November 2009 Book Challenge

[NewCrunchyDaddy]

Hard to believe it's already November. The time passes so quickly when you're reading good books. Hopefully as we head into the holiday season you'll find time to sit down, get away from it all and relax with some good books as we close out the year.

Now, repeat after me...

So, just by way of clarification (for comers both new and old), new and improved guidelines for the Book Challenge Thread are as follows:

1) Post the books you read ... or not
2) Post a recommendation ... or not
3) Number your book ... or not
4) Make a goal ... or not
5) Have fun with books (This one, unfortunately, is MANDATORY)


So, with that, avante, allons-y and a happy reading November to everyone!


2008's Threads can be found HERE
January's Thread can be found HERE
February's Thread can be found HERE
March's Thread can be found HERE
April's Thread can be found HERE
May's Thread can be found HERE
June's Thread can be found HERE
July's Thread can be found HERE
August's Thread can be found HERE
September's Thread can be found HERE
October's Thread can be found HERE

[mammastar2]

#64 - Coventry by Helen Humphreys

A slim novel set around the night of bombing in WWII during which the core of the British town of Coventry, including its cathedral, was destroyed. The story centres on a woman, Harriet, who takes her neighbour's place for the night as a fire-watcher on the cathedral roof. As the cathedral is destroyed, she finds herself helping a young fellow fire-watcher, Jeremy, make his way across the city in search of his mother. Their interaction, and the devastation she encounters along their route, forces her to confront the extent to which she has isolated herself emotionally and physically from other people since the death of her young husband during the previous war.

I enjoyed this. I'm always happy lately to read a good, thoughtful novel that is also slim and disciplined. Beautiful, simple use of language. I thought that the ending was a bit of a fizzle, but overall I liked this quite a bit.

[kbond]

#78 Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, ed. Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman
This collection of essays was really thought provoking, but as with many essay collections, some were better than others. Also, the "tagging" method of grouping the essays was interesting. I'm not sure if I liked it or not. Also, I'm not entirely sure if this grouping of essays would be all that persuasive to people who aren't already part of the choir, but I found it interesting.

#79 Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell
This was YA, and I read it mainly so I could get the accomplishment of having finished a book yesterday. That being said, it was well-written, very good at evoking a sense of place, and exactly the type of book that my 10 year old self would have loved.

[cathe]

Far From Gringo Land by Edward Myers

This was about a teenage boy who spends the summer living with a family in Mexico, helping them to build a house. The manual labor is nothing like he's ever experienced and there are cultural differences as well. This book was okay . . . something was missing for me though. I think the problem was it really didn't have a teen voice.

[friendtoall]

Elijah of Buxton (audio) by Christopher Curtis

I enjoyed reading about the black settlers in a community just down the road from where I lived last year, but it was painfully slow in some places, and the idiom got under my skin a bit.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

I loved the pace of the book but it wasn't as spooky as I was hoping for my Hallowe'en read.

Handmade Home: Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials into New Family Treasures by Amanda Blake Soule

Her books are so soothing. Lots of nice ideas, casual instructions, pretty pictures.

[Daffodil]

#18 - The Tree of Man by Patrick White

The story of Stan, his wife Amy, and their children, from the time young Stan first starts clearing land for a small farm in Australia to Stan and Amy's old age. Various things happen to them, and to people around them, but the book isn't so much about what happens as about the way none of them are ever able to really know or understand each other, or talk to each other about anything important. It was interesting enough to keep me reading, but not compelling enough to make me read it very fast. I spent about a month slowly plugging away at it (while also reading some other things.)

[NewCrunchyDaddy]

Originally Posted by kbond

#78 Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, ed. Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman
This collection of essays was really thought provoking, but as with many essay collections, some were better than others. Also, the "tagging" method of grouping the essays was interesting. I'm not sure if I liked it or not. Also, I'm not entirely sure if this grouping of essays would be all that persuasive to people who aren't already part of the choir, but I found it interesting.

I'm going to have to look this one up. I'm writing a paper from my lit crit theory class on women in the horror genre, and how they are presented as liberated progressive characters but all too often they are cardboard stereotypes that reinforce the male patriarchy, so it may be helpful.

[kbond]

Originally Posted by NewCrunchyDaddy

I'm going to have to look this one up. I'm writing a paper from my lit crit theory class on women in the horror genre, and how they are presented as liberated progressive characters but all too often they are cardboard stereotypes that reinforce the male patriarchy, so it may be helpful.

It might be helpful, but, honestly, it might not. Most of the contributors are blog writers so it's not an incredibly formal academic type tome overall. I don't know, it would really depend on what you were using it for as a source.

[NewCrunchyDaddy]

Originally Posted by kbond

It might be helpful, but, honestly, it might not. Most of the contributors are blog writers so it's not an incredibly formal academic type tome overall. I don't know, it would really depend on what you were using it for as a source.

Good to know. Thanks. I'll probably still look it up, just not as strenuously as I might of had it been more formal or academic.

[raksmama]

This might be a very silly question,but I'll go ahead and ask anyway.
I don't really understand how we are supposed to number our books.
I would have assumed the first book we read in November would be number #1, but a lot of you have higher numbers so if you don't mind, please clarify.
Thanks!
The book I am reading now is "Dreams Underfoot" by Charles De Lint.
It is a collection of short stories (Urban Fantasy) and is supposed to be the first book to read in De Lint's Newford series. I like it the least of all the books of his that I have read thus far,only because I've never liked short stories. I always feel like just when I am getting into it, the story is over! However De Lint is amazing. I only recently discovered him and it is great because there are so many books of his to chose from

[fremontmama]

Welcome Jalilah

Not a silly question at all! Some of us have set a goal for how many books we want to read for the year, so are keeping track of the total books read so far. Some of us haven't set a goal either, and still are keeping track for the year. Some of us don't keep track at all Whatever works for you!

And on that note, I'll post my latest read. I set a goal of 75 books this year (I think? ) and am pleased to say, I have surpassed my goal!!!!!!

#76 The Imposter's Daughter by Laurie Sandell

A graphic novel memoir about a woman who grows up with a dad who is mysterious and imperious and intelligent and fiery. She is riveted by him as a child, but as she grows up she learns more and more about him, and really doesn't like what she finds out. Quick read, kinda fun, a little sad. The ending felt a little abrupt to me.

[kbond]

So you know that the waiting times for your books are really long when the book finally appears for you AND you have no idea why you requested it.

[kangamitroo]

Originally Posted by kbond

So you know that the waiting times for your books are really long when the book finally appears for you AND you have no idea why you requested it.

oh yes, i've been there!

almost done with The writing on my forehead by Nafisa Haji

[Jenifer76]

Nothing but Trouble (PJ Sugar Series #1) by Susan May Warren

It's not fair to say that trouble happens every time PJ Sugar is around, but it feels that way when she returns to her hometown, looking for a fresh start. Within a week, her former teacher is murdered and her best friend's husband is arrested as the number-one suspect. Although the police detective investigating the murder--who also happens to be PJ's former flame--is convinced it's an open-and-shut case, PJ's not so sure. She begins digging for clues in an effort to clear her friend's husband and ends up reigniting old passions, uncovering an international conspiracy, and solving a murder along the way. She also discovers that maybe God can use a woman who never seems to get it right.

PJ's Christianity seemed more like an afterthought than a central theme of this book. Not that it makes the book less good -- just thought it was interesting from a "Christian" writer. I found PJ to be a likable character - a little daft at times but overall good. I think the author did an okay job of tying up the mystery - almost think she tried to make it more complicated than her writing skills (or ideas) could handle.


The Lost Quilter: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel by Jennifer Chiaverini

From Publishers Weekly
In her 14th series installment, Chiaverini picks up the threads from The Runaway Quilt to spin another tale of adventure, love, perseverance and, of course, quilting. When Sylvia Bergstrom Compson and her staff find a stash of old letters hidden in an antique desk in the manor's attic, the story whips back to 1859 to recount the travails of the formidable Joanna North, an escaped slave who spent a brief respite at Elm Creek Farm. Joanna is recaptured and sent back to the Virginia plantation she thought she had finally escaped, and is eventually dispatched to Charleston to work under her former master's demanding newlywed niece, Miss Evangeline. As the Civil War looms, Joanna learns that for a slave, nothing—love, family, loyalty—is sacred or certain, and she never ceases plotting her final escape in the patterns of her scrap quilting.

If you like the Elm Creek series, you will like this book. The historically set ones are my favorite amongst the books and this one did not disappoint. I do feel the book got bogged down near the end with the Civil War detail BUT it didn't detract from the overall story.

[Bufomander]

Welcome to November, everyone! We had tons of snow last week , and today it's sunny and warm-ish. Colorado weather is funny.

#116 Four, Five, and Six by Josephine Tey
Somebody else here read this last month. Three old style British mysteries in one volume. An author I didn't know before. Good stuff if you like that genre.

[mammastar2]

Originally Posted by Bufomander

Welcome to November, everyone! We had tons of snow last week , and today it's sunny and warm-ish. Colorado weather is funny.

#116 Four, Five, and Six by Josephine Tey
Somebody else here read this last month. Three old style British mysteries in one volume. An author I didn't know before. Good stuff if you like that genre.

I remembered having really liked Josephine Tey at some point in my teens, so I re-read a couple lately. I liked them, but nowhere near as much as I thought I would. And some of the racism/classism, while right on the money for the time in which she was writing, was cringe-worthy in that I-hope-no-one-looks-over-my-shoulder-as-I'm-reading-on-the-bus way!

[kofduke]

The Lightning Thief, Riordan

it would seem that Percy Jackson is just another New York kid diagnosed with ADHD, who has good intentions, a nasty stepfather, and a long line of schools that have rejected him. The revelation of his status as half-blood offspring of one of the Greek gods is nicely packaged, and it's easy to believe that Mount Olympus, in modern times, has migrated to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building (the center of Western civilization) while the door to Hades can be found at DOA Recording Studio, somewhere in LA.

I enjoyed this enough to want to read more of the series...if the movie is well done I think it'll be a big hit.

True Detectives, Kellerman

PI Aaron Fox and L.A. cop Moe Reed, interracial half-brothers who played minor roles in 2008's Bones, take center stage in bestseller Kellerman's routine 24th Alex Delaware novel. When Fox, who used to work for the LAPD, looks into the missing-persons case of 20-year-old Caitlin Frostig, he runs into conflict with Reed. The brothers end up pursuing some predictable lines of inquiry, checking out Rory Stoltz, Frostig's college boyfriend, as well as links to a filmmaker, Lem Dement, who's suspected of domestic abuse. More A-list connections surface after the investigators learn Stoltz was the personal assistant for actor Mason Book, whose rumored suicide attempt came shortly after Frostig's disappearance. The strains between Fox and Reed don't generate much heat, while the pacing and writing aren't up to Kellerman's best.

Eh.

#1 Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker, #2 Moosewood Restaurant New Classics, #3 Autobiography of God, #4 The Ghost Orchid, #5 The Poe Shadow, #6 Knit One Kill Two, #7 Citizen Girl, #8 The Fourth Bear, #9 The Third Secret, #10 Change of Heart, #11 Guardian Angels, #12 The Gore, #13 The Undomestic Goddess, #14 From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil T. Frankweiler, #15 Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, #16 Blood Memory, #17 A Thousand Splendid Suns, #18 Then we Came to the End, #19 - Feed, #20 - Paper Towns, #21 - The Sparrow, #22 - Swim, Bike, Run, #23 Field Notes from a Catastrophe, #24 Pillars of the Earth, #25 The Geographer's Library, #26 Lady Killer, #27 Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, #28 The Abstinence Teacher, #29 Under the Banner of Heaven, #30 Duma Key, #31 The Portrait, #32 Dirty Blonde, #33 Death Gets a Time-Out, #34 Kiln People, #35 Baudolino, #36 Memories of my Melancholy Whores, #37 Sculpting Her Body Perfect,#38 Property Of, #39 A Brief History of the Dead, #40 Jane Austen in Scarsdale, #41 The Known World, #42 Disarming the Playground, #43 Little Bee, #44 The Sustainability Revolution, #45 Darling Jim, #46 Not Buying It, #47 Snow Crash, #48 What I talk about when I talk about running, #49 Needled to Death, #50 Unconditional Parenting, #51 Sepulchre, #52 Season of the Witch, #53 Seven Types of Ambiguity, #54 Poe Audio Collection, #55 There is No Me Without You, #56 The Lightning Thief, #57 True Detectives, #58 Let the Northern Lights Erase your Name, #59 Darwinia, #60 Make it Now, Bake it Later, #61 Slow Cooker Handbook, #62 Stop and Smell the Rosemary, #63 Emeril's TV Dinners

[kbond]

#80 Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

This was great. It's a collection of 40 short vignettes that have different takes on what happens after we die--except all the stories are mutually exclusive and not really about the afterlife, but about life itself. There are a lot of great one-liners and sentences that really blow you away.

I'm not a huge fan of short fiction, but this collection was absolutely phenomenal.

[NewCrunchyDaddy]

#65 The Last Town on Earth (Audio)
by Thomas Mullen
read by Henry Stroizer

My review can be found HERE


#1 The King in Yellow, #2 Ghost Story, #3 Twilight (Audio), #4 Nice Work, #5 The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged, #6 Collected Poems 1909-1962 (T.S. Eliot), #7 New Moon (Audio), #8 Selected Poems (William Carlos Williams), #9 The Pearl, #10 The Blackwater Lightship, #11 100 Selected Poems (e.e. cummings), #12 The Grapes of Wrath, #13 Eclipse (Audio), #14 A Bit on the Side, #15 East of Eden, #16 As I Lay Dying: Redux, #17 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!, #18 Breaking Dawn (Audio), #19 A Streetcar Named Desire: 25th Anniversary Edition, #20 The Short Stories: The First Forty-Nine Stories with a Brief Preface by the Author, #21 New British Poetry, #22 Brick Lane, #23 Maps for Lost Lovers, #24 The Silence of the Lambs (Audio): Redux, #25 Pride and Prejudice, #26 Poe: A Life Cut Short, #27 Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures, #28 The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obession in the Amazon (Audio), #29 Her Story: A Timeline of the Women Who Changed America, #30 The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Russia, #31 Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible (Audio), #32 The Composer is Dead, #33 Shakespeare's Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook, #34 Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories, #35 The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, #36 The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science: 64 Daring Experiments for Young Scientists, #37 The Road, #38 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, #39 How to Draw Washington's Sights and Symbols, #40 My Hippie Grandmother, #41 Alfred Hitchcock Presents 12 Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do On TV, #42 My Favorite Horror Story, #43 Darwin Slept Here: Discovery, Adventure, and Swimming Iguanas in Charles Darwin's South America, #44 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, #45 Dead Until Dark, #46 Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils, #47 'salem's Lot (Audio): Redux, #48 How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion (Audio), #49 Darwinia: A Novel of a very Different Twentieth Century, #50 Why Did It Have to be Snakes?: From Science to the Supernatural, the Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones, #51 Road Rage: Two Novellas (Audio), #52 The Science of Stephen King: From Carrie to Cell, the Terrifying Truth Behind the Horror Master's Fiction, #53 Doctor Who: The Nightmare of Black Island (Audio), #54 Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, #55 Dragons of the Hourglass Mage, #56 Doctor Who: Pest Control, An Exclusive Audio Adventure (Audio), #57 The Hunger and Other Stories: A Collection of Violent Entertainments, #58 The Spellman Files, #59 All the King's Men (Audio), #60 Doctor Who: Forever Autumn (Audio), #61 The Peshawar Lancers, #62 Doctor Who: The Nemonite Invasion, An Exclusive Audio Adventure (Audio), #63 An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition, More Than 1,000 Terms, #64 Star Wars: Death Troopers, #65 The Last Town on Earth (Audio)

[kaliki_kila]

94. Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Born with green skin and huge teeth, like a dragon, the free-spirited Elphaba grows up to be an anti-totalitarian agitator, an animal-rights activist, a nun, then a nurse who tends the dying?and, ultimately, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West in the land of Oz. Maguire's strange and imaginative postmodernist fable uses L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a springboard to create a tense realm inhabited by humans, talking animals (a rhino librarian, a goat physician), Munchkinlanders, dwarves and various tribes. The Wizard of Oz, emperor of this dystopian dictatorship, promotes Industrial Modern architecture and restricts animals' right to freedom of travel...

I didn't like the book. It took me a long time to finish. We went to San Francisco on Halloween to see the musical and loved it! It seemed to be roughly the same storyline as the book, but the huge dragon puppet with glowing red eyes that loomed above the theater and the actress who played Glinda and the catchy music really brought the story to life. I wouldn't recommend anyone reading the book first - unless you are like me and you feel like you have to - but I do recommend seeing the musical!