I have a little desk calendar where each day it gives me a description and title of a book . I thought it would be fun to share it with the rest of you. So from today until the end of the year, I will be posting the book of the day.

For Today, January 15th,2008

Inspiring History-

After 24 years, Taylor Branch has finally completed his monumental three-part work on Martin Luther King Jr. Part history, part biography, the books examine a period of national upheaval, using Dr. King's life as the organizing principle of the narrative. At "Canaan's Edge" begins with the gripping story of the Selma, Alabama, voting rights march and ends with King's assassination. In between, Lyndon Johnson pushes through the Voting Rights Act and escalates the war in Vietnam, the Watts riots explode in Los Angeles, and Stokely Carmichael breaks with King's principle of nonviolence. Branch shows us, masterfully, how and why King's movement forever changed America.

Title: At Canaan's Edge: America In The King Years 1965-68

Author: Taylor Branch
Published: 2006 by Simon&Schuster

what a nice idea ashley....thx...i'll be watching.

January 16,2008

Celebrity Bio-

"Funny, I don't feel like a celebrity"-Barbra Striesand

If you like Babs, or even have a tepid interest in the subject, avoid Christopher Andersen's 2006 "Barbra: The Way She Is", reviled by critics and readers alike, and opt instead for this definitive 600-page, 1.6-pound masterpiece of gossip, and adoration by a veteran celeb biographer(chronicler of Princess Diana, Vivian Leigh, Maria Callas, Katharine Hepburn, and many others). This comes close to capturing the diva the way she is-full of contradictions, ego, and talent.

Title: Streisand: A Biography
Author: Anne Edwards
Published:1998 by Berkley

I have the same calendar :) I already have 3 days taped to my wall to remind me to add them to my to-read list and today's sounds pretty good too.

January 17, 2008

About Sherlock-

Short-listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, "Arthur&George" is a beautifully structured story that interweaves the lives of Arthur(Conan Doyle) and George(Edalji). The Victorian setting teems with issues of class, morality, friendship, and love. Chapter by chapter, Arthur and George merge and merge. What you need to know comes along in its own good time, while you become completely hooked into this story of the world's most renowned writer of detective fiction and an unknown Staffordshire solicitor accused of heinous crimes. Why and how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle proves George Edalji's innocences is Julian Barne's brilliant achievement, a marvelous fiction based on a true and historically significant story.

Title: Arthur&George
Author: Julia Barnes
Published: 2006 by Knopf

added it. thank you, that's a good one, and i happen to be looking for historical fiction novels (ala the alienist)..so thx again

January 18, 2008

The beloved author of "Prince of Tides" and "Lords of Discipline" reexamines the themes of masuculinity, failure, fear, and writing, from a vantage point 30 years after his excoriating experience as a point guard during his college years at the Citadel, in Charleston, North Caroline. Conroy can write well about anything, and this happens to be a darn good book about sports, for one thing, and, of course, a thoughtful, even haunting, foray into memory and the scars of youth.

Title: My Losing Season
Author: Pat Conroy
Published: 2002 by Nan A. Talese

That's so cute. I would love to find one.

January 19, 2008

Feels Good-

The seventh book(and what some say is the best yet) in the delightful No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, "Blue Shoes and Happiness" finds our heroine, Precious Ramotswe, continuing to tackle life, love, friendship, and mystery in Botswana. Smith, in his inifinitely gentle way, is not afraid to tackle real evil and human perfidy in his work, yet we are always charmed and the enduring values of life prevail.

Title: Blue Shoes and Happiness
Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Published: 2006 by Pantheon

Raelynne ~ It's a page-a-day calendar. You could probably find it on their website. (pageaday.com) Calendars in most of my local bookstores are pretty slim pickings now but they are all on major discount. I bought mine at the store I work at (a department store) but we don't have any of these left or else I'd get you one and ship it to you.

Here is the link to the Book Lover's Calendar for 2008. You can buy it from Amazon, Powell's, Barnes and Noble, and Calendars.com.

January 20,2008

Chattering Classes-

Conversation isn't just talk for Stephen Miller. Rather, it is something, to quote Jonathan Swift, like the "greatest, the most lasting, and the most innocent, as well as useful Pleasure of Life." Miller looks to Swift, Montaigne, Benjamin Franklin, and a host of other clever chatterboxes to reveal the art of conversation at its best, before turning to examine it's unhappy state in contemporary America. Miller's playful style is itself reminiscent of good conversation and makes for a truly entertaining read.

Title: Conversation:A History Of A Declining Art
Author: Stephen Miller
Published: 2006 by Yale University Press

January 21, 2008

Into Africa-

"The Poisonwood Bible" is one of those novels you enter and then inhabit for the duration. When you finish it, you feel you've really been somewhere. Here we travel to the Belgian Congo as it moves through numerous historical crises to eventually become Zaire. Into this world with its very different culture and climate comes Nathan Price of Bethlehem, Georgia, a self-anointed Baptist missionary who brings his wife and four daugthers to a place he is completely unable to understand. The women tell the tale, each one brilliantly realized in the way she writes about what she is witnessing. Jane Smiley, in "Washington Post Book World", called "The Poisonwood Bible" "ambitious, successful and beautiful," and indeed it is.

Title: The Poisonwood Bible
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Published: 2003 by HarperTorch



I'm sure most people in this group are familiar with this book and have read it or have it on their to-read list. :)

January 22, 2008

Favorites-

The title begs the question: Is there ever enough liebling? This omnibus reader, with selections covering some of A.J.'s Liebling's many obsessions--eating, women, the war years, boxing(he coined the phrase "the sweet science"), the press, and Lousiana's Huey Long--will at least keep you occupied for a few heavenly days with the incomparable prose, wit, and sheer charm of the man. "As "Just Enough Liebling" proves,[he]sounds as fresh and irrevent and relevent today as he did nearly fifty years ago" (Allan Barra, San Francisco Chronicle).

Title: Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work By The Legendary New Yorker Writer
Author: A.J.(Abbott Joseph)
Published: 2004 by Farrar, Straus andGiroux

January 23, 2008

Durrell claimed his famous tetralogy was based on Einstien physics: three spatial dimensions(Justine, Balthazar, and Mountolive relating the same events from different perspectives) and one temporal(Clea continuing on, showing what happened next). After Joyce, Woolf, and Proust, it might have seemed the next logical experiment with fiction--and the tetralogy was a critical and commercial success when it appeared nearly 50 years ago, but has it aged well?. Yes. Durrell's prose remains impressive; Alexandria is addictively, seedily fascinating and the mysteries of sex and love are still poignant.

Title: The Alexandra Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea
Author: Lawrence Durrell
Published: 1957-60; 1991 by Penguin

January 24, 2008

Fiddler's Fancy-

Was it the varnish that made a Strad sound so glorious? The wood accidentally soaked in seawater? We still don't know. But we do know that the Strad's sound has yet to be equaled. In this smart and engaging book, Faber follows the careers of five violins, and one cello down through the centuries and in the process we are treated to a history of Stradevari's genius. We can also savor the instrument's development, how violins are made, and a discussion of the musicians who have owned and played some the 1,000 instruments Stradivari made, of which 600 remain.

Title: Stradivari's Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection
Author: Toby Faber
Published: 2006 by Random House Trade Paperbacks

January 25, 2008

Popular Fiction-

Steve Berry brings a fast-moving thriller to bear on the fascinating world of the Knights Templar, with a lost treasure and plenty of secrets for former Justice Department agen Cotton Malone to chew on. If you liked "The Da Vinci Code" and can't get enough of those megalomaniacal pre-Renaissance bad boys, you'll enjoy this high-action romp by the author of "The Amber Room", "The Third Secret", and "The Romanov Prophecy".

Title: The Templar Legacy
Author: Steve Berry
Published: 2006 by Ballantine Books

January 26, 2008

Two bestselling authors, one of chick lit and the other of action-adventure yarns, have blended their specialties into a stew of a book that includes moviemaking, helicopters, a precocious five-year old named Pepper, and ex-husband, and a Green Beret Captain. Romantic Times made it a Top Pick and said, "Bless the day that Cruise and Mayer sat down to chat, for this collaboration is inspired! All of the humor and irony from Cruise's previous books is here in full force, but now it's ratcheted up with a male action-adventure perspective."

Title: Don't Look Down
Author: Jennifer Cruise and Bob Mayer
Published: 2006 by St. Martin's Press

January 27, 2008

In Lousia May Alcott's "Little Women", Mr. March was the absent father who was based in part on Bronson Alcott, Lousia May's father. In Geraldine Brooks's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, we learn that March has become a Union chaplain and then a teacher of "contraband" slaves. His letters home are cheerful, but the reader knows that he is hiding the truth from the family. He experiences firsthand the suffering of the war and feels the fultility of his efforts to ameliorate it. Mr. March has his own inner conflicts as well, and by the end of the novel he is a changed man. "It feels honorable, elegant and true-an adult coda to the plangent idealism of Little Women," said John Freeman in The Wall Street Journal.

Title: March
Author: Geraldine Brooks
Published: 2006 by Penguin

January 28, 2008

Fascinating Non-Fiction-

In 1951, 23-year old Che Guevara set off on an eight-month journey through South America with his friend Alberto Granado on his motorcycle, La Poderosa II(The Mighty One). His jounal from the trip was translated in 1996 as "The Motorcycle Diaries". The inner landscape of the young man is as varied and surprising as the geography he traverses on the increasingly less mighty motorcycle, from Argentina to Chile, Peru, Eucador, and Colombia: Poetry gives way to lust, macho bravado to social consciousness, friendship to rivalry, exhaustion to joy, riding to walking. The book is rich and thoughtful, offering a unique look at one of the modern history's most charismatic and enigmatic figures.

Title: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes On A Latin America Journey
Author: Ernesto Che Geuvara
Published: 2003 by Ocean Press

I enjoyed the movie based on this book also...

January 29, 2008

Fiction Upon Fiction-
In "Slow Man", Coetzee, a Nobel Prize-winning author, treats us to literature with a capital L. Retired photographer Paul Reayment loses his leg in a bicycling accident and during his long recuperation reflects on what he considers a wasted life. With the appearance of a Croatian nurse, his spirits lift, and he engages, through her and her son, with life again. As he struggels with how to express his feelings for her, who should arrive upon the scene but the eminent wrter Elizabeth Costello, the eponymous character of an earlier Coetzee novel. Now the book becomes something else altogether, a postmodern excursion into the theme of writing itself. This isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if it's yours, you are sure to enjoy Coetzee's appealing mastery of word and idea.

Title: Slow Man
Author: J.M. Coetzee
Published: 2005 by Viking

January 30, 2008

Few writers have so utterly taken possession of a particular niche as Alan Furst has of the shadowy corners of World War II Europe. In Furst's sixth journey into 1940's darkness, Jean Casson, a movie producer, negotiates the difficult Paris terrain between the French Resistance and its momentary allies, the Communists. How did he do it? "He pulled Helene tighter against him. Crazy to take off all our clothes--to make love like aristocrats." Furst gives us the war as it should have been, a romantically gritty world that's easy to live in for some 200 pages.

Title: Red Gold
Author: Alan Furst
Published: 2001 by Random House Trade Paperbacks

Is everyone or some people in the group benefitting from my "Book of the Day"?. Just checking.

January 31, 2008

Memoir-

In 1980, Jennie Erdal was a mousy,nerdy, struggling single mother of three, barely making a living in Scotland by translating Boris Pasternak. No one was more surprised than she when she was given a chance--and took it, for 15 years--to exchange this honorable but lackluster life for a tumultuous, highly paid, and morally dubious career as a ghostwriter in London for an improbably colorful publisher called Tiger. The strange dependency that emerges between Erdal and Tiger and the ghostwriter's struggle to find her own voice, are almost stranger than fiction.

Title: Ghosting: A Double Life
Author: Jennie Erdal
Published: 2005 by Doubleday

I enjoy reading your book of the day posts. I've added a couple to my tbr list.

I have just joined, and have already gotten my hands on 9 books mentioned! This is a super idea, and I am looing forward to my first "BOTD" recommendation. I want it to be perfect!

February 1, 2008

After a six-year renovation, the Smithsonian American Art Museum reopened in 2006, and this lavishly illustrated volume celebrates art, Americana, and the splendors of the Smithsonian. Art lovers will find much in this book to engage the senses and provoke thought--225 works from the collection, many of which have rarely been displayed, and enlightening commentary from curators: from stirring western landscapes to the tenements of New York City; from portraits that give a glimpse into the emotions of subject and painter to the burnished surfaces of modern sculptures that can be enjoyed purely as art for art's sake. It's all here.

Title- America's Art: Masterpieces From The Smithsonian American Art Musuem
Author- I'm guessing Smithsonian Art Museum
Published: 2006 by Harry N. Abrams

February 2, 2008

In 1956, John Ames, a pastor in small-town Iowa, learned that he had heart disease and had not long to live. The father of a young boy by a May-Decmeber marriage, the dying man hoped to communicate something of his life and beliefs to his son, and "Gilead" is the letter Ames wrote to him--a combination of family history, meditation, a bit of theology, concern for the boy's and his mother's future, and the earnest examination of a Midwestern minister's life. The book is quite simply a masterpiece, beautifully constructed, thematically rich, and with writing that is at once tranquil and powerful. "Gilead" won the Pulitzer in 2005.

Title- Gilead
Author-Marilynne Robinson
Published-2006 by Picador,USA

February 3, 2008

Oy Vay!

Michael Wex is a professor, translator, novelist, and stand-up comedian. All of these have contributed to "Born to Kvetch". The book is not merely a compendium of colorful Yiddish phrases buy an exuberant investigation of the underlying spirit, culture, and people that make the language what it is: "the national language of nowhere," a language of exiles. Wex is perhaps at his best in the chapter on "Yiddish curses," "You Should Grow Like An Onion," "Wise, witty, and altogether wonderful....Mr. Wex has perfect pitch," William Grimes wrote in The New York Times.

Title- Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language And Culture In All Its Moods
Author- Michael Wex
Published- 2005 by St. Martin's Press

Thanks for doing this, Ashley! I check every couple of days.

I have this calender right here on my desk and I still check this thread every so often. :)

I'm glad this comment line is been useful to everyone :) I'm glad I started it.

Ashley,

I have given out copies of "Born to Kvetch" to more people than I can count! What a great recommendation. The cover picture alone is worth the price - but the writing is brilliant.

My BOTD is Bleak House, which I just started re-reading. The author is some guy named Dickens!

February 4,2008

Much like George Eliot herself, Maggie Tulliver was a girl, then a woman, of independent mind and spirit. Such qualities were bound to get her into trouble in the Midlands of Victorian Britain, not only with disapproving aunts and neighbors but even with her brother, Tom. Tom's attitude was especially hurtful because of their close childhood relationship. Eliot, ever the novelist of character and society, renders Maggie and Tom beautifully as children, and as adults. One of Eliot's best-loved works and a great book for rereading.

Title- The Mill On The Floss
Author-George Eliot
Published- 1860;2001 by Modern Library

OMG, Furst is so good. His novels are just like Eric Ambler's in terms of atmosphere and setting. You have to remember one thing though-Ambler was actually writing novels in the 30s and 40s. Furst didn't come on the scene in earnest until the early 90s.

January 5, 2008 (voting day)

The Glory That Was Sparta
"A kind of heroic saga, drenched in the gore of battle and the dust of Spartan discipline."--The New York Times


In 480 B.C.E., 300 Spartans held the narrow pass at Thermopylae long enough to give the rest of Greece time to prepare a defense against the invasion of two million Persians under the leadership of King Xerxes.Steven Pressfield has written an ambitious narrative about the band of Spartan warriors. He conveys with compelling realism the gritty horror of the ancient battlefield, as well as the relations among the Spartans and their sacrifice at one of the most momentous battles of Western civilizations.

Title- Gates Of Fire: An Epic Novel Of The Battle Of Thermopylae
Author- Steven Pressfield
Published- 1999 by Bantam Books

February 6, 2008

Spirits Of Romance-

"Sparks delivers another shrink-wrapped, reliably uncomplicated romantic confection that's light as air, smooth as silk, and gloriously sweet."-Publisher's Weekly


Down in pastoral Boone Creek, North Carolina, they're seeing strange lights in the old cemetery. The local psychic, Doris mcClellan, thinks the lights are supernatural, and she invites professional skeptic Jeremy Marsh down to see if he can debunk her theory. A rising science journalist in New York City, Marsh senses a good story and accepts her invitation not knowing that the true mystery he will encounter is love in the person of Lexie Darnell, the town librarian and Doris's granddaughter.

Title- True Believer
Author- Nicholas Sparks
Published-2005 by Warner Books

Wow Ashley, what a great idea. I've got to get my hands on a calendar like the one that you've got. I just started on here and I've got to say there are plenty of books already that I've jotted down so that I can read it. Thanks girl!!!

Marlene- I'm glad that you like the idea :). I've also added some of the books on here to my never-ending to-read list.

I think I could read 24/7 for the rest of my life (how awesome would that be by the way?) and I'd still never get to the end of my to-read list.

February 7,2008

You Gotta Laugh-

Augusten Burroughs wrung a pretty funny book out of what most people would consider a nightmare of a childhood. His father was a depressed alcoholic. His mother was a would-be-poet who went crazy: "Not crazy in a let's paint the kitchen bright red! sort of way. But crazy in a gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God sort of way." When the two separate, his mother turns Augusten over to her disturbing therapist, Dr.Finch. Insane incidents unfold page after page, some harrowing, some revolting, some just laugh-out-loud funny. Augusten survives,rises above the madness, and successfully makes his way out into the wider, hopefully saner,world.

Title- Running with Scissors
Author- Augusten Burroughs
Published- 2003 by Picador USA


I've read this book. Very funny and very bizarre. I'm sure most people on here have read it too.

The first book I read by him was Sellevision. Very funny book about the people who work on a cable shopping network. After that I read all of his non-fiction stuff. He has an excellant sense of humor.

February 8,2008

Lizardo And Friends

"Kotzwinkle fans will find sharply resonant moments as well as pointed humor and insight into human nature at its worst and best."- Publishers Weekly


Suspend your disbelief, engage your sense of humor, and indulge yourself in this over-the-top space opera. Space pirate Jockey Oldcastle has heard about a project to bring immortality and englightenment to the human race. Not a bad idea, but unfortunately the subjects, instead of becoming immortal, end up as crystal artifacts. Oldcastle, with his navigator, one lizardo, and botanist Adrian Link decide to find out why.Their quest is filled with twists, turns, extadimensional beings, and some unusual technology.

Title- The Amphora Project
Author- William Kotzwinkle
Published- 2005 by Grove Press

February 9, 2008

Sex, Drugs,Etc.-

Here it is, everything you ever wanted to know about the sex film industry but somehow never got around to asking. Written from interviews with the major players in porn from the 50's to the 90's, the book has just about everything: sex, drugs, the FBI, the Mafia, money, celebrities, rock stars, and murder. Was Linda Lovelace forced to perform in the legendary "Deep Throat", or was everyone else lying? Was Traci Lord a victim of child pornographers, or did she mislead them about her age and use the resulting scandal to further her own career? This other Hollywood turns out to be just about as fascinating and sleazy as the real Tinseltown.

Title- The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History Of The Porn Film Industry

Author- Legs McNiel, Peter Pavia,and Jennifer Osborne
Published- 2005 by ReganBooks

February 10,2008

Cooger&Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show comes to Green Town, Illinois, bringing with it Mr.Dark, Mr.Cooger, Mr. Electro, and the Dust Witch, among other devious characters. Two 13-year-old boys, Jim Nighshade and Bill Halloway, are fascinated by the carnival and innocent of its evil. Bradbury's classic story is as much a coming-of-age tale as it is one of good versus evil.

Title- Something Wicked This Way Comes
Author- Ray Bradbury
Published-196 by Avon; 1998


"Something Wicked This Way Comes", which has not been out of print since its publication in 1962, makes a wonderful pairing with Bradbury's sweetly nostalgic "Dandelion Wine", about a 12 year-old boy's experience of a near perfect summer.

February 11,2008

"If you are not already addicted to Tim Flannery's writing, discover him now: this his best book yet."--Jared Diamond, author of "Collapse:How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed".

Most of us get our information about global warming and climate change in bits and pieces from the popular media. Here, Flannery brings all the science together and lays it out for the general reader, allowing us to fully comprehend what we human beings are doing to our planet and what individuals might do to make a real difference.

Title- The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing The Climate and What It Means for Life On Earth
Author- Tim Flannery
Published-2006 by Atlantic Monthly Press

February 12,2008

A Fine Romance-

Evanovich and Hughes add another wild confection to thier Full series. In "Full Scoop", the denizens of Beaumont, South Carolina, are up to their bangs in romance and mischief. Maggie Farnsworth's ex-con ex-boyfriend has escaped prison and is looking for her. FBI agent Zack Madden is there to intercept him and stirs up some unwanted feelings for Butterbean, a pygmy goat. And what is the romantic destiny of Destiny, the town psychic-slash-astrologer? Then there are the Elvises and the ice-cream parlor. Evanovich and Huges have concocted another big yummy sundae of laughs and romance.

Title- Full Scoop
Author- Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes
Published-2006 by St. Martin's Paperbacks

February 13, 2008

Evolving Civil Rights-

In 1963, the fanatic racist Byron de la Beckwith murdered NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers and got away with it when two hung juries failed to convict them. Thirty years later, Beckwith was tried one more time, found guilty at last, and sentenced to life in prison. Nossiter examines the years between the trials and traces how the civil rights movement changed Mississippi and the South, making Beckwith's ultimate conviction possible. His portraits of Evers, Becwith, and prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter are truly memorable.

Title- Of Long Memory:Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers
Author- Adam Nossiter
Published- 2002 by Perseus Books

February 14, 2008 Happy Valentine's Day

Lose Yourself-

A wonderful first novel from the coeditor of the Italian newspaper "La Stampa. The prince of the clouds is a dreamy, shy scholar of military history, Carlo, who goes to Sicily after World War II to study and for his wife's health. He find's himself drawn into real life in a way he never has before, with all the confusion, passion, rueful mistkaes, and tiny triumphs that he as avoided for too long. Nicola McAllister of "The Observer"(London) writes "Riotta is as romantic as Pasternak, as colourful and densely plotted as Garcia Maquez."

Title-Prince of the Clouds
Author- Gianni Riotta;translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli
Published- 2001 by Picador, USA

February 15 2008

Bible Study-

The New Testament is a collection of letters,narratives, and revelations. None of the original manuscripts exist today; the Bible we read is a copy of copies of the originals, each layer with its own examples of the fallibilities of editors and transcribers. Bart Ehrman has made a study of biblical manuscripts and of how the Bible was modified over time. This potentially dry subject becomes both accessible and interesting in Ehrman's hands, and it is further humanized by the author's personal story of how his studies of the Bible's texts have changed his own religious thinking.

Title-Misquoting Jesus:The Story Behind WHo Changed The Bible and Why
Author- Bart D. Ehrman
Published= 2005 by HarperSanFrancisco