Book Review: Really!

I've been having a little bit of a problem the last oh..... three or four months or so.... I haven't been able to read! I mean I can "read", I just can't seem to finish a book. The last one I remember finishing was in September when I was home recovering from surgery. It was Elegy for Iris, the story of author Iris Murdoch's life as told by her husband. Very good, if a little depressing. I followed up by watching the movie. Very, very good. (Kate Winslet was great!) 

Anywhoo.... I don't know what happened after that. I just lost interest or focus or something. Couldn't seem to finish anything. So, yesterday I finally finished a book I've been working on since October, Peace Like a River.  It's been on my TBR list for a while and our book club chose it for our November read. 

Peace Like a River  by Leif Enger, Atlantic Monthly Press; Later Printing edition (August 20, 2002), ISBN-10: 0802139256

Source: Heard of it for a long time, on my TBR list, chosen by book club

Rating: Definitely 5 out of 5 STARS

So, my taking so long to finish Peace Like a River is absolutely NO reflection on how wonderful this book is! There are a ton of reviews on it (here is a good one) so I won't really add much to all the words floating around out there in Bloglandria except to say "read it!" Great story told with wonderful words. Period. 

I dog-eared so many pages! (Yes, horrors! I do indeed dog-ear pages of *my* books that have especially beautiful writing or interesting tidbits of information. Here are just a few examples of Mr. Enger's ability to produce "good words":

"...it had Judge Raster, who I'd pictured as some predatory deep-sea critter, sitting behind his high desk. In the flesh the judge had the kind of wavy white hair I associated with benevolence, the hair of soft-touch aunts who keep mints in candy dishes within your reach; though his eyes, behind half glasses, evoked no such hopeful impressions. Surprisingly, my first sense of Judge Raster was of a man who clung to small vanities. He had a preening look. You do't like to think it of a judge." page 83 (Just a great character description.)

"Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone's been missing too long." page 54 (Do you know that kind of grief? The description brought tears to my eyes.)

"Davy didn't reply. It was deepest night. I remember his shape in the stuffed chair next the window: clean map of chin and cheekbone, cup of coffee under drifting steam. He was watching the meadow and after some silence rose and stood close to the glass. A herd of deer had come out from a black tangle of trees. They were crossing the meadow, so shapeless at this distance seeing them was an act of faith." page 298 (Lovely!)

That's just a few random pages I flipped to.... there's so much to admire in Enger's writing! Truly a man who can write a story with an obvious Christian worldview to a wider audience. Excellent!

Since I finished this one (hooray!) I thought I'd pick up another novel to read and bought When She Woke  for my Kindle based on a recommendation from a friend. Ai Yi Yi! I am *sorely* disappointed. It's so bad, I've put it down for good without finishing. I usually try not to be too harsh about books I don't like, but this one really was shocking to me. Great premise but very poorly executed with an obvious political agenda. Contrived characters, forced dialogue, stilted writing.... you get the idea. From some reviews I've read I gather Ms. Jordan's first novel, Mudbound, was much, much better. 

So, now I think I'm off to bed to start Leaving Van Gogh.... a recommendation from a (different) friend that I hope gives better results.  

CONTINUE READING...

2011 TBR Fiction List

Found here on etsy!

Finally! I've put together my new Fiction TBR List! This should keep me busy, don't ya think? Ah, well... better to have choices...

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 
3. The Stone Diaries by Shields* 
4. A Bell for Adano by Hersey 
5. The Sea by John Banville* 
6. Disgrace by JM Coetzee* 
7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy* 
8. Paris Trout by Pete Dexter 
9. Had a Good Time by Robert Olen Butler*
10. Father and Son by Larry Brown*
11. The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin*
12. In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez*
13. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford*
14. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan*
15 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon*
16. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides*
17. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold*
18. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri*
19. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett*
20. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See*
21. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
22. The Secret Magdalene by Ki Longfellow
23. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger* 
24. Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye*
25. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay* Finished: 2/11 Rating: 4.5 STARS

*I own a copy!

And here's a little more 'etsy + book = love':

Found here!

love the clouds!

etsy love!

Ha ha ha!

yes, well, i DO love her...

CONTINUE READING...

Christian Non-Fiction 2011 TBR List

Here's my updated Christian Non-Fiction list to compliment my General Non-Fiction list I posted last month.

1. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy  by Eric Metaxes*

2. A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael by Elisabeth Elliot*

3. When Life and Beliefs Collide by Carolyn Custis James*

4. Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre*

5. Hidden Worldviews: Eight Cultural Stories That Shape Our Lives by S. Wilkens & M. Sanford*

6. Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe by M. Driscoll & G. Breashears*

7. A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture by Craig Detweiler & Barry Taylor*

8. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis*

10. Real Sex by Lauren Winner*

11. The Christian Imagination by Leland Ryken*

12. Through a Screen Darkly by Jeffrey Overstreet*

13. The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer*

14. How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth by Fee & Stuart*

15. How to Read the Bible Book by Book by Fee & Stuart*

16. Normal Kingdom Business by Andree Seu*

17. Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt*

18. Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue by William Dyrness

*Already own! :-) And, yes, I realize I have a problem...

CONTINUE READING...

Seven on Saturday

1. We're having some odd weather here today, bloggy friends. Sun shining with temps in the 40's one minute then ominously dark clouds, strong wind, and SNOW the next! Weird.

2. Reading in Jeremiah today gave me pause and food for thought:

"Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backward rather than forward." 7:24

Now this is from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) which I'm reading because it's the version published with readings from C.S. Lewis. I don't particularly like this version (ESV is my favorite) but I found the translation of this verse interesting. Other versions I've looked at say "walked backward" instead of "looked backward." The idea of looking backward is what made me stop and copy down the verse in my daybook. Where am I looking backward and not forward? Where do Christians in general tend to look backward? Just something to chew on....

3. Thanks to Tim at his blog for posting this short video from National Geographic about the world's population soon reaching 7 billion. The video is very intriguing and I loved the use of typography and graphics. And if you're a mission-oriented Christian (shouldn't we all be?), it's mind blowing.

4. I am reading What is Left the Daughter on my Kindle right now. I'm not super impressed so far, but maybe there's some amazing ending on the horizon. Since the Kindle doesn't do pages, all I know is percentage, and I'm at about 80% complete. Ho-Hum.

5. Christian Audio gives away a free audio book a month. This month it's The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges. I've never listened to a Christian non-fiction book before but think I'll give this one a go. I like Bridges.

6. It's time to update my TBR lists. I'm starting with General Non-Fiction (All books I own, by the way!). Here's my 2011 list in no certain order:

1. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg*Because everyone who wants to write has read this one!

2. In the Neighborhood by Peter Lovenheim*Because I skimmed it in a bookstore months ago but didn't want to pay full price. I couldn't get it out of my mind and finally purchased used!

3. Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks*Because music is a gap in my life and I love Oliver Sacks.

4. Warm and Snug by Lawrence Wright*As research for something I'd like to write one day.

5. The Soul of the Night by Chet Raymo* Ditto #4. And I like Raymo's writing but not life philosophy.

6. At Day's Close by A. Roger Ekirch* Ditto #4.

7. Apollo's Fire by Michael Sims* Ditto #4.

8. Chapter After Chapter by Heather Sellers*Because it looks really good.

9. Spineless Wonders by Richard Connif* Because who wouldn't want to read about insects? Duh.

10. Mockingbird by Charles J. Shields*Because Harper Lee had to be incredibly interesting, don't you think?

11. Sleep Thieves by Stanley Coren* Ditto #4. Curious?

12. The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp Because it's been so popular and talked about.

13. Home by Bill Bryson Because I love him. This book by him is one of my all-time favorite books.

14. The Making of a Story by Alice LaPlante Because it's huge, seems full of super good exercises, and I would be quite impressed with myself if I got through it!

15. Couldn't Keep It to Myself by Wally Lamb Women, writing, and prison. Who wouldn't want to read it?

16. A Geography of Time by Rober Levine Ok, I just bought this one for my Kindle. I'd read a reference about it in another book and then a friend told me she was reading it on her Kindle.... so, how could I *not* get it?

7. Picture of the Week: Today Matt and I made a run to the dump to get rid of a trailer full of (mostly) construction trash from The Boy's house. Now I can park in the garage again! Hooray!! I snapped the picture below while Matt was throwing out our "metal-containing" trash. Amazing isn't it? All this stuff!! And this is just a single pile in one small county landfill in N.C. Boggles the mind when you stop to think about how much trash we generate as a nation.

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls, Paperback: 288 pages, Publisher: Scribner;
1 edition (January 9, 2006), ISBN-10: 074324754X

Source: Farming of Books Book Club and on my General Non-Fiction TBR List
Rating: 4.5 of 5 STARS

It seems like everyone has read this book! I remember when a friend first told me about it years ago and had loaned me a copy. I was on a road trip somewhere with a bunch of gals and had brought it with me. (Along with a whole bag of other books. My theory is when traveling you can never have too many books or underwear so I always have plenty of both!) Another friend hadn't brought anything with her to read and I let her have The Glass Castle. She gulped it down and insisted I read it as soon as possible. But, for whatever reason, I never did and eventually returned it to its owner.

I picked up a copy at a used book store a couple of years ago and put it on my TBR list for General Non-Fiction. And now I've finally read it... I inhaled it, too. For me, anyway. I'm usually a pretty slow reader. I read it last weekend while we were driving to and from D.C. and in little snippets in the hotel lobby waiting for E and Matt to join me for breakfast each morning. It was our book club's pick for the month of April and we discussed it this past Thursday. We gave it a rating of 4.6 as a group.

Jeannette Walls story totally captivated me. So, why not a 5 star rating? Well, I didn't mark one single page as especially beautiful or truthful writing like I do in so many books. (See Good Words entries.) But, oh, the story! A vagabond family - mother, father, four children - always on the move, always on the edge of homelessness, always fighting for the next meal. But loving each other and loving the excitement of life. True - the father was an alcoholic. True - the mother was either totally selfish or mentally ill. True - the children were really the parents of the family. True - the children suffered at the hands of their inept parents. But, they all loved each other.

In telling her story, Jeannette Walls never condemns her parents for their choices and how they affected her. That made a big impact on me. I spent so many years (especially in my twenties!) blaming my parents for things I didn't like about myself until I finally realized it was my own sinful nature that made me the way I was and no amount of blame-placing on my parents was going to change me. The only thing that could ever change me was God. That was a long road for me. It seems Jeannette Walls skipped that phase.

Also, the last half of the book is set in West Virginia and is a powerful description of the poverty that so many live in there. One of my best friends hales from West Virginia and grew up in extreme poverty. I know her story and I've visited her hometown with her twice. I remember when she read this book she said, "This was my life." Now reading it, I understand a little more. And my heart hurts for the little girl that grew up in such poverty in the "holler." And now even more, I admire the woman she is now... the one who "got out," went to college, moved to NC to live a different life... and went on to graduate from Duke with her masters a couple of years ago. Oddly enough, like Jeannette Walls, I've never heard her condemn her parents either. She's often told me they did the best they could. And that seems to be enough for her.

So, I definitely recommend this one to you. It's a quick read. I wouldn't say easy, necessarily. You'll be heartbroken for the children and outraged at the parents. But it's a fascinating story and one I'm glad I read.

Have a great Saturday, bloggy friends!

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: My Father's World

My Father's World: Meditations on Christianity and Culture by Philip Graham Ryken, P & R Publishing, July 2002, ISBN-10: 0875525601

Rating: 5 of 5 STARS
Source: TBR Christian Non-Fiction List

Whoo-hoo! I finished my first TBR Non-Fiction for the year! This was a pretty easy read, but I ended up picking it up and putting it down a lot, so it took awhile for me to finish.

This book is a series of short essays complied into five sections: Christians in the World; The Bible; Love, Marriage & Family; The Arts; Science and Technology; Social Issues; Feasts and Festivals; The Church Yesterday; and The Church Today. He is a clear and concise writer with a lot of wisdom to impart.

I especially enjoyed Ryken's essays on the arts. He has some wonderful discussions on painters and their influence and worldviews such as Cezanne and van Gogh. He also delved into music and literature. The social issues topics were intriguing, too...quite a diverse package: human rights, abortion, pornography, alcohol, gambling, automobile driving, cheating, sports, cattle, and prison. Whew! Finally, the essays on church history were very well done: five segments highlighting different historical events or people from each of the first five centuries of the last millennium.

I underlined and highlighted a lot in this book, but here's just a couple of excerpts:

From "Love marriage, and Family:" Too often we want to bend God to our desires rather than allowing God to shape our desires to match his plans. My present circumstances are God's best for me. he is doing what he is doing in my life because, ultimately, he loves me. And that is the long-term relationship that matters most all.

Another one from the same section: But perhaps the best way to strengthen a marriage is to go back to the foundation, which is loving one's spouse. For a wife, this means serving her husband, helping him become the man God wants him to become. For a husband, this means sacrificing for his wife, cherishing her in a way that nurtures her inward beauty. God's best plan for marriage requires husbands and wives to become good lovers (Proverbs 5:15-20).

I highly recommend My Father's World. It would be a great book to keep by your bed to read one or two essays a night.

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson, ISBN-10: 0312139284, 1995, Picador USA. (1995 Whitbread Book of the Year)

Rating: 5 0f 5
Source: TBR Fiction Prize Winners List for 2009

This is a great-grandmother/grandmother/mother/daughter story. Behind the Scenes is really all about the relationships between these women and how their decisions (in many instances extremely selfish ones) ripple down through the generations. It's narrated by the last woman in the line, Ruby Lennox. Here's the description from Publisher's Weekly:

"Ruby Lennox is a quirky, complex character who relates the events of her life and those of her dysfunctional family with equal parts humor, fervor and candor-starting with her moment of conception in York, England, in 1959: "I exist!" Ruby then describes the family she is to join. Her parents own a pet shop; her mother, Bunty, bitterly rues having married her philandering husband, George, and daydreams about what her life might have been. Ruby has two older sisters, willful Gillian and melancholy Patricia. Through its ambitious structure, the novel also charts five generations and more than a century of Ruby's family history, as reported in "footnotes" that follow relevant chapters. (For example, a passage about a pink glass button reveals the story of its original owner, Ruby's great-grandmother Alice, who will abandon her young family and run off with a French magician.) Ruby's richly imagined account includes both the details of daily life and the several tragic events that punctuate the family's mundane existence."

This was simply an amazing book. I read Case Histories by Kate Atkinson a couple of years ago and I remember enjoying it, but it was not nearly as spectacular as Behind the Scenes at the Museum. This was her first book...what talent! (See my "Good Words" entry on this book here.) Sometimes I read award winners or short-listers (See Remembering Babylon) and come away disappointed. But I completely understand why this book would have won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1995. (BTW - Whitbread is now called the Costa Award.)

An interesting thing for me was that the story is based mostly in York, England. Matt and I surely aren't world travelers, and the only place out of the country that we've visited is....York! We went there for a friend's wedding almost five years ago. It was fun reading about places we saw on our short trip there: York Minster, Betty's, the tiny streets with leaning shops.

This book made me think about my own mother and grandmothers and great-grandmothers... and it helps me to look back at some of them with a little more grace. It also made me think really hard about my own mothering and what my girls are going to remember about our relationships. That's not always an easy thing to ponder...I'm such a mother-failure sometimes...
but thank the Lord for His mercy and grace! I need it everyday.

One caution and one negative:

Caution: there's some raunchy stuff that may be offensive to some, but I saw it as totally necessary to the story to paint the true situation Ruby was in and to understand how her ancestors sinful decisions had so impacted her life right from the beginning. Some authors seem to throw in a few smutty scenes for no apparent reason. This wasn't the case with Behind the Scenes, but still....reader beware.

Negative (and this is a really small one...not worth even taking off half a star): It's a British story through and through. British authors are not my favorite because I don't always understand their references and their writing tends to be too flowery for me. The latter was not the case in Behind the Scenes - Atkinson's prose was beautiful. The former was very true, though. I had to look a few references up because I didn't always get her British vernacular.

Spiritual content? There's references to ghosts, a visit to a church where diviners speak with the dead, one sister turns out to be Buddhist, and the narrator clearly doubts anyone "lies in the arms of Jesus" after death. Even so, I think this would be a great book for Christians to read and discuss. We need to understand the different worldviews out there so we can better engage others with the Gospel truth and prepare our children.

I highly recommend this book! Oh - I didn't own this one....but I came across it at Goodwill for fifty cents last month! Love that! :o)

CONTINUE READING...

Book Review: The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy, ISBN 0307387895, Vintage Books , 2007, fiction

Rating: 5 of 5 STARS
Source: 2009 TBR Award Winners List

I wonder how many book reviews have been written on this book? I would imagine thousands. I'm not sure what I could possibly add. The philosophical and spiritual aspects of this book would give one writing fodder for months and months. McCarthy puts the depths of both love and human depravity on center stage. Endurance, goodness, evil, hope, despair, innocence....so much.
So much.

And I'm sure just as much has been written about McCarthy's writing style. It took me about 20 pages to get into his rhythm, to follow the sparse, sometimes incomplete, sentences... To digest the lack of quotation marks in dialogue and apostrophes missing in certain contractions... To find the flow in the micro 'chapters.' It was, in short, beautiful and completely complimentary to the story he was telling.

Read it. To say it's a powerful story of sacrificial love of a father for his son is to do injustice.

Just read it.

So - what else do I have to say? As someone who dreams of being a writer one day, McCarthy's writing is both intimidating and inspiring. I found myself dog-earing page after page. He uses words I'm not familiar with or words that I am familiar with in ways that I'm not. I've listed below some of my favorites with links to their definitions:

Gambrel - In an old batboard smokehouse they found a ham gambreled up in a high corner.
Discalced - They were discalced to a man like pilgrims of some common order for all their shoes were long since stolen.
Windrow - ...and the bend of the river was choked with great windrows of black limbs and brush and trunks of trees. (McCarthy uses this word several times. I find it beautiful.)
Macadam - Late in the day they came to a place where the fire had crossed the road and the macadam was still warm and further on it began to soften underfoot. (Again, another common word in this novel.)
Obsidian - She would do it with a flake of obsidian.
Rachitic - He was lean, wiry, rachitic.
Siwash - ...he rose and walked out and cut a perimeter around their siwash camp...
Runic - Runic slogans, creeds misspelled.
Phalanx - The phalanx following carried spears or lances...
Mendicant - They set out upon the road again, slumped and cowled and shivering in their rags like mendicant friars sent forth to find their keep.
Palimpsest - The billboards had been whited out with thin coats of white paint in order to write on them and through the paint could be seen a pale palimpsest of advertisements...
Intestate - The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable.
Scrim - Sketched upon the pall of soot downstream the outline of a burnt city like a black paper scrim.
Middens - Middens of anonymous trash.
Bolus - Watching while they opened up the rocky hillside ground with pick and mattock and brought to light a great bolus of serpents perhaps a hundred in number.
Verdigris - Then he found a coin. Or a button. Deep crust of verdigris.
Isocline - At the tide line a woven mat of weeds and the ribs of fishes in their millions stretching along the shore as far as eye could see like an isocline of death.
Clerestory - The weak sea light fell through the clerestory portholes.
Bindle - Lastly he made a bindle in a plastic tarp...
Pampooties - They'd wrapped their feet in sailcloth and bound them up in blue plastic pampooties cut from a tarp...
Salitter - The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then a distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. What time of year? What age the child? … The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. (See the link on 'salitter' to The First Morning post on some history of usage. Beautifully written post.)
Sloe - He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack?Crozzled - Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts.
Loess - Tracks of unknown creatures in the mortified loess.

There are many, many other passages I would share with you, but this is already way too long of a post, and I've got laundry to do, so I'll end it here. I highly recommend reading this, especially with others. There's so much to talk about. Enjoy.

CONTINUE READING...

2009-2010 Christian Non-Fiction TBR List

Christian Non-Fiction
1. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis*
2. Real Sex by Lauren Winner*
3. Acedia & Me by Kathleen Norris* (In Progress)
4. Reading is Believing by David Cunningham**(9/12/09)
5. The Christian Imagination by Leland Ryken*
6. The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson*(8/02/09)
7. The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill*
8. My Father's World by Philip Graham Ryken* (3/03/09)
9. Through a Screen Darkly by Jeffrey Overstreet*
10. The Reason for God by Tim Keller*
11. The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer*
12. Not the Way It's Supposed to Be by C. Plantinga Jr.** (4/25/09)

CONTINUE READING...

2009-2010 Fiction-I-Own TBR List

Fiction-I-Own:

1. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis*(6/10)
2. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty*
3. Had a Good Time by Robert Olen Butler*
4. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy* (Could Not Finish!Ugh!)
5. Father and Son by Larry Brown*
6. The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula Le Guin* (6/19/09)
7.Frankenstein by Mary Shelley* (6/17/09)
8. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood* (6/2/09)
9. I, Claudius by Robert Graves*
10. The Small Rain by Madeleine L'Engle (10/21/09)
11. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh*
12. The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin*

CONTINUE READING...

2009-2010 Prize Winning Fiction

Prize Winning Fiction:


1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz(2008 Pulitzer, 2008 NBCC)
2. Gilead by Robinson(2005 Pulitzer)*(10/10)
3. The Stone Diaries by Shields(1995 Pulitzer, 1994 NBCC) *
4. A Bell for Adano by Hersey(1945 Pulitzer)
5. The Sea by John Banville(2005 Man Booker Prize)*
6. Disgrace by JM Coetzee(1999 Man Booker Prize)
7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy(1997 Man Booker Prize)*
8. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest G. Gaines(1993 NBCC)* (6/20/09)
9. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen(2001 National Book Award)*
10. Paris Trout by Pete Dexter(1988 National Book Award)
11. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson(1995 Costa) (2/10/09)
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy(2007 Pulitzer)* (1/18/09)

CONTINUE READING...

2009-2010 General Non-Fiction TBR List

General Non-Fiction:
1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls*(4/11/10)
2. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg*
3. Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks*
4. Warm and Snug by Lawrence Wright*
5. The Soul of the Night by Chet Raymo*
6. At Day's Close by A. Roger Ekirch*
7. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy* (6/15/09)
8. Apollo's Fire by Michael Sims*
9. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi*(1/23/10)
10. Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher*
11. Party of One by Anneli Rufus*
12. Writing Alone, Writing Together by Judy Reeves* (3/29/09)

CONTINUE READING...

TBR 2009 Non-Fiction Lists

OK - here are my non-fiction TBR lists for 2009. If I even get 1/3 of this read, I'll be happy!

TBR 2009 General Non-Fiction
1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls*
2. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg*
3. Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks*
4. Warm and Snug by Lawrence Wright*
5. The Soul of the Night by Chet Raymo*
6. At Day's Close by A. Roger Ekirch*
7. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy*
8. Apollo's Fire by Michael Sims*
9. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi*
10. Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher*
11. Party of One by Anneli Rufus*
12. Writing Alone, Writing Together by Judy Reeves*

TBR 2009 Christian Non-Fiction
1. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis*
2. Real Sex by Lauren Winner*
3. Acedia & Me by Kathleen Norris*
4. Reading is Believing by David Cunningham*
5. The Christian Imagination by Leland Ryken*
6. The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson*
7. The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill*
8. My Father's World by Philip Graham Ryken*
9. Through a Screen Darkly by Jeffrey Overstreet*
10. The Reason for God by Tim Keller*
11. The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer*
12. Not the Way It's Supposed to Be by Cornelius Plantinga Jr.*

Whew!

CONTINUE READING...

My 2009 Fiction TBR List

Last year was my first time to sign up for a TBR (To Be Read) challenge. I had a list of 12 books plus 12 alternates that I wanted to read. I only read a total of 10 from my lists, but it encouraged me to read books that I probably wouldn't have made it to. It's good to have a plan, I think.

So, for 2009 I've decided to choose my TBR titles from winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, or the Costa (Whitbread) Award. My 12 Alternates list come from books I own that I want to read. (Except for one - #10...Sondie, can I borrow?)

2009 TBR Prize Winners List
1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2008 Pulitzer, 2008 NBCC)
2. Gilead by Robinson (2005 Pulitzer) *
3. The Stone Diaries by Shields (1995 Pulitzer, 1994 NBCC)*
4. A Bell for Adano by Hersey (1945 Pulitzer)
5. The Sea by John Banville (2005 Man Booker Prize)*
6. Disgrace by JM Coetzee (1999 Man Booker Prize)
7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997 Man Booker Prize)*
8. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest G. Gaines (1993 NBCC)*
9. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001 National Book Award)*
10. Paris Trout by Pete Dexter (1988 National Book Award)
11. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson (1995 Costa)
12. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2007 Pulitzer)*

2009 TBR Alternates List
1. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis*
2. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty*
3. Had a Good Time by Robert Olen Butler*
4. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy*
5. Father and Son by Larry Brown*
6. The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula Le Guin*
7. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley*
8. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood*
9. I, Claudius by Robert Graves*
10. The Small Rain by Madeleine L'Engle
11. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh*
12. The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin*

*Own it!

Here's the link to the TBR group I'm joining. General and Christian non-fiction TBR lists to come. Read on! ;->

CONTINUE READING...