108 books read in 2008 - I've bolded the ones I'd recommended, put an asterisk after those that were for Book Club.
January
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
The Exiled by Posie Graeme-Evans (not as good as I thought it'd be, but I did read all three)
Family Tree by Barbara Delinsky
Think of England by Alice Elliott Dark
Facing East by Kh. Frederica Mathewes-Green (LOVE this one, will often re-read it)
The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady by Gerald Morris (this is a series, start witht he first one)
The Gathering by Anne Enright (this most decidedly does NOT get bolded. When I was done, I asked the person who'd loaned it to me what I'd done to them to make them loan it to me)
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons (a fair warning on this one - it is fantastic, but she gets smutty too)
PS I Love You by Cecelia Ahern (I've not gotten around to seeing the movie)
At the Corner of East and Now by Kh. Fredrica Mathewes-Green
Atonement by Ian McEwan (I know a lot of people don't like this one, but I did)
The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf by Gerald Morris (see note above)
February
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Let Us Attend: A Journey Through the Orthodox Divine Liturgy by Fr. Lawrence Farley (this is absolutely fantastic)
Duran Duran:Notorious by Steve Malins (a gulity pleasure but yes, quite good)
The Island by Victoria Hislop (excellent)
The Uncrowned Queen by Posie Graeme-Evans (see note above)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, et al (LOVE her)
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan*
The Birth House by Amy McKay
March
The Quilter's Legacy by Jennifer Chiaverini (this is a lovely series, start at the beginning)
The Dragon and the Rose by Roberta Gellis (someday, I'm going to do a blog post about good books with cheesy covers - this is a contender for that post)
Bad Girls of the Bible by Liz Curtis Higgs
April
From Binge to Blackout by Chris Volkman and Toren Volkman*
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Illness and Cure of the Soul in Orthodox Tradition by Metropolitan Hirotheos (clearly, if you aren't Orthodox, this probably won't resonate)
Life of St. Sava by St. Nicholai Velimirovich
Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Fr. Seraphim Rose
First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty Day Journey Through the Canon of St. Andrew by Kh. Frederica Mathewes-Green (read daily during Lent)
Godric by Frederick Buechner
Isabel: Jewel of Castilla (The Royal Diaries) by Carolyn Meyer
The Master Quilter by Jennifer Chiverini (see above note)
May
The Passionate Brood by Margaret Campbell Barnes (another entry in the cheesy cover category)
Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin
The Founding by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
John by Cynthia Lennon
Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island by Laura Lee Hope
Looking for Mary (or The Blessed Virgin and Me) by Beverly Donofrio
The King's Grey Mare by Rosemary Hawley Jarman
Peony in Love by Lisa See
What Remains by Carole Radizwell
June
A New Earth by Eckhardt Tolle*
When Christ and his Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman (she's my second favorite fiction author after Barbara Kingsolver)
The Abortionist's Daughter by Elizabeth Hyde
The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory
In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason
The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Sernstad
Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky *
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
July
The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard
The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart
The Heroines by Eileen Favorite
The Barefoot Girl by Catherine Monroe
Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
Passage to Pontefract by Jean Plaidy (not only cheesy cover - but polyester, in Angevian England. So wrong)
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
August
The Condition by Jennifer Haigh*
Theodora Empress of Byzantium by Paolo Cesaretti
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brasheres
Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir
Circle of Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini
Royal Monastic: Princess Ileana of Romania by Bev Cooke
The Dark Rose by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Away by Amy Bloom (sadly, I was underwhelmed)
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh*
The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood
September
The Underneath by Kathi Appert
Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep
Sunshine and Shadow by Earlene Fowler
First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde (I want to be Thursday Next when I grow up)
The Canterbury Papers by Judith Knoll Healy
East of Eden by John Steinbeck*
The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander (absolutely amazing)
October
The Russian Concubine by Kate Furnivall (this was odd, it took about 200 pages to get going, I bet a lot of people give up on it)
A Breach of Promise by Anne Perry
Devil's Brood by Sharon Kay Penman
Guernica by Dave Boling (a local author, about the Basque people, which is my heritage, just lovely
Crazy Ladies by Michael Lee West*
Ekaterina by Susan K. Downs and Susan May Warren
November
Broken Dishes by Earlene Fowler (a lovely series of cozy mysteries)
Girls in Trouble by Caroline Leavitt (very interesting premise)
Sister Freaks: Stories of Women Who Gave Up Everything for God by Rebecca St. James
The Snow Fox by Susan Fromberg Schaffer
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein*
Fall of Constantinople by Steven Runciman
Seasons of Grace: Reflections on the Orthodox Church Year by Mat. Donna Farley (great essays)
The Shack by William Paul Young*
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
December
1215: The Year of the Magna Carta by Danny Danzieger and John Gillingham
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer (lovely)
Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
Mary Poppins by PL Travers (somehow I'd never read it before)
The First Seven Ecumenical Councils: Their History and Theology by Leo Donald Davis (while written from a Catholic perspective, this was very well done and made a potentially dry subject interesting)
Prince Caspian by CS Lewis
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller by Sarah Miller (this reminded me I should re-read Hellen Keller's autobiography)
Imperial Purple by Gillian Bradshaw
A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Minever by EL Kongigsburg (my favorite subject, Eleanor of Aquitaine)
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney
Rilla of Ingleside by LM Montgomery (these were the YA books I read during the snow days)
Crown in Candlelight by Rosemary Hawley Jarman (Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor)
Tatiana and Alexander by Paullina Simons (see above about her writing)
posted by Mimi @ 1/16/2009 07:00:00 PM
32 Comments
32 Comments:
you read 108 books in a year!!??
and I thought myself a consummate reader. no longer!! :)
I've read 16 of your books.
Loads of ideas for future reading on that list, thank you !!!
Good grief, Mimi! That's one book every 3.37 days!! What a fantastic list of books.
that's a lot of books for sure! :) Thanks so much for the recommendations!
Are the Bobbsey Twins still available?!?! They were my constant companions from about ages 4 through 10 (when I discovered Nancy Drew). I even think I remember that particular title! Wow.
And I am putting Let Us Attend at the top of my Amazon wish list. Thanks for so many good suggestions.
WOW! I wish I could read that much! I love to read and you have now encouraged me. Thanks for the list because it is somewhere for me to start. Have a good day!
awesome - I am going to use this to select some new books to read!
Mimi, what an accomplishment. I'm assuming you are a VERY fast reader. When do you do it? That is just amazing. I am so jealous. Congratulations and thanks for the recommendations.
Oh my, you've been busy. Thanks for listing all of these. I need to start keeping track of my lists...
I'm super impressed. That's amazing!
Hey, Mimi... are you on Facebook?
I was finally convinced to join last week, and I've been finding some of my blogging friends. It's been nice to have another connection with them.
If you are, look for my email: ajlrosov AT hotmail DOT com.
I'm not putting this on my own blog, because there are certain readers whom I don't want to know that I am there. IYKWIM.
Cheers! Alicia
Thanks, Mimi-- a lot of these books look great. I especially want to read "Let Us Attend."
I'm currently reading the Chronicles of Narnia... have never read them before. I'm loving it so far.
108 books! Oh. my. gosh.
You'll be glad to know that when Greg congratulated me on making my '08 goal of reading *20* books and asked if I knew anyone that had done any better, I correctly predicted that you would likely leave me in the dust.
I'm going to hold onto this list -- it looks priceless.
I'm going to have to track down The Romanov Bride; I loved The Kitchen Boy and I love reading about the Romanovs.
The Guernica book sounds good, too--I read one this year about the painting that was a history of the painting, the painter, the war, and the bombing all rolled into one short book. I think it was called Picasso's War.
Those McCall Smith books always amuse me, they are so NOT what I would think I would like and yet I always enjoy them. I read The Kalahari Typing School this year, too.
And I'm so happy you liked Rebecca--it almost makes up for your not liking GWTW! ;-)
you are amazing! some time in my life I'd like to read half as many in a year. thanks for the list too, so many times i go to the library and not have any idea of what to pick out. i trust your taste! :)
Wowzers! Go You! I don't think I read a single whole book this year... unless you count the 2008 Birnbaum's Guide to Walt Disney World! I've been more into magazine reading lately.
How do you do it??? No really, how do you do it?? It took me about 2 months to finish my most recent book.
WOW!! That's quite a bit of reading you got in! I love how you kept track of them all! I should try and do the same this year, though I highly doubt I'd read that many!
Thanks for the birthday wishes! God Bless!
What a great list....I totally agree with you on numerous ones: I am in the midst of Eat, Pray, Love and rarely don't finish a book, but I think this is going to be one of those AND I loved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, although it took me longer than usual to get through, it is something I keep going back to...I want to change my life like they did!
Also, did you watch Tess on Masterpiece Theatre last week? It was good, but so sad! I would change it, by making Angel come back from South America sooner and marry Tess. I love happy endings. (oh, what does it mean if it's underlined?)
I am so impressed I am giddy. I didn't manage a fraction of that.
Margi
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle sound interesting. Must look that one up!
I'm lucky to read an article in a magazine these days... I've started 4 books this year and haven't finished any of them! I didn't even know that Posie Graeme-Evans was an author... I do know she makes awesome TV shows and my kids love Hi5!!
OH MY! I always felt you were talented but 108 books, you have uber-talent...I can hardly start and finish 6 in a year...how do you find the time and still manage to respond to everyone in blogger world and facebook...you are my new hero ;)
Love the list of book ideas -- wonderful!
You are my hero!
I loved PS I Love you (book first, then movie). Cried the whole way through both.
Rebecca is GREAT. Did you know there was a movie about this, too? It's an oldie (black and white) but a goodie.
Thanks for the recommendations. I think I will have to hit the library soon. :)
Wow! I'm impressed! Thanks for another great book list! Hope all is well!
Victoria Blush. You are a consummate reader as well, I know.
Elizabeth – which 16?
Suzanne – my Dh did the same math. That’s probably why he is the math guy and I’m the reader
Alicia – the one I read was from the ones I read when I was little – someday I want to get the early version of Blueberry Island since I collect things with blueberries on them. I think they’ve been “cleaned up” for the newer generation, if you remember there was some very stereotypical diction in them.
I’m glad the lists offered some direction, Kat,
Karen and Alicia – I cannot rave about “Let Us Attend” enough.
Grace – that made me giggle.
Janelle – I loved Guernica. The book you mention sounds fantastic too. I think you probably match me bookwise, perhaps even beating me. I did like Rebecca.
Sue – giggle. I read a fair number of magazines too, but I did let Real Simple go this year.
Herman – I read every chance I get – Dh points out that it is my first thing to do, not last in a list. Also, I read fairly quickly, he’s more on the pace that you are.
Marfa – no, I missed the PBS version of Tess. I’d like to see it, as I did like the book (but depressing)
Margi! It is so fantastic to see you!
Tracey – I’d seen that she was an Australian producer. Your kids are little, when they grow I think you read more
Kelleylyn, blush. Thank you.
Mandy – I’d like to see the movie version of both PS. And Rebecca
Sylvia and Jessica – waves. Thank you!
I LOVE this, Mimi! How inspiring! We just started a book club in my neighborhood. I will definitely use your list as a future resource(right now we're reading Jane Austin's "Northanger Abbey")!
I think I had the original "Bobbsey Twins" books--they were my mother's (1930's). "Five Little Peppers" was one of my favorites as a kid.
What did you think of "Eat, Pray, Love"? I remember when I reviewed it you had just started.
And there's a new Tuesday Next book? How did I miss that?! :)
I have NO idea how you do this!
You work too, don't you and you have kids and a husband. Okay..what is the recipe? How many pages do you put away in say 30 min? Whew!
Very impressive!!
March - I did like "Eat, Pray, Love" I liked eat and love the best. I think in a lot of ways, and this may sound awful, forgive me, I wanted to tell her about Orthodoxy, because I think it's a framework she'd be able to plug some of her thoughts into that she hasn't considered. I didn't love it, but it was interesting.
And, yes, there's a new Thursday Next, it is fantastic.
Molly - I've not read that Austen book, I should.
And, Suzanne, it depends on the book, but I read a fair amount in 30 minutes if it is a quick read.
Thank you so much for mentioning my novel. I'm honored!
Caroline Leavitt
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