Ski Vacation Reading

Hello Readers,

Yes, we are on our ski vacation to Winter Park, Colorado and having a fabulous time.  The entire family has been in and out and enjoying this beautiful ski resort at 9000 feet.  I am thankful for medication that helps me with the altitude sickness.

As far a vacations go I have completed two book and have started two others- always a successful time when books are read - don't you agree?

Innocence by Dean Koontz, one of my favorite authors was a page turner and the concept of the story was secret until the end.  Koontz's prose and writing style are superb and I highly recommend his books.  I find that he pulls me into each paragraph with words that surround me and lift and frighten at the same time. Much of his work is religious in theme as this one contains many references to catholicism and Christianity and yet is not some of the soft religious themed writings you sometimes find.  Definitely a strong good versus evil writer and you know where he stands.  (Koontz is from coal country in PA)

The Wild Rose by Jennifer Donnelly is the final book in the Rose Trilogy.  This is a 'saga' book and I really am not  so fond of them but since this was the last in the series I felt the need to read it.  Donnelly spins a good tale in interweaves real life characters into the book but I wouldn't call it historical fiction, although Churchill, Shackleton and Lawrence of Arabia make prominent appearance in this book set in WW1 era Europe, Asia, and Africa.  This would be a great beach read, light, fantastical, sometimes unbelievable and yet compelling.

The low battery on my IPad required me to switch from reading The Color War by Jodi Picoult to Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer.  The later was given to me by Debbie as a 'have a happy vacation' book and I am on the prologue and sucked in already.  The book doesn't seem very 'happy' to me at this point!  The former has been on my IPad for a while but surprise, surprise - all the books I have read on this trip have been actual physical books!

Oh, did I tell you about The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George?  I finished it one day before leaving for vacation and wow, what a long, long book.  I really enjoyed it and found the historical descriptions informative and instructive to a time in history I didn't know much about.  This is definitely historical fiction and although very long, well worth reading.

Time to get moving on another vacation project.  Take care until we meet again.

Barbara

I know you're out there somewhere, somewhere - a Moody Blues tune

Yes, I am still out there reading and quilting and skiing.  Winter has been great and I am into an epic book.  The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George.  I have never read anything about this time period so it is very interesting - but it is almost 1000 pages.  

Recently read The Great Santini and The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy.  Many of you really don't like the accounting of child neglect and abuse in  Conroy's books however, I find there is much redemption in them.  

The following listing I just found via Flipboard on my IPad.  Some important and interesting books are on this list.  How many have you read?  How many do you want to read?  How many of them do you question their inclusion on this list?  I have read 30 of this list and I was happy that it was so many!  Of course I read many of the children's book with my children and during my college years for kiddie lit.  I'd like to read about 20 additional ones from this list and there are 20 I never heard of.  That leaves about 30 that I have no interest in, like a Brief History of Time by Hawking - just thinking of it sounds over my head in the science realm.  

Until we meet again - have a great day and take some time out to read.

Barbara


Amazon book editors have just released a list of their 100 Books To Read In A Lifetime.

Many of the books are 20th century classics or recent bestsellers — the oldest book on the list is Jane Austen's 1813 masterpiece "Pride and Prejudice." It also spanned multiple genres, with adult fiction, nonfiction, children's, and young adult novels such as "The Hunger Games" and "Harry Potter" making the list.

Check out the final list of books in alphabetical order below.

1. "1984" by George Orwell
2. "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking
3. "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers
4. "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah
5. "A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning: The Short-Lived Edition" by Lemony Snicket
6. "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle
7. "Alice Munro: Selected Stories" by Alice Munro
8. "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll
9. "All the President's Men" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
10. "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir" by Frank McCourt
11. "Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret" by Judy Blume
12. "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett
13. "Beloved" by Toni Morrison
14. "Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen" by Christopher McDougall
15. "Breath, Eyes, Memory" by Edwidge Danticat
16. "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
17. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl
18. "Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White
19. "Cutting For Stone" by Abraham Verghese
20. "Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead" by Brene Brown
21. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1" by Jeff Kinney
22. "Dune" by Frank Herbert
23. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
24. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson
25. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn
26. "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown
27. "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
28. "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
29. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling
30. "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
31. "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri
32. "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
33. "Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth" by Chris Ware
34. "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain
35. "Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson
36. "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
37. "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
38. "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
39. "Love Medicine" by Louise Erdrich
40. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl
41. "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
42. "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides
43. "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie
44. "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis
45. "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham
46. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
47. "Out of Africa" by Isak Dinesen
48. "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi
49. "Portnoy's Complaint" by Philip Roth
50. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen
51. "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
52. "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
53. "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin
54. "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton
55. "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon
56. "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
57. "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak
58. "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz
59. "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger
60. "The Color of Water" by James McBride
61. "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen
62. "The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America" by Erik Larson
63. "The Diary of Anne Frank" by Anne Frank
64. "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green
65. "The Giver" by Lois Lowry
66. "The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman
67. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
68. "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
69. "The House At Pooh Corner" by A. A. Milne
70. "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins
71. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
72. "The Liars' Club: A Memoir" by Mary Karr
73. "The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1)" by Rick Riordan
74. "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
75. "The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler
76. "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright
77. "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien
78. "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales" by Oliver Sacks
79. "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan
80. "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster
81. "The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel" by Barbara Kingsolver
82. "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York" by Robert A. Caro
83. "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe
84. "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
85. "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
86. "The Shining" by Stephen King
87. "The Stranger" by Albert Camus
88. "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway
89. "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
90. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle
91. "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame
92. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel" by Haruki Murakami
93. "The World According to Garp" by John Irving
94. "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion
95. "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe
96. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
97. "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption" by Laura Hillenbrand
98. "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann
99. "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein
100. "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak