Saturday, May 30, 2020

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:





Some actual book reviews:



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



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Sunday, May 17, 2020

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




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