badgerbooks

by velocibadgergirl

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Another book meme

(cross-posted from my regular blog)


Instructions:  Look at the list of books below.

Bold the ones you’ve read.

Italicize the ones you're planning to read.

Cross out the ones you won’t read / aren't interested in.

Star the ones on your book shelves.

Place parentheses around the ones you’ve never even heard of.

Do nothing to the ones that you may or may not read.




I grabbed two different lists and combined them, and then alphabetized them by title because I was really irritated by the haphazard arrangement.


*1984 - George Orwell

(The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho)

Angela’s Ashes - Frank McCourt

Angels and Demons - Dan Brown

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell

Anna Karenina - Tolstoy

Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

(Atonement - Ian McEwan)

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

*The Bible (I tried reading it all the way through once and got through the second or third page of Numbers before I gave up.)

(Blindness - Jose Saramago)

The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum

*Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

*Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding

The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield

Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (From what I've heard about the movie, I don't think I'd enjoy the book.)

(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)

Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (I love the newer movie version, but judging from the three or four pages of The Three Musketeers that I slogged through once, I don't think the book will be quite as interesting.)

*Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

(The Diviners - Margaret Laurence)

Dune - Frank Herbert

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

Emma - Jane Austen

Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

(Fall on Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald)

(Fifth Business - Robertson Davies)

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk

*A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

*The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

*The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck

*Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

*The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

*Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone - JK Rowling
*Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
*Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
*Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince


(His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman)

*The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

*The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

(I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb)

Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice

(In The Skin Of A Lion - Ondaatje)

*Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

(Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer)

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

*The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis

*The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

*Lord of the Flies - William Golding

* The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien
*The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers
*The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King


(Love in the Time of Cholera - Gael Garcia Marquez)

*The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

(Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides)

The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley

(Neuromancer - William Gibson )

The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks

(Not Wanted On the Voyage - Timothy Findley)

Of Mice And Men - John Steinbeck

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

*Outlander - Diana Gabaldon

The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton

(The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett)

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

(The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay)

(A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving)

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

(Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier)

*The Red Tent - Anita Diamant

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I tried to read this as a kid, and I just remember that Colin whined a hell of a lot and I got bored.)

(The Secret History - Donna Tartt)

The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

(The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zago)

*She’s Come Undone - Wally Lamb

(Shogun - James Clavell)

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares

*Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

The Stand - Stephen King

(The Stone Angel - Margaret Laurence)

(The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields)

(The Summer Tree - Guy Gavriel Kay)

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough

The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

*Ulysses - James Joyce

War and Peace - Tolstoy

*Watership Down - Richard Adams

White Oleander - Janet Fitch

Wizard’s First Rule - Terry Goodkind

(A Woman of Substance - Barbara Taylor Bradford)

The World According To Garp - John Irving

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

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Saturday, May 26, 2007

Book Meme: 123.5

(cross-posted from my regular blog)


1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.



Since I was at the computer desk, I had MB pick a book at random from the shelf in the living room.

He picked Lirael by Garth Nix.

Page 123, sentence 5 is:  "They didn't," replied the Dog happily.



If you want to play along, grab a book and either post your line here in the comments, or post it on your page and leave me a link! :)

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Sunday, May 06, 2007

Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon

I read a few pages of Promise Not to Tell about two weeks ago at Barnes & Noble, and couldn't get the setup of the story out of my head. I requested it from the library, and it came in just in time for me to take it with me on a camping trip this weekend.

The book starts with a murder, but it was really the section right after the murder scene that hooked me:

My name is Kate Cypher and I am forty-one years old. I killed someone tonight. I have always believed myself to be a person incapable of murder. Suicide has crossed my mind once or twice, but murder? Never. Not this white-winged dove. I've marched for peace and give money on a regular basis to Amnesty International. I'm a school nurse who draws happy faces on Band-Aids, for Christ's sake.

But none of this changes the fact that it was little old me who pulled the trigger and, with near-perfect aim, put a hole in another human being's heart.

Promise Not to Tell is the story of the unsolved 1971 murder of Kate's best friend, 12-year-old Del Griswold, a girl no one really knew. It's the story of Kate coming to terms with her betrayal of Del just before her death and of a recent copy-cat murder. It's also a ghost story, and a damn good one.

The book alternates sections of the present-day story--Kate caring for her mother, stricken with Alzheimer's and a strange obsession with a gray-eyed blonde girl who's been dead for thirty years; Kate trying to comfort Opal, daughter of a woman who grew up in a hippie commune alongside Kate; the mystery of the recent murder of Opal's best friend; Kate's continuing guilt over Del's murder and reacquaintance with Del's brother Nicky--with the long-past story of Kate and Del's short and tragic friendship. The alternation of storylines never seemed choppy, and served well to establish tension in the story.

Some of the things I suspected about the story arc turned out to be accurate, especially in the case of the ghost story, but some aspects of the plot took me by surprise. I can't say much more than that without ruining the end, which would be unfair. Promise is utterly believable, just creepy enough without going too far (I was able to read it by the campfire and still sleep soundly in my tent afterwards), and enveloping. It's also pretty short, and a fast read. I definitely recommend it!

jennifer-mcmahon.com

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