The Books List, Part Six

20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List

It's Thanksgiving, we're still having a pandemic, and so many of us are staying at home instead of traveling. Clearly it's time for another books list! 

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

1. Flesh and Blood – Jonathan Kellerman

2. Twisted – Jonathan Kellerman

3. The Beach House – James Patterson and Peter de Jonge

4. Double Homicide – Faye and Jonathan Kellerman

5. A Year in the Merde – Stephen Clarke

6. Naked in Baghdad – Anne Garrels

7. I'm a Stranger Here Myself – Bill Bryson

8. How Did They Die? - Norman and Betty Donaldson

9. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin

10. Therapy – Jonathan Kellerman

11. A Separate Peace – John Knowles

12. Of Human Bondage – W. Somerset Maugham

13. Made in America – Bill Bryson

14. Beloved – Toni Morrison

15. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis

16. The Optimist's Guide to History – Doris Flexner

17. O. Henry Festival Stories 1991

18. The Biggest Loser – The Biggest Loser Experts and Cast

19. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – Malcolm Gladwell

20. After Life – John Edward

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Margaret Atwood, Charles deLint and Toni Morrison), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. Strange Highways – Dean Koontz

2. The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower – Stephen King

3. The Beans of Egypt, Maine – Carolyn Chute

4. The Camel Club – David Baldacci

5. Fat Land – Greg Critser

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;

2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or

3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies).

1. Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer

2. Don Quixote – Miguel Cervantes

3. The Pilgrim's Proress – John Bunyan

4. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel DeFoe

5. Moll Flanders – Daniel DeFoe

6. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding

7. Candide – Voltaire

8. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

9. The Tragedy of Faust – Johann von Goethe

10. The Lady of the Lake – Sir Walter Scott

11. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott

12. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

13. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

14. The Red and the Black – Stendhal

15. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

16. Carmen – Prosper Merimee

17. The Thomas Berryman Number – James Patterson

18. Season of the Machete - James Patterson

19. Hide and Seek - James Patterson

20. Miracle on the 17^th Green - James Patterson

21. See How They Run - James Patterson

22. Black Friday - James Patterson

23. Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas - James Patterson

24. Sam's Letters to Jennifer - James Patterson

25. Santa Kid - James Patterson

26. High Fidelity – Nick Hornby

27. Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment – James Patterson

28. Jack and Jill - James Patterson

29. Pop Goes the Weasel - James Patterson

30. Roses Are Red - James Patterson

31. Violets Are Blue - James Patterson

32. Four Blind Mice - James Patterson

33. The Big Bad Wolf - James Patterson

34. Your Life in the Palm of Your Hand – Kathryn Harwig

35. The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

36. Boffo! - Peter Bart

37. Rejuvenile – Christopher Noxon

38. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash – Elizabeth Royte

39. Edwin Mullhouse – Steven Millhauser

40. The Voyage of the Beagle – Charles Darwin

41. Relativity: The Special and General Theory – Albert Einstein

42. One, Two, Three...Infinity – George Gamow

43. What Is Life? - Erwin Schrodinger

44. The Cosmic Connection – Carl Sagan

45. The Feynman Lectures on Physics – Richard Feynman

46. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male – Alfred Kinsey at al

47. The Poe Shadow – Matthew Pearl

48. A Twist at the End – Steven Saylor

49. Borges and the Eternal Orangutans – Luis Verissimo

50. The Dante Club – Matthew Pearl

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read.

Please check out the other books lists, if you haven't already: 

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-books-list-part-one.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-books-list-part-two.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-three.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-four.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-books-list-part-five.html

Some reviews I've written: 

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/review-of-honeymooners-cautionary-tale.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2016/04/review-of-almost-green-how-i-saved-16th.html

Image from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/knowledge-book-library-glasses-1052014/

The Books List, Part Five

20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List

With fall just around the corner, it's time to hit the books! But if you aren't in school, you get to choose yours, at least. Clearly, it's time for another Books List post!

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

1. Freakonomics – Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

2. Man and Wife – Andrew Klavan

3. Texas Hold 'Em – Kinky Friedman

4. Telling Lies for Fun and Profit – Lawrence Block

5. All the King's Men – Robert Penn Warren

6. The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World – A.J. Jacobs

7. Native Son – Richard Wright

8. The Uncanny – Andrew Klavan

9. The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

10. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

11. The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

12. Mary Mary – James Patterson

13. He's Just Not that Into You – Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo

14. Monster – Jonathan Kellerman

15. Dr. Death – Jonathan Kellerman

16. All I Did Was Ask – Terry Gross

17. The Jester – James Patterson and Andrew Gross

18. The Lake House – James Patterson

19. Never-Say-Diet Book – Richard Simmons

20. Bel Canto – Ann Patchett

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Margaret Atwood, Charles deLint and Toni Morrison), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. The Woman's Book of Questions – Sophia Mark

2. The Worst Noel – ed. by Marjorie Braman

3. Siren's Lullaby – William Kennedy

4. Incredible Facts – Richard Manchester

5. The Devil's Code – John Sandford

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;

2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or

3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies).

1. In the Ruins – Kate Elliott (book series – continued from prior list)

2. Crown of Stars – Kate Elliott

3. The Great Deluge – Douglas Brinkley

4. Never Done – Susan Strasser

5. The Foreigner's Gift – Fouad Ajami

6. In a Strange City – Laura Lippman

7. All Families Are Psychotic – Douglas Coupland

8. Bookmark Now – Ed. by Kevin Smokler

9. The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing – Melissa Bank

10. The Wonder Spot – Melissa Bank

11. I Hate the Man Who Runs This Bar – Eugene Chadbourne

12. Don't Get Too Comfortable – David Rakoff

13. Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs – Ken Jennings

14. Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! - Bob Harris

15. Female Chauvinist Pigs – Ariel Levy

16. To Hell with All That – Caitlin Flanagan

17. This Book Will Save Your Life – A.M. Holmes

18. Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl

19. The Thirteenth Tale – Diane Setterfield

20. The Devil in the Junior League – Linda Francis Lee

21. Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn

22. Insecure at Last – Eve Ensler

23. Freedom: The Story of My Second Life – Malika Oufkir

24. Last Seen Leaving – Kelly Braffet

25. Mortified – Ed. by David Nadelberg

26. One Good Turn – Kate Atkinson

27. The Worst-Case Scenario History Almanac – Borgenicht, Piven, Marchant

28. The Ten-Minute Activist: Easy Ways to Take Back the Planet – The Mission Collective

29. At Day's Close; Night in Times Past – A. Roger Ekrich

30. A Room of One's Own – Virginia Woolf

31. Skinny Legs and All – Tom Robbins

32. A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami

33. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife – Mary Roach

34. Global Warming: Personal Solutions for a Healthy Planet – Chris Spence

35. Climate Change Begins at Home – Dave Reay

36. Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life – Allen Shawn

37. The Age of Missing Information – Bill McKibben

38. The Friday Night Knitting Club – Kate Jacobs

39. The Double Bind – Chris Bohjalian

40. I Am the Cheese – Robert Cormier

41. Holes – Louis Sachar

42. Back When We Were Grownups – Anne Tyler

43. If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O – Sharyn McCrumb

44. The Devil Wears Prada – Lauren Weisberger

45. The Iliad – Homer

46. The Odyssey – Homer

47. The Aeneid – Virgil

48. Beowulf – unknown

49. The Divine Comedy – Dante Alghieri

50. The Travels of Marco Polo – Marco Polo

The other lists:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-books-list-part-one.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-books-list-part-two.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-three.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-four.html

Some actual book reviews:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/review-of-honeymooners-cautionary-tale.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2016/04/review-of-almost-green-how-i-saved-16th.html

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read.

Image from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/leaves-books-color-coffee-cup-1076307/

Learn English Grammar: When to Use the Word "Had"?

The word "had" serves two functions in English: as the past tense of "has/have", but also as a "helping verb" that is added to the past participle of a verb to create another tense, the past perfect. 

Let's look at the following examples:

1. She has a book. She had a book. 

This simply shows the use of the verb "to have" which means "to possess", in its present and past tense.

2. She writes a book. She wrote a book. She has written a book. She had written a book. 

This one shows the present and past tense (write/wrote), and gives an example of how "has" and "had" both act as "helping verbs" when added to the past participle (written) in the formation of the present perfect (has written) and the past perfect (had written).

The present perfect tense is used to describe something that happened (she has written a book) or didn't happen (she has never written a book) from the perspective of the current time, which is why it's called the present perfect. In other words, as of now, the present time, she has written a book.

The past perfect tense is used to describe something that happened in the past at a time before another time that is also in the past. So, "By the time Alice was 16 years old, she had written a book". Alice is not currently 16 years old - that happened in the past, which we can tell because of the use of the past tense word "was". But before that, even farther in the past, she wrote a book.

So when do you use "had"? You use it either to show a simple past tense of possession, or as a helper verb to refer to something that happened longer ago in the past from the reference point of something that also happened in the past, but more recently.

More on writing: 
https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2017/10/why-you-should-never-trust-spell-check.html

Image from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/correcting-proof-paper-correction-1870721/

The Books List, Part Four

20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List 

The pandemic isn't over, and summer reading season is just getting under way, so it's definitely time for another Books List post!

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

1. The Little Friend – Donna Tartt
2. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
3. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes – Chris Crutcher
4. Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel – Mike Chinn
5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
6. Gulliver's Travels – Jonathan Swift
7. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien
8. Fast Food Nation – Eric Schlosser
9. The Weight of It: A Story of Two Sisters – Amy Wilensky
10. Athletic Shorts: 6 Short Stories – Chris Crutcher
11. Why Animals Sleep So Close to the Road (And Other Lies I Tell My Children) – Susan Konig
12. Ironman – Chris Crutcher
13. Nickel and Dimed – Barbara Ehrenreich
14. Assassination Vacation – Sarah Vowell
15. Whale Talk – Chris Crutcher
16. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
17. Animal Farm – George Orwell
18. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
19. Autobiography of a Face – Lucy Grealy
20. Funny in Farsi – Firoozeh Dumas

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Margaret Atwood, Charles de Lint and Toni Morrison), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. Childhood's End – Arthur C. Clarke
2. The Midnight Club – James Patterson
3. The Lottery and Other Stories – Shirley Jackson
4. The Sheltering Sky – Paul Bowles
5. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;
2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or
3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies).

1. Along Came a Spider – James Patterson
2. The Waste Land – T.S. Eliot
3. Blue Blood – Ed Conlon
4. Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch – Hollis Gillespie
5. Eats, Shoots, and Leaves – Lynne Truss
6. The Rule of Four – Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
7. Red, Red, Robin – Stephen Gallagher
8. Paradise Lost – John Milton
9. Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
10. The Alienist – Caleb Carr
11. Mr. Spaceman – Robert Olen Butler
12. The Partner – John Grisham
13. When the Music's Over: My Journey into Schizophrenia – Ross Burke
14. The Book of Dead Birds – Gayle Brandeis
15. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
16. A Canticle for Liebowitz – Walter Miller, Jr.
17. The Postman – David Brin
18. Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler
19. I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
20. Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban
21. Brown Girl in the Ring – Nalo Hopkinson
22. Numbered Accounts – Christopher Reich
23. Blackburn – Bradley Denton
24. The American Way of Dying – Jessica Mitford
25. Him Her Him Again The End of Him – Patricia Marx
26. The Spellman Files – Lisa Lutz
27. Then We Came to the End – Joshua Ferris
28. Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War- Tara McKelvey
29. Swim to Me – Betsy Carter
30. The Big Turnoff – Ellen Currey-Wilson
31. Mystery Walk – Robert McCammon
32. The Strangers – Mort Castle
33. When Science Goes Wrong – Simon LeVay
34. Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever – James Patterson
35. Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports - James Patterson
36. Maximum Ride: The Final Warning - James Patterson
37. Sundays at Tiffany's - James Patterson
38. Sail - James Patterson
39. The Dangerous Days of Daniel X - James Patterson
40. The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God – Carl Sagan
41. The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
42. Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life – Amy Krouse Rosenthal
43. Bee Season – Myla Goldberg
44. A Primate's Memoir – Robert Sapolsky
45. Almost Human – Shirley C. Strum
46. King's Dragon – Kate Elliott
47. Prince of Dogs - Kate Elliott
48. The Burning Stone - Kate Elliott
49. Child of Flame - Kate Elliott
50. The Gathering Storm - Kate Elliott

The other lists:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-books-list-part-one.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-books-list-part-two.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-three.html

Some actual book reviews:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/review-of-honeymooners-cautionary-tale.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2016/04/review-of-almost-green-how-i-saved-16th.html

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read.

Image from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/illustrations/buckled-book-book-fantasy-photoshop-2180047/

The Books List, Part Three

20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List

Time for another Books List post! The weather has finally gotten warm, and you can now go read on the porch or in a comfy hammock. Enjoy!

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

1. Girl with a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
2. The Red Tent – Anita Diamant (you will probably cry, really hard. But it's good.)
3. Kiss the Girls – James Patterson
4. The Between – Tananarive Due
5. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
6. Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind: A Naturalist Debunks Our Favorite Fallacies about Wildlife – Warner Shedd
7. Lullaby – Chuck Palahniuk
8. Diary: A Novel – Chuck Palahniuk (this is a REALLY creepy story. Must like horror.)
9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Immortal – Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
10. It's a Dirty Job – Katy Terrega
11. The Ten Trusts – Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff
12. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
13. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
14. Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide – Kay Redfield Jamison
15. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling
16. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim – David Sedaris
17. Stealing Faces – Michael Prescott
18. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
19. House of Sand and Fog – Andre Dubus III
20. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Margaret Atwood, Charles de Lint and Toni Morrison), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
2. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
3. The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susanna – Stephen King
4. We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
5. Daddy's Little Girl – Mary Higgins Clark

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;
2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or
3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies). There are literally over 1400 books currently on my reading list (I'm stupidly ambitious), so this is a very small chunk.

1. The Ivory and the Horn – Charles de Lint
2. Jack of Kinrowan - Charles de Lint
3. Moonheart - Charles de Lint
4. Moonlight and Vines - Charles de Lint
5. Tapping the Dream Tree - Charles de Lint
6. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
7. One Lonely Night – Mickey Spillane
8. On the Beach – Nevil Shute
9. Starship Troopers – Robert Heinlein
10. The Door into Summer – Robert Heinlein
11. The Puppet Masters – Robert Heinlein
12. Double Star – Robert Heinlein
13. Citizen of the Galaxy – Robert Heinlein
14. The Wood Wife – Terri Windling
15. Arrowsmith – Sinclair Lewis
16. Guilty Pleasures – Laurell Hamilton
17. V – Thomas Pynchon
18. Tristam Shandy – Laurence Sterne
19. Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
20. Buddenbrooks- Thomas Mann
21. Le Pere Goriot – Honore de Balzac
22. The Tin Drum – Gunter Grass
23. Molly/Malone Dies/The Unnamable (trilogy) – Samuel Beckett
24. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
25. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
26. Dream of the Red Chamber – Cao Xueqin
27. The Trial – Franz Kafka
28. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
29. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – Mary Roach
30. Animal Talk – Tim Friend
31. Arranged Marriage – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
32. Dragonfly in Amber – Diana Gabaldon
33. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – Anita Loos
34. Life among the Surrealists – Matthew Josephson
35. Small Town – Lawrence Block
36. Novel History – Ed. by Mark C. Carnes
37. The Story behind the Story – Ed. by Turchi and Barrett
38. Mortification: Writer's Stories of Their Public Shame – Ed. by Robin Robertson
39. Lapsing into a Comma – Bill Walsh
40. The Elephants of Style – Bill Walsh
41. Empire Falls – Richard Russo
42. Life of Pi – Yann Martel (I've seen the movie and liked it)
43. Peace Like a River – Leif Enger
44. The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
45. Indistinguishable from Magic – Robert L. Forward
46. The Demon-Haunted World – Carl Sagan
47. Bellwether – Connie Willis
48. Neuromancer – William Gibson
49. Fairyland – Paul J. McAuley
50. A Map of the World – Jane Hamilton

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read.

The other lists:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-books-list-part-one.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-books-list-part-two.html

Some actual book reviews:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/review-of-honeymooners-cautionary-tale.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2016/04/review-of-almost-green-how-i-saved-16th.html

The Books List, Part Two

20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List

Still in quarantine, so time for another Books List post! I hope that you found the first post helpful in bringing some enjoyable books to your attention. If you didn't read it, go here:https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-books-list-part-one.html

You'll probably note that there is a continuing pattern in the proportion of books that I liked (20), books I didn't like (5), and books I might like (50). It's true that I do enjoy the majority of the books that I read, but that's not because I have low literary standards. Although I tend to be an optimistic chick, I don't appreciate bad writing, nor will I recommend a book that left me flat, even if it's by a favorite author (out of fairness, I almost always finish a book, even if it's not great, to give it every chance).

So how do I get so lucky? Well, it's because I tend to read books that have either come well-recommended or that are by an author I like. Sometimes I am betrayed, but most of the time I am delighted. Sometimes I just idly pick something out or read what's handy, and that's where taking my chances is less likely to pay off (sometimes it does). Basically what I'm saying here is that you, too, stand a better chance of liking something that was recommended – hence my list!

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

1. 3001: The Final Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
2. Moses, Man of the Mountain – Zora Neale Hurston
3. Seraph on the Suwanee – Zora Neale Hurston
4. Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
5. Odd Thomas – Dean Koontz
6. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
7. The Taking – Dean Koontz
8. The Dark: New Ghost Stories – Ed. By Ellen Datlow
9. A Cold Heart – Jonathan Kellerman
10. The Conspiracy Club – Jonathan Kellerman
11. The Last Juror – John Grisham
12. Writing the Breakout Novel – Donald Maass
13. A Primer on Mental Disorders – Allen, Liebman, Park, Wimmer
14. Wake Up, I'm Fat! - Camryn Manheim
15. Wasted – Marya Hornbacher
16. Helping Someone with Mental Illness – Rosalyn Carter
17. When the Wind Blows – James Patterson
18. Cradle and All – James Patterson
19. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
20. Along Came a Spider – James Patterson

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Margaret Atwood, Charles deLint and Zora Neale Hurston), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. Unexplained! - Jerome Clark
2. The Chronicle of Crime – Martin Fido
3. 563 Stupid Things People Do to Mess Up their Lives – Dr. Larry
4. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
5. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;
2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or
3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies). There are literally over 1400 books currently on my reading list (I'm stupidly ambitious), so this is a very small chunk. Don't worry; there will be more of these posts.

1. The Princess of Cleves – Madame de LaFayette
2. The Stranger – Albert Camus
3. The Counterfeiters – Andre Gide
4. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
5. Germinal – Emile Zola
6. U.S.A. Trilogy – John dos Pasos
7. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
8. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Doblin
9. Cities of Salt – Abd al Rahman Munif
10. The Death of Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes
11. The Last Chronicles of Barset – Anthony Trollope
12. The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens
13. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Goethe
14. Oblomov – Ivan Goncharov
15. Waverly – Sir Walter Scott
16. Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata
17. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
18. Cold Sassy Tree – Olive Ann Burns
19. Dawn – Octavia Butler
20. Boys and Girls Together – William Goldman
21. Bimbos of the Death Sun – Sharyn McCrumb
22. Suttree – Cormac McCarthy
23. Mythago Wood – Robert Holdstock
24. Illusions – Richard Bach
25. The Cunning Man – Robertson Davies
26. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
27. In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust
28. The Tale of Genji – Murasaki Shikibu
29. Emma – Jane Austen
30. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
31. The Ambassadors – Henry James
32. 100 Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
34. The Man without Qualities – Robert Musil
35. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
36. Yarrow – Charles de Lint
37. Memory and Dream - Charles de Lint
38. Trader - Charles de Lint
39. Greenmantle - Charles de Lint
40. The Little Country - Charles de Lint
41. Mulengro - Charles de Lint
42. Spirits in the Wires - Charles de Lint
43. Medicine Road - Charles de Lint
44. The Blue Girl - Charles de Lint
45. Angel of Darkness - Charles de Lint
46. Dreams Underfoot - Charles de Lint
47. The Fair in Emain Mancha - Charles de Lint
48. From a Whisper to a Scream - Charles de Lint
49. I'll Be Watching You - Charles de Lint
50. Into the Green - Charles de Lint

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read.

Here's the next, uh, chapter: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-three.html

Image from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/illustrations/book-old-clouds-tree-birds-bank-863418/

Review of Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale by Chuck Kinder

I want to be nice to Chuck Kinder. I want to give him a great review, because he is from West Virginia. Although I was not born in West Virginia, I grew up there, and I have had to deal with the most astonishingly ignorant comments from people who either have no idea that West Virginia is actually separate from Virginia (What part of Virginia did you say you were from? The part that became a state in 1863), or who think it is a land peopled solely by unlettered inbreds of the Deliverance ilk (by the way, Deliverance was set in Georgia , and the people in the movie were actors).

Okay, so clearly I'm a little defensive about the West Virginia thing, and I wanted to praise my homeboy Chuck Kinder as a fantastic writer who has penned an amazing book. And yet, although I don't think Kinder is a bad writer--as a matter of fact, he is a good writer--I do not, in fact, think that he has penned an amazing book, or even a very good one. It is not so much a bad book, either, as an aggressively pointless one.

Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale is the story of friends Ralph Crawford and Jim Stark, two intelligent yet self-defeating writers who are unlikely to achieve their big dreams of being star novelists, as they have made a second career of doing inadvisable quantities of recreational drugs, screwing around on their spouses, wandering off aimlessly, running out on restaurant checks, and blathering, blathering, blathering about all the great stuff they are going to do as soon as the world stops holding them back. Arghhh. I don't feel I need to tell you more; I am sure you know people just like this and probably have restraining orders against them.

What initially drew me to this book was the deadpan hilarity of the cover (in retrospect, the best part of the book), backed up by approving cover blurbs by such renowned literary figures as Michael Chabon, Richard Ford, Scott Turow and Larry McMurtry. But I should have taken warning from those same blurbs: Ford, for example, invokes the likes of Kerouac, Ken Kesey and even R. Crumb. The term 'iconoclast' is used, with reverence. Sigh. I have read Kerouac, Kesey and Crumb (now there's a nice, alliterative law firm for you), and they seem to enjoy writing about the pointless pursuits of drug-addled hedonists (by turns, nihilists), so, hey, if that's what you're into, this book fits right in. It also occurred to me that the blurbists are all known for writing "manly man" fiction, so maybe that's the problem--maybe I just don't have the right plumbing to enjoy this stuff. And here I was thinking a pointless, plotless, train wreck of a book with unlikable characters doing nothing worthwhile or even remotely interesting wouldn't appeal to anyone , regardless of gender.

Sorry, Chuck. At least I don't think it's because you're from West Virginia, if that's any consolation.

Hey, here's a book I liked: 

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-james-pattersons-quickie.html

The Books List, Part One

20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List

It is March 2020, and we are currently staying at home because of the threat of COVID-19 (historical context!). People are looking for things to do while under this semi-quarantine, and a lot of us are finding more time to catch up on reading. It's always good to have friends who can recommend books that they enjoyed, to give us an idea of something we might try next. I personally read a lot of different kinds of things – fiction, non-fiction, Young Adult (YA), graphic novels, and several years ago, I started writing down everything I read, with a little smiley, meh face, or frown to remind me whether I liked it, didn't care, or disliked it, because I am certainly not going to remember every single book I read, but at least I know whether I would read it again or steer clear.

I am not going to write reviews or summaries of these books, because all that stuff is readily available online. This is just my very simple overall opinion based on how I felt after having read the book. Did I love it, or at least like it? Or did I feel like I wasted my time? The point of sharing this list with you is to give you some inspiration about what you might like to read.

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

1. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
2. By the Light of the Moon – Dean Koontz
3. The Art Book – Phaidon Press
4. Cat's Eye – Margaret Atwood
5. The Murder Book – Jonathan Kellerman
6. The Face – Dean Koontz
7. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
8. The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood
9. Enough Rope – Lawrence Block
10. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them – Al Franken
12. Light in August – William Faulkner
13. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla – Stephen King
14. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
15. Stupid White Men – Michael Moore
16. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
17. Ender's Game – Orson Scott Card
18. The Songs of Distant Earth – Arthur C. Clarke
19. Jonah's Gourd Vine – Zora Neale Hurston
20. The Hammer of God – Arthur C. Clarke

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Margaret Atwood, Charles deLint and Zora Neale Hurston), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
2. The Official eBay Guide – Laura Fisher Kaiser and Michael Kaiser
3. Emotionally Weird: A Novel – Kate Atkinson
4. Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know them Taters Got Eyes – Lewis Grizzard
5. The South Beach Diet – Dr. Arthur Agatston

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;
2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or
3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies). There are literally over 1400 books currently on my reading list (I'm stupidly ambitious), so this is a very small chunk. Don't worry; I'm planning on coughing up more of these posts.

1. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature – Steven Pinker
2. American Normal: The Hidden World of Asperger Syndrome – Lawrence Osborne
3. Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats – Craig Marberry
4. Partly Cloudy Patriot – Sarah Vowell
5. Lady Oracle – Margaret Atwood
6. Man's Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
7. Running with Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
8. Random Family – Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
9. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
10. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
11. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
12. Midnight's Children – Salman Rushdie
13. My Antonia – Willa Cather
14. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
15. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
16. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
17. The Call of the Wild – Jack London
18. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
19. Dune – Frank Herbert
20. Fifth Business – Robertson Davies
21. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
22. The French Lieutenant's Woman – John Fowles
23. Gravity's Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
24. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
25. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
26. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
28. Rabbit Run – John Updike
29. Slaughterhouse – Five – Kurt Vonnegut
30. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
31. Sophie's Choice – William Styron
32. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
33. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
34. Ulysses – James Joyce
35. The World According to Garp – John Irving
36. The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell
37. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
38. Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner
39. Plainsong – Kent Haruf
40. Survival of the Prettiest – Nancy Etcoff
41. Learning Their Language – Marta Williams
42. Science and the Search for God – Gary Kowalski
43. Darkness Visible – William Styron
44. I Know What You're Thinking – Lillian Glass
45. The Fat Girl's Guide to Life – Wendy Shanter
46. Good Grief – Lolly Winston
47. Symptomatic – Danzy Senna
48. From Beirut to Jerusalem – Thomas Friedman
49. The Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
50. Petersburg – Andrey Bely

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read. Let's make quarantine fun and productive!

Here's the next list! : https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-books-list-part-two.html

Image from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/book-read-tee-literature-2020460/