Wednesday, October 31, 2007

book choice

Stacey posted a very interesting question to ponder:
So, what does a book choice say about a person? Anything at all? Or everything?
My first reaction was that book choice says everything about a person, but then I decided that this wasn't always the case. If the book is for a reading group or challenge, it may not reflect an individual's choice, but rather a group decision or a specific subject matter. I have read several books for reading groups this year that I might have never selected. I liked some and disliked others.

If a person picked up a book they might not otherwise select based on another person's recommendation to simply see if they would also enjoy it, the selection would not be a reflection of them. The curiosity or willingness to try a different author or genre, however, would be a reflection of their personality. Do you think if you only seriously looking at the books a person liked you might get a clear picture of who they are or at least how their mind works? Or do you need to know the books they disliked too. And which of these gives the better picture of who you are?

If the books I always selected and liked were romance novels, what would that say about me? Alternately, because as many people know I intensely dislike romance novels and never read them, what does that say about me? In a book review I might say that a book was too much like a romance novel for me, and mean that in a negative sense, but for someone else that could be a clear indication that they might enjoy the book. Does that say something about me?

A person may pick up a book on a whim or because the topic is intriguing. Do the topics a person chooses reflect on their personality? Is there a difference between those who only read fiction or nonfiction? How about people who will read both? Is my willingness to easily go off on reading sprees about specific subjects (viruses and pirates this year) a good indication of an active, curious mind? Or is it an indication that I can easily become distracted and obsessed by different topics?

In the end, I think the books a person likes or dislikes would reflect more about their personality than simply book choice.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Chatham School Affair



The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook is an excellent mystery. It deserved the 1997 Edgar award. The Chatham School Affair was originally published in 1996. My hardcover copy is 292 pages.

In The Chatham School Affair, attorney Henry Griswald has a secret: the truth behind the tragic events the world knew as the Chatham School Affair. The novel is narrated by a mature Griswald years after the events unfolded. The controversial tragedy destroyed five lives, shattered a quiet community, and forever scarred Henry. Since this compelling mystery is revealed slowly, layer after layer, The tensions builds right at the start of the novel, with Miss Elizabeth Channing's arrival at the school as the new art teacher and Henry reads the quote from her father, "For life is best lived at the edge of Folly." It is a stunning portrait of a woman, a school, and a town in which passionate violence seems impossible…and inevitable.

From Amazon:
"In 1926 Henry Griswald was a kid, a student of the lovely and unusual Elizabeth Channing, who had recently arrived in his coastal Massachusetts village to teach art at a private school run by his father. Decades later, the people of Henry's village are still racked by guilt and troubled by uncertainty--who, or what, drove Miss Channing to madness and murder? Henry Griswald, narrator of The Chatham School Affair, holds the key. Using the same dark, brooding tone that permeated Breakheart Hill, Thomas Cook has crafted a disturbing yet entertaining psychological thriller. "


Quotes:

"It was then that I should have glimpsed it, I suppose, the fact that she had lived in many different worlds, that they now lived in her, strange and kaleidoscopic, her mind a play of scenes."

"It was more than I could bear. And so I wheeled around and walked back through the courtyard and down the central corridor of the building and then swiftly out of it, like someone in flight from a surging fire."

"She smiled... then spoke a line that life forever proves to be a lie, "Take as much as you want, Henry. There is plenty."

"I might have experienced love up close and through all its changing seasons, and by doing that, come to feel spring as something other than a cruel deception, winter the dreadful truth of things."

" Life is inadequate, Henry... Sometimes the most we can give, or get, is trust."

"I thought of the line in Mr. Channing's book - Life is best lived at the edge of folly - and suddenly it seemed to me that of all the reckless, ill-considered lies I'd ever heard, this was the deepest, the gravest, the most designed to lead us to destruction."

The Chatham School Affair is an excellent mystery and I highly recommend it.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is ok - I enjoyed it but I don't think I'd recommend it. It was certainly one of the better books I've read for this October, but October has been a disappointing month. The Lovely Bones was originally published in July 2002 and my paperback copy is 328 pages

"On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue."

The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings. --Brad Thomas Parsons --"

As some reviewers have noted, The Lovely Bones does start out with a strong beginning and has a comparatively weak ending. It also requires you to believe in the heaven Sebold has created, which is not a place where God is even mentioned. It is a sort of place that you customize to fit your likes and dislikes. A make it your own heaven kind of place. In some ways, The Lovely Bones strikes me more as a teen book and largely based on the way Susie's heaven is described. That may be what makes this a so-so book for me.

quotes:
"He nodded seriously and kissed my father's cheek. Something so divine that no one up in heaven could have made it up; the care a child took with an adult."

"Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained."

"His devotion to me had made me know again and again that I had been beloved. In the warm light of my father's love I had remained Susie Salmon - a girl with my whole in front of me."

Monday, October 22, 2007

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I did not enjoy Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke at all. It was originally published in 2004. My paperback copy has 1006 pages.

As written by one Amazon reviewer, "I really enjoyed the author's subtle wit through out the story, but I think I would have enjoyed it much more if the book weighed in at 250 pages rather than 1000. I even found myself struggling to finish the book even though I had a 10 hour lay over in an airport."

Since I didn't have a lay over ahead of me that forced me to finish, I finally even gave up skimming through the book at about page 600. At the beginning of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell I took note of several well written passages. Once I threw in the towel, or rather tossed the paperback aside, I decided that even noting well written passages was no longer worth my time. When you hear someone say Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell could be by Tolkien, don't believe it for a second. I've read and reread Tolkien for years and never been bored with it. This is not recommended.

From Amazon.com
"It's 1808 and that Corsican upstart Napoleon is battering the English army and navy. Enter Mr. Norrell, a fusty but ambitious scholar from the Yorkshire countryside and the first practical magician in hundreds of years. What better way to demonstrate his revival of British magic than to change the course of the Napoleonic wars? Susanna Clarke's ingenious first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, has the cleverness and lightness of touch of the Harry Potter series, but is less a fairy tale of good versus evil than a fantastic comedy of manners, complete with elaborate false footnotes, occasional period spellings, and a dense, lively mythology teeming beneath the narrative. Mr. Norrell moves to London to establish his influence in government circles, devising such powerful illusions as an 11-day blockade of French ports by English ships fabricated from rainwater. But however skillful his magic, his vanity provides an Achilles heel, and the differing ambitions of his more glamorous apprentice, Jonathan Strange, threaten to topple all that Mr. Norrell has achieved. A sparkling debut from Susanna Clarke--and it's not all fairy dust. --Regina Marler --"

Friday, October 19, 2007

The Baby Steps Challenge



I'm going to participate in the Nattie Challenge called The Baby Steps Challenge.
The three books I will read are:
The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver
The Chatham School Affair by Thomas Cook
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Monday, October 15, 2007

Pink Casio


Casio and 5 Minutes for Mom is offering a pink camera to help support breast cancer awareness: "The special-edition pink EX-Z75 will be available beginning October 2007 and can be purchased at Sears, La Curacao, Fred Meyer, BJ’s, Nexcom, AAFES, Staples, and Future Shop. The bundle package will have an MSRP of $179.99, and will proudly sponsor the National Breast Cancer Foundation. For more information, please visit www.casiousa.com."

Remember to visit the National Breast Cancer Foundation and the Breast Cancer Site for more information about how you can help promote awareness.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Fifty Acres and a Poodle

Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm by Jeanne Marie Laskas is a wonderful, heartwarming story of a couple who fall in love with the idea of owning a farm before they understand the reality of owning a farm. Fifty Acres and a Poodle was originally published in October 2000. My hardcover copy is 272 pages. It really is a humorous, delightful story. Laskas even discusses some very serious problems with grace and wit. This was the perfect book to read and I'm planning to look for more of Laskas' books. I would highly recommend Fifty Acres and a Poodle.
"Jeanne Marie Laskas is 37, with a house, garden, dog, cat, flourishing writing career--all of the perfect ingredients, in fact, of a happy city-person's life--when a childhood dream resurfaces. It is a farm dream, this "song I couldn't get out of my head," and it would make more sense, she ruefully admits, if she were "at least the farm dream type. A person with some deep personal longing to churn butter." But not Laskas. She likes malls. She eats Lean Cuisine. She believes "very deeply in the power of air conditioning, microwave ovens, and very many things you plug in." Nonetheless, she spends weekends on make-believe "farm shopping" excursions with her boyfriend, Alex, who is another city person, a shrink and the owner of an honest-to-goodness poodle--a farm dream disqualifier, if ever there were one. Then, one summer afternoon, the perfect place appears, and it's very real: fifty acres, a pond, an Amish barn, and a magnificent view out over the rolling hills of Pennsylvania's Washington County. They fall in love. They buy the farm. Goodbye, city-person life.

But the scenery with which they fell in love is not quite like the scenery in postcards. Things need to be done to it, and all of these things involve buying and learning how to use different kinds of tractor attachments. And then there are the neighbors: the sheep farmer who shoots dogs, the curious proliferation of Joe Crowleys, everywhere the hunters. ("Congratulations on your ... dead deer," is all Alex can think to say to them.) Over the year that follows, the two city slickers find out a great deal about livestock, tractor attachments, and themselves; all of which is related in Laskas's funny, warm, conversational style. As she leaves behind her ordered, interior world for one that's gorgeously, chaotically exterior, Fifty Acres and a Poodle becomes much more than just a book about learning to live in the country; it is, in fact, a book about learning to live--dead groundhogs, emotional messes, and all. You don't need your own farm dream to fall in love with this witty and winning memoir, but it wouldn't hurt to look through the real estate pages, just in case. --Mary Park --"

Quotes:
"Thank God for writing. It was a way of getting all the inward stuff out. It was like installing a ventilation system, a link of fans blowing through ductwork, releasing emotion and thought to the wind."

"Yes, I know. I practice saying that, too: 'My boyfriend is a shrink.' When I'm feeling very courageous I practice saying the whole thing: 'I am in love with a shrink with a pet poodle.' Whew. You never know where you're going to end up."

"See, now, I never knew tractors even had attachments. I mean, I never really thought about it. To me, a farm tractor is a thing you see in the distance when you are on the Turnpike going somewhere, and it is out there on those fields doing very important farm things. That a tractor is made up of parts - attachments and levers and hydraulic-powered thises and thats - was not in my consciousness."

"Most of the pickups appear to be hauling nothing, leading me to wonder why, exactly, people have pickups."

"And anyway, when I get anxious, I buy electronics. Stereos or speakers or computers or little hand-held gizmos that store phone numbers. Electronics calm me down. The more complicated, the better. When the world feels like too much, when friends are betraying you or family is all worked up... there's nothing like installing a new hard drive in your computer to calm you down...Electronic things offer the most concrete opportunity I know of taming chaos."

"I pull out my cell phone. I have to call Alex, I have to tell him that Wal-Mart is so much nicer than Kmart... I am becoming a person who appreciates Wal-Mart."

"Is this really in line with my values? Do I really want to be a person who has access to five hundred million thousand TV channels? Well, yes."

"Sheep, I am told, are stupid. I'm not sure why this matters, but every time we tell someone around here that we're thinking of putting sheep on these fields, we get the same response: Sheep are stupid." (My own father will drive by a field of sheep and mutter loudly, "Stupid sheep.")

Monday, October 8, 2007

Product

Do you ever buy those peanut butter kisses in the orange and black wrappers that are found this time of the year? I usually pick up a bag every year. My children liked them, but for a unconventional reason. The kids diligently saved all orange and black wrappers, taking them from the trash if necessary. They took those waxen wrapping papers and made Product.

In the early years of making Product they chewed up the wrappers and then laid them out flat to dry. After receiving several consumer complaints, the Product was washed after the chewing but prior to the drying. Eventually, when modern standards were adopted, they actually washed the Product with soap and then rinsed it. Later on the operation expanded and they began to fully utilize mass production techniques. They were limited only by the amount of raw material available. When the production of Product reached its peak, the entire workforce was continuously chewing wrappers. While one half was washing the wrappers with soap, the other half was rinsing them. Product was set out to dry where ever they could find available room.

This continued for several seasons; they were determined to persevere despite the distinct lack of demand for Product.

In the later years of the project, an R&D branch was formed. Amongst the many goals of this branch was the search for a more plentiful source of raw materials. Salt water taffy wrappers were an option, but they often tore when removing the taffy and they were difficult to clean. The properties of everything from post-it-notes to paper towels to legal tablets to toilet paper were carefully studied, but nothing but the original orange and black waxed paper wrappers could meet the exacting criteria of the R&D research branch.

In the final years the production of Product lessened dramatically. R&D began to veer off their original course and focused all their efforts on discovering the optimal combination of shape and materials in an attempt to dominate the black market demand for spitwads and spitwad shooters. This marked the end of their production of Product.

Today one can still find remnants of this era when Product dominated a market.

Every year, when I buy a bag of peanut butter kisses I can't help but ask Wonder Boy and Just Me if there has been a resurgence in the demand for the raw materials to make Product.

Edited to add:

I need to clarify exactly what is "Product". I should have more succinctly explained that Product, in fact, was the chewed and flattened (later washed) black or orange wrappers from peanut butter kisses. We had stacks of finished Product sitting around. To this day if any of us refers to Product we all immediately picture those chewed washed black and orange wrappers. It is too bad there was never a market for it. There was never a market for the pre-made spit wads either.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

I truly disliked The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. One could even say I hated it. I tried to like it, diligently reading until about page 250; then I skimmed through it to the end. Don't ask me how The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990. Personally, I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone. I need a good book after this one. This was akin to a week of torture between personal happenings and trying to read this book. Originally published in 1989, my soft cover copy was 407 pages. If you are part of the group reading all the Pulitzer Prize winners I can give you a great deal on this one. Be forewarned it reads like light porn, not that I read porn, but that's how it struck me. This may be in line for the worst read of 2007, although the writing itself is much better than the other contender.

From Amazon:
"The Mambo Kings are two brothers, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, Cuban-born musicians who emigrate to New York City in 1949. They form a band and enjoy modest success, playing dance halls, nightclubs and quince parties in New York's Latin neighborhoods. Their popularity peaks in 1956 with a guest appearance on the I Love Lucy show, playing Ricky Ricardo's Cuban cousins and performing their only hit song in a bittersweet event that both frames the novel and serves as its emblematic heart. Hijuelos's first novel, Our House in the Last World , was justly praised for its tender vignettes of emigre Cuban life; here, he tells of the triumphs and tragedies that befall two men blessed with gigantic appetites and profoundly melancholic hearts--Cesar, the elder, and the bandleader, committed to the pursuit of life's pleasures, and Nestor, he of the "dark, soulful countenance," forever plunging through a dark, Latin gloom. In a performance that deepens the canon of American ethnic literature, Hijuelos evokes, by day, a New York of crowded Harlem apartments made cheery by Cuban hospitality, and by night, a raucous club scene of stiletto heels and waxy pompadours--all set against a backdrop of a square, 1950s America that thinks worldliness means knowing the cha-cha. With an unerring ear for period idioms ("Hello you big lug") and a comic generosity that renders even Cesar's sexual bravado forgivable if not quite believable, Hijuelos has depicted a world as enchanting (yet much closer to home) as that in Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera . The lyricism of Hijuelos's language is wonderfully restrained, conveying with equal facility ribald comedy and heartfelt pathos. Despite a questionable choice of narrative conceit (Cesar recollects the novel from a seedy "Hotel Splendour" in 1980), Hijuelos's pure storytelling skills commission every incident with a life and breath of its own. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc."

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Wednesday checker

Just Me has informed me that I need to tell the whole story, or at least more of it, in order to fully convey why the Wednesday checker was creepy and we won't be BFF, so here goes.

When I got in line, I had a young mother with a tired toddler in front of me. The checker was talking to the young girl, getting her to smile. Then the little girl waved bye-bye to me and I said, "Bye-bye!" to her.
The checker turned to me, as I was unloading my cart, and said, "I just love the little ones!"
I said something along the lines of, "Oh yes, she was a cute little girl. Mine are all grown up now so we're waiting for grandkids."
The checker said, "Oh! You don't look old enough to have grown children."
I said something like, "Just don't look too closely then because I do indeed look old enough!"
The checker insisted that I looked too young. This was the first hint of creepy.

I do indeed look old enough to have a 19 and 17 yr. old because we didn't even have kids until I was almost 30. My 30th high school reunion just happened. I have no doubts that I, a short, fat, graying woman in her late 40's, look old enough to have grown kids. I look old enough to have grandkids. The checker looked old enough to have grandkids too.

As I was unloading the cart she kept chatting away to me. I am also old enough to totally forget large chunks of the decidedly odd conversation, but I clearly though the woman was loony at the time. Another part toward the end of the encounter stuck in my mind. She said my haircut was so cute, just perfect for my face. Then she wanted to know where I got it cut. I couldn't remember the name of the place and at this point my groceries were bagged up and I was ready to go, but she just kept talking about how she needed to go get her hair cut.

I sputtered that it was a place over by Target and Pier 1. The young woman at the check out next to us wasn't busy and was listening in to this rather one sided conversation. She said the name of the place.

I was still trying to be polite, but anxious to get my groceries out to the car at this point. It was time to stop talking and I tried to give her all the clues that I was leaving. She told me all the "Always come to my checkout line! I enjoyed talking to you! It'll be nice to see you again!" line as I started rolling the cart off.

It was creepy. I knew it was creepy when it was happening. I trust my instincts with people because I usually have discernment in that area. It was creepy enough to avoid the store on slow Wednesdays and blend in with the scooter traffic on Thursdays.

counter

I've added a StatCounter today.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

shopping on Thursdays

Where ever we live, I always settle down to one a day of the week when I run errands and do shopping. I've found my shopping day of the week here in KS is tending to be Thursdays. It suits our schedule. There is one little issue with Thursdays, though, it's also, apparently, the day the senior citizens go shopping at the grocery store I prefer.

The first time I shopped on Thursdays, I was very surprised to see all the seniors shopping; all the very elderly seniors. The produce department was akin to gridlock during rush hour. (They always have a great low price on bananas on Thursdays.) Just getting a place in line to reach the peaches was a lesson in patience. Having the three women who were ahead of me suddenly start chatting about some event extended my wait even more. Scooter traffic was moving slowly down the center of the aisles. Elderly couples are shopping together, many of them dressed carefully for the outing with some men even wearing suit coats. Frequently these couples need to stop and discuss the produce, how it looks, the price, how many plums they want for the week, and where the plums were grown. The whole store was like that and I decided that I would avoid Thursdays at all costs and try fitting Wednesdays into my schedule.

I tried Wednesdays thinking that a less crowded store might be better than the senior clogged aisles on Thursday mornings. Wednesdays were OK, but with a slower day came other issues. That seems to be the day to train new people on the registers. With new people often come errors. There were fewer check out lanes open. I might have stuck with Wednesdays but for the overly friendly checker.

I would guess that the overly friendly checker was a woman who was only a few years older than me, so she was firmly in her fifties. She creeped me out. I am always very nice and polite to sales people and those who stand at the registers scanning my purchases. This doesn't mean, however, that I want to be their best buddy. It's all business. I'll be polite and friendly, but it's only to make the business at hand, buying groceries, go smoothly. The overly friendly checker seemed to think that we were destined to be BFF. The store wasn't busy at all, so she kept chatting with me. As I was finally trying to leave she extolled me to "Always come to my checkout line! I enjoyed talking to you! It'll be nice to see you again!"

That's when I switched back to Thursdays. The store is busy, crowded, full of slow moving seniors in cart and scooter gridlock, and all check out lines are operating. Even if the overly friendly checker is working, she's too busy to see me and I can easily find another checkout lane. Shopping on senior citizen day is growing on me. In a few short years I can get an AARP card myself, but for right now I am young among the crowd on Thursdays. I don't mind patiently waiting for my turn to look at the produce on sale. It is a lesson in taking life at a slower pace, and getting bananas for .19/lbs.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

just me

Did you see Just Me's ears?
She's up to 3 holes now.

106 books

These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and underline those on your tbr list. (slightly edited - from 3M)

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex

Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales

The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible

1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Fang

Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers