Books of the Year

The Kansas City Star recently published its top 100 books of 2007.

The New York Times' list of 100 notable books will be published
Dec. 2. Online, the list links to the book reviews. Lists are available back to 1999. The Times' top 10 list will be published online Wednesday.

My Month of October

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
By Alexander McCall Smith
240 pages

I've never been much of a mystery reader, but this series' lead detective has been called the "Miss Marple of Africa." Mme. Precious Ramotswe takes her inheritance and opens a detective agency in Botswana, becoming the country's only female private detective. The book is almost a collection of short stories, but a few larger cases tie the novel together. I didn't rush out to buy the next book in the series, but I would consider reading more in the future because of the vivid scenery and characters the author uses.

The Cry of the Dove
By Fadia Faqir
304 pages

I was loving this book until I realized I was still reading exposition 200 pages in. The rising action starts late, and what is hyped as the main action of the book is even later. The ending left a bad taste in my mouth. This book, just published this month, may succeed from a literary standpoint, but for the casual reader, it was a bit too long.




The Ivy Chronicles
By Karen Quinn
342 pages

Classic chick lit at its finest. Quinn uses many traditional chick lit themes — starting over, self discovery, love and men — but an older and more composed character in Ivy Ames, a former corporate office queen who begins her own business advising desperate parents on the strenuous admissions process to New York's finest kindergarten programs. This was a quick read (less than a week, and I worked overtime) that has more to it than most formulaic chick lit.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eats, Shoots & Leaves
By Lynne Truss
204 pages
Time to read: Too long (About 2 weeks)

Like any great book about grammar, Eats, Shoots & Leaves has a good deal of bite. Truss rags on everyone — especially Americans — for relaxing standards of punctuation while exploring usage and anomalies of commas, semicolons, periods (or full stops, as they say in Britain), etc. It's an informative book, especially because Truss discusses the differences in American and British usage, but a lot of the grammatical knowledge is basic if you've taken a good copy-editing course. Luckily, Truss makes up for that with her intelligent writing that made me turn to the dictionary at times. (Most of the words I was curious about weren't in my two paperback dictionaries, so I suggest having a computer, large dictionary or pencil and paper nearby if you care about such things.) This is one of the better modern reads about grammar-related issues.

Good Omens

Author: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Length: 369 pages
Time to read: Approximately two weeks but I work two jobs

I loved this book. It moves quickly and it's very funny. Basically, it is about the Apocalypse and how an angel and a demon try to stop it from occurring. There are lots of little threads that run through the book and the authors very neatly refer back to them and tie everything together at the end. It's a very enjoyable read and I would recommend it if you are looking for some nice light fiction with a bit more substance that chick lit.

How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls

How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls
By Zoey Dean
293 pages
Time to read: Less than a week, while moving

I wanted an easy read for my first week of work. It was.

How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls follows Megan Smith, a highly indebted Yale graduate, as she struggles to stay on her feet by tutoring (and while tutoring) the infamous Baker twins, billed as the new Paris Hilton and friends. Their partying ways begin to catch up to them, however, and Duke officials tell them they would have to actually earn their way into the freshman class. Their grandmother hires Megan to help them get there.

Megan spends most of the book in Palm Beach — a distance from her East Coast life — and begins to feel pulled between her two lives ... and the two sides of the twins. The plot is fair, but Dean falls short of the characters' full potential. The twins are hard to follow (something Megan could agree with) and not nearly as nasty as one would expect from filthy rich girls.

A good read, but nothing remarkable.

Songbird

Songbird
By: Walter Zacharius
Time to read: 1 week
Pages: 291

"Songbird" is about War World II and the story of a girl just becoming a woman during Hitler's reign. Mia Levy is a snob before the war starts, but as her surroundings change and she and her family are forced to live in degradation and despair, she realizes how lucky she once was. Somehow she makes the right friends throughout her time in Poland and makes it out of the worst areas. After making her way out and finding love briefly in America, she returns to Europe as a spy for America.

Her story is tragic, but somehow, the way it's told, you don't feel as deeply for her as you do other heroines you've read about trapped in this crazy time. The author chooses to skip over so of what could have been the most detailed and interesting scenes just to skip ahead or to save himself the trouble of writing it. As the CEO of a publishing company, you'd think he'd have better editors that would tell him to write those scenes.

All in all, it was a good read, just not as good as it could have been.

The Billboard Madonna

Title: The Billboard Madonna
Author: some crappy guy
Pages; 320
Time to read: a week

I got this book two summers ago in the boulder library when they gave away books that no one checked out anymore. That should have been my hint: THE BOOK HADN'T BEEN CHECKED OUT SINCE 1993...this was 2005.

The story seems cool: guy hit and run kills this girl, he is haunted by her....he's an ad. exec so he puts her into his highway safety campaign.

The book was not good. I had to dredge through it to finish it. A 300 page book shouldn't take me a week to read...but this one did. I wouldn't suggest it.

Ever.

The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife
By Audrey Niffenegger
535 pages
Time to read: About a week
Claim to fame: One of People's Top 10 Books of 2003

I barely believed the person who told me this was Niffenegger's first novel. It is well-written and concise, while still being an enchanting love story.

The aptly named The Time Traveler's Wife is about a time traveler, Henry, and his wife, Clare, and their romance that spans most of their lives. The book opens when the two meet in the present and continues through vignettes of their time together as Henry travels, uncontrollably, through time.

The Time Traveler's Wife was great when read in longer chunks, but also good when I snuck in individual chapters and vignettes at work or on the subway. Even so, the book is captivating enough that I rarely wanted to put it down after only a few pages. Recommended for anytime, anywhere.

Hi!

Hi, I'm Darla, the new book blog member! Jodi (or should I say Jodith ;) and I interned together in Tulsa this summer. I am going to be a senior at Mizzou, but I'm from Colorado. I 'm studing journalism, specifically design, and geography. I love the color green, road trips, and house plants. Yeah.

A friend and I were going to try the 100-Book Challenge this year, but school got in the way, so I've only read 21 thus far. Maybe I can do 50? We'll see. I want to get back to the hardcore reading days of my youth, so hopefully this blog will give me some good suggestions. My all-time favorites include Harry Potter (of course) and the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon- long and a little romance-y but so much fun to read. I post the books I read for the challenge on my Xanga (pinkflamingodar), but here are some of my favorites from this year:

Lust for Life by Irving Stone- A big biographical novel about Vincent VanGogh. It is based based on letters to his brother, Theo, so the events and what he was thinking are fairly accurate, but the diologe leaves something to be desired. My only complaint is the author added in some (obviously, and admittedly) fictitious scenes that detracted from the storyline. Overall a very good portrait of his tortured, genius life. If you love his art and have some time on your hands, it's a good read.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel- this book is amazing. It's about an Indian (like the country) boy who is Hindu, Muslim and Christian and who gets trapped in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger after the ship carrying his family and their zoo animals to Canada sinks. As if that wasn't enough of a premise... it has a point, and it's about life and philosophy and all that good stuff.

Home to Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani- this is the fourth (I think) in a series about a pharmacist who lives in Virginia but is really Italian. The books follow her life as she discovers her heritage, has a family, etc. The characters in this are all great, I always miss them after I finish one of the books. This is the best of Trigiani's stuff, I think. Quick and easy, but fun.

Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein- This book is a compilation of transcripts about the life of Edie Sedgwick, a socialite in the 60's who inspired lots of Andy Warhol's art. It's amazing! Even though her life is pretty messed-up and sad, it explains a lot about Warhol's pop art and that whole movement, and how it all sort of fell apart in the '70s... yeah, drugs.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote- I saw the movie Capote last year, and I had to read this. It was really good, even though I know he dramatized some of the story it didn't feel like it. He's an amazing writer and I couldn't put it down. It's about two men in Kansas who murder a whole family for no apparent reason, then are on the run for awhile. Sort of journalism, sort of not, but definitely a good read.

Nice to meet y'all! (Yes, I got that in Oklahoma...)

Nineteen Minutes

Nineteen Minutes
By: Jodi Picoult
Time to read: A few days
Pages: about 350

I absolutely love Jodi Picoult. I have read every book she's written, and for the most part, loved every single one of them. Of course, this book is no different.

Josie Cormier has it all. She is beautiful, in the popular crowd, and has the boyfriend that everyone is jealous of. Peter Houghton is the complete opposite of Josie. He is bullied relentlessly and only has one friend. When the two were children they used to be the best of friends, but as Josie became more popular, she began to remove her self from Peter. Which, she may have realized on March 6, 2007, that this may have been a big mistake on her part.

On that morning, Peter walks into his high school carrying 4 guns, and shoots and kills 10 people...injuring countless others. Every single life in the small New Hampshire town of Sterling is changed forever. Josie lives through the massacre, but her boyfriend Matt is killed.

As par to all Picoult books, a long court case is involved. At first, Josie's mother, Alex, was the presiding judge, but she had to remove herself when the lawyers threatened to put Josie on the stand. Also, another trait of Picoult books, a twist at the end that isn't predicted, is included in Nineteen Minutes.

This book really makes the reader think about their actions. High school may have been a long time ago for some of Picoult's readers, but to see Peter treated the way he is in this book is heartbreaking. I wanted to call my mom, who is a high school principal, and beg her to not just let students who are bullied fall into the crowd like Peter. Nineteen Minutes came out a little bit before the Virginia Tech shootings this fall, so I think that only makes the book more powerful in this day and age.

Read this book, read Jodi's other books...just enjoy her great writing and story weaving.

The Divide

The Divide
Author: Nicholas Evans
Pages: 403
How long: 5 days

So, I'm a huge fan of Nicholas Evans for the only reason that he also wrote "The Horse Whisperer." This book comes in a close second to it. "The Divide" is the type of story that gives away the ending at the beginning and then backtracks to show you how the end came about. I see no other way for Evans to have written this book, but it still would have been that much more dramatic and that much more hard hitting if he could have saved the climax for the end.

That being said, it's still a really enjoyable, emotional, fast read. The story is about a family of four: Ben and Sarah and their two children, Abbie and Josh. The marriage has settled into that routine lifestyle where each of them play games to piss each other off because they know how to do it best. Their love life is so bleak that Ben now only focuses on his proudest asset, Abbie. The same goes for Sarah and Josh. Still, Sarah believes Ben is the love of her life and would never think otherwise. However, Ben can't stop thinking about how crappy his marriage is.

The explosions start when Ben meets a woman during his family vacation and, within a year, walks away from his family for his happiness. The revelation of this to his family is heartbreaking and powerful.

Because Abbie had that amazing relationship every daughter hopes to have with her father, Ben's actions became the catalyst to Abbie's dramatic change. Once the sweet girl everyone loved, she becomes enveloped in anger. The author's shameless portrait of her pain and how powerful it affected her was devastating to read.

What Abbie starts doing to forget her pain makes her a wanted criminal. How the family deals with her actions and how Abbie is finally stopped is played out in the rest of the book. I'd go on, but I don't want to spoil anything else in case you do read it.

But if you're curious to see how one person can so quickly become a completely different person, read this book. If you're interested in seeing how family is ripped apart and slowly, ever so slowly, makes its way back to loving each other, then read this book. And lastly, if love a great read, read this book.

The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner
By: Khaled Hosseini
Time to read: 1 week
Pages: 371

Wow, this book was an amazing read – harrowing in its straight-forward truth and blatant candor. Hosseini shows Afghanistan and its character through a group of characters and how they've changed over the course of forty or so years. It also shows how much turmoil Afghanistan has been through and how long the country has suffered.

Amir tells the story of his friendship with Hassan and how their different beliefs and ancestry (one a Sunni Muslim, the other a Shi'a) effect both of them while growing up. Unforgivable acts take place, yet, somehow, the people who do these acts find redemption, and deservingly so. At times you will find it excruciating to read this tale, but it is worth it in the end. The hate you feel at points eventually subsides, and the reader too wishes for Amir to find peace.

I don't want to give too much away, so I'll leave you with this quote from Isabel Allende: "This is one of those unforgettable stories that stays with you for years. All the great themes of literature and of life are the fabric of this extraordinary novel: love, honor, guilt, fear, redemption."

Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind
By: Margaret Mitchell
Time to read: 3 weeks
Pages: 1024

This is one of my all-time favorite books. Next to Harry Potter, which this was a time filler to read before I start Deathly Hollows.

I've always been interested in the Civil War from a Southern point of view, and this book is the epitome of Southern living in the 1860s. The book opens in 1861 with a 16-year old Scarlett O'Hara flirting with twin brothers on the front porch of her large, Southern plantation, Tara. The book progresses through the war years, Reconstruction and then post-reconstruction time.

Scarlett moves from Tara, which is 25 miles south of Atlanta, to Atlanta during the war. Much to her dismay she is forced to work in hospitals and help dying soldiers. She flees Atlanta right before Sherman burns it to the ground on his infamous march to the sea.

After the war she is forced to completly rebuild her family's plantation..for the first time in her life she is forced to work along side the black people who have always done her bidding. Then she is in constant fear of Carpetbaggers or Yankees coming to kill, rape or steal everything that she has worked so hard to build up after the war.

I won't say too much about the love triangle in the book between Scarlett, Rhett and Ashley. Essentially she thinks she loves Ashley, and she realizes too late that it's really Rhett she loves.

I love this book a lot, and I hadn't read it in about two or three years. But re-reading it as a more mature reader made me able to better analyze the characters and their motives. Rhett is nothing but a cynical ass hole, who deeply loves Scarlett. If Scarlett lived today, she would be some big wig corporate exec., but since she lived in the 1860s, she was considered 'fast,' 'manly' and many other things. But, I admire her just the same.

I'm not much for the movie Gone with the Wind, but the book is great. If you like historical fiction I would definately reccommend it!

Four stars!

Middlesex

Book: Middlesex
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Pages: 529
Time to read: more than a month
Claim to fame: Oprah's Book Club

This book isn't exactly a page-turner, at least not until the last two or three chapters, but it is interesting in how the author writes the book. He interupts himself so many times in this story that you'd think you'd get annoyed and want to throw the book down, but you don't. You don't because each interuption gives you another look into some part history, whether it's the author's history or world history. It's a facination read in that sense.

"Middlesex" is about a person, Callie/Cal, who is born a hermaphrodite. As a child, no one knew anything was wrong, so she grew up as a girl. To be honest, most of the book, Callie is present. In order to get to the present of what is happening, the author carries the reader back to Greece, where her grandparents grew up. Eugenides slowly tells the story about how Callie/Cal came to be by explaining the details of first her grandparents' lives, then her mother's, father's, aunt's and aunt's husband's lives, and finally comes to Callie growing up. Throughout this, each chapter opens with Cal speaking about his life at the current time (age 25-35?).

To be forthcoming, this book involves love in all forms: incest, inbreeding, homosexuality, hermaphroditism, etc. One thing I will credit the author with is writing about love from all these angles and never writing about it like it's wrong. It made the family in the story seem that much more real because they were the ones living this life and if they didn't believe they're feelings were right, then the reader would have had much more difficulty reading this story.

If you're looking for a long, in-depth read, try this book out. Otherwise, it may not be your cup of tea.

Hey, guys!

Ok, to start, my name is Margaret. I just graduated from Ball State University in Muncie, IN with a degree in theatre. I'm currently living in Fort Wayne, IN. I am a waitress at Applebee's and the head marching instructor for the high school I graduated from. In November, I will be moving to Washington, D.C. No, I have no idea what I will be doing once I move there.

Books I have read recently and would recommend:

If Minds Had Toes
This book is about a teenage boy who travels to the World of Ideas and meets a bunch of old, dead philosophers. This book made me smile and really deals with whether or not the examined life is worth living.

Freakonomics
This book is so thought-provoking. In it, an economist takes everyday problems and trends, looks at the numbers, and analyzes it. One of the questions he answers is what teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common.

Elsewhere and its sequel, Nevernever by Will Shetterly
In these novels, Shetterly uses the setting of Terri Windling's Bordertown books and creates his own characters. These two books are about a boy named Ron who runs away from home to find his older brother. Throughout these books, Ron discovers what it means to live in Bordertown and who he is. It's very much science fiction but I enjoyed reading it.

Ok, that's it for now.

All the President's Men/The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Finally, I finished something!

Book: All the President's Men
Authors: Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Pages: 336
Time to read: Three-plus weeks

I don't generally read non-fiction, but this remains a must-read for journalists. Two key reporters of the Watergate investigation walk you through their steps of uncovering possibly the largest political scandal of all time. At times, I felt like this book was taking too long, but in retrospect, it was similar to the frustration the reporters felt. This isn't a read-before-bed kind of book, but it is an important one.



Book: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Author: Ann Brashares
Pages: 294
Time to read: 44 hours

The Sisterhood series is quickly becoming a fixture in young-adult chick lit and for good reason.

Brashares shares the stories of four teenage girls (juniors-to-be) who are scattered across the globe for the summer. Naturally, the plot follows the pants and their adventures as well. It is a feel good book with a clan of characters who may as well be the girls next door, although they lack the depth that you would find in a true classic. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is an easy read, but perfect for vacation or a weekend.

Speaking of being scattered, the six contributors of this blog are living in six different states: Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kansas, New York, South Dakota and Oklahoma.

The Historian

Book: The Historian
Author: Elizabeth Kostova
Pages: 642

This book was really cool. It is a fiction novel about the life, death and afterlife of Vlad Tepes...who was Dracula. I don't want to get too much into the plot since it is a suspense mystery, but the book is told through three people - A professor, Rossi; his student, Paul; and Paul's daughter, the nararator. Rossi and Paul both receive books that have only a dragon in the middle, then mysterious events begin to happen. Rossi disapears, Paul's cat dies, and a strange librarian begins to follow Paul and Rossi's daughter, Helen.

Paul and Helen travel through 1950's communist Eastern Europe - Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary in search of Dracula's tomb and Professor Rossi.

I would suggest this book to anyone who likes a little fantasy and a little suspence, and vampirical activity.

Two very enthusiastic thumbs up!

bookclubwoo!

Hello hello!
I'm Jacky. Graduated from KU Journalism in December and now live in New York working for a magazine. I've been ready A LOT on the subway, so i'm super excited for new suggestions (and books to avoid). About me: I do not like high heels. Green is my favorite color. I hate sweating. I get excited when I see famous people. I categorize tomatoes as vegetables.

All-time favs:
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krause Rosenthal
If I write a book (wait...WHEN i write a book...) i want it to be like this. organized by random thoughts, words and subjects. hilarious, insightful, well written and completely enjoyable. the kind you hate finishing.

Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien
Yes, this is the dude who wrote those war novels you had to read in high school but this has nothing to do with war. It's about a linguistics professor and the relationships in his life. For those of you with a love of words like me, you'll appreciate how the character analyzes sentences, conversations and words. My book is heavily highlighted. Very witty and touching.

The Time Traveler's Wife
It's incredibly long but totally worth it. An unconventional organization, in that it chronicles the relationship between a man who can time travel and this girl/woman. Beautiful story. Superbly crafted (whatever that means; i just felt like saying it).

I just finished reading my first two Jodi Piccoult novels. First I read The Tenth Circle and thought it was decent (it has comics interspersed throughout the chapters, which is a cool idea). Then I read Keeping Faith, about a girl whose parents are having marital problems and she starts having religious episodes. Keeping Faith was amazing, more so for the plot than the writing. I was constantly trying to guess what would happen next and was continually surprised.

I also just finished Love Walked In. I was skeptical when I started it, but quickly became obsessed. It's the story of a young girl whose mom goes crazy and a single woman who falls in love. Their paths cross and show amazing examples of what love is, what people do for love and what happens when that love is threatened. The author did a great job of having different voices for the two characters...the chapters alternate between Claire and Cornelia. I had warm fuzzies through many parts of this novel.

Step On A Crack

Book: Step On A Crack
Author: James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
Pages: 383
Time to Read: 1.5 weeks

Out of all of James Patterson's books, this is not the one to read if you want to start reading his works. I'm a dedicated reader of his works, so I've noticed the nice, neat formula he's started to use in his books, not menton bringing on an underling to do all the dirty work and then slapping his name at the top of the cover art.

Anyway, the main character is Mike. He's a police officer who seems to be doing everyone else's job except his own. He's dabbled in dealing with the press during high-stress situations; he's been a negotiator; and he's worked with the hostage rescue team. So instead of giving him one role to play, Patterson/Ledwidge make him do all three jobs. Why not, right?

The crisis situation has a former president's wife getting killed and then at the funeral, a team of men take over the church with several celebs, politicians and the like trapped inside. A ranson is demanded and the police/FBI do as much as they can to get it together while stringing the bad guys along. Along with this crisis, Mike's family is trying to handle their mother's impending death from cancer. And all of this happens days away from Christmas. Uplifting story, huh?

In true Patterson fashion, we know Mike will be a saint of a guy, he'll use his pyschiatric/sociologist background to somehow figure out who the criminals are...even with little to no clues to go on, and someone on the criminal team will have been working on the good guy's side during the whole dilemma.

Even though I've just totally trashed this book, I still love Patterson. Every now and then he'll give you a great mystery. It just hasn't happened for a while now. If you would like to read some of his better works, try "Kiss the Girls," the Women's Murder Club series of books (there are 5 of them now), or "When the Wind Blows." These books include some of his more inventive and better laid out plots.

Howdy, y'all

Okay, no I'm really not that hick-ish, but it seemed like a great way to say hello. I go to grad school at the University of Kansas. I'm a journalism major with an emphasis in copy editing. And no, I won't go all crazy on you if you mess the language up (I'm likely to do so in this first posting anyway). I grew up in central Kansas and got my bachelor's degree from Kansas State University in English (creative writing). I love reading and watching movies and TV shows. Right now, I'm working in Tulsa in an internship position. The city is great fun. Anyone who hasn't been here should check it out.

The books I love to pieces are: Maus I & II, The Sound and the Fury, The Notebook, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Horse Whisperer and The Bride Stripped Bare.

Oh, and Erin, if you're willing to lend out your Jodi Picoult collection next semester, I would love to begin reading her work. I've been hearing good things about her books.

My Life

Book: My Life
By: Bill Clinton
Number of pages: 957
Time took to read: From 5-22 to 6-16

I both liked and disliked this book. It was the story from his birth, until he walked out of the Oval Office and met George W. to take over the Presidency.

A lot of the stories he told were very interesting. His father died before he was born, his grandfather was one of the few white men in Arkansas to sell groceries to black people in the 50's, he was a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford and traveled the world. During his Presidency he played golf with Tiger Woods, etc., etc., etc., But, what I didn't like about it was how political heavy the story was. I was super confused through most of his political tenure in Arkansas. I didn't know any of the politicians names that he was referring to. I started looking up some, then I just gave up. And, even during his Presidency I was too young to remeber the Watergate case against him, so I had to Google that to understand what was going on. Near the end of the book, he spent so much time discussing peace treaties between Israel and Palestine, and though I have heard of Yassir Arafat, I didn't completly get what was going on, so I just skimmed those parts. But, it is a farily interesting book about a very interesting man. Don't expect too much about Monica Lewinsky...it's covered in about 15 pages or so.

Ranking: 2 stars out of 4.

Books Rule!

My name is Erin and I am Catherine's friend from KU. I'm really excited about this book blog..Right now I'm reading Bill Clinton's book "My Life"...but here are some of my favorites:

Gone with the Wind, Harry Potter, ANYTHING by Jodi Picoult (I've read all of her books...except for her newest Nineteen Minutes, since it's only in hardback. I'm too cheap to pay $30 for a book, and I'm about #75 on the library's waiting list..My day will come soon enough!) If you haven't read her..I highly suggest it.

Introduction and Initial Recommendations

Welcome, everyone! I'm really excited to get this going, and even more excited about how many people we have from different parts of the country. Because many of us don't know each other, how about we start with introductions?

I'm Catherine. I graduated from the University of Kansas, and I'll be the Pennsylvania representative this summer as I intern in Philadelphia. I just finished "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" a few hours ago, preceded by the first three books.

Books I've loved: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith), Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden), Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe), Friday Night Lights (H.G. Bissinger), All But My Life (Gerda Weissmann Klein), and Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)

Books I didn't like (not assigned in western civ): Sex and the City (Candace Bushnell), North Dallas Forty (Peter Gent)

Happy Saturday!