Kerri's 2010 Challenge! *75* maybe 100!

[Kerri]

50 60 75 100 Books in 2010 (Books read & date finished)
1. Life, the Universe and Everything 1/1/10 (3 stars)
2. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish 1/2/10 (3 stars)
3. Mostly Harmless 1/4/10 (2 stars)
4. The Lightening Thief 1/7/10 (4 stars)
5. Every Breath You Take: A Novel 1/9/10 (4 stars)
6. The Book Thief 1/14/10 (5 stars)
7. Stargirl 1/16/10 (4 stars)
8. Sarah's Key 1/18/10 (3 stars)
9. Love, Stargirl 1/23/10 (2 stars)
10. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 1/26/10 (3 stars)
11. The Girl Who Played With Fire 1/31/10 (3 stars)
12. The Historian 2/8/10 (4 stars)
13. Dracula 2/15/10 (4 stars)
14. Lolita 2/19/10 (2 stars)
15. The Hunger Games 2/21/10 (5 stars)
16. Catching Fire 2/22/10 (5 stars)
17. The Penderwick's 2/24/10 (3 stars)
18. A Prayer for Owen Meany 2/28/10 (5 stars)
19. The Picture of Dorian Gray 3/3/10 (3 stars)
20. The Good Earth 3/5/10 (4 stars)
21. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass 3/6/10 (2 stars)
22. Shutter Island 3/7/10 (4 stars)
23. Tell No One 3/8/10 (4 stars)
24. The Bell Jar 3/10/10 (4 stars)
25. Wide Sargasso Sea 3/11/10 (3 stars)
26. Cutting for Stone 3/14/10 (5 stars)
27. A Reliable Wife 3/16/10 (2 stars)
28. Holding Up the Earth 3/19/10 (3 stars)
29. Wilde by Jonathan Fryer 3/20/10 (4 stars)
30. Never Cry Wolf 3/24/10 (2 stars)
31. A Great and Terrible Beauty 3/27/10 (3 stars)
32. Briar Rose 3/28/10 (2 stars)
33. Outlander 3/30/10 (5 stars)
34. The Handmaid's Tale 4/7/10 (4 stars....3.75 if possible)
35. The Grapes of Wrath 4/14/10 (5 stars)
36. A Moveable Feast 4/17/10 (2 stars)
37. Flowers for Algernon 4/21/10 (4 stars)
38. Leonardo's Shadow 4/23/10 (3 stars)
39. The Fogotten Garden 4/28/10 (5 stars)
40. A Northern Light 5/1/10 (4 stars)
41. Coraline 5/5/10 (3.5 stars)
42. Garden Spells 5/6/10 (4.5 stars)
43. Ender's Game 5/8/10 (4 stars)
44. The Last Unicorn 5/10/10 (3 stars)
45. The Red Tent 5/11/10 (5 stars)
46. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet 5/12/10(3.5 stars)
47. The House on the Strand 5/15/10 (3.5 stars)
48. Gone with the Wind 5/23/10 (5 stars)
49. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl 5/24/10 (4 stars)
50. One Hundred Years of Solitude 5/28/10 (3 stars)
51. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie 5/30/10 (2.5 stars)
52. Shiver 5/31/10 (3.25-3.5 stars)
53. Dragonfly in Amber 6/2/10 (4 stars)
54. The Sugar Queen 6/5/10 (4.5 stars)
55. The Time Traveler's Wife 6/8/10 (5 stars)
56. Voyager 6/13/10 (4 stars)
57. Nineteen Eighty-Four 6/13/10 (2 stars)
58. Firefly Lane 6/14/10 (3.5 stars)
59. Pride and Prejudice 6/17/10 (4 stars)
60. East of Eden 6/23/10 (4 stars)
61. The Monster of Florence 6/24/10 (4 stars)
62. In Cold Blood 7/1/10 (4 stars)
63. So Brave, Young and Handsome 7/5/10 (3 stars)
64. The Elegance of the Hedgehog 7/7/10 (3.5 stars)
65. The Angel's Game 7/8/10 (3.75 stars)
66. The Bronze Horseman 7/12/10 (5 stars)
67. Tatiana and Alexander 7/13/10 (5 stars)
68. A Farewell to Arms 7/14/10 (3 stars)
69. The Passage 7/19/10 (4 stars)
70. Little Women 7/23/10 (3 stars)
71. Frankenstein 7/26/10 (2 stars)
72. Still Alice 7/27/10 (4 stars)
73. Passion Becomes Her 7/29 (2 stars)
74. Hyperion 8/4/10 (3.5 stars)
75. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil 8/6/10 (3-3.5 stars)
76. The Perks of Being a Wallflower 8/8/10 (3-3.5 stars)
77. To Kill a Mockingbird 8/9/10 (5 stars)
78. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest 8/13/10 (4 stars)
79. I Am the Messenger 8/14/10 (4.75 stars)
80. These Is My Words 8/15/10 (4.75 stars)
81. The Giver 8/16/10 (4.5 stars)
82. Mudbound 8/17/10 (2 stars)
83. The Whitechapel Conspiracy 8/23/10 (3 stars)
84. Little Bee 8/24/10 (3.5-3.75 stars)
85. Mockingjay 8/26/10 (5 stars)
86. Slaughterhouse-Five 8/29/10 (3 stars)

Started, did not finish and will not pick back up:
1. House Made of Dawn (60 pages read) 5/2/10 (1 star)
2. Stand on Zanzibar (275 of 650 pages read) 5/9/10 (1 star)


READING NOW: The Johnstown Flood and True Grit and Good Night, Mr. Tom

[Kerri]

Finished Wide Sargasso Sea this morning....an authentic prelude to Jane Eyre and an interesting explanation as to what exactly happened to Bronte's Bertha and Rochester to make one crazy and the other bitter.

[Kerri]

LOVED Cutting for Stone and strongly DISLIKED A Reliable Wife.

[Kerri]

Just finished the book Wilde...extremely interesting biography of Oscar Wilde. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray at the beginning of the month, at which time, I knew virtually nothing about Oscar Wilde except that he was a playwright and had written The Importance of Being Earnest. The Picture of Dorian Gray started off with some subtle hints of unconventional behavior involving older and younger men and culminated with outright scandalous behavior involving brothels and opium dens (won't spoil the story by including who was involved in these activities...just that it was included in his story). I was surprised at the success and acceptance his novel must have received at the time it was released being that it was published in the late 1800's (obviously I wasn't too educated on the lifestyles of certain circles in the 1890's in London and Paris!) I was so intrigued by this that I HAD to read more about Oscar Wilde especially after I had seen a reference to his "sensational trial" without any further information regarding what it was he was being tried for. The story of his life is fascinating and full of scandal....mimicking the story of Dorian Gray and, most notably, Wilde's character, Lord Henry Wotton, who was quite obviously fashioned after himself. Extremely interesting, especially following The Picture of Dorian Gray

[Kerri]

Just finished The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood....very intriguing, disturbing, creative and thought provoking. I'll be writing more about this later..............

[Kerri]

Finsihed A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway before I went to bed last night and wanted to post it real quick since I will be away for a few days. This is the first work by Hemingway that I have ever read....don't think it was the best to start with and wonder if it will cause me to be more critical when I read other works by him. I thought he seemed like a pompous, arrogant man who did nothing in the 20's but roam from cafe to cafe, drink, eat, gamble and gossip about fellow writers and occasionally write something himself. The small "stories" (if you can call them that) were not all that interesting and seemed more like a listing of places and people....kind of like bragging about where he'd been and who he'd associated with. I will definitely read some of his actual stories (opposed to this which was supposed to be a "memoir" of his time in Paris)....The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls are two I will look into. I'm certainly very curious about what the "Hemingway Hype" is all about. There was some eloquent and beautiful prose here and there, but not a lot...in fact, there is only one part where he describes spring in Paris (or anywhere for that matter) that stands out to me. Other than that, I thought the book was rather dull. Obviously, I must lack something intelligence wise, as all the "great" literary minds seem to have loved this book....the reviews were crazy over-the-top!

[Kerri]

Since last posting, I have read Flowers for Algernon, which I liked a lot, Leonardo's Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo da Vinci's Servant which was a somewhat slow, young adult read....I liked it, but thought it was a little bland which surprised me because I normally find historical fiction so interesting...the idea, the concept and the story were all great...I think maybe the "telling" of the story was a little dry for my taste...anyway, I liked it fine, and lastly, just finished The Forgotten Garden which was fabulous....loved it! The Forgotten Garden was a story of women trying to uncover the mystery surrounding their family's past told from the perspective of characters from different time periods ranging from the early 1900's to 2005. Lots of twists and turns and interjected with unique and fascinating fairy tales. Great story!

[Kerri]

Started to read and then ditched House Made of Dawn and then picked up Stand on Zanzibar. Both books were published in 1968 (my birth year)...one of my goodreads groups is reading books published in your birthyear for the month of May....so far, it seems that I didn't pick the best of books which is odd as House Made of Dawn won the Pulitzer and Stand on Zanzibar won the Hugo award for best fiction. I'm still working on Stand on Zanzibar, but it is slow going. In the meantime, I have read Coraline and Garden Spells....enjoyed both!!!

[Kerri]

Still trudging along with Stand on Zanzibar...read Ender's Game today to break up the monotony a bit. Ender's Game is certainly more exciting and easier to read (as a YA book should be), but yet there were still some similarities between the two books....both futuristic and dealing with the over-population of the Earth....interesting ramifications of population control in both books.

[Kerri]

Haven't been posting my most recent reads....my favorites for the month of May are The Red Tent, Gone With the Wind and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.

[Kerri]

Favorites for the month of June were: The Time Traveler's Wife (which I was absolutely enthralled with and was the only book I read in June that I gave 5 stars to), The Sugar Queen, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, East of Eden, The Monster of Florence, In Cold Blood and a reread of Pride and Prejudice. June turned out to be a great month of reading for me!!!

[Kerri]

July favorites were: The Bronze Horseman (one of the best historical romances EVER) followed by Tatiana and Alexander. Those were my only 5 star reads for the month. I also read, and really liked, The Passage and Still Alice.