What Erica Read in 2005.
Now in a messed-up order with screwed-up links and bad formatting! Yay!
| Your Fat Can Make You Thin by Calvin Ezrin |
| Blink (audiobook) by Malcolm Gladwell |
| In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez |
| Some kids books for school: Frindle by Andrew Clements and Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt |
| The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith |
| The Magician's Assistant, another by Ann Patchett |
| How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers |
| The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. I read this in about two days, so I didn't have a lot of time to really think about it, but it wasn't depressing like everyone says the movie is. (Who wants to rent that with me?) It was... dark, and somber, but beautiful, and I felt it and liked it, in a quiet and melancholic kind of way. |
| Slowness by Milan Kundera. I read a lot of Kundera, usually when I'm on vacation or need a quick fix of lightness, of feeling less tied to the earth than I sometimes do. I was particularly happy to be reading this one, with the Kundera philosophy of social actors as "dancers", at the same time as the DFW listed below, since one of the stories in that book referred to this one. Thread collapse in my own bedroom. |
| The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I |
| Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace |
| Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Greely. Ohmigod, more non-fiction! |
| I teach 5th grade reading! My class is reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler by E L Koenigsburg. It was perfectly lovely timing for me to be in NY earlier this month, so that I could go to the Met and bring back souvenirs and pictures for the girls. (We almost read The House with a Clock in its Walls by J Bellairs, so I just re-read that also, in preparation, but was very happy we decided not to go with it for my class.) |
| Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides |
| Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett. This book was beautiful, truly. Another one I read slow, dragging it out so these women would remain my friends longer. This book inspired me to write and write, a feeling I love, and to take a long walk through memories of my own true and beautiful friendships. It reminded me most of my best friendship with Kat, and reading this book a few weeks before her wedding was perfect. |
| How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen |
| The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini |
| Best Friends, Worst Enemies by Thompson et al. Non-fiction! Read this for my new job at Heschel Day School. My favorite part: "A moral school is a school where people spend a lot of time discussing what a moral school is." |
| Dress Your Family in Cordouroy and Denim by David Sedaris |
| England, England by Julian Barnes |
| Everything is Illuminated by JS Foer |
| The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Hadden |
| The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney. Non-fiction! |
| A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton |
| A Confederacy of Dunces by JK Toole |
| The Soloist by Mark Salzman |
| How to Learn Any Language by B Farber. A GREAT little book! |
| The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard |
| The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. I *love* when non-fiction can read so much like fiction. I read this for the Simi Valley Library Book Club, Literazzi, which I really enjoyed and now miss on account of that whole full-time job thing. Blech. This book read a lot like The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. |
| The 158-Pound Marriage by John Irving, one of my favorite authors. This wasn't nearly so heart-wrenching as I expected, as some of his others are. |
| The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. |
| The Magic Christian by Terry Southern. |
| The Awakening by Kate Chopin, also for my book club. Very, you know, Madame Bovary-ish. There's a deep insight, no? |
| The Story of My Life by Helen Keller |
| Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. |
| The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. I have to post the story of why I read this book - coming soon. |
| Deep in the Shade of Paradise by John Dufresne. Read for my new book club which I LOVE, Literazzi at the Simi Valley Library. I didn't love this book, however. It felt like it was trying to be a Tom Robbins, but it was nowhere near as good. |
| Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda |
I have here lists of just about every book I've read in past years, though some years are nicely formatted and some are a big mess. One day I'll get them all looking nice, but when? Oh yeah, the 23rd...
Here we go. This is some thrilling stuff, folks! We have: 2006, clean. We have 2004, messy but not as bad as '05. Here is 2003 and 2002, which I think are pretty good.
Hey, what's your favorite book ever? What would you recommend as a Great Book to just about anyone? E-me!
By the way, the reason these books are all hyperlinked to their pages on amazon.com is that I'm an amazon.com "associate", meaning that if you click through to amazon using any of the links on this page and then buy *anything* (even if it's NOT the item I have hyperlinked), then I get "credit" for having referred you in and I get some little percent of what you spend. So I LOVE IT WHEN YOU CLICK THROUGH! Please do it all the time, every time you want to buy something on amazon, come here first! You're the best!
You can also use this link to Amazon's main page to buy anything and I'll get a kick-back, yippee!!