Spoiler

Last Little Blue Envelope

2011-08-24T19:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, it was painfully obvious that with Keith paired up with Ellis, Ginny would end up with Oliver. Oliver the black-mailer. Oliver the fuckwad. Oliver who doesn't have ANYTHING to recommend him. Yes, he has the sob story at the end of the book, but NO. He sucks in a million ways and if you want me to believe him as a romantic figure, then you have to prove it. Johnson shows the growing attraction, but never sold it. I never fully believed in it, so when Oliver has a perfectly good reason for his douche-bag actions* and they kiss, all I could do was throw the book across the room.

The fact that Ginny falls for him and his stupid act makes me really dislike Ginny. It ruined this book and the last book for me.

*And you know what? THAT'S NOT A GOOD REASON. You can work full time and go to uni part time. Uni fees for full time are only 3000GBP a year no matter where you go. They have student loans. You don't need to blackmail a girl out of her aunt's artwork (which, frankly, I think Ginny should have kept for herself instead of selling it and I think she wanted to.) BUT NO!

Invisible Things

2011-03-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

SERIOUSLY, WTF?! All of a sudden Sophie doesn't give a shit about ANYTHING because yay! Mikael's back? When did Sophie, smart brave kickass Sophie turn into Bella?! And we no longer care about Elsa's blackmailing or the war or the bomb or how CREEPTASTIC floating Nobel is? NO! Snow Queen gave back Mikael and all is well because I'm in lurve and who the hell cares if the world ends tomorrow. LURVE! Puke. But even if we're going to go with that, smooch smooch THE END. Who cares that they're still in the creepy ice palace? It could use another page or two. The end just seemed so rushed and not at all in line with ANYTHING else going on. It would have been a better ending if Sophie woke up and the entire thing was a dream brought on by a wacky history assignment.

Rise of the Huntress-- Spoilers

2010-08-24T15:08:00.000-07:00

So... on page 373, Tom shouts out "There's darkness inside me, too!... I can match anything you do. I'm the hunter, not the hunted!"

But... the title is Rise of the HuntRESS. Tom's not a huntress. Initially, I though the title referred to Bony Lizzie, but we've killed her off, so I'm thinking that the Huntress has to be Alice. Is anyone with me on this? Or am I totally off base.

Also, I'm excited for Ireland. I want to see more of the Morrigan and the Celtic witches. AND I hope nothing happened with Grimalkin-- I want her back because she's awesome.

If I Stay-- Spoilers

2010-08-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

1. The scene where her grandpa is at her bedside

"It's okay," he tells me. "If you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I've ever wanted anything in my life." His voice cracks with emotion. He stops, clears his throat, takes a breath, and continues. "But that's what I want and I could see why it might not be what you want. So I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It's okay if you have to leave us. It's okay if you want to stop fighting."

2. When Kim is at her bedside:

"I do have a point to all this," she continues. "There are like twenty people in that waiting room right now. Some of them are related to you. Some of them are not. But we're all your family."

She stops now. Leans over me so that the wisps of her hair tickle my face. She kisses me on the forehead. "You still have a family," she whispers.

Every Soul a Star SPOILERS

2010-04-25T18:34:00.001-07:00

Ok, so Bree being a secret geek was a little... convenient. Bree was so well drawn throughout the rest of the book this was just a little too easy. Especially because I think Bree could have done a lot with the campground-- there are hot springs! It wouldn't be that hard to do some sort of Spa as one of the Unusuals. It would draw people to the camp and would use Bree's talents at what she likes. Ah well.

Crossing Stones SPOILER

2010-04-16T09:57:00.001-07:00

It's "Staring at Me" on page 78. Not only do I love the actual holes in this poem and how loud those blank spaces are, how much they say with their nothingness, but when I first read this, I thought Ollie was lying on a battlefield, dying, then near the end, you get the first full line, the first full thought, and it's the nurse's voice saying That's right--you're getting better. At least not any and it's a relief because you know he's alive and it's a relief because it's a full line and eases the tension and discomfort of the poem, and it just works on so many levels.

Going Bovine SPOILERS!

2010-03-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

You know how much I love a bittersweet, realistic ending. Cam dying at the end is the type of ending I like in books and usually want. BUT NOT THIS TIME. I wanted him to sit up and be well and live happily ever after. I wanted the trip to be real. Usually the sadness of life is perfect literature for me, but oh, I was so gutted when I got the ending I usually crave.

Review Policy

2010-02-08T09:21:00.001-08:00

Biblio File is meant to be a record of "everything" I read.

"Everything" is in quotation marks because fiction must be at least 100 pages before I review it. There may be a very few exceptions made for books that I love and need to talk about or books that I am reviewing or thinking critically about for other sources (such as a class).

If a nonfiction title is over 100 pages, it automatically gets reviewed. Because nonfiction for middle grade readers is often capped at 96 pages, the 100 page break is much more fluid for nonfiction. I will review nonfiction that is under 100 pages if I absolutely love it, it is seriously awesome, or seriously flawed.

While I occasionally may talk about something else that excites me, I only review things I read here. No audio books, movies, tv shows, etc.

I do accept review copies but please, please, please contact me first: kidsilkhaze at yahoo dot com

I have a severe backlog of review copies and many other books I have to read for work and other places, as well as all the books that catch my eye at the library and book store. I cannot accept all books. Sometimes I can't accept a book because of other commitments, I will also not accept a book that I do not want to read. If you have a day you would like the review to post by, please ask me. I will try to accommodate you, but I make no promises. If you contact me and I say "yes" to a book, I will attempt to have it read and reviewed within 3 months or by the book's publication date, whichever is later. However, I make no promises.

Things I like in books (a very, very, very short list):

Fairy tale retellings
WWI
Fiction about China
Nonfiction about China
Books that explore the changing notions of British identity
Funny books about girls
Teenage spies
History
Historical Fiction
Books told in stuff and other non-conventional story-telling methods
Explorations of faith (all faiths!) that don't try to convert the reader
A good author note

Things I don't like in books:

Talking animals (if it's an enchanted frog, ok. A wise spider? Ergh.)
Self-help books
Not citing sources in nonfiction
Horses (I have never liked horse books)

I do not review picture books. Picture books are great and I love 'em and use 'em all the time at work, but I do not review them. Partly because one must draw the line somewhere, mainly because I can't talk about art intelligently.

Melissa de la Cruz bonus question

2010-01-06T18:33:00.000-08:00

Why do vampires and werewolves go together so well?

I think it's just fun to have more than one supernatural creature, and while vampires stand in for sexy fun, the werewolves are about beastly fun. They make a great comparison, since vampires are supposed to be so inhumanly sophisticated, while the wolves appeal to our animal nature—they're out of control, and you know, furry. Furry is always fun.

A-Z Challenge

2010-01-03T17:25:00.001-08:00

The Books:

A-- ArchEnemy

B-- Boys are Dogs

C-- Cold Comfort Farm

D-- Dinosaur Mummies

E-- The End of the Affair

F--Fat Cat

G-- Great Fables Crossover

H--Haunted (Lady Grace Mysteries)

I--Insatiable

J-- Jimmy's Stars

K--Kith (The Good Neighbors)

L--The London Eye Mystery

M--The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

N--The Norman Conquest of England

O--Out of the Dust

P-- Paris Pan Takes the Dare

R--Renegade (Rebel Force)

S--Splendor (The Luxe)

T-- Tales of Cryptids

U--Up Down Over Under

W-- Wild Things

Y-- Year of the Tiger

Z--Zombies vs Unicorns

The Authors:

A--Alvarez, Julia

B-- Berlin, Eric

C-- Creech, Sharon

D--Davies, Jacqueline

E--Ellsworth, Loretta

F-- Flake, Sharon

G--Gaiman, Neil

H-- Halls, Kelly Milner

I--Ignatow, Amy

J-- Jacobs, AJ

K--Kelly, Jacqueline

L-- Lopez, Diana

M--Murphy, Jim

N--Nesbo, Jo

O--Ostow, Micol

P-- Pratchett, Terry

R-- Riordan, Rick

S--Small, David

T--Telegemeier, Raina

V--Venkatraman, Padma

W--Wheeler, Alex

Y-- Yee, Lisa

TBR LIST

2010-01-03T17:17:00.000-08:00

1. Woman from Shanghai

2. Wicked

3. War and Peace

4. Too Cool for School

5. United States of Arugula

6. Spud

7. Ten Things I Hate About Me

8. Secret Society Girl

9. Shades of Grey

10. Sky Burial

11. Pledged

12. Possession

Alternates:

1. River Town

2. Script and Scribble

3. The Orientalist

~~4. Peter and Max~~

5. Mango Shaped Space

6. The Market

7. Last Chinese Chef

8. The Host

9. Inheritance

10. General Winston's Daughter

11. Hat Full of Sky

12. Girl from the Golden Horn

Young Adult Reader Challenge

2009-11-29T18:10:00.002-08:00

Can I read 75 YA books in 2010? Totally. Here's the list:

1. Splendor (The Luxe) by Anna Godberson
2. The Good Neighbors--Kith by Holly Black
3. Lost by Jacqueline Davies
4. ArchEnemy by Frank Beddor
5. The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake
6. On Pointe by Lorie Ann Grover
7. Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
8. Going Bovine by Libba Bray
9. Samurai Shortstop by Alan Gratz
10. Brookyln Nine by Alan Gratz
11. Ash by Malinda Lo
12. Fat Cat by Robin Brande
13. Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson
14. Gone by Lisa McMann
15. Crossing Stones by Helen Frost
16. Slinging the Bling (US title: Posh and Prejudice) by Grace Dent
17. Runaway by Meg Cabot
18. Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
19. Double Crossing by Eve Tal
20. Just Ella by Margaret Petterson Haddix
21. Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon
22. Still Sucks to be Me by Kimberly Pauley
23. No and Me by Delphine de Vigan
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson
26. Impossible by Nancy Werlin
27. If I Stay by Gayle Forman
28. Fly Girl by Sherri L. Smith
29. Jumped by Rita-Garcia-William
30. Lockdown (Escape from Furnace) by Alexander Gordon Smith
31. Flash Burnout by LK Madigan
32. Up Over Down Under (SASS) by Micol Ostow and Noah Harlan
33. Keesha's House by Helen Frost
34. Ghosts of Ashbury High by Jaclyn Moriarty
35. So Punk Rock by Micol Ostow
36. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
37. Alibi Junior High by Greg Logsted
38. I Kissed a Zombie (And I Liked It) by Adam Selzer
39. Age 14 by Geert Spillebeen
40. Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter
41. Spy in the House by YS Lee
42. Guitar Boy by MJ Auch
43. Zombies vs. Unicorns ed Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier
44. Night Tourist by Kathy Marsh
45. Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell
46. Never Cry Werewolf by Heather Davis
47. Along the River by Adeline Yen Mah
48. Dead Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan
49. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
50. Psych Major Syndrome by Alicia Thompson
51. Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix
52. Dead is just a Rumor by Marlene Perez
53. Jane by April Lindner
54. Cardturner by Louis Sachar

Support Your Local Library Challenge!--COMPLETE!

2009-11-29T18:07:00.000-08:00

100 Library Books Checked Out and Read in 2010? Can do! Here's the list:

1. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
2. Splendor (The Luxe) by Anna Godberson
3. The Norman Conquest of England by Janice Hamilton
4. Stitches by David Small
5. The Good Neighbors: Kith by Holly Black
6. Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
7. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
8. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
9. Good Neighbors--Kith by Holly Black
10. Boys Are Dogs by Leslie Margolis
11. Confetti Girl by Diana Lopez
12. Love that Dog by Sharon Creech
13. Hate that Cat by Sharon Creech
14. The Skin I'm in by Sharon Flake
15. Dinosaur Mummies by Kelly Milner Halls
16. Tales of Cryptids by Kelly Milner Halls
17. Wild Horses by Kelly Milner Halls
18. Going Bovine by Libba Bray
19. Samurai Shortstop by Alan Gratz
20. Jimmy's Stars by Mary Ann Rodman
21. Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz
22. Albino Animals by Kelly Milner Halls
23. Wild Dogs by Kelly Milner Halls
24. Target (Rebel Force) by Alex Wheeler
25. Hostage (Rebel Force) by Alex Wheeler
26. Renegade (Rebel Force) by Alex Wheeler
27. Ash by Malinda Lo
28. Fat Cat by Robin Brande
29. My New Best Friend by Julie Bowe
30. Smile by Raina Telegemeier
31. Anything by Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin
32. The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick
33. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
34. The Secret of the Yellow Death by Suzanne Jurmain
35. Country Driving by Peter Hessler
36. Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
37. An American Plague by Jim Murphy
38. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
39. Soulless by Gail Carriger
40. Blameless by Gail Carriger
41. Brand New School, Brave New Ruby (Ruby and the Booker Boys) by Derrick Barnes
42. Trivia Queen, Third Grade Supreme (Ruby and the Booker Boys) by Derrick Barnes
43. Gone by Lisa McMann
44. Crossing Stones by Helen Frost
45. Eleven by Lauren Myracle
46. Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez
47. Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelen
48. Shooting the Moon by France O'Roark Dowell
49. Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith
50. Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
51. Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
52. The Babysitter's Club: The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin
53. Double Crossing by Eve Tal
54. Diamond Willow by Helen Frost
55. Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier
56. Firefight (Star Wars Rebel Force) by Alex Wheeler
57. Trapped (Star Wars Rebel Force) by Alex Wheeler
58. Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix
59. One Crazy Summer by Rita Garcia-William
60. Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber
61. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
62. Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson
63. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by Jone le Carre
64. Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher
65. Impossible by Nancy Werlin
66. If I Stay by Gayle Forman
67. NERDS: National Espionage, Rescue and Defense Society by Michael Buckley
68. Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder by Jo Nesbo
69. Popularity Papers by Amy Ignatow
70. Countdown by Deborah Wiles
71. Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith
72. Jumped by Rita Garcia-Williams
73. Lockdown (Escape from Furnace) by Alexander Gordon Smith
74. Flash Burnout by LK Madigan
75. Up Over Down Under (SASS) by Micol Ostow and Noah Harlan
76. So Punk Rock by Micol Ostow
77. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
78. The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
79. Nancy Drew: The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene
80. Alibi Junior High by Greg Logsted
81. Coven of Witches by Joseph Delaney
82. I Kissed a Zombie (and I Liked it) by Adam Selzer
83. Saving the Baghdad Zoo by Kelly Milner Halls and William Sumner
84. Alcatraz vs. the Knights of Crystallia by Brandon Sanderson
85. Thank you, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
86. Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time by Lisa Yee
87. Legend of Spud Murphy by Eoin Colfer
88. Legend of Captain's Crow Teeth by Eoin Colfer
89. Hound of Baskervilles Sir Conan Doyle
90. Age 14 by Geert Spillebeen
91. Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
92. Drita, My Homegirl by Jenny Lombard
93. Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus by RL LeFevers
94. Spy in the House by YS Lee
95. Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
96. Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh
97. Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell
98. Boom by Mark Haddon
99. Strange Case of the Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger
100. Griff Carver, Hallway Patrol by Jim Krieg

Disclosure Information

2009-10-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

1. If the book came from a publisher for this blog, I always disclose that, whether or not I keep the book. This is not a change in policy at all, I'm just reiterating it.

2. If I have a link to Amazon, and you click on that link and purchase anything then I get a percentage of the sale. How big of a percentage depends on how many items are purchased through my blog per month. I do this because as a blog reader, I want easy access to information about the book and maybe purchasing info if the book sounds good. It's also one of the easiest ways for people who enjoy my blog to support it. It's not a huge money maker for me, (in the summer of 2009, I made enough money to buy one CD.) Sometimes, if a book is not available through Amazon, I will link to another place to buy it. Usually, it will be The Book Depository. At this point, I have no affiliation with the Book Depository, except being a very satisfied customer. One again, not a change in policy at all, just a reiteration.

3. I will now be disclosing where EVERY book I read/review comes from. After every review, it says Book Provided By...

My Wallet: This is a book I (or Dan) purchased and own. Variations on this might include My Bookshelf which is a book that's been sitting on my shelves so long I don't remember where it came from, Bookmooch which is a book I mooched, so I own it, but didn't actually pay for it or I might list the name of a very nice person who gave me the book as a present for my birthday/holidays/etc. Such people are disinterested parties.

My Local Library: A book I checked out from the library, either the system I work in or the one I live in.

The publisher/author/publicist for ____ consideration: An ARC or finished copy of a book provided by the author or publisher or another party for the express purpose of review in this blog OR in another medium, such as LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program, which I am also a member of. If it says at my request that means I approached the sending party instead of them approaching me. (If a someone says "are you interested in any of these books" then they send me the books I request, that will not be labeled as "at my request." If an author says "I have X copies of my new book for book bloggers and I say "ooo! Me!" or if I write to a publisher and say "I would like to review X book if you have any copies available" then they'll be labeled as "at my request.") I also say if it's for review/Cybils/other consideration--so, why they sent me the book.

Updated 2/8/2010

Everafter War

2009-10-02T07:53:00.001-07:00

OMG! Remember when I said the fact that Bunny's hand GLOWED RED on Mirror meant something. IT TOTALLY DOES! ACK! And poor poor Briar Rose. :(

Tender Morsels

2009-09-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

DUDE. LIGA GOT SCREWED (again!). Ok, while Davit's choice might make sense given the time-slip, DUDE. I'm a big fan of not-happy-but-realistic endings but WTF was that?!

Kendra Spoilers

2009-05-26T15:11:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, but:

YOU DON'T STEAL YOUR BEST FRIEND'S GUY! SO UNCOOL! And, if he likes you better, it doesn't matter, you just don't go there. Who cares if you're a better couple or if she didn't deserve him. YOU JUST DON'T GO THERE! I can't believe that not only did Kendra go there, but she got away with it! And Adonna, while she didn't forgive her, you knew she was going to! The entire ending, while happy, seemed a little too tidy. Ah well.

Forever Princess

2009-04-08T13:35:00.000-07:00

Of course Mia FINALLY SAW THE LIGHT and dumped JP. And went home with Michael. And patched things up with Lilly who seems a better friend now than she was in the earlier books.

And it was AWESOME. TOTALLY F-ING AWESOME.

Also, I loved the big where Michael and Mia totally make out in the carriage ride. Tee-hee.

And when Lars tells Michael he needs to punch JP. And that Mia won't.

I knew it would all end up good. Otherwise, I would cry. And Meg Cabot would no longer be my celebrity BFF, which would make me cry even harder.

Turning Pages

2009-03-12T13:49:00.001-07:00

Ok, dude, if Kevin is having Priscilla drive him to New York, he's going to round up the rest of the Fables, yes? Because if he doesn't, Willingham's just a nasty nasty tease.

I'm also hoping that Snow and Bigby's kid, Ghost, who shoved that sword through Jack's chest, will save the day. That'd be sweet.

Also, Emily Wall. Did you all get this before I did? It wasn't until that last frame with her three brothers that I got it... she's the 4th wall. D'UH.

Also, Dex? Awesome.

Fables 11: War and Pieces

2009-03-04T18:41:00.000-08:00

Prince Charming isn't dead. It just doesn't make sense--it took forever to kill Goldilocks (is she even dead for sure?) because she was too popular in the Mundy world. Snow White survived being shot in the head, her brains scattered all over the farm because she was too popular. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella are some of THE most popular fairy tales in the Western Mundy world and Prince Charming stars in ALL of them. He's too popular. He can't be dead. It just doesn't make sense!

Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read Before They Die

2009-01-28T08:40:00.000-08:00

Comedy

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
Money by Martin Amis
The Information by Martin Amis
The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge
According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
Augustus Carp, Esq. by Himself: Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Henry Howarth Bashford
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Queen Lucia by EF Benson
The Ascent of Rum Doodle by WE Bowman
A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd
The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
No Bed for Bacon by Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon
Illywhacker by Peter Carey
A Season in Sinji by JL Carr
The Harpole Report by JL Carr
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary
The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
Just William by Richmal Crompton
The Provincial Lady by EM Delafield
Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter De Vries
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Jacques the Fatalist and his Master by Denis Diderot
A Fairy Tale of New York by JP Donleavy
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Ennui by Maria Edgeworth
Cheese by Willem Elsschot
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Caprice by Ronald Firbank
Bouvard et Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert
Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn
The Polygots by William Gerhardie
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Brewster's Millions by Richard Greaves (George Barr McCutcheon)
Squire Haggard's Journal by Michael Green
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene
Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith
The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgkins
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes
Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
The Mighty Walzer Howard by Jacobson
Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
The Castle by Franz Kafka
Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (Gil Blas) Alain-René Lesage
Changing Places by David Lodge
Nice Work by David Lodge
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
England, Their England by AG Macdonell
Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie
Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf by David Madsen
Cakes and Ale - Or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard by W Somerset Maugham
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills
Charade by John Mortimer
Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul
The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin
La Disparition by Georges Perec
Les Revenentes by Georges Perec
La Vie Mode d'Emploi by Georges Perec
My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunkett
A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau
Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
Alms for Oblivion by Simon Raven
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
The Westminster Alice by Saki
The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
Hurrah for St Trinian's by Ronald Searle
Great Apes by Will Self
Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe
Blott on the Landscape by Tom Sharpe
Office Politics by Wilfrid Sheed
Belles Lettres Papers: A Novel by Charles Simmons
Moo by Jane Smiley
Topper Takes a Trip by Thorne Smith
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett
The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
White Man Falling by Mike Stocks
Handley Cross by RS Surtees
A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
Penrod by Booth Tarkington
The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
Tropic of Ruislip by Leslie Thomas
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout
The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon
Tono Bungay by HG Wells
Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
The Wimbledon Poisoner by Nigel Williams
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson
Something Fresh by PG Wodehouse
Piccadilly Jim by PG Wodehouse
Thank You Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
Heavy Weather by PG Wodehouse
The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse

Crime

The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren
Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler
Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Trent's Last Case by EC Bentley
The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley
The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary E Braddon
The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
Greenmantle by John Buchan
The Asphalt Jungle by WR Burnett
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain
Double Indemnity by James M Cain
True History of the Ned Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter
The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter
Ratking by Michael Dibdin
Dead Lagoon by Michael Dibdin
Dirty Tricks by Michael Dibdin
A Rich Full Death by Michael Dibdin
Vendetta by Michael Dibdin
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Pledge by Friedrich Durrenmatt
The Crime of Father Amado by José Maria de Eça de Queiroz
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
LA Confidential by James Ellroy
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
The Third Man by Graham Greene
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
The King of Torts by John Grisham
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Fatherland by Robert Harris
Black Sunday by Thomas Harris
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles
Silence of the Grave by Arnadur Indridason
Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes
Cover Her Face by PD James
A Taste for Death by PD James
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman
Misery by Stephen King
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
52 Pick-up by Elmore Leonard
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
Cop Hater by Ed McBain
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
Sidetracked by Henning Mankell
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
The Great Impersonation by E Phillips Oppenheim
The Strange Borders of Palace Crescent by E Phillips Oppenheim
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Toxic Shock by Sara Paretsky
Blacklist by Sara Paretsky
Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace
Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace
The Big Blowdown by George Pelecanos
Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos
Lush Life by Richard Price
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
V by Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Black and Blue by Ian Rankin
The Hanging Gardens by Ian Rankin
Exit Music by Ian Rankin
Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell
Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell
Dissolution by CJ Sansom
Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Le Sayers
The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon
The Blue Room by Georges Simenon
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Getaway by Jim Thompson
Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine
A Fatal inversion by Barbara Vine
King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine
The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Native Son by Richard Wright
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

Family and self

The Face of Another by Kobo Abe
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Epileptic by David B
Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker
Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac
Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac
The Crow Road by Iain Banks
The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
A Legacy by Sybille Bedford
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
G by John Berger
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch
Evelina by Fanny Burney
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
The Sound of my Voice by Ron Butlin
The Outsider by Albert Camus
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Professor's House by Willa Cather
The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Les Enfants Terrible by Jean Cocteau
The Vagabond by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Manservant and Maidservant by Ivy Compton-Burnett
Being Dead by Jim Crace
Quarantine by Jim Crace
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Roxana by Daniel Defoe
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
My New York Diary by Julie Doucet
The Millstone by Margaret Drabble
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Silence by Shusaku Endo
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
Howards End by EM Forster
Spies by Michael Frayn
Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud
The Man of Property by John Galsworthy
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Immoralist by Andre Gide
The Vatican Cellars by Andre Gide
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
The Shrimp and the Anemone by LP Hartley
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
The Three Paradoxes by Paul Hornschemeier
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Washington Square by Henry James
The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
The Unfortunates by BS Johnson
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce
Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
Memet my Hawk by Yasar Kemal
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
How Green was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
Martin Eden by Jack London
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
The Chateau by William Maxwell
The Rector's Daughter by FM Mayor
The Ordeal of Richard Feverek by George Meredith
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Who Do You Think You Are? by Alice Munro
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul
At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness by Kezaburo Oe
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
The Good Companions by JB Priestley
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
A Married Man by Piers Paul Read
Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson
The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney by Henry Handel Richardson
Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Unless by Carol Shields
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The Three Sisters by May Sinclair
The Family Moskat or The Manor or The Estate by Isaac Bashevis Singer
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
Death in Summer by William Trevor
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Peace in War by Miguel de Unamuno
The Rabbit Omnibus by John Updike
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Jimmy Corrigan, The Smarest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
Frost in May by Antonia White
The Tree of Man by Patrick White
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

Love

Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier
Dom Casmurro Joaquim by Maria Machado de Assis
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
The Garden of the Finzi-Cortinis by Giorgio Bassani
Love for Lydia by HE Bates
More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow
Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Look At Me by Anita Brookner
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Possession by AS Byatt
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
A Month in the Country by JL Carr
My Antonia by Willa Cather
A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
Claudine a l'ecole by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Cheri by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette
Victory: An Island Tale by Joseph Conrad
The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette
The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Adam Bede by George Eliot
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
A Room with a View by EM Forster
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Living by Henry Green
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
The Go-Between by LP Hartley
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer
Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by WH Hudson
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Beauty and Saddness by Yasunari Kawabata
The Far Pavillions by Mary Margaret Kaye
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
Moon over Africa by Pamela Kent
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos
Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
The Rainbow by DH Lawrence
Women in Love by DH Lawrence
The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann
The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
Zami by Audre Lorde
Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
Samarkand by Amin Maalouf
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
A Heart So White by Javier Marias
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
So Long, See you Tomorrow by William Maxwell
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
The Egoist by George Meredith
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
The Painter of Signs by RK Narayan
Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
Light Years by James Salter
A Sport and a Passtime by James Salter
The Reader by Benhardq Schlink
The Reluctant Orphan by Aara Seale
Love Story by Eric Segal
Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
Waterland by Graham Swift
Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
First Love by Ivan Turgenev
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
East Lynne by Ellen Wood
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Science fiction and fantasy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Non-Stop by Brian W Aldiss
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
The Drowned World by JG Ballard
Crash by JG Ballard
Millennium People by JG Ballard
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Darkmans by Nicola Barker
The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
Vathek by William Beckford
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite
Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown
Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Coming Race by EGEL Bulwer-Lytton
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
The Influence by Ramsey Campbell
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Man who was Thursday by GK Chesterton
Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Hello Summer, Goodbye by Michael G Coney
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R Delaney
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
Camp Concentration by Thomas M Disch
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Under the Skin by Michel Faber
The Magus by John Fowles
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Red Shift by Alan Garner
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Light by M John Harrison
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
Dune by Frank L Herbert
The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Children of Men by PD James
After London; or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies
Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Shining by Stephen King
The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski
Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
The Night Sessions by Ken Macleod
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Ascent by Jed Mercurio
The Scar by China Mieville
Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Mother London by Michael Moorcock
News from Nowhere by William Morris
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Vurt by Jeff Noon
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth
A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
Air by Geoff Ryman
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Blindness by Jose Saramago
How the Dead Live by Will Self
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Affinity by Sarah Waters
The Time Machine by HG Wells
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
The Sword in the Stone by TH White
The Old Men at the Zoo by Angus Wilson
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

State of the nation

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
London Fields by Martin Amis
Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
La Comedie Humaine by Honore de Balzac
They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy
A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn
Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
Room at the Top by John Braine
A Dry White Season by Andre Brink
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The Virgin in the Garden by AS Byatt
Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier
What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coeztee
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Underworld by Don DeLillo
White Noise by Don DeLillo
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Sybil or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
The Book of Daniel by EL Doctorow
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
USA by John Dos Passos
Sister Carrie by Theodor Dreiser
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
Effi Briest by Theodore Fontane
Independence Day by Richard Ford
A Passage to India by EM Forster
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
The Odd Women by George Gissing
New Grub Street by George Gissing
July's People by Nadine Gordimer
Mother by Maxim Gorky
Lanark by Alastair Gray
Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
South Riding by Winifred Holtby
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
Chronicle in Stone by Ismael Kadare
How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
The Leopard by Giuseppi di Lampedusa
A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin
Passing by Nella Larsen
The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Amongst Women by John McGahern
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Of Love & Hunger by Julian Maclaren-Ross
Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Time of Indifference by Alberto Moravia
A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul
McTeague by Frank Norris
Personality by Andrew O'Hagan
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Ragazzi Pier by Paolo Pasolini
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Moon and the Bonfire by Cesare Pavese
GB84 by David Peace
Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock
Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Shame by Salman Rushdie
To Each his Own by Leonardo Sciascia
Staying On by Paul Scott
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon
God's Bit of Wood by Ousmane Sembene
The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
Richshaw Boy by Lao She
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
This Sporting Life by David Storey
The Red Room by August Stringberg
The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Couples by John Updike
Z by Vassilis Vassilikos
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Germinal by Emile Zola
La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola

War and travel

Silver Stallion by Junghyo Ahn
Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington
Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge
Darkness Falls from the Air by Nigel Balchin
Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard
Regeneration by Pat Barker
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Fair Stood the Wind for France by HE Bates
Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd
When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti
One of Ours by Willa Cather
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Monkey by Wu Ch'eng-en
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Sharpe's Eagle by Bernard Cornwell
The History of Pompey the Little by Francis Coventry
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Bomber by Len Deighton
Deliverance by James Dickey
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
South Wind by Norman Douglas
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Justine by Lawrence Durrell
The Bamboo Bed by William Eastlake
The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
The African Queen by CS Forester
The Ship by CS Forester
Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Beach by Alex Garland
To The Ends of the Earth trilogy by William Golding
Asterix the Gaul by Rene Goscinny
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Count Belisarius by Robert Graves
Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman
De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage
King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard
She: A History of Adventure by H Rider Haggard
The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
Covenant with Death by John Harris
Enigma by Robert Harris
The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
Rasselas by Samuel Johnson
From Here to Eternity by James Jones
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
Confederates by Thomas Keneally
Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
Day by AL Kennedy
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
La Condition Humaine by Andre Malraux
Fortunes of War by Olivia Manning
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat
Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
History by Elsa Morante
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Burmese Days by George Orwell
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell
The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell
The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolp Erich Raspe
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Crab with the Golden Claws by Georges Remi Herge
Tintin in Tibet by Georges Remi Herge
The Castafiore Emerald by Georges Remi Herge
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimaraes Rosa
Sacaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safran Foer
The Hunters by James Salter
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
Austerlitz by WG Sebald
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson
A Sentimental Journey by Lawrence Sterne
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Williwaw by Gore Vidal
Candide by Voltaire
Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh
Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells
The Machine-Gunners by Robert Westall
Voss by Patrick White
The Virginian by Owen Wister
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
The Debacle by Emile Zola

Really Adult Books!

2009-01-17T18:18:00.000-08:00

I do enjoy a good romance novel. I used to read a lot more of them in high school and college (for when my brain was too fried to do anything that required a lot of thought) My all time favorites are still the Beloved series by Mallory Burgess. I hadn't picked up a romance novel in years, but, in 2007, (yes we're still catching up on reviews!) I read 4.

Let me warn you, these are NOT clean romances. These are bodice-ripping ones. Complete with ripped bodices.

Also, I did read these 1.5 years ago, so details are a little sketchy in my mind.

My favorite of the group is

Ba d Boys Ahoy! Sylvia Day

This is less of a novel, and rather three loosely related novellas. Lots of pirates, gamblers, and all around rogues having hot sex and finding true love in the process. We have strong men, stronger women, and of course they hate each other but can't help the sexual tension and end up in bed and eventually fall in love and live happily ever after.

They all take place in the early 1800s, in England or the high seas on the way to England. Upper class stuff, so lots of fun gowns and layers of old fashioned undergarments to rip through.

My one complaint is a word choice one. Day uses the word "cream" in relation to female secretions on a regular basis. Like, almost every time she needs to refer to it. Ew. Ew. Ew. If it's actually creamy, she has a yeast infection!

I read another by Sylvia Day,

Ask For It

I didn't like this one nearly as much, and not just because of the "cream" thing, which is a word used way too often here as well.

This is another historical romance set in England, this time in the 1770s.

Once upon a time, Elizabeth and Marcus were engaged. But Marcus made Elizabeth too hot, so she fled and married a much safer, more boring man. And then he was murdered and has a diary full of secrets that people want to kill Elizabeth for.

Marcus is assigned to protect her. We have murder! plot! intrigue! spies! but...

Romance novels all tend to have a rogueish hero is bossy. Even the super literary ones, like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights or his many later imitators, such as Edward Cullen. And there's usually some watered down rape fantasy of a man demanding sex, the woman saying no, and then the guy making a move, and then the girl giving in and then pages of orgasms. I'm not going to comment on whether or not this is seriously messed up, but I will say that Marcus takes this to the extreme to where it's no longer hot in a slightly messed up sense, but just plain messed up.

Champagne Rules Susan Lyons

This is one of those books that enjoyed while reading it, and then it promptly faded from my mind. You know what I mean?

I think this is because it lacks the love/hate sexual tension of most romance novels. Basically, quiet, mousy vet, who lives in the shed apartment of her parents house (BORING) once had a super hot one night stand while vacationing in Greece.

Lately, she's been thinking about that guy again. A little google-stalking later and she's found him, emails him, and they plan on meeting up, even though they live no where near each other (IIRC, Suzanne lives in Canada and Jaxon is in California, but both on the West Coast).

Lots of hot sex with no strings, but then they start to fall for each other.

This has the extra dimension of the fact that Suzanne is white and Jaxon is black.

Like, I said, I liked it when I read it, but eh.

The Embroidered Couch Lu Tiancheng, translated by Lenny Hu

I have to say I was suprised when I read this. I knew it was an erotic novel, but it also dates from the 1600s, so I thought it would be erotic in the same way that The Arabian Nights is erotic. No actual graphic descriptions of sex.

Oh, this has them, and not in a romance-novel erotic way, but in a sterile porn way that has an odd habit of listing how many times they thrust into each other.

The basic premise is that Easterngate and his teacher Dali decide to get into a contest to see who's the best lover. Lots of sex, trickery, and raping the unwilling servants ensues.

As if the basic plot weren't bad enough, this is the worst translation of anything I've ever read. There is WAY TOO MUCH modern slang--"blew his wad" "pussy" "johnson" and something Hu translates as a vibrator, but how that works in the seventeenth century is anyone's guess. The original wasn't set in the Ming dynasty, it was WRITTEN in the Ming dynasty--the translation needs to reflect that.

The translation is so bad that I can't tell if most of my complaints are with the book or the translation.

Don't waste your time.

Back for Weekly Geeks 12, people asked questions about unreviewed books.

Imani asked:

Hello :) I have one about the Sylvia Day. How did you like it? Are all the heroes those uber-alpha toughies with muscles as big as heads, that kind of thing? Are the heroines strong and smart or more typical?

In both Sylvia Day books, the we're dealing with 4 heroes and 4 heroines. I'd say that 2 of the guys are the "uber-alpha toughies" and the other 2 are still mentally uber-masculine stereotypes. All of the heroines are strong and smart, and end up making good partners for these uber-males--good at keeping their egos in check!

100 Best

2008-12-31T09:27:00.001-08:00

Ok, this list isn't of the 100 best, but just the 26 that I have not read yet.

Mr. Grumpy's Outing John Burningham
Millions of Cats Wanda Gag
Swamp Angel Anne Isaacs
John Henry Julius Lester
Snowflake Bentley Jacqueline Briggs Martin
Tuesday David Weisner
Seven Blind Mice Ed Young
Morning Girl Michael Dorris
Stone Fox John Reynolds Gardiner
Misty of Chincoteague Maguerite Henry
Babe the Gallant Pig Dick King-Smith
Betsy-Tacy Maud Hart Lovelace
Grandfather's Journey Allen Say
The Incredible Journey Sheila Burnford
The Dark is Rising Susan Cooper
Humbug Mountain Sid Fleischman
Julie of the Wolves Jean Craighead George
The People Could Fly Virginia Hamilton
Rabbit Hill Robert Lawson
The Great Fire Jim Murphy
Rascal Sterling North
Island of the Blue Dolphins Scott O'Dell
The Cricket in Times Square George Sheldon
Behind the Attic Wall Sylvia Cassedy
Johnny Tremain Esther Forbes
Out of the Dust Karen Hesse

2009 List

2008-12-28T16:37:00.000-08:00

Well, last year I made a list of books that I owned and hadn't read, or that Dan owned and I WANTED to read. I wanted to read 50 by the end of the year. I read... um... 16. Pathetic.

But! Let's try again. (YES! I know I messed up the numbering, but I think I messed it up enough ways that it all evens out in the end.) Also, on 3/4 I deleted 2 titles (Modern China: A Very Short Introduction and Rickshaw) because I've already read them so they should never have been put on the list in the first place!

Read so far: 15

1 The 100-Year-Old Secret (The Sherlock Files) Tracy Barrett
2 1421: The Year China Discovered America Gavin Menzies
3 3 KINGDOMS Moss Roberts
4 79 Short Essays on Design Michael Bierut
5 Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges Facing Choice
6 The Adoration of Jenna Fox Mary E. Pearson
7 The Adventures of Short Stubbly Brownbeard Alan J Levine
8 Alas, Babylon Pat Frank
9 Aloft Chang-Rae Lee
10 Amalee Dar Williams
11 Anatomy of a Boyfriend Daria Snadowsky
12 The Annotated Secret Garden FH Burnett
13 The Arthritis Handbook: The Essential Guide to a Pain-Free, Drug-Free Life Grant Cooper
14 Asleep Banana Yoshimoto
~~15 The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves (The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation) M.T. Anderson~~
16 Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition) Ayn Rand
17 Auntie Mame : An Irreverent Escapade Patrick Dennis
18 Aurelie: A Faerie Tale Heather Tomlinson
19 Austerity Britain, 1945-1951 (Tales of a New Jerusalem) David Kynaston
20 Autobiography of a Geisha Sayo Masuda
21 Azalea Mountain : a modern revolutionary Peking opera : September 1973 script of the Peking Opera Troupe of Peking Shu-yuan Wang
22 Azarel: A Novel Karoly Pap
23 Babe: The Gallant Pig (Babe) Dick King-Smith
24 The Ballet Family Jean (Mabel Esther Allen) Estoril
25 Ballet Family Again Jean Estoril
26 Ballet Shoes Noel Streatfeild
27 The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears Dinaw Mengestu
28 Becoming Madame Mao ANCHEE MIN
29 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
30 Beneath the Red Banner (Panda books) Lao She
31 Betsy-Tacy (Betsy and Tacy Books) Maud Hart Lovelace
32 The Binding Chair: or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society Kathryn Harrison
33 Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob Dick Lehr
34 Black Snow Liu Heng
35 Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo A. Anaya
36 Bliss Lauren Myracle
37 The Blue House (Panda Books) Naishan Cheng
38 The Bluest Eye (Oprah's Book Club) Toni Morrison
39 The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe
40 The Book of Lost Things: A Novel John Connolly
41 Book Reviewing
42 Boomsday Christopher Buckley
~~43 Born Too Short: The Confessions of an Eighth-Grade Basket Case Dan Elish~~
44 Bound Feet and Western Dress Pang-Mei Chang
45 Boundaries of Her Body: A Troubling History of Women's Rights in America Debran Rowland
46 Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 Diana Preston
47 Boy's Life Robert McCammon
48 Boys Are Dogs Leslie Margolis
49 Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut
50 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
51 The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War Sang-Hun Choe
52 Bridge of sighs Richard Russo
53 Candy in Action Matthue Roth
54 The Canterbury tales Geoffrey Chaucer
55 Carpe Diem Autumn Cornwell
56 Cathy's Key: If Found 650-266-8202 Sean Stewart
57 Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An) (Detective Stories)
58 A Certain Chemistry: A Novel Mil Millington
59 The Chan's Great Continent, China in Western Minds Jonathan D. Spence
60 Charms for the Easy Life Kaye Gibbons
61 Chicks With Sticks 3: Knitwise Elizabeth Lenhard
62 China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Reaktion Books - Envisioning Asia) Jerome Silbergeld
63 Chinatown, NY: Labor and Politics, 1930-1950, Updated Edition Peter Kwong
64 The Chinese Bell Murders (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
65 The Chinese Gold Murders (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
66 The Chinese Lake Murders (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
67 The Chinese Nail Murders (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
68 Chinese Story and Other Tales Boris Pilnyak
69 Chocolat (Tie-In) Joanne Harris
70 The Chocolate War (Laurel Leaf Books) Robert Cormier
71 Civil War in China Suzanne Pepper
72 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
73 Cold Comfort FarmStella Gibbons
74 Color Purple Alice Walker
75 Colors of the Mountain Da Chen
76 Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
77 Contemporary Chinese Short Stories (Panda Books = Hsiung Mao Ts0ung Shu)
~~78 Crazy Lady! Jane Leslie Conly~~
79 The Creek Jennifer L. Holm
80 Cybele's Secret Juliet Marillier
81 A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman Ida Pruitt
82 David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair (Everyman's Library (Cloth))Irene Nemirovsky
83 Days of a Russian Noblewoman: The Memories of Anna Labzina, 1758-1821 Anna Labzina
84 The Devil Wears Prada: A Novel Lauren Weisberger
85 The Dharma Bums Jack Kerouac
86 Dragon and Sickle - How the Communist Revolution Happened in China
87 Drama in the People's Republic of China
88 Dream of the red chamber (Doubleday anchor books) Xueqin Cao
89 Eating Chinese Food Naked Mei Ng
90 Elvis & Olive Stephanie Watson
91 The Embroidered Shoes: Stories Tsan-Hsueh
92 The Emperor's Pearl Robert Hans Van Gulik
93 Empire Falls Richard Russo
94 Empress Orchid Anchee Min
95 Empress: A Novel Shana Sa
96 Everyday Life Lydie Salvayre
97 Explosions and Other Stories Mo Yan
98 Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star (Fablehaven) Brandon Mull
99 Fairy Tales : (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editio) Hans Christian Andersen
100 Fakie Tony Varrato
101 Falling Leaves : The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter Adeline Yen Mah
102 Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village William Hinton
103 A Farce to Be Reckoned With Roger Zelazny
104 Filth Irvine Welsh
105 Fire in the Blood Irene Nemirovsky
106 For Now Gayle Friesen
107 Foreshadowing Marcus Sedgwick
108 The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression Amity Shlaes
~~109 The Frog Princess (Tales of the Frog Princess) E.D. Baker~~
110 Full House Francine P. Pascal
111 Gaia Girls Enter the Earth (Gaia Girls) Lee Welles
112 Gaia Girls Way of Water (Gaia Girls) Lee Welles
113 General Winston's DaughterSharon Shinn
114 Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire
115 A Gesture Life : A Novel Chang-Rae Lee
116 Getting the Girl: A Guide to Private Investigation, Surveillance, and Cookery Susan Juby
117 The Girl from the Golden Horn Kurban Said
118 The Girl Who Played Go: A Novel Shan Sa
~~119 A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat Gail Gauthier~~
~~120 A Girl, A Boy, and Three Robbers Gail Gauthier~~
121 Girl, Interrupted (Vintage) Susanna Kaysen
122 The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing Melissa Bank
~~123 The Glass Castle: A Memoir Jeannette Walls~~
124 Glue Irvine Welsh
125 God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan Jonathan D. Spence
126 The Golden Lotus: Chin P'ing Mei (The Adventurous History of Hsi Men and His Six Wives)
127 Gone and Back Again Jonathon Scott Fuqua
128 The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history John M. Barry
129 Grinnell College John S. Nollen
130 Grinnell College in the Nineteenth Century: From Salvation to Service Joseph Frazier Wall
131 The Group Mary McCarthy
132 The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, Parts I - II Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
133 Hardboiled and Hard Luck Banana Yoshimoto
134 Haters Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
135 The Haunted Monastery and the Chinese Maze Murders Robert van Gulik
136 Health and HappinessDiane Johnson
137 Hero-Type Barry Lyga
~~138 High Fidelity Nick Hornby~~
139 Home of the Brave Katherine Applegate
140 The Host: A Novel Stephenie Meyer
141 The House of Dies Drear (Dies Drear Chronicle) Virginia Hamilton
142 How to Be Bad Lauren Myracle
143 Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine Jasper Becker
144 I Am Not Joey Pigza Jack Gantos
145 I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes Jaclyn Moriarty
146 If at Faust You Don't Succeed Roger Zelazny
147 You Come Softly Jacqueline Woodson
148 In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences (Vintage International) Truman Capote
149 In the Serpent's Coils (Hallowmere) Tiffany Trent
150 Inheritance: A Novel Lan Samantha Chang
151 Isaac's Torah Angel Wagenstein
152 Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit Daniel Quinn
153 The island of lost maps : a true story of cartographic crime Miles Harvey
154 Istanbul: Memories and the City Orhan Pamuk
155 Istanbul: The Imperial City John Freely
156 It Can't Happen Here Sinclair Lewis
157 Jack of Kinrowan Charles De Lint
158 The Jane Austen Book ClubKaren Joy Fowler
159 Journey Across Tibet: A Young Woman's Trek Across the Rooftop of the World Sorrel Wilby
161 Judge Dee At Work Robert van Gulik
162 Kaffir Boy: The True Story Of A Black Youths Coming Of Age In Apartheid South Africa Mark Mathabane
163 The LACQUER SCREEN Robert van Gulik
164 Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon (Penguin Classics) Jane Austen
165 The LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST Nikos Kazantzakis
166 Le Mariage Diane Johnson
167 A Leaf In The Bitter Wind Ting-Xing Ye
168 A Lesson Before Dying Ernest J. Gaines
169 Li'l Kids: "road to god knows..." adventures! Von Allan
170 Life and Death are Wearing Me Out: A Novel Mo Yan
Life and Death in Shanghai Nien Cheng
171 Little Green Men: A Novel Christopher Buckley
172 Long May She Reign Ellen Emerson White
173 The Lords of Discipline Pat Conroy
174 The Lost Colony, Book One, Collector's Edition: The Snodgrass Conspiracy (The Lost Colony) Grady Klein
175 Love and Other Near-Death Experiences: A Novel Mil Millington
176 The Love Wife Gish Jen
177 The Lucky Ones Stephanie Greene
178 Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee Pamela Druckerman
179 The lute : Kao Ming's P�i-p�a chi Ming Kao
180 The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and and How All Men Can Help Jackson Katz
181 The Making of the English Working Class (Penguin History) E.P. Thompson
182 Man of the House: A Novel Ad Hudler
183 A Mango-Shaped Space Wendy Mass
184 Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture Richard H. Solomon
185 Mao: A Life Philip Short
186 Mao: The Unknown Story Jung Chang
187 Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail Thomas McFadden
188 Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box G. P. Taylor
189 Masterpiece Elise Broach
190 The Mayor of Casterbridge (Penguin Classics) Thomas Hardy
191 Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac Gabrielle Zevin
192 Memories of My Melancholy Whores Gabriel Garcia Marquez
193 The Memory Keeper's Daughter Kim Edwards
194 Midnight Pearls Debbie Viguié
195 Milagros: Girl from Away Meg Medina
197 The MONKEY AND THE TIGER (Monkey & the Tiger Srs) Robert van Gulik
198 The Monster Hunter's Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Saving Mankind from Vampires, Zombies, Hellhounds, and Other Mythic Ibrahim Amin
199 Monster Madness (Nightmare Academy, No. 2) Dean Lorey
200 The Morning Deluge Han Suyin
201 The Mother Tongue Bill Bryson
202 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
203 Murder in Canton Robert Hans Van Gulik
204 My Faith in Frankie Mike Carey
205 My Ishmael Daniel Quinn
206 My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered Howell Raines
207 The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (Studies of the Pacific Basin Institute) Katsuichi Honda
208 The Nanny Diaries: A Novel Emma McLaughlin
209 Necklace and Calabash Robert van Gulik
210 Neverwhere Neil Gaiman
211 The Nightingale Kara Dalkey
212 No Birds Sang Farley Mowat
~~213 North of Beautiful Justina Chen Headley~~
~~214 Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies) Justina Chen Headley~~
215 Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
216 Oliver Twist (Bantam Classics) Charles Dickens
217 On the Water H. M. van den Brink
218 One Day in China: May 21, 1936 Sherman Cochran
219 One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross Harry Kemelman
220 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
221 The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life Tom Reiss
222 Paper Daughter: A Memoir M. Elaine Mar
223 Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries Bharti Kirchner
224 The Peach Blossom Fan: Tao-Hua-Shan Shangren Kong
225 Peiling and the Chicken-Fried Christmas Pauline Chen
226 Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005 Phil Baines
227 The Phantom of the Temple Robert van Gulik
228 Philippa Fisher's Fairy Godsister Liz Kessler
229 The Pillow Book (Penguin Classics) Sei Shonagon
230 Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren
231 Places I Never Meant To Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers
232 Playing for Thrills Wang Shuo
233 PLEASURE OF MY COMPANY, THE: A NOVELLA Steve Martin
234 Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities Alexandra Robbins
235 The Plot Against America: A Novel Philip Roth
236 POETS & MURDER (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
237 Possession : A Romance (Vintage International) A.S. Byatt
238 The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary Simon Winchester
239 The Puzzling World of Winston Breen Eric Berlin
240 Question of Hu Jonathan D. Spence
241 Raise the Red Lantern: Three Novellas Su Tong
~~242 Rapunzel's Revenge Shannon Hale~~
243 Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books Azar Nafisi
244 Red Azalea Anchee Min
245 Red Dragon Codex (Dragonlance: the New Adventure) R.D. Henham
246 The red lantern; a modern revolutionary Peking opera
247 Red Star Over China Edgar Snow
248 Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man Jonathan D. Spence
249 Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party Ying Chang Compestine
251 River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.) Peter Hessler
252 The Road to Wellville : Tie-In T.C. Boyle
253 Rockville Pike: A Suburban Comedy of Manners Susan Coll
254 The Rouge of the North Eileen Chang
255 Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1750-1917 (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian & East European Studies
256 The Samurai's Garden: A Novel Gail Tsukiyama
257 A Season of Eden JM Warwick
258 Secret in the Tower: Time Spies, Book 1 (Time Spies) Candice Ransom
259 Secret Society Girl: An Ivy League Novel (Ivy League) Diana Peterfreund
260 Seeing Sky-blue Pink (Exceptional Reading & Language Arts Titles for Intermediate Grades) Candice F. Ransom
261 The Servants Michael Marshall Smith
262 The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific J. Maarten Troost
263 Shanghai: Electric & Lurid City
264 Shark Girl Kelly Bingham
265 Shift Charlotte Agell
266 Silk Alessandro Baricco
267 Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet Xinran Xue
268 Snow Tracy Lynn
269 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel Lisa See
270 Snow White, Blood Red Ellen Datlow
271 Something Rotten Alan M. Gratz
272 Something to Blog About Shana Norris
273 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
274 The Sound and the FuryWilliam Faulkner
275 A Spot of Bother (Vintage)Mark Haddon
276 Spud John van de Ruit
277 Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes Chris Crutcher
278 Stealing Heaven Elizabeth Scott
279 Stilwell and the American experience in China, 1911-45 Barbara Wertheim Tuchman
280 The Stink Files, Dossier 001: The Postman Always Brings Mice (Stink Files) (Stink Files) Holm & Hamel
281 A Stolen Tongue Sheri Holman
282 STORM: The Infinity Code (Storm) Emma Young
~~283 The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice (P.S.) Trevor Corson~~
284 Straight Man Richard Russo
285 Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties Tariq Ali
286 Sun, the Moon and the Stars Steven Brust
287 Supreme Courtship Christopher Buckley
288 Talent Zoey Dean
289 Teahouse, (A Play in Three Acts) Lao She
290 The Templars : The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades Piers Paul Read
291 Ten Things I Hate About Me Randa Abdel-Fattah
292 Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Cambridge Literature) Thomas Hardy
293 A Theory of Relativity Jacquelyn Mitchard
294 Tin Angel Shannon Cowan
295 To change China : Western advisers in China, 1620-1960 Jonathan D. Spence
296 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
297 Treason by the Book Jonathan D. Spence
298 The Triumph of Deborah Eva Etzioni-Halevy
299 The True Meaning of Smekday Adam Rex
300 Turbulence: A Novel (Pegasus Prize for Literature) Jia Pingwa
301 Two Pioneers of Young Adult Library Services Patty Campbell
302 Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (Citadel Underground Series) Abe Peck
303 Under the Volcano: A Novel (P.S.) Malcolm Lowry
304 The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolut David Kamp
305 Unraveling on the Old Silk Road : Hitchhiking China and Beyond Antonio Cammarata
306 Vögelein: Clockwork Faerie Jane Irwin
307 Visions of Cody Jack Kerouac
308 Waiting: A Novel Ha Jin
309 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
310 Warriors: The Lost Warrior (Warriors) Erin Hunter
~~311 We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Shirley Jackson~~
312 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda Philip Gourevitch
313 The Well : David's Story Mildred D. Taylor
314 Whale Talk Chris Crutcher
315 What Do Jews Believe?: The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism Edward Kessler
316 What Do Muslims Believe?: The Roots and Realities of Modern Islam Ziauddin Sardar
317 When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: Tie-In Edition Le Ly Hayslip
318 When You Are Engulfed in Flames David Sedaris
319 White as Snow (Fairy Tale Series) Tanith Lee
320 Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants Chen Guidi
321 World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War Max Brooks
322 Written on Water (Weatherhead Books on Asia) Eileen Chang
323 Zibby Payne & the Party Problem (Zibby Payne) Alison Bell
324 Zibby Payne & the Trio Trouble (Zibby Payne) Alison Bell

Stop in the Name of Pants

2008-10-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

OMG, ANGUS!!!! I was so worried that he wasn't going to make it. That's the part where I cried.

Also, I am SO GLAD that Gee is very single at the end of this book. I really hope she stays single through at least the majority, if not all of the next one. I think it would be good for her and help her grow up a little more!

Princess Mia

2008-06-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

JP SUCKS! And why is Mia so naive?!

I mean, here are all the ways in which JP is NOT COOL:

1. He strung Lilly on forever
2. He dumped her as soon as Mia was single
3. He then makes an immediate move for Mia
4. He tries to drive a wedge between the two
5. Is really sneaky in how he's making his move on Mia

Is it just me or is this guy super smarmy? SUPER SMARMY!

And then she goes and kisses him?! REALLY?!

Ok, so... I understand that Mia needs some more experience in order to make her love with Michael so sweet (because they WILL get back together. I demand it!) but... urgh...

Plus, how stupid is Mia to go for him? Even if Lilly is making out with Kenny these days, she should realize that this will kill her relationship with her.

Princess in Training

2008-06-10T09:22:00.001-07:00

Ok-- my thoughts on the ending of Princess in Training by Meg Cabot.

My original review is here.

So... it turns out that Michael does want to Do It. I almost cried when he said he wasn't going to wait forever for Mia. Part of me is also a little ticked at the 3 month re-evaluation of the situation. Dude--she'll jump you when she's ready.

On the other hand, it was realistic I think.

But, it's a book about princesses, I don't need realistic boys!!!!

So... I'm torn. It was a believable ending and sets up drama to come, but on the other hand, bad form Michael.

Good Enough

2008-05-22T13:01:00.001-07:00

Ok, I absolutely LOVE that Ben and Patti don't hook up. I mean, I really wanted them to, but... it so rarely happens in real life, so it was much more believeable that they don't. And the complete awkwardness was perfect. I also am glad that Patti and Samuel didn't hook up either--it was too easy.

I also am glad that Patti didn't go to Julliard. Her decision to do the music program at Yale while pursuing other options made total sense and I think it was a really smart decision.

Seriously. I love this book.

2008 List o'Books To Read

2007-12-11T18:52:00.000-08:00

By the end of 2008, I will read at least 50 of these titles, which are ones I owned at the end of 2007, or that Dan owns and I want to read.

So far, I've read 16

1421: The Year China Discovered America Gavin Menzies
3 Kingdoms trans. Moss Roberts
Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges of Facing Choice
Adventures of Pink Elephant #1 Christine Amamiya
Aloft Chang-rae Lee
Amalee Dar Williams
Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History ed. Antoinette Burton
Arthritis Handbook Grant Cooper
The Assasin's Cloak: Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists
Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade Patrick Dennis
Autobiography of a Geisha Sayo Masuda
Azalea Mountain : a modern revolutionary Peking opera : September 1973 script of the Peking Opera Troupe of Peking Shu-yuan Wang
Azarel: A Novel Karoly Pap
Babe: The Gallant Pig (Babe) Dick King-Smith
Ballet Shoes Noel Streatfeild
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears Dinaw Mengestu
The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
Beneath the Red Banner (Panda books) Lao She
Beowulf Howell D. Chickering
Betsy-Tacy (Betsy and Tacy Books) Maud Hart Lovelace
Bill Bryson's African Diary Bill Bryson
The Binding Chair: or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society Kathryn Harrison
Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo A. Anaya
The Blue House (Panda Books) Naishan Cheng
The Bluest Eye (Oprah's Book Club) Toni Morrison
The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe
Book of a Thousand Days Shannon Hale
Book Reviewing
Boomsday
Born Too Short: The Confessions of an Eighth-Grade Basket Case Dan Elish
Bound Feet and Western Dress Pang-Mei Chang
Boundaries of Her Body: A Troubling History of Women's Rights in America Debran Rowland
Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 Diana Preston
Boy's Life Robert McCammon
Breakfast of Champions Kurt Vonnegut
Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War Sang-Hun Choe
The Canterbury tales Geoffrey Chaucer
Carpe Diem Autumn Cornwall
Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An) (Detective Stories) van Gulik
A Certain Chemistry: A Novel Mil Millington
The Chan's Great Continent, China in Western Minds Jonathan Spence
Charms for the Easy Life Kaye Gibbons
Chicks With Sticks 3: Knitwise Elizabeth Lenhard
China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Reaktion books - Envisioning Asia) of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Reaktion Books - Envisioning Asia) Jerome Silbergeld
Chinatown, NY: Labor and Politics, 1930-1950, Updated Edition Peter Kwong
The Chinese Bell Murders (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
The Chinese Gold Murders (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
The Chinese Lake Murders (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
The Chinese Nail Murders (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
Chinese Story and Other Tales Boris Pilnyak
Chocolat (Tie-In) Joanne Harris
The Chocolate War (Laurel Leaf Books) Robert Cormier
Civil War in China Suzanne Pepper
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
Cold Comfort Farm: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Stella Gibbons
Color Purple Alice Walker
Colors of the Mountain Da Chen
Contemporary Chinese Short Stories (Panda Books = Hsiung Mao Ts0ung Shu)
Crazy Lady! (Trophy Newbery) Jane Leslie Conly
Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club) Alan Paton
A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman Ida Pruitt
Days of a Russian Noblewoman: The Memories of Anna Labzina, 1758-1821 Anna Labzina
The Devil Wears Prada: A Novel Lauren Weisberger
Dream of the red chamber (Doubleday anchor books) Xueqin Cao
The Embroidered Shoes: Stories Tsan-Hsueh
The Emperor's Pearl Robert van Gulik
Everyday Life Lydie Salvayre
Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star (Fablehaven) Brandon Mull
Fairy Tales : (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Hans Christian Andersen
Falling Leaves : The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter Adeline Yen Mah
Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village William Hinton
Fire in the Blood Irene Nemirovsky
For Now Gayle Friesen
Franny and Zooey J. D. Salinger
Full House Francine P. Pascal
Gaia Girls Enter the Earth (Gaia Girls) Lee Welles
Gaia Girls Way of Water (Gaia Girls) Lee Welles
General Winston's Daughter Sharon Shinn
A Gesture Life : A Novel Chang-Rae Lee
The Girl from the Golden Horn Kurban Said
The Girl Who Played Go: A Novel Shan Sha
A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat Gail Gauthier
Girl, Interrupted (Vintage) Susanna Kaysen
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing Melissa Bank
The Glass Castle: A Memoir Jeannette Walls
Glue Irvine Walsh
God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan Jonathan Spence
The Golden Lotus: Chin P'ing Mei (The Adventurous History of Hsi Men and His Six Wives) (might need a new copy)
Grinnell College John S. Nollen
Grinnell College in the Nineteenth Century: From Salvation to Service
Joseph Frazier Wall
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, Parts I - II Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Hardboiled and Hard Luck Banana Yoshimoto
Haters Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
The Haunted Monastery and the Chinese Maze Murders Robert van Gulik
Health and Happiness Diane Johnson
High Fidelity Nick Hornby
Home of the Brave Katherine Applegate
The House of Dies Drear (Dies Drear Chronicle) Virginia Hamilton
I Am Not Joey Pigza Jack Gantos
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away Bill Bryson
If You Come Softly Jacqueline Woodson
In the Serpent's Coils (Hallowmere) Tiffany Trent
Inheritance: A Novel Lan Samantha Chan
The island of lost maps : a true story of cartographic crime Miles Harvey
Istanbul: Memories and the City Orhan Pamuk
Istanbul: The Imperial City John Freely
Jack of Kinrowan Charles de Lint
The Jane Austen Book Club Karen Joy Fowler
Journey Across Tibet: A Young Woman's Trek Across the Rooftop of the World Sorrel Wilby
Journey Into Mohawk Country George O'Connor
Judge Dee At Work Robert van Gulik
Kaffir Boy: The True Story Of A Black Youths Coming Of Age In Apartheid South Africa Mark Mathabane
The LACQUER SCREEN Robert van Gulik
Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon (Penguin Classics) Jane Austen
Laika Nick Abadzis
Le Mariage Diane Johnson
A Lesson Before Dying Ernest J. Gaines
Life and Death in Shanghai Nien Cheng
Long May She Reign Ellen Emerson White
The Lords of Discipline Pat Conroy
The Lost Colony, Book One, Collector's Edition: The Snodgrass Conspiracy (The Lost Colony) Grady Klein
The Lost Gospel : The Book of Q and Christian Origins Burton L. Mack
Love and Other Near-Death Experiences: A Novel Mill Millington
The Love Wife Gish Jen
The lute : Kao Ming's Pi-pa chi Ming Kao
The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and and How All Men Can Help Jackson Katz
A Mango-Shaped Space Wendy Mass
Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture Richard H. Solomon
Mao: A Life Phillip Short
Mao: The Unknown Story Jung Chang
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail Thomas McFadden
The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac Gabrielle Zevin
Memories of My Melancholy Whores Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Memory Keeper's Daughter Kim Edwards
The MONKEY AND THE TIGER (Monkey & the Tiger Srs) Robert van Gulik
The Mother Tongue Bill Bryson
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
Murder in Canton Robert van Gulik
Murder Of Bindy Mackenzie Jaclyn Moriarty
My Ishmael Daniel Quinn
My Last Best Friend Julie Bowe
The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (Studies of the Pacific Basin Institute) Katsuichi Honda
The Nanny Diaries: A Novel Emma McLaughlin
Necklace and Calabash Robert van Gulik
A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry R. Howard Bloch
Neverwhere Neil Gaiman
Nice Work (King Penguin) David Lodge
The Nightingale Kara Dalkey
No Birds Sang Farley Mowat
Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies) Justina Chen Headley
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories Elizabeth Strout
Oliver Twist (Bantam Classics) Charles Dickens
On the Water H. M. van den Brink
One Day in China: May 21, 1936 Sherman Cochran
One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross Harry Kemelman
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life Tom Reiss
Paper Daughter: A Memoir M. Elaine Mar
Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries Bharti Kirchner
The Peach Blossom Fan: Tao-Hua-Shan Shangren Kong
Peiling and the Chicken-Fried Christmas Pauline Chen
The Perfect Hamburger and Other Delicious Stories Alexander McCall Smith
The Phantom of the Temple Robert van Gulik
Piper Reed: Navy Brat (Piper Reed) Kimberly Willis Holt
Pippi LongstockingAstrid Lindgrin
Places I Never Meant To Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers ed. Judy Blume
Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities Alexandra Robbins
The Plot Against America: A Novel Philip Roth
POETS & MURDER (Judge Dee Mysteries) Robert van Gulik
Possession : A Romance (Vintage International) A. S. Byatt
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary Simon Winchester
The Puzzling World of Winston Breen Eric Berlin
Question of Hu Jonathan Spence
Raise the Red Lantern: Three Novellas Su Tong (I've read Raise the Red Lantern, but not the other novellas in this book)
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books Azar Nafisi
Reality Leak Joni Sensel
Red Dragon Codex (Dragonlance: the New Adventure) R.D. Henham
The red lantern; a modern revolutionary Peking opera
Red Star Over China Edgar Snow
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party Ying Chang Compestine
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.) Peter Hessler
Rockville Pike: A Suburban Comedy of Manners Susan Coll
The Rouge of the North Eileen Chang
The Samurai's Garden Gail Tsukiyama
The Scarlet Letter (Airmont Classics, CL7) Nathaniel Hawthorne
Secret in the Tower: Time Spies, Book 1 (Time Spies) Candice Ransom
Seeing Sky-blue Pink (Exceptional Reading & Language Arts Titles for Intermediate Grades) Candic Ransom
Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov Stephen L. Hoch
Seven Contemporary Chinese Women Writers Ru Zhijuan
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific J. Maarten Troost
Shanghai: Electric & Lurid City
Shopgirl: A Novella Steve Martin
Silk Alessandro Baricco
Small World David Lodge
Smart Dog Vivian Vande Velde
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel Lisa See
Something Rotten Alan M. Gratz
Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
Spell Book Of Listen Taylor Jaclyn Moriarty
Spud John van de Ruit
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes Chris Crutcher
A Stolen Tongue Sheri Holman
The Summons John Grisham
Teahouse, (A Play in Three Acts) Lao She
The Templars : The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades Piers Paul Read
Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloudm Sun Shuyun
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Cambridge Literature) Thomas Hardy
Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Overtures to Biblical Theology) Phylis Trible
A Theory of Relativity Jacquelyn Mitchard
To change China : Western advisers in China, 1620-1960 Jonathan Spence
Toby Wheeler: Eighth-Grade Benchwarmer Thatcher Heldring
Treason by the Book Jonathan Spence
Two Pioneers of Young Adult Library Services Patty Campbell
Under the Volcano: A Novel (P.S.) Malcolm Lowry
Unraveling on the Old Silk Road : Hitchhiking China and Beyond Antonio Cammarata
Vögelein: Clockwork Faerie Jane Irwin
Waiting: A Novel Ha Jin
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
Warriors: The Lost Warrior (Warriors) Erin Hunter
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Shirley Jackson
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda Philip Gourevitch
The Well : David's Story Mildred D. Taylor
Whale Talk Chris Crutcher
What Do Jews Believe?: The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism Edward Kessler
What Do Muslims Believe?: The Roots and Realities of Modern Islam Ziauddin Sardar
White as Snow Tanith Lee

Wednesday Wars

2007-12-07T14:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, dude, at the end, where Mrs. Bigio invites Mai Thi to come live with her? Really? Ruined the book, because that was just too tidy and... ew.

Magic and Other Misdemeanors

2007-11-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

Further thoughts on Magic and Other Misdemeanors

That whole sequence when Sabrina and Daphne get pulled into the future and see their future selves and what's become of Ferryport Landing? Chilling. Especially on page 152 when Sabrina's watching the older Daphne stand apart from the group--she shuddered to think what had happened to steal the happiness from Daphne... I too, wonder what could happen to make Daphne so cold...

And what's with all the Everafters helping the Grimm's yard sale and then showing up as members of the Scarlet Hand?

Prince Charming is a double agent that's really good, a la Snape, right? RIGHT?! Why is he so mean to Snow White?

And what's with that stunt that Bunny Lancaster pulled, glowing her hand all read to punish Mirror? Because dude, her HAND turned SCARLET. That has to be meaningful!

Can the future really be changed?

But, on a happier note... Sabrina and Puck, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G... sweet.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

2007-07-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

Ok guys, this is a SPOILER blog, so there are SPOILERS here.

But I really don't want to ruin it so...

Seriously. SPOILERS! ABOUT HARRY POTTER!

There are just my initial thoughts, but I loved it. I loved how hysterical it was, even in the darkest moments.

I love that Snape still had Lily's patronus. "After all this time?" "Always"

And I really really loved Mrs. Weasley-- NOT MY DAUGHTER YOU BITCH.

I cried for Hedwig and Dobby. And poor poor Fred. Poor George.

I cheered when McGonagall came on the scene. I cheered for Percy. I laughed and cheered for Kreacher. Most of all, I cheered for Gran.

I have long suspected that Harry was the 7th Horcrux, but I was still shocked and couldn't believe it when it happened. I think I love Dumbedore even more now.

I wanted more Ginny.

I'm still overwhelmed and will post more later, but wanted to get my thoughts out. Comment/email if you've read it and want to talk....

FAQ and About

2007-04-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

No one's really ever asked me a question on this blog, so this is a made up FAQ. If anyone ever gets curious, I'll revise it.

Who the heck are you?

My name is Jennie and I'm a children's librarian at a public library in the DC metro area, but I started this blog back when I was working in cataloging for a research database. I've always been a reader. I have a degree from Grinnell College in History with an interdisciplinary concentration in Chinese Studies. My MLIS is from the University of Maryland, majoring in Archives/Record Management. I'm married to someone with an obscene number of master's degrees and a holy tolerance for the stack of books in our house. I like to read and travel and read while traveling.

I have served on the MG/YA Nonfiction Cybils judging panel in 2007 and 2008. I was on the nominating panel in 2009.

I was also on the 2009 Maryland Blue Crab Award Committee, which awards fiction and nonfiction books written at the early and transitional reading levels.

Why should I care about your reviews? or Why do you review?

Because I have awesome taste. Ok, you don't have to care. I review books because amongst the people who actually know me in the real world, I have a reputation for being a crazy reader. I read a lot in a wide variety of books. People started asking me for book recommendations. I started to blog about books to see if I could start or participate in a wider conversation. I post my opinions on books out there for you to take or leave.

I review because it's fun and I have a lot to say and I could talk all day about what I've read lately. If I put my thoughts here, it saves the people around me from having to listen to it all. This is not a place for professional-type reviews. When I write a professional-type review (or a professional review) I will link it here.

Also, see why I blog.

What's your policy on reviewing free books and Advanced Reader's Copies?

If I read it, I review it. Please see my Review Policy.

What gets reviewed?

See my Review Policy.

What's with the Amazon links?

I am an Amazon associate, which means if you click on one of the Amazon links on my page and buy something (Even if it's not what you clicked on) then I get a percentage of the sale (how big of a percentage depends on how many items were purchased in a month.)

I do this because I like to buy books and I can't always buy books, because the mortgage also demands paying, and my belly frequently demands food. So, if I can make a little money off this blog (and trust me, I'm not making much) that means I can buy more books. Which I will then read, and review, all for your pleasure.

Have you ever read a book you didn't like?

This is a real question from one of my coworkers at booktalk training where I kept saying, "oooo! I love that book!" I do like most of what I read, but not everything. There are negative reviews here.

Why review books you didn't like?

To tell people not to waste their time, to offer a different opinion if everyone else in the universe loved it. Because I want to review everything I read, and I don't like everything.

Why read books you don't like?

Sometimes, I have to for work. Sometimes, they're like car crashes and I can't turn away from the ickyness.

How can I contact you?

You can email me at kidsilkhaze at yahoo dot com. This is also the email address you can usually find me in other places like LibraryThing.

last updated 2/8/2010

Godless

2006-04-01T09:14:00.000-08:00

I was so pissed off on how they all blamed Jason in the end. What a bunch of sheep. Baa! Baa! Baa! Get a spine and a life. One person blaming Jason for getting them in trouble would have been believable, but EVERYONE?! JHC!

A Dance of Sisters

2006-04-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

Here's the thing: I've known a lot of people who've had dreams of being a professional ballerina and had to give it up and when Delia gives it up... she's not bothered by missing it, and that just doesn't ring true AT ALL. That, and she recovers from her anorexia way too quickly. I think this is all part of the "must finish book now" feel of the ending but still... it ruined the book for me in the end.

Penderwicks

2006-03-27T17:10:00.000-08:00

Oh my god! At the end? When Batty gives up her wings? Made me cry. And sigh happily. I also loved the bit when he was spending the night and noticed that Batty didn't have her wings on and she's like "I don't sleep in them silly" or whatever she said. I love Batty.

Perks of Being a Wallflower

2006-03-27T17:04:00.000-08:00

I hate the fact that Charlie was molested in the end. I think it cheapened the whole book. I wish that his depression and craziness was just because he was a sensitive teenager and not due to this big trauma in his past. I really identified with him as a character but then when I got to the end? Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Still love that Smiths song though.

HP6

2005-08-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

You know, I have real Harry Potter theories, too... not just gross ones.

1. The 7 pieces of Voldemort's soul
a. The bit still in Voldy
b. The Diary
c. The Ring
d. The Cup
e. Nagini
f. The Locket
g. HARRY POTTER.

2. Dumbledore totally turned into a phoenix at his funeral

3. Harry has to go back to school, because that's where the pensieve is, and man, that'll be important.

4. RAB= Regulus Black

5. Kreacher totally has the locket. Mundungus did not steal it. (Remember, we've seen the locket in Book 5)

6. If Harry survives the final show down, he'll get back together with Ginny

7. Harry will vanquish Voldemort, he just might die in the process

8. Some people have the theory that Snape killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore's orders. I wish this were true, but I sadly don't think it is.

*Reasons I want Snape to be good:
a. Harry needs to be wrong about something. It's not good for his ego that he's always so right, and also? look where that got him at the Department of Mysteries. Just sayin'
b. If this whole thing is going to come down to luuuuuuuurve, then we need to explore redemption. I mean, we have friendship love (Ron and Hermione) dirty lurve (Ginny) parental love (Lily dying to save Harry, Sirius, Dumbledore) understanding (Lupin and Hagrid) but we need some forgiveness and redemption, and Snape's the only character who can really flesh that out.

9. Peter Pettigrew will die protecting Harry.

10. We haven't seen the last of Victor Krum

11. Harry will play Quidditch for England for a few years

12. Alberforth (?) (Dumbledore's brother, the barman at the Hog's Head) will play a big role.

13. Ron and Hermione will finally get their act together, but she'll have to make the first move.

14. Uncle Vernon will hit the roof at the thought of Ron and Hermione coming to stay.

15. Aunt Petunia will do something very cool.

16. Something bad will happen on Harry's birthday and the fact he's no longer protected will be really obvious really quickly.

17. Draco and Harry will never get along, but Draco will switch sides.

18. We'll find out more of Lily and James's post-Hogwarts back story.

19. Neville will kick some serious ass.

20. A Weasley will die.

21. It will not be Ron or Ginny.

22. Hermione will be carrying Ron's love child at the end of the book. Wait. That goes under perverted theories. ;)

What you Owe Me full review/ rant

2005-02-23T08:28:00.000-08:00

Gilda didn't really steal the money. Her husband did. He also beat her. Yet, no one cares. Gilda still gets screwed in the end. She admits that although she tried to find Hosanna and make things right she didn't look hard enough because she couldn't be successful if her business partner was a black woman (it's 1950 this is *true* sad, but true) and she had suffered enough in her life (she's a survivor!) But oh! she didn't want to find Hosanna! So she's a bad bad bad dirty Jew.

No one really cares that on the last page Hosanna admits that she never confronted Gilda because it was easier to be angry and bitter and ruining her children's lives than to get the truth and work things out.

Also, no one seems to care that NONE of these women has any agency whatsoever, except Gilda.

Matriece wants to confront Gilda on her own terms. She starts sensing that maybe there's more to the story than her mother's side allowed. But NO! She's staling! Here come the old boy triumvirate of Meeks, Monty, and Mooney (her old boss, her boyfriend's father, her godfather/her mother's lover. Also the 3 richest/most powerful black men in LA) to do it on their terms. Matriece is just taken along for the ride. The fact that she gets anything out of it is a personal curtesy.

Why does no one think that the person who most deserves to have the contract that proves Gilda owes Hosanna money is Hosanna's daughter?

But really, this book borders on anti-semitic. Poor Matriece. Her momma was poor because of this Jew. She's had a hard life and worked really hard to get where she is, running this random meeting and here's Rachel! Gilda's daughter playing with her diamond-encrusted Star of David at a meeting she doesn't want to be at but it's mom's company so she has a job she doesn't have to do anything for... page after page after page of this.

But really, no one learns anything about themselves in the end.

The characters are really underdeveloped. Most of them are just flat.

I only finished it because a friend lent it to me.