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2011 Reading list #1: The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
This is a re-read. It was on the shelf at home and I wanted to read something I knew I would like but that I hadn't read recently. I think I read TRB about 13 years ago and quite enjoyed it then. It was somewhat different from what I remembered, but still enjoyable. I mean... it's Margaret Atwood. The woman can WRITE. It's work like hers that ( Read more... ) -
2010 Reading list #13!! Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
So, before, when I said it was embarrassing that I had only read 12 books last year... I just remembered that my record is slightly less atrocious, because I ALSO read Gone With The Wind. Why? Mostly because we saw it in the bookstore and Darrin recommended it (yes, he who owns the sewing machine and the BBC series of Pride and Prejudice ( Read more... ) -
2010 Reading list #8-#12... oh so sad
I refuse to believe that I read only 12 books in 2010. That's not true... that's impossible!! I think the thing is, I dip into other books on history, literature, and (new this year!) pregnancy & childbirth. So I don't really count those as "read" because I didn't read them start to finish, but they do take up a lot of my reading time.
Writing ( Read more... ) -
2010 Reading List #7: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Blink was a gift I got for my clinical psychologist husband, who I figured would find a book on decision making very interesting, even if it's sort of pop science. We've talked about research done by psychologists who study decision-making, and so I knew already that
PEOPLE ARE VERY BAD AT MAKING RATIONAL DECISIONS.
We're fooled by our own ( Read more... ) -
2010 Reading List #6: JPod by Douglas Coupland
I am only up to 6 books because I started dipping into other books briefly--revisiting some works I enjoyed in the past, but not working all the way through them (a book about China, Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress, etc. etc.
While I was sick I picked up JPod, Darrin's plane book for our visit to my in-laws at Christmas. I read some ( Read more... ) -
2010 Reading List #4 and #5
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky; Plato's Republic.
Some books are hard!
I read BK because I had enjoyed Crime and Punishment very much; Plato's Republic was on the reading list for the philosophy course I'm sitting in on at UTPA. I am embarrassed to say that while I liked sitting down to read each one, they were both so unwieldy that ( Read more... ) -
2010 Reading List #3: Happenstance by Carol Shields
This was a book club selection, and a good one. It is actually two novels in one. Each book is the story of one week in the life of a couple from Chicago, but one novel is from the woman's perspective, and the other from the man's. This is not a simple He Said She Said; the woman is away from home for most of it at a crafts convention (she is a ( Read more... ) -
2010 Reading List #1 and #2
Real updates? We don't need no stinkin' real updates!
Because of the move, it took me foreeever to finish Stolen Continents: 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas by Ronald Wright, but I'm glad I did. It's hardly cheery reading, as you might expect from the title. It does a lot to deconstruct the language of oppression and ( Read more... ) -
2009 book overview
Bolded the ones I REALLY liked and that resonated especially with me. Not to say the others weren't good, but there were a few I especially liked.
1. Foundation -- Isaac Asimov
2. Walking the Dog -- Bernard McClaverty
3. The Years of Rice and Salt -- Kim Stanley Robinson
4. The Book of Negroes -- Lawrence Hill
5. Crow Lake -- Mary Lawson
6. ( Read more... ) -
2009 Reading List #17 and #18
Yes, I'm skimping on the comments this time, because the year is already over and anyway I don't have SUPER huge comments to make about them...
#17 was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott; #18 was a complicated kindness by Miriam Toews.
I wasn't aware that LW was such a promotion of American and Christian values; this means that I was torn between ( Read more... )