a nice Discworld novel)
15. Stolen Innocence (one of the girls from Warren Jeff's people tells her story)
16. Death and the Penguin (great novel about a man and his penguin - and the mafia)
17. Hotel New Hampshire (Never read this John Irving-novel before - loved it)
18. Man Gone Down (amazing debut - not an easy or light read in any way but very rewarding and interesting - about a father struggling to get by in today's America)

Currently I'm reading a novel by a Swedish author, John Ajvide Lindqvist's Håndteringen af Udøde (translated into English as Handling the Undead) - so far a light read about the dead coming alive. But the author isn't quite pulling it off, I think - it would be funny to see what Stephen King would have done with this idea. Although Lindqvist has just written a very powerful scene about a grandfather hearing scratching noises from his 6 years old grandson's grave...

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity.
21 Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
22 White Tiger.
23 Call the Midwife: a True Story of the East End in the 1950s.

24 Notes on a Scandal. Zoe Heller. Wonderfully-written, brilliantly-drawn characters who each vie for the title of 'most despicable person in the book' as they live through a most despicable situation of a middle-aged teacher having an affair with a young pupil and the Machiavellian machinations of an older, bitter teacher, a repressed lesbian. I would imagine it translated better into a film, especially given the stellar cast of Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, than it read as a book.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity.
21 Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
22 White Tiger.
23 Call the Midwife: a True Story of the East End in the 1950s.
24 Notes on a Scandal

25 Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz: This book, very short, very emotional, begs to be read in one sitting. Its the story of five sisters, a brother, their mother and father during WWII. The father, in the US, desperately seeking visas to bring his family to safety from Hungary receives them too late. The mother and youngest child are immediately murdered by the Nazis in the gas chambers and one sister dies later. But three sisters survive by their wits and one of them relates briefly the horror of that time in this incredibly powerful book. If you never read another book on this ultimate tale of man's inhumanity to man, then this one would give you enough of a view to understand the times and the horror

*January*
1. Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink
2. Dragon Rider, by Cornelia Funke
3. The World According to Garp, by John Irving
4. Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
5. The Handmaid's Tale, By Atwood
6. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
7. The Great Turkey Walk by Kathleen Karr
8. Through the Looking Glass And What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll
(Illustrated by Ralph Steadman)
9. Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins
10. Put me in the Zoo, by Robert Lopshire

*February*
11. The Great Wheel, by Robert Lawson
12. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
13. Lincoln: A Photobiography, by Russell Freedman
14. Lady Chatterley's Lover, By D.H.Lawrence
15. The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
16. The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad

*March*
17. Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers, by Ralph Moody
18. Deadly Exchange, by Geoffrey M. Gluckman
19. The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
20. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatriz Potter

Currently Reading

Emma, by Jane Austen
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
Cheaper by the Dozen, by Mr and Mrs Gilbreth

Last night I finished #20, The Little Giant of Aberdeen County. I don't know what I'm going to read next. Maybe Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Beth, I've heard very good things about that book, it was selected last year at a reading group I belong to but I didn't have the chance to read it.

Lorena, I just started reading it a few minutes ago. I think it's going to be great!

Can't wait to hear what you think of it, Beth, I have it on my shelf and hope to read it in the not too distant future.

Mandy and Emilee, I'm only on page 35 of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and I'm loving it. I can already tell it's going to be one of my all-time favorites! Oskar is so lovable.

Emilee wrote: "Lorena I like the list of books you've read."

Thanks Emilee, I read a little bit of everything. ;o)

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity.
21 Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
22 White Tiger.
23 Call the Midwife: a True Story of the East End in the 1950s.
24 Notes on a Scandal, Zoe Heller
25 Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz

26 Seal Doctor.This is Ken Jones own story of how, from the rescue of one injured and beached new born baby seal, he built the now world-famous National Seal Sanctuary in Gweek, Cornwall. The beginnings of a small pool and a shed in the garden have now grown to encompass many pools, a hospital and other animals, notably, otters, sea lions, donkeys, goats and horses. There are many photographs in the book which adds to the enjoyment of reading the stories of the rescued animals.
I have been to Gweek and enjoyed seeing the seals, especially the babies with their creamy white fur and huge, liquid black eyes and hope that I will be able to go again one day, more knowledgeable this time.

I think we are pretty much on a par Emilee, what's a few books here and there? I've read 9 of your books. My favourites were the Austen books and the Handmaid's Tale.

1. Flower Confidential
2. Alex & Me
3. Otherwise Normal People
4. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
5. Within These Walls
6. Kabul Beauty School
7. The Family Tree
8. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery
9. Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
10 Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel.
11 My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
12 Annie May's Black Book
13 The Dressing Station
14 The Mistress's Daughter
15 Nowhere in Africa
16 Complications - Atul
17 Plato and the Platypus Walk Into a Bar
18 Great Big Beautiful Doll
19 If I Did It
20 Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity.
21 Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
22 White Tiger.
23 Call the Midwife: a True Story of the East End in the 1950s.
24 Notes on a Scandal, Zoe Heller
25 Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz
26 Seal Doctor

27 No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels
The infiltration of the Hells Angels by undercover cop and author Jay Dobyns is as interesting from the point of view of the very real deterioration of the character Jay and metamorphosis into his alterego 'Bird' as it is from the hows and wheres of how law enforcement can run such an operation.
The book's writing is unusual in that where Jay is an involved family man and serious cop, the writing reads as measured and logical. But as his real life crumbles and he feels most alive as an (otc) drug-wired gang member, so does the writing become frenetic and disorganised. Only the impossibly unsatisfying denoument, forseeable but unexpected, saves the man, but not, sadly, the operation.

Emilee wrote: "So I though that I would be really nuts and read 100 books for 2009. Anyone else willing to join in? I am going to work on my list and post it."


I'd like to say this would be possible for me to achieve, but I, realistically, will not have the time...