The Best Book I Never Read

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We’ve all seen the lists, we’ve all thought,”I should really read that someday,” but for all of us, there are still books on The List that we haven’t actually gotten around to reading. Even though we know they’re fabulous. Even though we know that we’ll like them. Or that we’ll learn from them. Or just that they’re supposed to be worthy. We just haven’t gotten around to them yet.

What’s the best book that YOU haven’t read yet?

I’ve got some doozies, for as well-read as I am:

Crime and Punishment
100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera
Wuthering Heights
Rabbit, Run

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Thank you, Melissa (Book Nut)


I participated in the Book Bloggers Christmas Swap, and Melissa the Book Nut was so kind to peek at my Amazon.com wishlist and give me McGee and Stuckey’s The Bountiful Container!! I am so excited to read it this winter and talk to my landlady about putting a container of herbs on her front porch this spring.

Thank you Melissa!!

And here’s a link to Shelly, who got a secret Santa package from me!

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7 Random Book Facts about Me

I was tagged by Sally for this meme. Basically we’re listing 7 random book-related facts about ourselves.

1. I give books away all the time, and never expect anyone to return a book I’ve loaned to them. Of course, when it’s a loan I do hope that the books come back to me, but I never sweat it if they don’t.

2. I always return books that I borrow in a timely fashion. I have stopped borrowing books from friends because my TBR stack is so crazy big that I would have to keep their books longer than makes me comfortable.

3. I used to be pretty good in French and read “Les Jeux Sont Fait” by Jean-Paul Sartre in the original French when I was 17. I can’t remember a thing about it now.

4. I rarely blog about the parenting books I read because I worry that I will alienate readers who have different opinions about parenting than I do. I see so much divisiveness over parenting issues and don’t want to bring them here.

5. In addition to books, I read cookbooks and magazines. I read The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly every week. Monthly/bi-monthly I read Touchstone, Cook’s Illustrated, and the free issues of Cookie, Parenting, and Wonder Time that I got just by having a baby. I’m not renewing any of those subscriptions. In the past, I would always get a trashy women’s magazine and a Vanity Fair whenever I flew somewhere.

6. Superfast Husband is not much of a reader. He is very smart and when he does read, he reads challenging stuff, but he doesn’t need to read every day. I always thought I’d end up with another book nerd, but it doesn’t really bother me because I like lots of other things about him that he wouldn’t have time to do if he was reading like me.

7. It took having a baby for me to have a day without reading.

I’m tagging:
Sense of Wonder
Rhinoa’s Ramblings
James Rovira
Imani
Eva
Restless Reader
Bybee

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Favorite Films A to Z

Taken from my dear Sheila:

List your favorite films from A to Z, one for each letter of the alphabet.

A for Amadeus
B for Blade Runner
C for Cabaret
D for Dressed to Kill
E for East of Eden
F for Fear Eats the Soul
G for Ginger Snaps
H for The Haunting
I for Imitation of Life
J for Johnny Guitar
K for Krull
L for Leave her to Heaven
M for Mildred Pierce
N for Natural Born Killers
O for Ossessione
P for Pandora’s Box
Q for Queen Christina
R for Raise the Red Lantern
S for Seance on a Wet Afternoon
T for Two Friends
U for The Usual Suspects
V for Valley of the Dolls
W for Whale Rider
X for X-Men
Y for You Can Count on Me
Z for Zoolander

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Stories (Booking Through Thursday)

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If you’re anything like me, one of your favorite reasons to read is for the story. Not for the character development and interaction. Not because of the descriptive, emotive powers of the writer. Not because of deep, literary meaning hidden beneath layers of metaphor. (Even though those are all good things.) No … it’s because you want to know what happens next?

Oh yeah, this is totally me. Story trumps all. I wouldn’t give two figs for diamond sharp prose and stellar ideas without a story. That’s why I love fantasy and YA so much.

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Top 48 SF Movies Based on a Novel

I’m meme-crazy because I love my baby more than this blog. It’s true! (But I have a lot of love to go around, so don’t worry.)

From A Dribble of Ink:

Copy the list below.
Mark in bold the movie titles for which you read the book.
Italicize the that you’ve watched.

1. Jurassic Park
2. War of the Worlds
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
4. I, Robot
5. Contact
6. Congo
7. Cocoon
8. The Stepford Wives
9. The Time Machine
10. Starship Troopers
11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
12. K-PAX13. 2010
14. The Running Man
15. Sphere
16. The Mothman Prophecies
17. Dreamcatcher
18. Blade Runner(Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
19. Dune
20. The Island of Dr. Moreau
21. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
22. The Iron Giant(The Iron Man)
23. Battlefield Earth
24. The Incredible Shrinking Woman
25. Fire in the Sky
26. Altered States
27. Timeline
28. The Postman
29. Freejack(Immortality, Inc.)
30. Solaris
31. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
32. The Thing(Who Goes There?)
33. The Thirteenth Floor
34. Lifeforce(Space Vampires)
35. Deadly Friend
36. The Puppet Masters
37. 1984
38. A Scanner Darkly
39. Creator
40. Monkey Shines
41. Solo(Weapon)
42. The Handmaid’s Tale
43. Communion
44. Carnosaur
45. From Beyond
46. Nightflyers
47. Watchers
48. Body Snatchers

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Teaser Tuesday–Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

A fun new meme!


TEASER TUESDAYS ask you to:

# Grab your current read.
# Let the book fall open to a random page.
# Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
# You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
# Please avoid spoilers!

From Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I chose 3 sentences to complete the paragraph.

“He just sat there for a while, and then he said, ‘A friend of mine–no, not a friend, a man I met in Tennessee–had heard about this town, and he had also heard of your grandfather. He told me some stories about the old days in Kansas that his father had told him. He said that during the Civil War Iowa had a colored regiment.’”

I’m actually reading Home for a review I’ll be publishing later this year, but the publishers ask that all quotes be checked against the final version so it’s not a good source for something like this. But Gilead is sitting right underneath, along with Housekeeping. I’ll be rereading both to prep for my review. Fun!

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Favorite Author Meme

Heather at Errant Dreams came up with a wonderful meme–enjoy & consider yourself tagged!

* Answer the questions as you see fit. Although they’re all phrased to ask about a singular author, feel free to respond with multiples, or even a list.
* Where possible & convenient (you don’t have to go as crazy as I did!), include a link here or there to an author’s website, your review of one of their books, or a review that inspired you to try the author(s), so your readers can get more information on anyone that sounds interesting.
* Tag five people and drop by their blogs to let them know you tagged them, or open-tag your readers.
* It would be nice if you included a link back to your tagger.

1. Who’s your all-time favorite author, and why?

I think I would have to say CS Lewis. I’ve read all of his books, many of them several times. I’ve read the Narnia Chronicles at least a dozen times, and books like The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters have meant a lot to me at certain times in my life.

2. Who was your first favorite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favorites?

The first author I remember being obsessed with–as in, I’ve got to read everything by this person–was John Bellairs. He wrote gothic stories for kids illustrated by Edward Gorey that were imaginative and just scary enough, and the first one I read was The House with a Clock in its Walls. I’m saving a few for Superfast Baby when she’s old enough. I had read multiple books by other authors, but I was more into the series, than the author, as with the All of a Kind Family books.

3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favorite authors, and why?

Robin Hobb, without question. She’s a superlative storyteller and I just lost myself in love starting with Assassin’s Apprentice. I’d also add Leo Tolstoy and Jhumpa Lahiri to the list, having read both of them for the first time in 2007.

4. If someone asked you who your favorite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection?

Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Stephen King, Madeleine L’Engle, CS Lewis, Robin Hobb, George RR Martin, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, Charles Dickens, Kathleen Norris, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, Dan Allender, Edith Wharton, Jhumpa Lahiri.

Nothing really to add on further reflection. I spend a lot of time thinking about my favorite authors!

Books vs. Movies (Booking Through Thursday)

Yay–my question got picked!! If you’re coming here from Booking Through Thursday, please note that my url is superfastreader.com, with no “wordpress.” I’d be ever so grateful if you update this if you are linking to me. And thanks for the link love!

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Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

So many great answers! For me, when I see a movie I want to be swept away with sounds and images and emotions. I love big epics and musicals for this reason. When I read, I want to get lost inside the skin of another person. Movies tend not to excel in this sort of thing, but it is possible–The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Morvern Callar come to mind.

Add your answer here!

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The Alphabet Meme

Picked this meme up from Melanie, in honor of two YA books I read for work this weekend.

The goal of this is to list favourite authors according to last name (with a representative fave book as well).

Atwood, Margaret — Cat’s Eye
Bronte, Charlotte — Jane Eyre
Card, Orson Scott — Ender’s Game
Dragonwagon, Crescent — The Year It Rained (with Paul Zindel)
Eager, Edward — Half Magic
Forster, EM — Howard’s End
Gibson, William — Neuromancer
Hobb, Robin — Ship of Magic
Ishiguro, Kazuo — And Never Let Me Go
Jackson, Shirley — Hangsaman
King, Stephen — The Gunslinger
Lewis, CS — Till We Have Faces
Martin, George RR — Game of Thrones
Novik, Naomi — His Majesty’s Dragon
Oates, Joyce Carol — Blonde
Percy, Walker — The Last Gentleman
Queenan, Joe — If You’re Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble
Rendell, Ruth — Judgment in Stone
Smith, Wesley — Culture of Death
Tolkien, JRR — The Return of the King
Undset, Sigrid — Kristin Lavransdatter
Vine, Barbara — A Dark-Adapted Eye
Wharton, Edith — Twilight Sleep
X — I’ll read the next book someone recommends by an author whose last name starts with X.
Yancey, Phillip — Where is God When It Hurts?
Zarr, Sara — Story of a Girl