Liesl's comments (member since Aug 01, 2008)

Liesl's comments from the The Next Best Book Club group.

I went back to work a little over a year ago, and that has seriously cut into my reading time :o( . So far I've only read 16 books this year, but may get a couple more in before the end of the year. My favorites of the year were Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell (an author my mother loved, but I hadn't read anything by her until now - turns out Mom was right, she's good) and In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. By far the strangest book I read this year was Brittle Innings which is the story of a young man who plays minor league baseball during the the Great Depression and has as his teammate - Frankenstein's monster. Definitely different! For me the "stinker" has to be (and I know this will be sacrilege to many) Great Expectations. It's been on my "currently reading" list all year and I still haven't managed to slog my way through it. I am finding it SO tedious! But I am not giving up on this one. I will - eventually - finish it!

Oh, this makes me incredibly sad . . . I really hope things go well for her. And yes, all of you, if you haven't read The Thornbirds, I highly recommend it. It is such a good book!

elected

When I was in tenth grade I read The Fountainhead and loved it.

I don't peek ahead, but when my boys were small and I was reading Harry Potter books to them at bedtime I just couldn't wait to see what was going to happen, so I read ahead after they were asleep and never told them. They would have been really mad that they had to wait to see what happened and I didn't!

I've only read 3 (hanging my head in shame):

To Kill a Mockingbird
The Executioner's Song
The Shipping News (geez, did that really win a Pulitzer? I wasn't impressed with it)

Several are on my TBR

Unfortunately, I won't be joining you for these reads. I've already read Water for Elephants (loved it!) and tried Angela's Ashes, but was bored to tears and couldn't finish it. Hopefully, I'll be joining you all for next month's books.

Fiona - IT is one of my all-time favorite books. It scared the crap out of me and I just couldn't stop reading it. I think you'll really like it.

Oh, man. This looks like so much fun, but since I went back to work full time, my reading time has been seriously diminished. Oh, well. I can't resist participating, so I'll give it my best shot!

Sometimes being a Virgo stinks . . . anyone got any suggestions of books that fit the criteria for Virgo for the astrology category?

Lori -- I'm laughing because my husband was an English Lit major in college, so he's often "shocked" at the holes in my reading. So many books he's read - and a bunch of them I not only haven't read, but have no desire to read. But I am trying to slowly plug some of the holes. (In the case of GE, very slowly.)

OMG - I must be borderline illiterate. The only thing I remember having to read in high school was Great Expectations and a book by (or maybe just about?) Walt Whitman. Fortunately I was a bibliophile who read all the time on my own even way back then, but the list of books I've read is seriously lacking in the classics. I'm trying to make up for that. Last year I read Jane Eyre, Silas Marner and Lolita. Right now I'm creeping through Great Expectations. Yes I read it in school, but that was a very long time ago and it was from a text book so I think it may have even been an abridged version - which I detest - so I'm making sure I've read the real deal. I may be sorry I did that, cuz as I said, it's pretty slow going so far - I keep picking up other books that I actually do find interesting, but I will persevere. :-)

Me too, Fiona. It's one of the reasons I'd so like to see In the Time of the Butterflies chosen. I added it to my TBR in November because it looked so interesting and it's really what I want to read next.

Rebbie wrote: "Sorry if my post overstepped the boundaries of the group. I was trying to convey my opinion about the author and the memoir.
I apologize if I took my post in the wrong direction."

Rebbie -- I didn't make muy comment because of your post. I'm surprised that this book was chosen because it's just asking for the kind of posts I thought Lori had banned.

I always enjoyed the Mrs. Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman.

The Chronicles of Narnia - my fave of all time
Harry Potter
The Box Car Children
Nancy Drew
Thursday Next
The "Mrs. Pollifax" series by Dorothy Gilman

Hey, Lori - I thought politics (and religion) were banned from this group?

Cat 1 In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

The Book of Lost Things
Snow Falling on Cedars
The Secret of Lost Things: A Novel

All had huge potential that was simply never fulfilled IMO.

1. Hospital Point where the now Coast Guard commander of Massachusetts resides (w/active lighthouse), but was once the site of a hospital for smallpox victims.

2. There's a house about 1/2 mile from my home (in Columbus Ohio) that was part of the Underground Railroad during the Civil War.

3. Three (at least) Indian village ruins that are more than 500 years old.

4. Concrete City: A crazy, creepy place about 10 minutes from where I live. It was built as temporary housing for miners here in the early part of the 20th century, until they started getting sick... It was partially demolished around 1924, and is now used for a cool place to hike to, play paintball in, and graffiti on. Check out the story and some awesome pictures.

5. I live 5 blocks from the Columbia River, the largest river in the Pacific Northwest, the fourth largest river in the U.S. and the largest river flowing into the Pacific Ocean from North America. It's great fun for summer water recreation.

Wow, what a great idea and a great list. I, too, am going to make it a point to read at least 10 of these in 2009.


1. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
2. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
3. Persuasion by Jane Austen
4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
5. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
6. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
7. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
8. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
9. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
10. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
11. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
12. The Gawgon and the Boy by Lloyd Alexander
13. Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith
14. The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
15. A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East, by Tiziano Terzani
16. Dissolution, by C.J. Sansom
17. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
18 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
19. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
20. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
21. Blindness - Jose Saramago
22. The Giver - Lois Lowry
23. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
24. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
25. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
26. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
27. Suite Francaise- Irene Nemirovski
28. The Fountainhead- Ayn Rand
29. The Horse Whisperer - Nicholas Evans
30. The Things They Carried-Tim O'Brien
31. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
32. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
33. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
34. Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
35. Little Women-Louisa May Alcott
36. The Island - Victoria Hislop
37. The Crown Conspiracy - Michael J. Sullivan
38. House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
39. Time and Again - Jack Finney
40. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hossieni
41. Watership Down by Richard Adams
42. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
43. Mistress of the Art of Death - Arianna Franklin
44. Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
45. Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
46. Book of Lost Things by Connolly
47. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
48. Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Carrell
49. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
50. Just one look by Harlan Coben
51. Water For Elephants by Saru Gruen
52. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
53. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
54. Mahabharata by R. Rajagopalachari
55. Straight Man by Richard Russo
56. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
57. The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
58. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
59. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean
60. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
61. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
62. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
63. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
64. Icy Sparks - Gwyn Rubio
65. The Stolen Child - Keith Donohue
66. A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
67. These Is My Words - Nancy Turner
68. Daughter of the Forest - Juliet Marillier
69. What is the What - Dave Eggers
70. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
71. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
72. I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb
73. Written On The Body - Jeanette Winterson
74. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
75. Howards End - E.M. Forster
76. Endurance- Alfred Lansing
77. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
78. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
79. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
80. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
81. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
82. Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank
83. The Scarlet Letter -Nathaniel Hawthorn
84. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
85. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
86. Witch Fire by James Clemens
87. The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy
88. Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
89. Molvania, A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry by Cilauro, Gleisner, Sitch
90. The Stand by Stephen King
91. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
92. Atonement by Ian McEwan
93. The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson
94. How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne
95. Away by Amy Bloom
96. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
97. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo