Samantha's Book
List
2007
JULY
- Karen Joy Fowler: The Jane Austen Book Club
- Rick Kausman: If Not Dieting, Then What?
- Gina Kolata: Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss and the Myths and Realities of
Dieting
- Melissa Bank: The Wonderspot, bought at Oxfam in England, read on plane on way home.
- Armistead Maupin: Michael Tolliver Lives!
- Bill Bryson:The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir
- Carol Shields: Unless
JUNE
- Christopher Moore: You Suck, Island of the Blue Sequinned Love Nun
- Wally Lamb: I know This Much is True
MAY
- Zoe Whittall: Bottle Rocket Hearts
- Nairne Holtz: The Skin Beneath
- Nalo Hopkinson: The Salt Roads
- David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas, Weirdly and wildly interlocked stories
crossing borders, time periods, gender, geography, and genre. A roller
coaster ride that I didn't want to end. Lots of lovely literary fun if you
like detective stories, historical fiction, and sci fi all thrown together
in one book.
APRIL
- Charlaine Harris: Definitely
Dead
- Kim Edwards: The Memory Keeper's Daughter
- Janet Evanovich & Leanne Banks: Hot Stuff
- Patricia McCormick: Sold
- Christopher Moore:
Practical Demonkeeping and
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
MARCH
- Mary Janice Davidson: Undead and Underappreciated, Another vampire
romance novel...
- Carl Hiassen: Nature Girl
- Anne Bartlett: Knitting
- Richard Flanagan: The Story of One Hand Clapping, Set in Tasmania, ths story of European
immigrants and families, spanning the 1950s to 90s.
- Kiran Desai: The Inheritance of Loss, The Man Booker Prize winner for 2006
- Meg Wolitzer: The Wife, Long suffering wife of badly behaved Famous Author, tells all
FEBRUARY
- Debra Anderson: Code White, The story of 24 year old femme dyke on
a psych ward, manages to be funny despite the setting, doesn't try to tell
any easy stories or settle any scores, the story of a flawed system but
there are no villians really.
- Tim Winton: The Turning, Overlapping short stories, set in small towns in Western
Australia, desperate
lives,
glimpses of hope and beauty, through the stages of life. That said, the glimpses didn't outweigh
the grit for me. Loved the sense of place and the strength of some of the characters but the
suffering weighed on me. February, I guess.
- Kate
Atkinson: Case Histories, Families torn apart by violence, loss,
and grief, incl that of the private investigator trying to figure it all
out. Part crime novel, part mystery, part family drama...gripping. Thanks
Andrea.
- Kate Atkinson: One Good Turn
JANUARY
- Michael Redhill: Fidelity
- Emma Donoghue: Touchy Subjects
- Eoin Colfer: The Last Colony, Artemis Fowl battles demons and
hormones in this latest installment of the AF series.
- Glen Huser: Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen, another
recommendation from younger family members, the story of a road trip
involving "two tough
chicks, a 90 year old former school teacher and a tennaged foster home
reject" who take a road trip to modelling school and to see one
last performance of Wagner's Ring
series.
- Vincent Lam: Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, Giller winning
collection of connected short stories about a group of young doctors,
begins with their attempts at getting into med school and ends with a
story about the SARS outbreak.
- Stephanie Meyer: Twilight, teen romance with vampires, recommended
by my daughter Mallory.
DECEMBER
- Douglas Coupland: Eleanor Rigby
- Joanna Briscoe: Sleep with Me
- Daniel Nettle: Happiness--The Science Behind Your Smile
- Nick Hornby: About a Boy
NOVEMBER
- Dan Savage: The Kid--What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to
Get Pregnant--An Adoption Story
- Atul Gawande--Complications: A Surgeon's Notes On An Imperfect
Science
- Carol Queen: The Leather Daddy and the Femme
- Dan Savage: Skipping Towards Gomorrah--The Seven Deadly Sins and the
Pursuit of Happiness in America
- Peter Singer & Jim Mason: The Way We Eat: Why Our Foods Choices Matter
- Christopher Moore: Blood Sucking Fiends
OCTOBER
- Marian Keyes: Last Chance Saloon
- Alison Bechdel: Fun Home
- Tristan Toarmino: Pure Lust
- Rudy Rucker: Realware
- Christopher Moore: Coyote Blue
- Muriel Spark: Me Mento Mori, published in 1958, bought 2006 at
Goodwill, a nonsentimental, engaging, and wry novel about old age.
SEPTEMBER
- Daniel Gilbert: Stumbling on Happiness
- Nalo Hopkinson: Skin Folk, read in the interior of Algonquin Park,
fascinating short stories on themes of identity, race, and gender. That
sounds too scholarly, these stories are also scary, funny, sexy, and just
plain delightful to read.
AUGUST
- Octavia Butler: Wild Seed
- Lisa Walker: Looking Like What You Are: Sexual Style, Race,
and Lesbian Identity
- Lisa Moore: Open, lovely lyrical stories from
Nfld author,
one reviewer writes: "Lisa Moore's Open makes you believe three things
unequivocally: that St. John's is the centre of the universe, that these
stories are about absolutely everything, that the only certainty in life
comes from the accumulation of moments which refuse to be contained."
I agree.
- A.M. Homes: Music for Torching, novel from queen
of suburban gothic, full of her usual dark humour and marital drama
- Christopher Moore: A Dirty Job, a beta-male takes on the job of
death, silliest book I have read in a long while
JULY
- Gemma O'Connor: Sins of Omission, beach book, read at Pinery
- Maeve Binchy: Nights of Rain and Stars, beach book
- Carl Hiassen: Basket Case,
better beach book, also read at
Pinery
- Yann Martel: SELF, another fictional autobiography, this one of a
writer/traveller whose gender changes overnight, not just once, but
twice
- Marian Keyes: Sushi for Beginners
- Steve Bruhm and Natasha Hurley
(eds): Curiouser: on the queerness of
children, (read for Outgames panel on children and sexual justice)
- Rich Savin-Williams: The New Gay Teenager, (also read for Outgames
panel)
-
Lori Lansens: The Girls,
(fictional memoir of conjoined twins, set in SW Ontario)
- Lori Ann
Muenzer: One Gear, No
Breaks : Lori-Ann Muenzer's
Ride to Belief, Belonging, and a Gold Medal
- In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging
the Cult of Speed, (just as it says, I felt very guilty for reading it
too quickly)
- Octavia Butler:Parable of
the Sower
- Augusten Burroughs: Magical Thinking
JUNE
- Nicholas Pashley: Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It's
Necessary (collection of essays on--among other things--the pleasures
of drinking and
reading in bars on weekday afternoons, not inspirational enough to
persuade me to swap reading in coffee shops for reading in pubs, but fun
nonetheless, a loan from a friend in light of a recent bout of
non-drinking on my part, thanks Rob)
- Octavia Butler: Fledgling (my favourite sci fi/fantasy author,
reading this reminded me once again what a loss her recent death is, this
book tells the story of a young female vampire, deals with themes of
racism, gender, and sexual orientation in smart and subtle ways)
MAY
- Sarah Holloway: Family Wanted ("Powerful
collection of pieces by different writers on adoption, from all
three sides of the issue: writers who are adopted, those who have given up
children for adoption and those who have adopted.")
- Hilary McKay:
Permanent Rose (Latest installment from my favourite children's
author, continues the story of the eccentric and artistic Casson family
focussing on the youngest Casson, 8 year old Rose)
APRIL
- Joan Kelly: The Pleasure's All Mine
- Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez: Playing with Boys (3 Latina women in LA win
romance, fame and
friendship, chick lit bought at airport in Tallahassee)
MARCH
- Nick Hornby: Long Way Down (Unlikely individuals meet atop tall building, the would-be
suicides tell their stories, continue their relationship and in odd ways support one
another)
- Norah Vincent: Self-Made Man (Journalist spends more than a year living as man, gains
insight into contemporary masculinity, and writes about it)
- Malcolm Gladwell: Blink (Not surprisingly we make decisions quickly, sometimes for
better, sometimes for
worse. telling between the two is the trick)
- Manda Scott: Hen's Teeth (British mystery involving biotech industry)
- Russ Kirk: Everything You Know about Sex is Wrong (Aside from title.."Everything You Think
you Know about Sex is Wrong" would be better...informative and entertaining)
- Steven Saylor: The Venus Throw (Historical mystery, set in
Rome)
JANUARY
- Jill Soloway: Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants (Soloway, writer and co-executive producer of Six
Feet Under, writes humorously about her teenage years)
- Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake (I loved this bleak futuristic novel, sad and funny)
- The Bride Stripped Bare (Truly dreadful novel about a married womans's experiences,
supposedly published anonymously)
- Peter Robinson: Playing with Fire
2005
DECEMBER
- Laurell K. Hamilton: The Stroke of Midnight
- Nanny Diaries (Total fluff, fear of flying is my excuse, read
during de-icing stage of Toronto to London flight, joys of winter
travel)
- Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampire Stories (Thanks
Sarah...)
- Zadie Smith: On Beauty (Academic family life, racial politics, friendship, love and
marriage)
- Amanda Quick: Paid Companion
-
Kelley Armstrong: Industrial Magic (sequel to Dime Store Magic,
see below, read on train home from Toronto)
NOVEMBER
- Miriam Toews: A Complicated Kindness (quirky coming of age novel, winner of GG award,
about a teenage girl in a small Mennonite town, bought and read en route to Ottawa)
- Kim Cattrall: Sexual Intelligence
- Ariel Levy: Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
OCTOBER
- Nicola Barker: The Three Button Trick and Other Stories
- Anita Shreve: Light on Snow
- Pat Barker: Border Crossing & Double Vision
- Tanya Huff: Smoke and Shadows
-
Night's Edge
by Maggie Shayne, Barbara Hamble, Charlaine Harris
- Johanna Trollope: The Spanish Lover
SEPTEMBER
- Jeannette Walls: The Glass Castle (Amazing memoir, read in one sitting, like
Angela's Ashes and Running with Scissors, it's the story of the author's troubled,
frightening childhood. Poverty, yes. Eccentric self-centred parents, that too. But also
a strong sense of family, love and concern for knowledge.)
AUGUST
- Joan Barfoot: Luck
- Sparkle Hayter: Nice Girls Finish Last, Last Great Manly Man
(Mysteries starring TV news reporter Robin Hudson, mix of
comedy, whodunit, and social commentary.)
- Carl Hiaasen: Tourist Season (Newspaper reporter goes off rails,
killing tourists in dramatic ways, to save Florida from outsiders.)
- Kelley Armstrong: Dime Store Magic (Supernatural thriller, set in
New England--witches, sorcerers and teenage rebellion.)
- Laurell K. Hamilton: Narcissus in Chains (Although this also
contains vampires,
werewolves, assorted shape shifters & other worldly folk, it's about as different
in mood from the Club Dead series as books can be, not for the faint of heart, grim
and gruesome, don't know if I will read more in the series)
- Wendy Holden: Simply Divine (Fat, fun, summer fluff set in glossy
magazine industry in
England, protaganist works for two magazines Fabulous! and Georgeous!)
- Edward Riche: Rare Birds (First novel, Canadian, set in Nfld,
features trials and
tribulations of owner of upscale
restaurant The Auk and his wacky colourful neighbours, very funny at times.
)
JULY
- Audrey Niffennegger: The Time Traveller's Wife (Remarkably
inventive love story, beautiful and sad...I confess to some tears.)
- Charlaine Harris: Club Dead & Dead to the World & Living
Dead in Dallas(Southern vampire/werewolf/shapeshifter
romance series...)
- Wendy Holden: Femme Fatale (Another British romantic comedy set in
the publishing industry.)
- Paige Braddock: Jane's World, Volume 1 & 2 (Paige Braddock's home on the
web)
- Marian Keyes: The Other Side of the Story (Three British women, all
in their thirties, write, publish, ane edit books, fall in love and lead
intertangled lives, bought in Manchester airport, read on plane home.)
- Kate Fox: Watching the English (Cultural anthropolgist
observes her own tribe and explains why the English take forever
to say hello and goodbye, apologize when you bump into them, and
buy drinks in rounds. Also read on plane. Should've read on way
there.)
- Nick Hornsby: How to be Good (Read on way to England,
bitter columnist turns good and drives wife nuts in the
process.)
- Tanya Huff: Long Hot Summoning (More battles between good and evil,
this one aptly taking place in suburban shopping mall.)
- Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow: Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love
France and Hate the
French (Authors live in France and attempt to explain the French to the
rest of us, tackling such subjects as the French love of correcting
failed attempts to correctly speak their language.)
- L.E. Modesitt, Jr.:
Ghost of
the
White Nights (3rd book in spy trilogy set in alternate version of our world--with ghosts and
zombies/without the
United States--will now seek out first two books, thanks again Rob)
- Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go (Haunting story about future
in which clones are raised to be organ donors, never heavy handed,
one only realizes the full horror of the situation as the story
progresses.)
JUNE
- Tanya Huff: Summon the Keeper (B & B with hell in the basement, a keeper to guard it, a
talking cat and sex with a ghost...how could summer reading get more fun than this? Thanks
Eleanor, mentioned S. Hayter and she mailed me this one )
- Sparkle Hayter: Naked
Brunch (Mystery? Romance? Werewolves! Oh
my...thanks Rob)
- Cheryl S. Bartlett: Stripper Shoes (Thoughtful & funny story about a woman who decides,
after having two children and completing her Ph.D.,
to become a stripper.)
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Bestseller bought
at TO airport for Jeff for Dad's Day, read while waiting for late flight to Montreal.)
- Lisa Palac: The Edge of the Bed: How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life
(Friend of Susie Bright--who wrote the intro--feminist, former Catholic On Our
Backs staff person tells the
story of her involvement with pornography.)
- Susie Bright: The Best American Erotica 2005
(Not just smutty fluff, or should that be fluffy smut?...includes short
stories by likes of Mary Gaitskill and Jane Smiley.)
MAY
- Stephen Marche:
Raymond and Hannah
(First novel, love story set in Toronto and
Jerusalem, conducted largely through e-mail exchanges)
APRIL
- Octavia Butler: Lilith's Brood (Been meaning to read this sci fi
classic for years...WOW!)
- Miranda Beverly-Whittemore: The Effects of Light
- Diane Ackerman: A Natural History of Love
- Helen Fisher: Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage,
and Why We Stray
- Paulo Coelho: Eleven Minutes (Modern day fairy tale,
prostitute meets artist & falls in love (and vice versa), ho hum, bought in Toronto airport and
read
on way home)
- Darcey Steinke: Milk (God, sex, babies and New York...all in
131
pages,
beautifully written, will seek out previous books by this author)
MARCH
- Nalo Hopkinson: Brown Girl in the Ring (Sci fi novel set in Toronto, winner of the Warner
Aspect First Novel contest, recommended by my friend Eleanor Brown on her blog, Opinionated Lesbian)
- Dan Simmon: A Winter
Haunting (Scary, very scary....)
- Patrick O'Brian: Collected Short Stories (Another recommendation from friend and fellow
book lover Rob Corless. He also has a book page).
- Elizabeth Wurtzel: Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (Resolve to
work on being more "difficult"...)
- Lily Burana: Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America
(Reviewed in this month's New Yorker, sounded interesting and it
was..)
- Robin Robertson (editor): Mortification: Writers' Stories of their
Public Shame (Just as it says, includes Atwood, Colm Toibin, Julian
Barnes, Ondaatje and Lethem. Seriously funny.)
- Jane Juska: A Round-Heeled Woman (Author runs ad "Before I turn
67..I would like to have lots of sex with a man I like." This book
tells her story. Loved the idea but didn't much like the book.)*
FEBRUARY
- J.M.Coetzee: Elizabeth Costello
(Read one chapter for ethics reading group--thanks Dick--and then went on
to buy book to read rest. The story of an author's life told through a
series of lectures, raises issues of human decency, moral responsibility,
guilt, and
animal suffering, all common themes in Coetzee's work)
- Dan Simmons: The Hollow Man (Love, horror, sex, math, murder,
and the meaning
of
the universe...fun, scary and compelling read, what more could one want in a spring
break
book?)
- Anthony Bourdain: Kitchen Confidential (As if Hunter S. Thomson
went to culinary school...bad boy chef tells all but drug stories,
butt jokes, and testosterone prose wore on me afer awhile..confess to skipping bits near
end)
- Augusten Burroughs: Dry: A Memoir (Life goes on in rehab and AA after Running with
Scissors ends--see below.)
- Neil Gaiman: The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (Thanks
Rob...)
JANUARY
- Catherine Alliot: Wedding Day (more fun fluff about women's lives
by
British author below)
- Richard Wright: Adultery (dull middle aged man has dull middle aged
affair which ends very, very badly...thanks Megan)
- A.M. Homes: Things You Should Know (another short story
collection
featuring Homes' "dark and mysterious view of contemporary domestic
life."--from the dust jacket)
- Catherine Alliot: Olivia's Luck (British author, very fluffy, fun
reading...January isn't an easy month in Canada or in academic life,
fluff helps...Oh, the plot? Husband leaves Olivia but all works out
well in the end.)
- Douglas Glover: 16 Categories of Desire (Canadian author,
collection
of short stories, not all about desire, the title of the book is taken
from one of the stories, looked good on the library shelf)
2004
DECEMBER
- Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo: He's Just Not that Into You--The
No-Excuses Approach to Understanding Guys (best-selling, popular
culture, tough love
self-help book, read on plane home from Boston--I only read fluff on
planes, that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it)
- David Sedaris:
Holidays on Ice (Christmas stories on the strange
side of life) and Me Talk Pretty Some Day (Sedaris tries to learn
French)
- Augusten Burroughs: Running with Scissors (if there were an award
for "worst childhood/best memoir" this book ought to take it)
- Peter Hyman: The Reluctant Metrosexual--My Almost Hip Life
(former magazine fact checker
and now columnist documents chronicles his personal life as a
"just gay enough" Manhattan
single)
- A.M.Homes: Jack (fiction for young adults by author below, subject
matter=what to do when your divorced dad comes out of the closet)
- A.M.Homes: The Safety of Objects (wonderful/awful suburban-gothic
short stories, recommended--with suitable qualifiers and warnings--by
Colin)
- Ben Mezrich: Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT
Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (just like it sounds and almost,
but
not quite, made me want to play blackjack)
- Suzanne Scholsberg: The Curse of the Singles Table (fitness
writer/bike racer chronicles her "true story of 1001 nights without
sex")
NOVEMBER
- David Liss: A Conspiracy of Paper (historical mystery set at the
time of the founding of the stock market in England, thaks Andrea)
- Ladies' Night at the Finbar Hotel (Various Irish women authors
including
Maeve Binchy and London, Ontario's own Emma Donaghue each write a chapter
which focusses on one guest or group of
guests staying at the hotel on opening night, most fun trying to guess
who wrote which chapter since they deliberatly don't say)
OCTOBER
- Banana Yosimoto: NP, Lizard (read BY's book Kitchen for a book
group and really liked it, like these too)
- David Sedaris: Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim (Quietly and
scarily funny essays on what lies benath the surface of semingly normal
family life...thanks Andrea.)
SEPTEMBER
- Janet Evanovich: Ten Big Ones (September is a really busy
month...need I
say more?)
JULY & AUGUST
- Frances Fyfield: Undercurrents (American pharmacist has mid-life
ciris and embarks on search for lost lover in coastal town of Warbling,
England)
- Elizabeth George: A Traitor to
Memory (murder mystery featuring violin prodigy, borrowed from Kathleen
for week of camping)
- Elizabeth George: Deception on His Mind, A Suitable Vengeance, For the
Sake of Elena, Playing for the Ashes, Payment in Blood
- Kathleen Tessaro:
Elegance
JUNE
- Val McDermid: A Distant Echo (compelling and creepy mystery, set
in
Scotland)
- Ana Menendez: Loving Che (book group pick)
- Peter Carey: My Life as a Fake (bought at Frankfurt airport for
trip
home)
- Banana Yoshimoto: Kitchen (book group pick, really enjoyed it)
- Sophie Kinsella: Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (fluffy book borrowed
from sister-in-law Susan, the true shopaholic, to read on plane to
Sweden)
- Sophie Kinsella: Confessions of a Shopaholic (fluffy book bought
for
plane trip, read after lending it to philosopher/friend/row mate Ann
Levey
on flight
from Winnipeg while I read book below)
- Ruth Rendell: Harm Done(book group pick for June, read on way back
from Winnipeg)
MAY
- Michael Dibdin: And Then You Die(latest Aurelio Zen mystery read in
Winnipeg
at CPA; Zen, of Rome's elite Criminalpol unit, finds a killer
and begins a romance in Versilia, a Tuscan coast resort town)
- David Lodge: Therapy (middle aged writer addicted to therapy of
various forms, read en route to CPA in Winnipeg)
- Richard Russo: The Straight Man (funny novel about academic life,
recommended by Martin)
- Jaclyn Moriarty: The Year of Secret Assignments; Feeling Sorry for
Celia (both borrowed from
Mallory)
- Louise Rennison: Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions
of Georgia
Nicolson (borrowed from Mallory)
- Alexander McCall Smith: Morality for Beautiful Girls (mystery, set
in
Africa, bought at train station)
- David Lodge: Home Truths (novella, based on play about three
friends
and a nasty journalist, also bought at train station)
APRIL
- Michel Houellebecq:The Elementary Particles (morally ambigious
novel
about lives of two brothers; a sexually depraved teacher, and a
repressed scientist, recommended by Martin during hte course of a
long bike ride), a slightly longer review is here.
- Mark Haddon:The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the
Night-time (fictional memoir of autistic boy who is witness to
break up of parents' marriage, funny, tragic)
- Alexander McCall Smith: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
(mystery)
MARCH
- Sandra Birdsell: The Russlander (HAGS book, great)
- David Lodge: Thinks...(more British humour about academics behaving
badly, cognitive scientist Ralph and visiting English prof Helen have
affair)
- Clive Barker: Weaveworld (dark fantasy set in a rug...thanks
Ken)
FEBRUARY
- Anita Diamant: The Red Tent (stories from the Bible as told from
women's perspective)
JANUARY
- Elizabeth Hay: Small Change (HAGS book, dreadful)
- Janet Evanovich: To the Nines (bounty hunter Stephanie Plum,
Ranger, and Morelli)
- PD James: The Murder Room (mystery)
2003
DECEMBER
- Michael Moore: Dude, Where's My Country? (Christmas gift from
dad-in-law)
- Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose:
Bushwhacked--Life in George W. Bush's America (another political book
from Tom)
- Helen Dunmore: The Siege(historical fiction set in Lenigrad in
1941)
- Jose Saramago: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (seasonal
reading: one of my
favourite writers retells a classic story)
NOVEMBER
- Wally and Barbara Smith: Bicycling Cuba (it's November in London
and I'm about to put my bike away, need I say more?)
- Clive Barker: Coldheart Canyon (scary, dark fantasy set in
Hollywood, not for the faint of heart)
- Janet Evanovich: Full House, Full Speed (fun fluff though not
as fun as the Stephanie Plum books)
OCTOBER
- Janet Evanovich: Full Tilt (more of same)
- Melissa Bank: The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing (single
neurotic NY women seek love)
- Jonathan Gash: Different Women Dancing, Prey Dancing (by author
of
Lovejoy novels/feature cardiologist Dr. Clare Burtonall and male
prostitute or "goer" Bonn)
- Lance Armstrong: It's Not about the Bike(inspirational
reading...resolution-- no more whining about hills)
- Janet Evanovich: Visions of Sugar Plums (Stephanie Plum Christmas
novel)
JUNE & JULY
- Ann Patchett: Bel Canto (Magic realism, opera, a hostage
taking in a South American country, the meaning of love)
- Lauren Belfer: City of Light(Historical novel set in Buffalo in
1901 narrated by 36 yr. old bluestocking and headmistress of girls'
school, lots of deatil about hydroelectricity and its opponents)
- Abigail Padgett: Blue (Social psychologist Blue McCarron solves a
mystery)
-
Diane Shoemperlen:
Our Lady of the Lost and Found (Fiction: Virgin Mary is unexpected
house
guest)
- Sandra Scoppettone:
Gonna Take a Homicidal Journey(Mystery)
- The Botany of Desire(Non-fiction, pop science about plants, book
group choice)
- Dean Koontz: Seize the Night(Beach book--Christopher Snow, whose XP (xeroderma pigmentosum)
renders him extremely vulnerable to all forms of light hangs out in the
dark and solves crime)
- Samuel
Fussell: Muscle:
Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder (memoir, one of my favourite
books, English PhD student drops out and enters world of weights, competes
in strength and physique competitions, reflects on relationship between
body and identity)
- Hilary McKay: The Exiles in Love (hilarious, borrowed from
Mallory)
MAY
- Colm Tóibín:The Heather Blazing(older Irish couple retire to
seahore and face relationship problems)
- Michael Cunningham: At Home at the End of the World(Two
male childhood
friends move to NY, add a female member to their family, and move to the
country)
- Carol Shields:Dressing up for the Carnival
- Zadie Smith: White Teeth
- Black Tights(Surprise! Women athletes face sexism. HAGS book group
pick.)
- Sue Townsend: Ghost Children(Dreadful novel by author of Adrian
Mole diaries)
APRIL
- Hilary McKay: The Exiles, Saffy's Angel, The Exiles at Home
- Michael Cunningham: The Hours
- Alice Munro: Hateship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
- Jonathan Lethem: As She Climbed Across the Table
- Lorrie Moore: Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
MARCH
- Joan Clark:
Latitudes of Melt
FEBRUARY
- Janet Evanovich: Hard Eight
- Jose Saramago: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reiss
JANUARY
- Ann Ireland: Exile
- Jose Saramago: All the Names
- Barbara Vine: No Night is Too Long, The Chimney Sweeper's Boy
2002
DECEMBER
- Jan Wallis: Dreaming Me
- Jill Ker Conway; A Woman's Education
- Sebastian Faulks:Charlotte Grey
NOVEMBER
- Ian McEwan: Atonement
- Minnette Walters: Acid Row
OCTOBER
- Katha Pollit: Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women,
Politics, and Culture*
- Book Two, Lord of the Rings
AUGUST
- Stephen King: Hearts in Atlantis
- Laurie King: To Play the Fool, With Child, Night Work
- Baine Kerr: Harmful Intent
- Barbara Vine: Grasshopper
- Laurie Colwin: A Big Storm Knocked It Over
JULY
- Timothy Findley: Stone Orchard
- Anita Brookner: Visitors
- David Adams Richards: The Bay of Love and Sorrows
- Ian McEwan: Amsterdam
- Charles Baxter: The Feast of Love
- Colm Tóibín: The Story of the Night
JUNE
- Rachel Seiffert: The Dark Room*
- Bill Bryson: Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe, I'm a Stranger
Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away
MAY
- Julian Barnes: England, England
- Bill Bryson: Walk Through the
Woods, In a Sunburned Country, This
Small Island
APRIL
- Helen Dunmore: Your Blue-Eyed Boy*
- Desire*
MARCH
- Peter Carey: The True History of the Kelly Gang*
FEBRUARY
- Barbara Neely: Blanche Passes Go
- Hanna Spencer: Hanna's Diary*
JANUARY
- Amanda Cross: Poetic Justice, In the Final Analysis
- Ian Rankin: Dead Souls
- L. Wright: A Touch of Panic
- Elizabeth Hay: A Student of Weather*
2001
JANUARY
- Steve Martin: The Attorney
- John Grisham: The Brethen
- Ann Perry: Half Moon Street
- Janet Evanovich: Hot Six
- John Coetze: Disgrace*
FEBRUARY
- Dropped Threads*
- David Adams Richards: Mercy Among the Children*
MARCH
- Carol O'Connell: Mallory's Oracle, Shell Game, Stone Angel, The Man
Who Cast Two Dhadows, Killing Critics
- Deja Dead
- Memoirs of a Geisha*
APRIL
- York Stories*
- Fast Food Nation
- Bruce Graham: The Parrsboro Boxing Club
- Maeve Binchy: Tara Road
- Elmore Leonard: Maximum Bob
May
- Nuala O'Faolain: Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin
Woman
- Deidre McCloskey: Crossing, How to be Human Though an Economist
- Peter Cameron: Andorra
- The Girl with the Pearl Earring
- Adrian Mole: The Cappucino Years
June
- bell hooks: Feminism is for Everyone*
- Kathy Reichs: Deadly Decisions
- Matt Cohen:
July
- Margaret Yorke: A Case to Answer
- Muriel Spark: Aiding and Abetting
- PD James: A Time to be in Earnest
- Michael Dibdin: The Dying of the Light
- Hazel Holt: Mrs. Mallory Investigates
August
- Minnette Walters: The Shape of Snakes
- Martha Grimes: The End of the Pier
- Peter Mayle: A Year in Provence, Toujours Provence
September
- Anne Tyler: Once We Were Grown Ups
- Maeve Binchy: The Lilac Bus, Evening Classes
- Robert Frank: Luxury Fever
- Naomi Klein: No Logo
- Michael Dibdin: Thanksgiving
- We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our
Families: Stories from Rwanda
by Philip Gourevitch
October
- Joanna Trollope: The Men and the Girls
- Anita Shreves: Fortune's Rocks
- P.D. James: Death in Holy Orders
NOVEMBER
- Amanda Cross: Sweet Death, Kind Death; The Theban Mysteries; Collected
Stories
- Tony Parsons: Man and Boy
2000
JANUARY
- Beryl Bainbridge: Master Georgie, Every Man for Himself
- John Grisham: Street Lawyer
- Wayne Johnston: Colony of Unrequited Dreams
FEBRUARY
MARCH
- Letters to a Young Feminist*
APRIL
- Jane Hamilton: Map of the World*
- Maeve Binchy: Glass Lake
- Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses*
MAY
- Herman Hesse: Siddhartha*
- Penelope Fitzgerald: The Blue Flower
JUNE
- Dorothy Smith: Writing the Social
JULY
- Janet Evanovich: Two for the Dough
AUGUST
- Susan Howatch: The Glittering Image
- PD James: A Certain Justice
- Janet Evanovich: One for the Money, Three to get Deadly, Four to
Score, High Five
- Jane Roland Martin: Coming of Age in Academe
- Amanda Cross: The Players Come Again
- Margot Livesey: The Missing World
- Frances Fyfield: Shadows on the Mirror
SEPTEMBER
- Maeve Binchy: Scarlet Feather
- Catherine Cookson: The Whip
- Michael Dibdin: The Cabal, Vendetta, Cosi Fan Tutti
OCTOBER
- Matt Cohen: Elizabeth and After*
- PD James: A Taste for Death, Unnatural Causes
- Gospel of Germs*
NOVEMBER
- Michael Dibdin: Dead Lagoon, Dark Specter, Dirty Tricks, Blood Rain
- Alistair McLeod: No Great Mischief
- Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin
- Brendan Graham: The Whitest Flower
- Barry Unger: Morality Play
1999
JANUARY
- Sue Grafton: N is for Noose
- Alice Hoffman: Here on Earth
- Don Snyder: The Cliff Walk: A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found
FEBRUARY
- Catherine Dunne: In the Beginning
- Joan Barfoot: Duet for Three
- Anita Brookner: A Closed Eye
- Shani Mootoo: Cereus Blooms at Night
MARCH
- Laura Umasky: Motherhood Reconceived*
- Iris Murdoch: Jackson's Dilemma*
APRIL
- Clifford Stoll: The Cuckoo's Egg : Tracking a Spy through the Maze of
Computer Espionage
- Alice McDermott: Charming Billy*, Weddings and Wakes, That Night
MAY
- Joan Barfoot: Getting Over Edgar*
JUNE
- Helen Fielding: Bridget Jones' Diary*
- Edward Ball: Slaves in the Family*
JULY/AUGUST
- Wallace Stegner: Angle of Repose*
- Frances Fyfield: Without Consent
- Margaret Yorke: False Pretenses
- John Bayley: Elegy for Iris
- Pat Barker: Another World
SEPTEMBER
- Joanna Trollope: Other Peoples' Children
- Naguib Mahfouz: The Palace Walk
OCTOBER
- Edith Wharton: Glimpses of the Moon
- Scar Tissue
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
- Bonnie Burnard: A Good House
- John Grisham: Testament
1998
JANUARY
- The Perfect Storm
- Carol Anshaw: Aquamarine, Seven Moves
- Flaubert: Madame Bovary*
- Pat Barker: The Century's Daughter
- Joan Barfoot: Some Things about Flying
- Rose Tremain: The Way I Found Her
FEBRUARY
- Jill Paton Walsh: Knowledge of Angels, Lapsing
- Cynthia Ozick: The Puttermesser Papers
- Anne Beattie: Chilly Scenes of Winter
- Elizabeth Benedict: Slow Dancing
- Fay Weldon: Growing Rich
MARCH
- Anita Brookner: A Friend from England, A Private View*
APRIL
- Ian McEwan: The Innocent
- Stanley Coren: Sleep Thieves
- Laura Fraser: Losing It: America's Obsession with Weight and the
Industry that Feeds It
- Ursula Hegi: Stones from the River, Floating in My Mother's Palm*
- Jonathan Kozol: Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the
Conscience of a Nation
- Laura Kipnis: Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of
Fantasy in America
MAY
- Anita Brookner: Altered States
- Peter Carey: Oscar and Lucinda*
JULY
- Arundhati Roy:
God of Small Things*
- Mordecai Richler:
Barney's Version
- Carol Shields: Larry's Party
AUGUST
- Dorothy Allison: Cave Dweller
- Jane Urqhart: The Underpainter
SEPTEMBER
- Molly Peacock: Piece by Piece*
- Judith Farr: You Never Came to me in White (didn't finish)*
OCTOBER
- Rudy Weibe and Yvonne Johnson: A Stolen Life*
NOVEMBER
- Katharine Graham: A Private Life*
- Anita Shreve: The Weight of Water*
- Marc Parent: Turning Stones
DECEMBER
- Jung Chang: Wild Swans*
- Margaret Lawrence: The Stone Angel*
*reading group books
........to be continued.
E-mail me with recommendations!
You're Mrs. Dalloway!
by Virginia Woolf
Your life seems utterly bland and normal to the casual
observer, but
inside you are churning with a million tensions and worries. The company
you surround
yourself with may be shallow, but their effects upon your reality are
tremendously deep.
To stay above water, you must try to act like nothing's wrong, but you
know that the
truth is catching up with you. You're not crazy, you're just a little
unwell. But no
doctor can help you now.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue
Pyramid.