I don't usually hit a point in a book and just decide I'm not finishing it, but I did tonight. Worse yet, it's a book for the book group meeting Thursday. What finally drove me over the edge was having the main character die a third of the way through the book. I see now that this plot twist is hinted at in reviews, but I'm not sure if I'd have picked up on it had I read them before starting the book.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 8:18 PM

I've been slowly working my way through Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi via dailylit. In today's chunk I came across the following quote I just needed to share:

"We had dinner on a ground-veranda over the water--the chief dish the renowned fish called the pompano, delicious as the less criminal forms of sin."

I want a meal like that.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 9:25 AM

from the KPCC book club:
Scott McClellan's What Happened

from Powell's Indiespensable:
Aron Nels Steinke's The Super Crazy Cat Dance
Monica Drake's Clown Girl

from my weekend visit to Powell's:
Alan Weisman's The World Without Us
Alexandra Fuller's The Legend of Colton H. Bryant
Markus Zusak's The Book Thief
Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games
Robert Charles Wilson's Axis
Jonathan Safra Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

recent bookmooch arrivals:
Robert D. Kaplan's Warrior Politics
George Orwell's A Collection of Essays
Sonia Nazario's Enrique's Journey
Dana Sachs's The House on Dream Street
Isabel Allende's Paula
Pico Iyer's The Lady and the Monk
posted by Kristin Buxton at 1:42 PM

ALA was good to me book-wise this year:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton (which it turns out I already had)
Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg
Isaac's Torah by Angel Wagenstein
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Ficciones (in Spanish) by Jorge Luis Borges
Memory & Dream by Charles de Lint
Territory by Emma Bull
Widdershins by Charles de Lint
1001 Foods to Die For
and
the Complete Calvin and Hobbes

for the grand total of $23.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 9:46 PM

I finished my first book from the 1% Well-Read Challenge earlier today: We by Eugene Zamiatin. Sadly the paperback I was reading is now in multiple pieces. I'm not usually that hard on books, but this particular book is older than I am, so I don't feel so bad. Reading the book it was hard to believe it was written in the 1920's. It's held up well.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 8:57 PM

From bookmooch:
Whole Wide World by Paul McAuley
Intuition by Allegra Goodman
All of an Instant by Richard Garfinkle

From LibraryThing Early Reviewers:
This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities by Jim Rossignol

From my parents:
Bonk by Mary Roach
The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester (this one I'd bought autographed at the Tattered Cover while I was visiting but had them ship to me with the others)
posted by Kristin Buxton at 6:36 PM

In bold are the titles read from Entertainment Weekly's list of the New Classics

1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996).
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000) (hated it, btw)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990).
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998) (classic?)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998).
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000).
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998) (hated it)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987).
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001).
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997).
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997).
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983). Some of the stories.
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984) .
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999).
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003) . (Not sure why I bothered.)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

via Pages Turned
posted by Kristin Buxton at 5:16 PM

In the last few days a number of books have shown up in my mailbox.

My first shipment from Powell's indiespensable:
The Outlander by Gil Adamson
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America (sampler) edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey

From Bookmooch:
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

From Amazon:
The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds
The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman and Gris Grimly

From LibraryThing's Early Reviewers Program:
Spanish - Live it and Learn it!: The Complete Guide to Language Immersion Schools in Mexico by Martha Racine Taylor
posted by Kristin Buxton at 8:21 PM

If you ever decide to read Moby-Dick, I'd recommend looking for an abridged version.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 7:38 PM

Recently I discovered that the Seattle Channel's TV show with Nancy Pearl, Book Lust, is available as an audio-only podcast in addition to the online video. I've found I'm much more likely to listen than I am to watch. Last night I was listening to her interview with Karen Joy Fowler and felt compelled to start one of Fowler's books, Sarah Canary, which I'd had sitting around for years.
posted by Kristin Buxton at 7:45 AM