31 Books in 31 Weeks

Back in business

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 19:15:43 -0400

I am back to the list and going full speed ahead.

Reviews and quotes on those I have finished to come.

Current read: Ender’s Game.

31 Books

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:43:00 -0400

I love setting goals and I love making lists.

I plan to FINALLY finish reading these 31 books by well before the end of the year. It is certainly an eclectic bunch - thanks to all of you who made recommendations.

And fear not, I will be sharing my opinions and of course quotes (because I love quotes more than I love goals and lists).

Here they are (in no particular order):

~~An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin~~
~~Miss Lizzie - Walter Satterthwait~~
~~Chopin’s Letters - Frederic Chopin~~
~~The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald~~
The Once and Future King - T. H. White
Pygmy - Chuck Palahniuk
Madness and Civilization - Michel Foucault
~~A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan~~
A Widow for One Year - John Irving
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
~~Just Kids - Patti Smith~~
Mythology - Edith Hamilton
Heaven Exists - Noelle McNeil
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
~~The Tsar’s Dwarf - Peter H. Fogtdal~~
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn
~~The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith~~
Garden of Eden - Ernest Hemingway
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
~~Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card~~
Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard
The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
The Virgin and The Gypsy - D. H. Lawrence
The Wall - Sartre
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
~~Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte~~
~~Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen~~

Miss Lizzie

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:45:21 -0400

Book #2 is complete! And should have taken me way less time to read than it did - but, c’est la vie.

Miss Lizzie was a fun and fast summer read type book. Not a life changing novel - but the characters were strong, and the mystery kept me hooked.

I would write more - but, I am exhausted as hell.

Now for some Chopin!

"We make our own luck, Amanda. But some of us make it more quickly than others."

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:00:06 -0400

“We make our own luck, Amanda. But some of us make it more quickly than others.”

- Walter Satterthwait (Miss Lizzie)

"Families are held together as much by what they do not say as by what they do."

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:46:47 -0400

“Families are held together as much by what they do not say as by what they do.”

- Walter Satterthwait (Miss Lizzie)

An Object of Beauty

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:56:02 -0400

Book 1 (just 30 more to go) completed!

I absolutely loved this book. Steve Martin creates such wonderful character’s and has an effortless charm and sense of humor in his writing. You can’t help but smile while you read his work.

Though the book is centered around the story of a woman through a friend’s perspective, it really gives a fascinating history of the art dealing industry from the mid 90s to present day - a world that I never knew much about. I found it to be quite fascinating, and the history lesson was perfectly intertwined with the plot of the characters.

Up next: Miss Lizzie

"Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the..."

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:55:36 -0400

“Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.””

- Billy Collins (Excerpt from Marginalia)

"Lacey was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others..."

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:54:24 -0400

“Lacey was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized”

- Steve Martin (An Object of Beauty)

"I have found that - just as in real life - imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience"

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:53:53 -0400

“I have found that - just as in real life - imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience”

- Steve Martin (An Object of Beauty)