Between the Lines discussion

Fiona how many days a week do you work and how many do you read!!!!! lol

Fiona - what did you think of McCullough's Tim? I read it years ago and thought it the oddest book ever.

Petra, I don't work as I am a SAHM to a partially disabled daughter and 2 sons. Depends on what I read and when.

I listened to the Audio for it and thought it was ok, but had never read or heard anything from her before. Would definately listen to more of her books. What about you?

You don't work! I would have thought that you work very hard indeed.

My SIL is a semi-SAHM (she works half-one day a week) to a disabled son, a hormonal teenage daughter and a quite normal son. She works very hard indeed. As I am sure you do.

I can't do audio at all. I can't concentrate enough. The only other McCullough book I've read is the Thorn Birds which was wonderful.

Christina Stind wrote: "[w:]e have a man who is currently the official spokesperson for HA Denmark and he has written a couple of books (one about his escape from the police and Denmark after he shot the leader from another group). ..."

I would be interested to read this book, but only if I could get it for free. I have no respect at all for the Hell's Angels: they are society's rejects for very good reasons, and wouldn't want to put a penny in any one of their coffers. That said, I do find books about them interesting.

Petra, I'm not sure if he has been translated - I checked here on goodreads and he's only listed with a german edition of one of his books...
You can see him here: Jørn Jønke Nielsen

There has been some talk here about whether it was right that public libraries have bought these books because the state then supports HA ... My opinion is that every book published in Denmark should be available at the library...

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
28 Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish
29 This Child is Mine
30 Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir
31 Nineteen Minutes
32 Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

33 Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
If I had known this book was the first part of a trilogy - the other books as yet unwritten - and that the book was not complete unto itself, in other words, this saga is a serial rather than a series, I would probably not have bought it. And then I would have missed a book interesting for its historical period (the Opium Wars with China) about which I knew nothing, for its finely-drawn characters and general good-all-round storytelling.

This is really a 5-star book, but I am only giving it 4-stars because any serious review would be a spoiler, and this book is so good I wouldn't want to do that, and because I am pissed off at the author for finishing the story quite arbitarily and without having published the next chapter, the next book in the trilogy. All I can say to Amitav Ghosh, is hurry up man, I'm waiting, what happens next???

I just finished Q & A, #28.

JAN 1 - APRIL 30, 2009

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
28 Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish
29 This Child is Mine
30 Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir
31 Nineteen Minutes
32 Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
33 Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

34 Le Bal and Snow in Autumn by Irene Nemirovsky
This book is comprised of two novellas. The first, Le Bal, is about a 14 year old girl's revenge on her narcissitic and overbearing mother. Its an absolute gem. The writing, characterisation, pacing and final denoument are all perfectly executed. A five-star story without a doubt.

The second novella, Snow in Autumn, is a story, told through the eyes of the old nanny, of a wealthy, aristocratic family fleeing the Russian Revolution and ending up in Paris where they all struggle to adapt, some less successfully than others, notably the nanny. Its a piece that can best be described as 'un homage de Chekov'. I am not a Chekov fan and I didn't like this much either. Only a two-star story for me, but the first novella was so superlative that I've awarded the book 4 stars.

I finished #29, The Mighty Queens of Freeville, while waiting for my son at school. Obviously I'm not going to reach my goal. I don't think I can read four more books in 3 days.

LOL, I'll be catching up right along with you!

100 books in a year! I'd have to do a speed-reading course first.

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
28 Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish
29 This Child is Mine
30 Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir
31 Nineteen Minutes
32 Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
33 Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
34 Le Bal and Snow in Autumn by Irene Nemirovsky

35 Gathering Places: Balinese Architecture - A Spiritual and Spatial Orientation by Barbara Walker
I have a fascination for Bali. I've been many times and am always struck by the outward world, the expressive dimension of the hidden world, the spiritual one. All the beautiful architecture, the terraced rice fields, the beautiful fabrics, the lush and manicured gardens are all expressions of the spirituality that is present everywhere and at every moment in Bali.

This book is as much about the little bamboo bales (ba-lays) or rest-platforms in the rice fields as it is about the luxurious spas and palaces-turned-restaurants. Its Bali from Balinese eyes and from Western ones.

I only meant to glance through this beautiful photographed coffee-table book, but I spent half the morning perusing it from cover to cover and now, now its on my coffee table!

Readin book 52 now:

Dying Light - Stuart MacBride

This is a new Logan McRae thriller from the author of "Cold Granite". It's summertime in the Granite city: the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and people are dying! It starts with a prostitute, stripped naked and beaten to death down by the docks - the heart of Aberdeen's red light district. For DS Logan MacRae, it's a bad start to another bad day. Only a few short months ago, he was the golden boy of Grampian police. But one botched raid later, he's palmed off on a DI everyone knows is a jinx, waiting for the axe to fall with all the other rejects in the 'Screw-up Squad'. Logan's not going to take it lying down. He's determined to escape DI Steel and her unconventional methods, and the best way to do that is to crack the case in double-quick time. But Rosie Williams won't be the only one making an unscheduled trip to the morgue. Across the city, six people are burning to death in a petrol-soaked squat, the doors and windows screwed shut from the outside. And despite Logan's best efforts, it's not long before another prostitute turns up on the slab! Stuart MacBride's characteristic grittiness, gallows humour and lively characerization are to the fore in his unputdownable second novel, confirming his status as the rising star of crime fiction.

Completed books '09:
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. House in Paris (really great novel about two children happening to meet in a house in Paris and the story of why one of them was adopted)
19. 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)
20. Håndteringen af udøde (Handling the undead - the recently deceased wake up again and cause a lot of problems - liked this one a lot)
21. The Handmaid's Tale (for the group read)
22. Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (not my thing - rather repetitive - for the 1001-books you must read... list)
23. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (loved it!)
24. Wonder Boys (enjoyed this one a lot as well)
25. City of God (very impressive book)
26. After Dark (another good book by one of my favourite authors, Haruki Murakami)
27. The gravedigger's daughter (I love Joyce Carol Oates - this was a great novel about a girl of immigrant parents who suffer from abuse from her husband and have to make her own life)
28. Going Postal (a really good Discworld novel! Very funny!)
29. Watchmen (the best graphic novel ever! Such an amazing combination of words and pictures - really show what graphic novels can do at their best!)

About halfway through The Raw Shark Texts - it's great so far and very different and a bit weird.

So I'm behind as well... I would like to be at 33 when april's done - but I'm not going to make it...

Book 53:

Lucky - Alice Sebold

MAY 1 onwards

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
To enjoy this book you have to enter the mind and world of this 90 year old man, living in the last years of his life in poverty in the once grand decaying house of his youth. His career never rose above second-rate reporter, he never married and never even fell in love. His personal relationships with women was limited to the whores he paid for. A most unfulfilled life.

But then, for a present, he gives himself a 14 year old virgin, a would-be whore, for his 90th birthday. Exhausted from menial labour and drugged up by the brothel madame with valerian, she sleeps every night they spend together and for the first time in his life he falls in love. In love with the idea of his sleeping beauty.

This is a poetic, sensual book that many reviewers, unable to see beyond their own ideas of fitness, have condemned as tawdry, a paean to pedophilia and just plain sick. But it isn't. Its the last flowering of a rose, touched by frost it should have died but instead is more glorious, more beautiful because it is so unseasonal, a real surprise. What it says about the nature of men's love for young beauty is age-old: look good, be demure, quiet, and let him be the dominant one, is taken to an extreme here with the sleeping beauty, it worked for Snow White and it worked for the Sleeping Beauty and it works for Delgadina too.

I finished #30The Weight of Heaven A Novel this morning.

May

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta

This is a call a spade what it really is, a shit shovel, type of book. Nigel Latta, a forensic psychologist, specialising in the treatment of the most disgusting criminals imaginable - fathers who rape their daughters, teenagers who kill other children, rapists, murderers and pederats, he despises the technical and evasive language of other professionals in his field. His only aim is to try and stop these criminals from reoffending and to that end he seeks to form a relationship with them that is between people, not a psychologist in an authorative position treating a patient. He seeks to get the perpetrator to confront the appalling consequences for the victims of his crimes by exposing the reasons they commit them at all and to replace the criminal activity with one, or a lifestyle, that would more acceptedly and satisfyingly fill the needs of the perpetrator. This is tremendously interesting to read, the book is quite unique in this respect.

The in-your-face style might work well for a psychologist, but for a reader, it gets a bit annoying. But for a couple of chapters of this annoying lecturing, I would have given the book 5 stars.

Last night I finished #31, What I Saw And How I Lied.

53. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Audio).
54. Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India - Madhur Jaffrey

From May

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta
38 Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odysseyby Edward Kanze

This is the sort of book you keep to read a few pages of while the kettle boils, or the website loads or the bath fills with water. A couple of pages of reading about driving the entire way around Australia (avoiding the cities wherever possible) and listing every single animal the author and his wife come across - and those that they don't see as well is about all I could take at a sitting. However, the book has charm. I'm not sure where that charm resides, but I didn't give the book up and now I know if I go to Australia, which I would like to, that I shouldn't bother driving around the perimeter of the island-continent and criss-crossing the mountains and deserts because unless you are a list-keeping naturalist, its a trip that definitely sounds like it lacks charm.

Last night I finished #32 Tamar A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal.

May 2009

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta
38 Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey by Edward Kanze

39 Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human
by Elizabeth Hess
This book is scarcely about Nim Chimpsky at all, its far more about all the humans in his life. Its about the person who bought him, the many people who raised him as a human child - although they would never have given up on the job if he had been one as they all did so quickly with Nim - and all the people who were part of the various experiments on him. Finally it is about the people who looked after him in his retirement.

As a book about an animal, animal behaviour and language acquisition, this book fails miserably - Vince Smith, Roger Fouts and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh have all written much more interestingly on these subjects. However, it was interesting to see the wheeling and dealing and politicking of the world that lives on research grants and where jealousy rather than co-operation is the name of the game for these scientists.

Update to my list of completed books for 2009:
34. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
35. Dancing in the Moonlight by Raeanne Thayne
36. Kingdom Come: The Final Victory by Tim Lahaye
37. Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch by B.J. Daniels
38. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
39. The Bride's Baby by Liz Fielding
I am getting ready to read my first Goodreads giveaway book next.

No, I am reading whatever books I would have already read or books I am reading for my book clubs.

I finished #33, Looking for Alaska, earlier this afternoon.

Bo wrote: "What I would like to know from people doing this challenge is are you tempted to read easy books or ones with not too many pages so you can reach your goal more easily?"

Yes actually, I have been tempted, but since I don't enjoy many 'easy' books and prefer fairly heavy non-fiction, I can't see that I will actually change my reading.

Bo wrote: "What I would like to know from people doing this challenge is are you tempted to read easy books or ones with not too many pages so you can reach your goal more easily?"

I'm reading exactly the same mix of difficult and easy, short and long books as I did before. Perhaps at the end of the year if I am a few books short I might be tempted to read a few easy ones in a row... but I guarantee that they would be ones I intended to read eventually anyway.

55. Broken Skin - Stuart MacBride
56. Flesh House - Stuart MacBride (Audio)
57. Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World - Vicki Myron

May 2009

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta
38 Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey by Edward Kanze
39 Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess

40 The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith
Another feel-good book about the no. 1 lady detective, Precious Ramotswe and her slightly off-kilter assistant Mma Makutse set in Botswana. The plots are irrelevant, the many characters are beautifully-drawn and the author's love of Botswana shines through. Indeed, one of the pleasures of this series of books, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, is revisiting the interesting characters that populate the stories, much like meeting old friends and have a slice of fruit cake, a cup of tea and a chat together.

Bo wrote: "What I would like to know from people doing this challenge is are you tempted to read easy books or ones with not too many pages so you can reach your goal more easily?"

It can be tempting - but I still read a mix of fiction and non-fiction (mostly fiction) and short and long books. After reading a long novel, I like reading a shorter one so it evens out - I hope. Currently I'm reading The Stand by Stephen King at 1153 pages so definitely not only reading easy books...! And I hope on reading Don Quixote, Drood by Dan Simmons (about Dickens' last years) and War and Peace this year as well - and maybe the LOTR trilogy - and these are all looooong books!

58. Blood Test - Jonathan Kellerman
59. Billy the Kid - Michael Morpurgo
60. Cool! - Michael Morpurgo
61. The Cave - Kate Mosse
62. The Okinawa Dragon - Nicola Monaghan
63. Falling Into The Limelight - Peter Sallis
64. Knife Edge - Robert Swindells

65. Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

40. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
41. Baby Bonanza by Maureen Child
42. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon

Lilly wrote: "Can you equate reading a book with listening to a book? There isn't the investment in concentration, time and effort with listening. If it is equivalent, why can't you count seeing a movie of a boo..."

Lilly, I read at about 50 pages an hour. So for Jane Eyre at 600 pages it would take me about 12 hours. The Jane Eyre audio book I am planning to listen to is 17 hours and 21 minutes. So, for me at least, an audio book takes longer to listen to than it would take to read it. I also find myself having to focus more... mostly because when I listen to audio books I am usually trying to multi-task. I definitely do not think the effort involved in watching a movie is equivalent to the effort needed to listen to an audio book.

I don't listen to audio books because I can't just sit there and listen, I would have to multi-task. But I certainly don't multi-task when I'm reading a book. Every bit of my concentration is on the book so I know what Lilly means. But you know, different strokes for different folks.

Also as far as the book/film thing is concerned, I think that books seem only to be inspiration to directors and the resulting film may have very little of the book in it, so they don't equate.

BUT (there are always exceptions), films of Shakespeare's plays especially done by the BBC do equate. They add nor substract from the dialogue and whatever action is added its only an illustration of the dialogue and scene directions anyway. So I would say that if someone is going to say they read a book when they actually listened to it, then they could say they read a Shakespearean play when they had watched it.

May 2009

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta
38 Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey by Edward Kanze
39 Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess
40 The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith

41 Drink, Play, F@#k by Andrew Gottlieb

It was ok. Each of the three sections dragged for the last two chapters and the final section was a bit wanky. Other than that, it was a fast plane-read and quite amusing. I hadn't read the original Eat, Pray, Love as I find worthy, self-improvement books incredibly boring and a waste of time - I need a full body retooling rather than touch-ups on the rusty spots, so I can't tell if this was a good parody or not. Still, like the curate's egg, it was good, in parts.

May 2009

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta
38 Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey by Edward Kanze
39 Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess
40 The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith
41 Drink, Play, F@#k by Andrew Gottlieb

42 From Here to Maternity by Sinead Moriarty

Not quite as satisfying a read as the other two books in the series because the author tried to elevate two supporting characters into much more major ones with a story of their own to tell. Other than that, standard chicklit - a good, quick read that's a bit like a nice big bar of chocolate, delicious at the time but you've forgotten about it before suppertime.

May 2009
The silver chair
The last battle
The words we live by
Twilight
New moon
Eclipse
Breaking dawn
The host
Us and them

I have the books I've read in 2009 posted on the 100+ Book Challenge group here on GR. I'm currently at 36 and I've vowed to finally finish Don Quoixote today. A little behind a 100 book pace but still plenty of time to make up lost ground.

May 2009

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta
38 Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey by Edward Kanze
39 Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess
40 The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith
41 Drink, Play, F@#k by Andrew Gottlieb
42 From Here to Maternity by Sinead Moriarty

43 The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
If you like sagas, this was a good one, but in common with a lot of sagas is the large cast of characters. Although I do rate Amitav Ghosh as a writer with great ability to draw characters, this time by the end of the book I couldn't keep straight who was who and what relationship they had to each other. Often the people I was most interested in, just featured in a small bit of the book and after that heard from only in passing.

After a long gap of years, I have only recently resumed reading light fiction, and probably I expect too much of it after immersing myself in many of the 'greats' and a lot of non-fiction. I was drawn to this book though after reading Aravind Adiga's White Tiger and remembering how much I used to enjoy stories of the Raj - Paul Scott, E.M. Forster etc - and read Ghosh's latest, Sea of Poppies, which I loved. I didn't enjoy the Glass Palace as much as Sea of Poppies but still... as I say, maybe I expect too much.

66. The Woman In Black - Susan Hill
67. The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips - Michael Morpurgo
68. Puberty Blues - Kathy Lette & Gabrielle Carey

Choosing books and Audios I enjoy. ALso has a wonderful hubby that looks after the kids. It also helps that the kids are at school all day from say 8.30am til 3.30pm.

25. City of God (very impressive book)
26. After Dark (another good book by one of my favourite authors, Haruki Murakami)
27. The gravedigger's daughter (I love Joyce Carol Oates - this was a great novel about a girl of immigrant parents who suffer from abuse from her husband and have to make her own life)
28. Going Postal (a really good Discworld novel! Very funny!)
29. Watchmen (the best graphic novel ever! Such an amazing combination of words and pictures - really show what graphic novels can do at their best!)
30. The Raw Shark Texts (wow - amazingly creative book that really plays with the way words can tell and show a story)
31. The Kite Runner (finally I read this one and really liked it. Not quite what I expected - the plot twists really surprised me)
32. The Stand (re-read this one. Great book - enjoyed King's post-apocalyptic vision)
33. My Stroke of Insight (Brain scientist gets a stroke - did not enjoy this very much or as much as I'd expected)
34. Breakfast at Tiffany's (okay read - enjoyed it more after reading discussions of it)

Currently reading Half of a Yellow Sun and enjoying it. Didn't know anything about the Nigeria-Biafra war before reading this one.
To be on goal I need to be at 50 books by the end of June so I have a lot of reading to do. Starting to wonder if I'm going to make it ...

Leona wrote: "I have just taken a tally of all the unread books on my bookshelf at home (not the virtual one here) and there are more than 100 not read. I knew I was an book buying addict but I didn't think I wa..."

Leona, I'm giving you a heartfelt award for your support on behalf of booksellers everywhere. Thank you :-)

(I have an indie bookshop)

May 2009

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta
38 Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey by Edward Kanze
39 Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess
40 The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith
41 Drink, Play, F@#k by Andrew Gottlieb
42 From Here to Maternity by Sinead Moriarty
43 The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh

44 Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult
I hadn't wanted to read another Jodi Picoult. After starting on the high note of My Sister's Keeper and working my way through a totally formulaic series always with a twist at the end, I didn't hold out much hope for this book but it was the only one I had for a long night in a hotel in a foreign land.

It was quite different in that it was distinctly overwritten, and in parts quite beautifully-written too. Usually I think of Picoult as a storyteller whose characters are somewhat sketchy ciphers that appear with different accoutrements in book after book, but the two main characters in this book were completely individual, perhaps especially the woman. Unfortunately nearly five hundred pages of two characters, one a bolter, the daughter of a bolter and one trying not very hard to escape his patrician family, gets boring without a good story.

The ending was pleasingly predictable instead of some manufactured codswallop like the ending of My Sister's Keeper and the rest, and I would have given it 3.5 stars if I could.

I try to read an average of two books a week. Some weeks I read nothing but students' papers, and others I read 4 or 5 books.

2009 thus far
1. Mother's Beloved: Stories from Laos by Outhine Bounyavon (ed. Bounheng Inversin and Daniel Duffy)
2. The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic by Darby Penney, Peter Stastny, Lisa Rinzler (photographer)
3. Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
4. The Game of Sunken Places by M. T. Anderson
5. The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen by M. T. Anderson
6. When the Rainbow Goddess Wept by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
7. The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot
8. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
9. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 2: The Kingdom on the Waves by M. T. Anderson
10. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama
11. The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison by Warren Fellows with Jack Marx
12. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
13. The Gate by François Bizot
14. N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto
15. Gender-based Violence During the Khmer Rouge Regime: Stories of Survivors from the Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) (2nd ed.) by Nakagawa Kasumi
16. The Third Sex: Kathoey--Thailand's Ladyboys by Richard Totman
17. The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam
18. Walking away from the Killing Fields: How a Hopeless Boy Became a University Professor in Japan by Nophea Sasaki
19. More Than White Cloth? Women's Rights in Cambodia by Nakagawa Kasumi
20. A Different Kind of Boy: A Father's Memoir about Raising a Gifted Child with Autism by Daniel Mont
21. A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo
22. Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea's Prisons by Cullen Thomas
23. A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last by Stephen Levine
24. A Photographic Guide to Birds of Thailand by Michael Webster & Chew Yen Fook
25. A Photographic Guide to Birds of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos by Peter Davidson
26. So Many Enemies, So Little Time: An American Woman in All the Wrong Places by Elinor Burkett
27. Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov
28. In Our Village: Kambi ya Simba Through the Eyes of Its Youth by Barbara Cervone, Ed.
29. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
30. Jennifer Government by Max Barry
31. Interworld by Neil Gaiman & Michael Reaves
32. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
33. The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Book by Robert Mankoff, Ed.
34. Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
35. Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic
36. Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow
37. Merchants of Madness: The Methamphetamine Explosion in the Golden Triangle by Bertil Lintner and Michael Black
38. The Dancer from Khiva: One Muslim Woman's Quest for Freedom by Bibish
39. In the United States of Africa by Abdourahman A. Waberi
40. A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, as Well Public as Private, Which Happened in London During the Last Great Visitation in 1665. Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London. Never Made Public Before by Daniel Defoe
41. Smile as They Bow by Nu Nu Yi
42. The School of War by Alexandre Najjar
43. The Fugitive by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
44. The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad
45. Thirsty by M. T. Anderson
46. A Photographic Guide to the Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands: Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion and the Comoros by Fanj Andriamialisoa, Ian Sinclair, & Olivier Langrand
47. First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed My Life by Eve Brown-Waite
48. What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel by Dave Eggers
49. Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer by Rosita Arvigo with Nadine Epstein and Marilyn Yaquinto
50. Twillight by Stephenie Meyer
51. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyam & Edward FitzGerald
52. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
53. The Wandering Border by Jaan Kaplinski

54. English as She Is Spoke: Being a Comprehensive Phrasebook of the English Language, Written by Men to Whom English Was Entirely Unknown by Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino (Paul Collins, Ed.)

May 2009

36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
37 Into The Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us by Nigel Latta
38 Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey by Edward Kanze
39 Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess
40 The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith
41 Drink, Play, F@#k by Andrew Gottlieb
42 From Here to Maternity by Sinead Moriarty
43 The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
44 Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult

45 The Silent Gondoliers by William Goldman
This is a short and magical fable of Luigi, the greatest of all gondoliers but not the
greatest singer and it is told through the voice of S. Morgenstern who is
perhaps the greatest of all modern fable-spinners accompanied by illustrations
of Paul Giovanopoulos, who perfectly interprets the world of the gondoliers in
pen and ink drawings. And if you think there are too many superlatives in
this review, its because you haven't read the book.