Book Challenge: December 2005

[Alkenny]

Nothing new for me just yet, but I didn't see one started so here we go!

[Alkenny]

Just finished #139 Away From You by Melanie Finn

Ellie's upbringing in colonial Africa in the 1960s and 70s—stiff whiskies, keeping up appearances and English gardens amidst the African Bush—was marked by a troubled relationship with a violent father she didn't really know. So when she returns there after her father's death, for the first time in twenty-five years, it means facing a past she thought she had put behind her. But even as childhood memories threaten to paralyze her, Ellie sets out to discover the dark secret at the heart of her father's life and her parents’ marriage, hoping the truth will allow her to break free from the past that has haunted her life.

[Viola]

I just finished the second book in the Warcraft: War of the Ancients triology last night. :
I'm reading Mama Day by Gloria Naylor right now.

[Alkenny]

I love Gloria Naylor!

[loftmama]

49) Above Us Only Sky by Marion Winik

synopsis: "In this new collection of essays, Winik explores how she--and other women--face midlife and aging without getting tangled up in the past or the future, all with her trademark humor and insistence on the truth."

This book was an autographed gift to me. Easy to read during nursing sessions. I enjoyed most of the essays, laughed out loud. Having lived in Austin, Texas, for a while, I could especially relate to those essays. Good.

[Alkenny]

#140 Making it Up by Penelope Lively

Authors of fiction are often asked, "How much of what you write comes from your own life?" This is especially the case for Penelope Lively, whose celebrated works such as The Photograph and the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger ring so true that they seem to tread that fine line between fact and fiction.

Making It Up is Lively’s engrossing and deftly constructed response. What if her family’s escape from Egypt during World War II had a different outcome? What would her life have been like if she’d become pregnant at eighteen? Or if she had married someone else?

As Lively weaves through very plausible hesitations, choices, and definitive moments of a life, she also offers a meditation on the nature of fate, destiny, and choice. An examination of those junctures when a split-second decision can change everything, Making It Up is a striking testament to Lively’s distinctive gifts and a rare opportunity to glimpse how real life can inspire great fiction.

Interesting concept, but it didn't hold me really well.

[cathe]

#138 Beloved by Toni Morrison

Don't know what took me so long to finally read this book - but it was on the 100 greatest novels of all time so I finally got it. It was great - really haunting.

[Astrid]

: I think I still have 5 more to go before I reach my goal of 100 for the year. Better get reading

[loftmama]

50) The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares

I this series of books! Seriously I must be stuck in adolescence. I teeangers and all their angst. That's why I loved teaching high school so much. I think Ann Brashares does such an excellent job of capturing the mixed up emotional world of these 4 girls. She covers it all and gets into all their messy lives and messy heads. She even gets the moms right and that roller coaster of a relationship. Wow! I can hardly wait to read the next one.

[cathe]

#139 South of Reason by Cindy Eppes

Well-written book about a girl who moves next door to her half brother. His mother is a wonderful, fun women but has kind of a nervous breakdown - the girls mother is a control freak. Although it had good characters, a pretty good story and good writing - somehow it was not really a page turner for me - maybe I didn't care enough about the main character - I lukewarmly recommend it.

#140 More Charlotte Mason Education by Catherine Levison

Info for homeschoolers on the Charlotte Mason method. Okay - some interesting stuff.

[Red Sonja]

#93, 94, 95, 96 & 97 for LB

"The Lady in Question" by Victoria Alexander

"The Pursuit of Marriage" by Victoria Alexander

A couple of bodice-rippers, my usual fluffy fare.

"Pregnancy Sucks for Men: What to Do When Your Pregnancy Makes You Both Miserable" by Joanne & Jeff Kimes

An airport read.

"Adventures in Tandem Nursing" by Hilary Flower

"Hyperspace : A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension" by Michio Kaku

LOVED it! But, I'm also a physics geek.

[Alkenny]

A couple from the YA shelves:

#141 Salad People And More Real Recipes: A New Cookbook for Preschoolers & Up by Mollie Katzen

In the much-anticipated follow-up to Pretend Soup, celebrity chef Mollie Katzen cooks up 20 new vegetarian recipes that kids six and under can prepare themselves (with a little help from their adult assistant). The last decade has seen unprecedented demand in healthy eating for kids. Taking this interest one step further, Mollie Katzen presents kid-friendly recipes that will inspire joyful kitchen adventures and food appreciation. With Salad People, children will enjoy a lifelong love and playful respect for nutritious food from Tiny Tacos, Counting Soup, Salad People, and beyond. Complete with kitchen tips, safety and behavior rules compiled by actual kids, and thoughtful observations on what children gain from cooking, Salad People is the model children’s kitchen guide for a new decade. All-new recipes make the perfect companions to Pretend Soup recipes.

#142 Vile Verses by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl is best remembered as the author of many well-loved children’s stories. But he was also the creator of some astonishingly imaginative, outrageous, and wonderfully disgusting verses. From oozing grobes to slimy slugs, this extraordinary collection is bursting with Dahl’s poems, verses, and songs. And with full-color original illustrations from a distinguished group of more than twenty artists, including Quentin Blake,William Joyce, and Lane Smith, this lavish volume is a must-have for any Dahl fan’s library.

[MrsMissy]

I do not have a count of books but I just finished a GREAT book:

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Alkenny]

Originally Posted by MrsMissy

I do not have a count of books but I just finished a GREAT book:

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Totally agree!

#143 The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

A moving, vividly told memoir full of heart, drama, and exquisite comic timing, about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a barJ .R. Moehringer grew up listening for a voice: It was the sound of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before J.R. spoke his first words. As a boy, J.R. would press his ear to a clock radio, straining to hear in that resonant voice the secrets of masculinity, and the keys to his own identity. J.R.+s mother was his world, his anchor, but he needed something else, something more, something he couldn+t name. So he turned to the bar on the corner, a grand old New York saloon that was a sanctuary for all types of men-cops and poets, actors and lawyers, gamblers and stumblebums. The flamboyant characters along the bar-including J.R.+s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; Joey D, a soft-hearted brawler; and Cager, a war hero who raised handicapping horses to an art-taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fatherhood by committee. When the time came for J.R. to leave home, the bar became a way station-from his entrance to Yale, where he floundered as a scholarship student way out of his element; to his introduction to tragic romance with a woman way out of his league; to his stint as a copy boy at the New York Times, where he was a faulty cog in a vast machine way out of his control. Through it all, the bar offered shelter from failure, from rejection, and eventually from reality-until at last the bar turned J.R. away.Riveting, moving, and achingly funny, The Tender Bar is at once an evocative portrait of one boy+s struggle to become a man, and a touching depiction of how some men remain lost boys.

[Queen Gwen]

#57 Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum does Christmas. Need we say more?

[cathe]

#141 The Misfits by James Howe

This was a cute YA book about a bunch of kids who don't fit it but manage to make their mark on seventh grade anyway. Fun to read - good characters.

[Red Sonja]

#98 for LB

Originally Posted by Queen Gwen

#57 Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum does Christmas. Need we say more?

I saw that one at the library last week, sounds like I need to pick it up!

"A Midwife's Story" by Penny Armstron

from Amazon:

A Midwife's Story begins with Penny Armstrong's middle-of-the-night realization that she wants to be a midwife; by the time the book is over, Penny Armstrong has delivered more than one thousand babies and experienced a dramatic change in both her daily life and her beliefs. Her midwifery training begins in Glasgow, Scotland, and is as far from ideal as she can imagine. She is shocked by the noisy, bureaucratic environment; by angry, impoverished mothers who try to shove their babies back into the womb to avoid birth; and by inflexible hospital regulations which can endanger the lives of baby and mother. Back in the United States, she works as a midwife among the Amish in rural Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Over the years she finds herself absorbing their values of communal living, love, and assistance and becomes convinced that birthing is an experience that can and should occur in the home. Although she is forthright about her opinions on home births, it is her glorious descriptions of childbirth (and even one death), contrasted with her portrayals of sterile and unsympathetic hospital experiences, that are ultimately persuasive. In their collaboration, Penny Armstrong and Sheryl Feldman have created a loving and generous book that speaks to many people on many issues: childbirth, families, the Amish, marriage, deformity, death, commitment, technology, and respect for the land.

[Red Sonja]

#99 for LB

"Cat's Eyewitness" by Rita Mae Brown

from Amazon:

The 12th novel in this bestselling cozy series from Brown and her feline collaborator (after 2004's Whisker of Evil) offers the usual irresistible mix of talking animals and a baffling murder or two. After she decides to quit her job as the Crozet, Va., postmistress because her animal companions--cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter and corgi Tee Tucker--are no longer permitted to accompany her to work, Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen and best friend Susan Tucker retreat to a Blue Ridge Mountains monastery, where a statue of the Virgin Mary suddenly begins to bleed from the eyes. This curiosity, which attracts national media attention after a local reporter, Nordy Elliott, files a short piece on it, becomes more of a concern when Susan's beloved great-uncle, a monk, turns up dead at the foot of the statue. While Harry, her two cats and her dog investigate, Elliott becomes the next murder victim, in a symbolic manner linked to the supposed miracle.

[Alkenny]

#144 The Regime by Lahaye and Jenkins Latest in the Left Behind series (second prequel)...Another train wreck book from me, just can't help but look though the writing sucks.

[Hollysmom]

#34 Twisted by Jonathan Kellerman

From the Publisher
Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor has helped psychologist Alex Delaware crack tough cases in the past. And in Jonathan Kellerman’s New York Times bestseller Billy Straight she took the lead in the desperate hunt for a teenage runaway stalked by a vengeful murderer. Now the complex and wryly compassionate Petra is once again at the center of the action, in a novel of cunning twists and page-turning suspense.

Lifeless bodies sprawl in a dance-club parking lot after a brutal L.A. drive-by. Of the four seemingly random victims, one stands out: a girl with pink shoes who cannot be identified–and who, days later, remains a Jane Doe. With zero leads and no apparent motive, it’s another case destined for the cold file–until Petra decides to follow her instincts and descends into a world of traveling grifters and bloodthirsty killers, pursuing a possible eyewitness whose life is in mortal danger.

Finding her elusive quarry–alive–isn’t all Petra has on her plate: departmental politics threatens to sabotage her case, and her personal life isn’t doing much better. If all that wasn’t enough, Isaac Gomez, a whiz-kid grad student researching homicide statistics at the station house, is convinced he’s stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders. The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date–a date that’s rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who’s evaded detection for years–and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.

Easy quick read. I always enjoy his books.

I am sooo far behind. Now that I am starting to feel human again I hope to get some more reading in.