Amazon's Top 100

My friend Sara knows that I am fond of lists, all lists, but especially reading lists. She found this list and posted it on my FB page and then she posted how many she'd read. I, of course, had to do the same. Thanks, Sara! 

Read red (54)

*Recommend (46)

Want to read blue (28)

Will never read green (4)

Not read normal (46)

1. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
2. Dune by Frank Herbert*
3. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks
4. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
5. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
6. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
7. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
8. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
9. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien*
10. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
11. The World According to Garp by John Irving
12. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
13. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion
15. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
16. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien*
17. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens*
18. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
19. Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
20. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins*
21. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
22. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared M. Diamond
23. The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne
24. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry*
25. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson*
26. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll*
27. Alice Munro: Selected Stories by Alice Munro*
28. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak*
29. The Shining by Stephen King*
30. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
31. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
32. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
33. Moneyball by Michael Lewis
34. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald*
35. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
36. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
37. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
38. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
39. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
40. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
41. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley*
42. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl*
43. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton*
44. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
45. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen*
46. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder*
47. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 by Jeff Kinney
48. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster*
49. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood*
50. Beloved by Toni Morrison*
51. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
52. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
53. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison*
54. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle*
55. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
56. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury*
57. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
58. Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
59. 1984 by George Orwell*
60. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote*
61. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan
62. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
63. The Color of Water by James McBride
64. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White*
65. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle*
66. The Stranger by Albert Camus*
67. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*
68. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown*
69. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
70. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris*
71. All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
72. A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning: The Short-Lived Edition by Lemony Snicket
73. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
74. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
75. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
76. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt*
77. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain*
78. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
79. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein*
80. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
81. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
82. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
83. The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
84. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
85. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
86. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger*
87. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
88. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
89. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway*
90. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
91. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
92. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen*
93. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi*
94. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
95. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
96. The Liars' Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr
97. The Giver by Lois Lowry*
98. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
99. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Dantica
100. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov*

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 12

Last year I found this book challenge (since then I have seen many variations of it, but I like this one best!), and have been intrigued about how I would answer the questions posed. Obviously, I started this challenge over 30 days ago...I just wasn't inspired. It isn't as easy to write about books as I thought.

Feel free to comment with your own answer or post the challenge to your own blog.

A Book Or Series of Books You've Read More Than Five Times

Book

You can read all about my love of this play here.

Book Series

I love these books and could read them over and over.
I can't wait for Lila to read them.

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

Day 02 – A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
Day 03 – The best book you've read in the last 12 months
Day 04 – Your favorite book or series ever
Day 05 – A book or series you hate
Day 06 – Favorite book of your favorite series
Day 07 – Least favorite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise
Day 08 – A book everyone should read at least once
Day 09 – Best scene ever
Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11– A book that disappointed you
Day 12 – A book or series of books you’ve read more than five times
Day 13 – Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)
Day 14 – Favorite character in a book
Day 15 – Your “comfort” book
Day 16 – Favorite poem or collection of poetry
Day 17 – Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)
Day 18 – Favorite beginning scene in a book
Day 19 – Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)
Day 20 – Favorite kiss
Day 21 – Favorite romantic/sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 22 – Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 23 – Most annoying character ever
Day 24 – Best quote from a novel
Day 25 – Any five books from your “to be read” stack
Day 26 – OMG WTF? OR most irritating/awful/annoying book ending
Day 27 – If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!
Day 28 – First favorite book or series obsession
Day 29 – Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)
Day 30 – What book are you reading right now?

50 Books in a Year: Book #32 American Gods

OK, so trying to explain this book is like trying to explain The Fountainhead...usually what I say about that book goes a little something like this: It's a book about this guy Howard Roark, who wants to build buildings his own way and people don't want him to and he's all for helping people, but not at the sake of himself and supposedly there's a rape scene and he gives a 40ish page speech. I love this book so much that I can't talk about it properly. This is not the book at all, but when I try to talk about it, I get all jumbled about and just can't sell it. And, I sooo want to sell it!

I want to sell this book as well! Here's my botched attempt at telling you what it's about: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, is about this guy named Shadow who gets out of prison early because of the death of his wife and gets hired by a man named Wednesday, who is more than he seems and they go all around America recruiting Old Gods to fight the New Gods of today.

But, it's so much more than that!

This book is about one of my favorite subjects: What it means to be an American and to live in The United States of America. It's about what I talk to my students about all year--American culture, Pop Culture and reverence and Faith/faith. It's about the journey we all take to figure out who we are.

It starts out with Shadow having a fight with a leprechaun and receiving a gold coin that inadvertently stops his wife from being totally dead, she assist him through-out the whole book and saves him from death more than once. There are some gods, like this kobold, who wish they'd never been brought over from the Old World and two Old Gods (Loki and Odin--who Shadow finds out is his father) who want to live so badly, they almost pull off the greatest con ever. There's an excellent conversation between Johnny Appleseed and some other tall tale heroes about why Paul Bunyan (who is a manufactured tall-tale) isn't as cool as those that are based on real people. The God Media is a beautiful newscaster and Technology is a fat kid full of computer parts. And, it seems the more we (as Americans) 'worship' our gods the stronger they are...Jesus in America is not as strong as He used to be, but He can't even get someone to give him a ride in the Middle East. And, who are the stronger gods, the New Gods, of course, and while a god can die (they have feelings and can hurt like the rest of us), if you believe in that god he/she can reappear. The thing is that most gods seem to not have enough people believing in them to reappear as healthy active beings. For instance, Wednesday is this old wisened man and Easter is a beautiful middle-aged blonde because people still celebrate her, even if they do for the wrong reasons.

To understand this book it's important understand world religions, American tourism (I want to visit the House on the Rock so bad now), culture and counter-culture, Native American mysticism and your own beliefs and how they play into what decisions you make and who you are.

And, there's this lovely strong female character, Sam Black Crow, who has the best monologue ever:

"I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

The lady at Border's said that she loved it and hoped I would to, I do! If you read this book because you like Stardust you will be surprised as this book is deeper and longer and will make you question, if even you don't like it!

Did I sell it? If not, go out and read it anyway...you won't be sorry!

5 Stars