Bury me with books,
all of them cracked wide open.
No satin, only the feel of this legible
dry skin under my cold fingers.
Be sure my head is propped a little,
next to a reading light.
from "Lying in Bed with a Book," Philip Dacey
Now Reading:
The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway
Next up:
Want to suggest a book or an author? Please send me a note!
Some of My Recent Reads - August-November 2006
Flags in the Dust, William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
Sanctuary, William Faulkner
The Unvanquished and associated previously published short stories, William Faulkner
Go Down, Moses and associated previously published short stories, William Faulkner
Light in August, William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston
Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee
Native Speaker, Chang Rae Lee
Paradise, Toni Morrison
The Intuitionist, Coleson Whitehead
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (unfinished), Oscar Hijuelos
Bodega Dreams, Ernesto Quiñonez
Mother Tongue, Demetria Martínez
Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexi
Gardens in the Dunes, Leslie Marmon Silko
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
"The Dead," James Joyce
The Trial, Franz Kafka
Some Prefer Nettles, Junichiro Tanizaki
The Plague, Albert Camus
From Jose Luis Borges's Ficciones: "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote," "The Garden of Forking Paths," "Funes the Memorious," "Death and the Compass," and "Three Versions of Judas"
Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
Born in Death, J.D. Robb
A Few of My Favorite Authors
Links take you to the authors' offical sites.
Nora Roberts, aka J.D. Robb, author of the Eve Dallas books (and some romance stuff ;-)
Patricia Cornwell, author of the Kay Scarpetta books
Nevada Barr, author of the Anna Pigeon books and Bittersweet
Kathy Reichs, author of the Tempe Brennan books
Peter David, writer of stuff--stuff like the funniest, most-involved Star Trek novels and episodes of Babylon 5
Douglas Adams, author of the five-book Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, the Dirk Gently series, Starship Titanic, and Last Chance to See
Laurell K. Hamilton, author of the Anita Blake (Animator and Vampire Slayer) series and the Merry Gentry (PI and Faery Princess) series
Jasper Fforde, author of The Eyre Affair and three other Thursday Next novels--an absolutely delicious blending. In the BookWorld, fictional characters work to preserve classic (and not-so-classic) literature with the help of the series heroine Thursday Next, a SpecOps agent from the Outland (the real world), trained for Jurisfiction by Miss Havisham of Great Expectations. The Real World is, in fact, a fantasy world where the Crimean Wars just ended, werewolves run amok, and husbands are erased from history--only sometimes, if they're Chrono agents, they're able to visit now and then. The similarities to our own world only make Thursday's more interesting. In July, the first of Fforde's Jack Spratt Nursery Crime series came out. The web page itself is terribly amusing and loads of fun, filled as it is with such "dazzling displays of nonsense" as the Special Features (including deleted scenes and outtakes!) and updates on the migration of Mammoths.
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, authors of The Cabinet of Curiosities, Thunderhead, The Ice Limit, and other fun, complex, suspenseful reads
Looking for a Few Good Books? I'm not familiar enough with the corpora of these authors to put them on the Favorites list at this point, but I love these books.
The Lecturer's Tale: A Novel, James Hynes
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
The Lake of Dead Languages, Carol Goodman
Mirabilis, Susann Cokal
Mary Called Magdalene, Margaret George
I, Elizabeth, Rosalind Miles
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Sharpshooter Blues, Lewis Nordan
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Sabriel, Book One of The Old Kingdom Trilogy, Garth Nix
Lirael, Book Two of The Old Kingdom Trilogy, Garth Nix
Abhorsen, Book Three of The Old Kingdom Trilogy, Garth Nix
Map of Bones, James Rollins
Sandstorm, James Rollins
Older Reads
The Amber Room, Steve Berry
The Nymphos of Rocky Flats by Mario Acevedo
Sir Gaiwain and the Green Knight
May 2006
Abhorsen, Book Three of The Old Kingdom Trilogy, Garth Nix
Lirael, Book Two of The Old Kingdom Trilogy, Garth Nix
Sabriel, Book One of The Old Kingdom Trilogy, Garth Nix
The Water Mirror, Dark Reflections Book One, Kai Meyer
I, Lucifer, Glen Duncan
Map of Bones, James Rollins
Sandstorm, James Rollins
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Lauren Willig
King of the Vagabonds: The Baroque Cycle #2, Neal Stephenson
Touch Not the Cat, Mary Stewart
Pandemic, Daniel Kalla
The Magdalene Cipher, Jim Hougan
The World to Come, Dara Horn
Abandoned--at chapter 9, due to sudden unbearable misogyny: Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein
January-March 2006 (in order of most recent first)
The Great Gatsby (1925), F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
The Sound and the Fury (1929), William Faulkner
The Waste Land (1922), T.S. Eliot
The Professor's House (1925), Willa Cather
The Beggar's Opera, John Gay
The Sun Also Rises (1926), Ernest Hemingway
In Our Time (1925), Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast (1964), Ernest Hemingway
A Journal of a Plague Year, Daniel Defoe
"Melanctha, or Each One As She May," Gertrude Stein
"As a Wife Has a Cow," Gertrude Stein
"Tender Buttons," Gertrude Stein
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope
Windsor Forest, Alexander Pope
Pastorals with a Discourse on Pastoral, Alexander Pope
"Pale Horse, Pale Rider," Katherine Anne Porter
"Flowering Judas," Katherine Anne Porter
August-November, 2005
The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett, 11.25
Beloved, Toni Morrison, 11.16.05
Coyote Blue, Christopher Moore
The Strange Case of the Sequined Love Nun, Christopher Moore
Practical Demonkeeping, Christopher Moore
Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, Christopher Moore
The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror, Christopher Moore
Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, Christopher Moore
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
The Dream of a Common Language, Adrienne Rich. 10.12.05
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway. 10.1.6.05
Mount Dragon, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Riptide, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Ice Limit, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Thunderhead, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Companion, Christopher Moore
Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks
Reading Novels, George Hughes
(in order of most recent last)
Nevada Barr's Hard Truth
The Sharpshooter Blues, Lewis Nordan 4/5/05
Outlander, Diana Gabaldon 4/8-9/05
Dragonfly in Amber, Diana Gabaldon 4/10-12/05
The Seduction of Water, Carol Goodman
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 6/5
When We Were Gods: A Novel of Cleopatra, Colin Falconer 6/5-6
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ann Brashares
Warrior Queen: The Story of Boudica, Celtic Queen, Alan Gold
Desert Heat, J.A. Jance
The Probable Future, Alice Hoffman ~6/10
A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray 6/14-18
The Rule of Four, 6/18-
Heir Apparent, Vivian Vande Velde 8/3
Point of Honour, Madeleine E. Robbins 8/4
Blood and Gold, Anne Rice 8/4-5
Holy Hell, Elizabeth Sims 8/7
Books I've Abandoned for Now
Cane (1923), Jean Toomer
Humphry Clinker (1771), Tobias Smollett
Conversational Style, Deborah Tannen
The Abandoned Generation, Henry A. Giroux
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, Brian Greene
The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J.
Voyager, Diana Gabaldon 4/12/05
Ya-Yas in Bloom, Rebecca Wells
Wisdom's Daughter: A Novel of Solomon and Sheba, India Edghill
The Badass Girl's Guide to Poker, Toby Leah Bochan
The Codex, Douglas Preston 5/24
Memoirs of Cleopatra, Margaret George 6/6/05
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Witch of Cologne, Tobsha Learner 8/7
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