40 books in ‘07

I love books, and I love to read, but I often forget to read, and I get frustrated with that. This here is my attempt to read lots and lots in ‘07. Please leave recommendations in your comments so I can get a good list of reads. Thanks with a BIG cherry on top!

Current list of recommendations:

• On Agate Hill by Lee Smith is just fantastic, and she’s a local author (from Hillsborough).
• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
• Anything by Laurie Notaro (her first book is The Idiot Girl’s Action Adventure Club) will have you laughing out loud until you have tears rolling down your cheeks;
  Autobiography of a fat bride : true tales of a pretend adulthood
• Forest Gump and/or the sequel Gump & Company
• Nicholas Sparks books if you’re into that kind of mushy gooshy; Dear john
  Message in a bottle
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver – Good narrative, told from the point of view of a mother and her four daughters (each chapter from a different POV) as their family travels to the Congo to be missionaries in 1959. It’s a fairly easy read, but one I definitely got into and had a hard time putting down.
• Beach Music by Pat Conroy – Conroy is one of my favorite authors, so I really recommend anything by him, but this was the first I read, so it’s always going to be one of my favorites. It’s the story of a man who takes his daughter and moves to Italy after his wife commits suicide to remove himself from all the things that reminded him of his wife, and how he transitions back into life in the US with his and his wife’s families several years later. Another easy read, but very, very good.
• The Windup Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami – Murakami is another one of my all-time favorite authors. His writing tends to lean towards surreal realism, and can be weird if you’re not used to it or into that style. But this is one of my favorite books ever, and I’ve made all my friends read it (and they’ve all loved it, too). It’s the story of a guy whose wife disappears and all the strange people he meets (and their stories) as he goes about trying to find out what happened to his lost wife.
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman - If you’ve not read anything by Gaiman, you should. Easy, fun reading. It’s sorta surreal realism, like Murakami, but a bit more light-hearted and fantastical. This one’s the story of a guy freshly released from prison who ends up having nothing left from his former life to go back to, and ends up running around with all these “gods” (peoples’ forgotten ideas of gods, in a nutshell) lost in America. Quite entertaining.
• Anything by Terry Pratchett, and double points if it comes from the Discworld series. Wintersmith is a recent release, and I highly reccomend that if you enjoy any kind of fantasy reading. He’s got a wonderful style of writing, and I find myself giggling at everything I get my hands on.
• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon – If you like semi-cheezy romance, time-travel, historial fiction, this series will keep you occupied for a while. It’s the story of a woman who ends up going back to 18th century Scotland, can’t get back to her own time, and ends up marrying a man to stay alive and eventually falls in love with him. The story gets a bit bogged down with minute details later in the series, but it’s a fun, no-brain-required type of read (perfect for holidays).
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – You may have already read this one – it was so popular a while back, on all the top reading lists. Another pretty easy read about a man who time travels (whether he wants to or not) and how he meets his wife, and how they live together with his weird … “talent.” I quite enjoyed it.
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• Hearts in Atlantis
• Timothy Findley, Piano Mans Daughter
• Roald Dahl, anything he writes!
• John Irving, Prayer for Owen Meany
• Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmations and Starlight Barking
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• Anna Endquist; The Piano
• Mark Haddon, whose written “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” and “a spot of bother” both VERY interesting and weird and hard to put down.

Other Notes:

• Try googling “summer reading lists” for required reading for high schoolers – always a good source of classic must-reads.
• The Quailridge Books website has has all their staff picks
• I also recommend checking out the books, booktards and book_worm LiveJournal communities, they always have some good posts.

Books I’ve read since making a better effort:

• Forest Gump and
• the sequel Gump & Company
• Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
• Little Children by Tom Perrotta
• Teacher Man by Frank Mc Court
• Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
• A Million little pieces by James Frey
• The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy