Monday, March 31, 2014

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

Thursday, February 20, 2014

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 Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah
  4. "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle
  5. "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll
  6. "All the President's Men" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
  7. "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir" by Frank McCourt
  8. "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett
  9. "Beloved" by Toni Morrison
  10. "Breath, Eyes, Memory" by Edwidge Danticat
  11. "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
  12. "Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White
  13. "Cutting For Stone" by Abraham Verghese
  14. "Dune" by Frank Herbert
  15. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
  16. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn
  17. "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown
  18. "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
  19. "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
  20. "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri
  21. "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
  22. "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain
  23. "Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson
  24. "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  25. "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
  26. "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  27. "Love Medicine" by Louise Erdrich
  28. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl
  29. "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
  30. "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides
  31. "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie
  32. "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis
  33. "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham
  34. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
  35. "Out of Africa" by Isak Dinesen
  36. "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi
  37. "Portnoy's Complaint" by Philip Roth
  38. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen
  39. "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
  40. "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut
  41. "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin
  42. "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton
  43. "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
  44. "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak
  45. "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger
  46. "The Color of Water" by James McBride
  47. "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen
  48. "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green
  49. "The Giver" by Lois Lowry
  50. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  51. "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
  52. "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins
  53. "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry
  54. "The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler
  55. "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien
  56. "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster
  57. "The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel" by Barbara Kingsolver
  58. "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe
  59. "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
  60. "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
  61. "The Shining" by Stephen King
  62. "The Stranger" by Albert Camus
  63. "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway
  64. "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
  65. "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame
  66. "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe
  67. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
  68. "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann
  69. "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein
  70. "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak