Heather's One Hundred

Discussão100 Books in 2009 Challenge

Entre no LibraryThing para poder publicar.

Heather's One Hundred

Este tópico está presentemente marcado como "inativo" —a última mensagem tem mais de 90 dias. Reative o tópico publicando uma resposta.

1heatherm
Jan 4, 2009, 2:25 pm

I suspect making it to one hundred will be easier to accomplish than my other goals of reducing the TBR stack and decreasing the amount of brain candy.

2heatherm
Editado: Jan 4, 2009, 2:38 pm

1. Ian McEwan - Atonement

No strong reaction one way or the other.

2. Marguerite Abouet - Aya

I've read this series backwards and this volume strikes me as less comic than the second volume. Both are beautifully drawn accounts of what it meant to be a young woman in the 1970s in Cote d'Ivoire.

3heatherm
Jan 5, 2009, 5:48 pm

3. David Eggers - Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Amazing in its command of the long shaggy sentence.

4heatherm
Editado: Mar 28, 2009, 2:59 pm

Totally derailed by day gig this month so I've made very slow progress.

4. M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation

Enjoyed the echos of eighteenth-century educational experiments though I suspect Anderson's read Rousseau's Emile but not Edgeworth's Belinda.

5. Shena MacKay's Heligoland

I hadn't read any MacKay before but I enjoyed this novel which satirizes domestic experiments and celebrates the difficulty and pleasure of making a home. Must hunt out another MacKay.

6. Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in audio book form.

I remember bits and pieces of the radio shows and am glad to be listening to the book rather than reading it. If I were reading it, I'd be racing through it and probably wouldn't have noticed how carefully crafted his sentences are.

5heatherm
Editado: Jan 31, 2009, 12:13 pm

7. Arthur Motyer's What's Remembered

Picked this one up because Motyer taught at the university I went to and I knew many of the people who studied theatre with him. A middling novel cast as a spoken memoir of what it meant to be a closeted university instructor shuttling back and forth between Canada and England in years before AIDS wrought so much destruction.

8. Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites

Surprised by the tonal echoes of Adams and glad for something silly to read.

6heatherm
Fev 1, 2009, 2:45 pm

9. Manda Scott's Hen's Teeth

Tartan noir: A new writer to me but entertaining enough to merit hunting out another of her books.

10. Mavis Gallant's From the Fifteenth District

Amazing but always with a centre of loss.

7heatherm
Fev 8, 2009, 8:31 pm

11. The Best American Comics 2006

12. Dennis Lehane's The Given Day

Essentially a historical romance and oddly reminiscent of Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees. Baseball subplot seems grafted on. On the whole: disappointing.

8heatherm
Fev 15, 2009, 7:22 pm

13. Eric Garcia's Casual Rex

Amusing conceit but rather spoiled for me by flawed editing in the closing chapters and the odd absence of herbivores.

14. Manda Scott's Stronger Than Death

9heatherm
Fev 16, 2009, 2:15 pm

15. Sue Halpern's Can't Remember What I Forgot

Clear, accessible, well-written summary of current research about memory loss without an emphasis on the devastation of living with memory loss.

10heatherm
Fev 22, 2009, 4:39 pm

16. Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe (audio book)

I enjoyed this one less than the first in the series, primarily because of the reader's voice.

17. Terry Pratchett's Nation

A Robinsonade in defense of rational thinking. Echoes of Joan Aiken. Not one of Pratchett's better books.

18. Sam Gosling Snoop

Amusing with a strong whiff of the superficial.

11heatherm
Mar 4, 2009, 5:09 pm

19. Marilynne Robinson's Home

12heatherm
Editado: Abr 19, 2009, 1:16 pm

20. Mo Hayder's Ritual. Disappointing. Strong whiff of racism.

21. Michael Connolly's Brass Verdict. Competent verging on prosaic.

13heatherm
Editado: Abr 19, 2009, 1:16 pm

22. Jason Lutes' Berlin: City of Stones

23. Jason Lutes' Berlin: City of Smoke

24. Pagan Kennedy's The First Man-Made Man

25. Amy Bloom's Normal

26. Carol O'Connell's Bone by Bone

14heatherm
Editado: Abr 19, 2009, 1:17 pm

It's an odd year: I'm taking a lot of books back to the library unfinished.

27. P. D. James - Private Patient. Disappointing

28. Terry Prachett - Truckers

29. Terry Pratchett - Diggers

15heatherm
Abr 19, 2009, 1:24 pm

Another week of taking books back unfinished, most notable among them O'Neill's Netherland.

30. Michael Blouin's Chase and Haven

31. Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything (audio book)

16heatherm
Abr 20, 2009, 7:37 pm

32. Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors

33. Muriel Spark's Loitering With Intent
Odd: not sure what to make of the narrator. Somehow reminds me of Hogg's Justified Sinner.

34. Mariko Tamaki's Cover Me

This reworks some of the ground covered in graphic novels Emiko Superstar and Skim

17heatherm
Abr 26, 2009, 1:16 pm

35. Ariel Schrag's Potential

36. Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End

Now I need to read her earlier work.

18heatherm
Maio 3, 2009, 4:40 pm

37. Terry Pratchett's Wings

Not as amusing as the first in the triology. But it's a triology so I had to read it. Right?

38. Francine Prose's Primitive People

Ambivalent about this one--mostly because I disliked many of the main characters and didn't get past it.

39. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Enjoyable. I got the most pleasure from Ellen Forney's illustrations. The older I get, the more I like books with pictures.

19heatherm
Maio 15, 2009, 8:48 am

40. Haruki Murakami - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (audio book)

41. Lucy Knisley - French Milk

42. Lee Child - Nothing to Lose

43. Erika Moen - Dar: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary

20heatherm
Maio 17, 2009, 9:49 pm

44. Pratchett's Dark Side of the Sun

Even though this on the short side for a Pratchett novel it took me weeks to finish--oddly boring.

45. Christopher Brookmyre's Snowball in Hell

Not as funny as his earlier Scottish mysteries but still worth the escapist read.

21heatherm
Maio 18, 2009, 4:48 pm

46. Rose Tremain's The Road Home

I liked this even though I suspect it paints a too rosy view of Eastern European migrant workers.

22heatherm
Maio 22, 2009, 8:42 pm

47. Kate Beaton Never Learn Anything From History

Lots of giggles: I like the combination of history plus Cape Breton sarcasm.

48. Adrian Tomine Shortcomings

49. David Bergen Year of Lesser

This novel will probably end up in my top ten of the year. I hadn't realized it was Bergen's first novel: the narrative control and fluidity is surprising in a first novel. It's in my re-read pile and I think I'd juxapose it with Mariylnne Robinson's Gilead.

23heatherm
Editado: Jun 26, 2009, 2:17 pm

50. Tom McEwen - He Wrote for Us

51. Bernard Beckett - Genesis

52. Stieg Larsson - Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

53. Miriam Libicki - Jewish Memoir Goes Zap, Pow, Oy

54. Gillian Flynn - Dark Places

24heatherm
Jun 28, 2009, 9:02 am

55. Hitori Nakano - Densha Otoko

56. Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers

25jfetting
Jun 29, 2009, 9:58 am

How was Dark Places? I'm excited to read it - I really enjoyed Sharp Objects.

26heatherm
Jul 1, 2009, 4:52 pm

I quite liked it. Flynn does a good job with characterization and with the manipulation of multiple narrators and multiple timeframes. Before getting caught up in the plot I was taken with a number of unxpectedly beautiful sentences. She does description very well -- so well that at one, non-horror, non-mystery plot moment, she triggered my gag reflect.

The mysteries are well handled and not quickly guessable--I don't mind guessing the ending 30 pages in to a mystery but I'd rather not. I've added Sharp Objects to my-look-for list.

27heatherm
Jul 1, 2009, 5:05 pm

Some of the pressure in my day job is lightening up and I'm actually getting time (and inclination) to read again. At long last.

57. Val McDermid - A Darker Domain

A new protagonist for McDermid and while the self-conscious fat jokes are a little tiring, this was a pleasant change from the serial killer pattern she's been working through. Workmanlike.

58. Jason Shiga - Bookhunter

I picked this up at TCAF in early May and gulped the whole thing down and want to re-read it in a couple of days. The conceit of apply police procedural genre moves to book theft is amusing enough. What makes it particular amusing to me is it's setting in 1974 and the drawings and role played by mainframe computers, low baud rate modems, and telephony. Don't know many comics that can work in trunk calls.

59. Tash Aw - Map of the Invisible World

I need to think this one over a bit. I gulped it down and happily consulted an atlas to get a sense of Indonesian geography. But. I suspect it's not as strong as his first novel and there's something too happy-endingish about the conclusion.

28heatherm
Jul 31, 2009, 8:23 pm

60. Michael Connolly - The Scarecrow

61. Sarah Waters - Little Stranger

62. Jean Ewen - China Nurse

63. Sonya Grypma - Healing Henan: Canadian Nurses at the North China Mission, 1888-1947

64. Steig Larsson - The Girl Who Played With Fire

29heatherm
Set 6, 2009, 11:28 am

I'm having a hard time this summer. Time that normally would go into reading is going into work or thinking about work. Downtime reading is not wildly impressive.

65. Kathy Reichs - 206 Bones

66. Faye Kellerman - The Burnt House

Both of these were disappointing.

67. Ellen Lupton - Indie publishing

This is a quick high level survey of publishing basics. As with all of Lupton's books, well designed even if the cover doesn't withstand the library's use of masking tape.

68. C. Tyler - You'll never know: A good and decent man

A graphic memoir well worth reading.

69. Diana Athill - Stet

I didn't find this one as compelling as Somewhere towards the end but this memoir of mid-century English publishing held my attention over a couple of evenings. And that's no small thing these days.

30heatherm
Set 23, 2009, 10:12 am

70. Meredith Farkas - Social Software in Libraries

Useful survey.

71. Jeff Rubin - Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller

Read like an over-expanded article. Useful connections none the less.

72. Colm Toibin - Brooklyn

Likely to be one of my top-ten books of the year.

73. Terry Pratchett - Jingo

Much needed comic relief.

31heatherm
Out 3, 2009, 10:32 am

74. Alan Moore - The Watchmen

Didn't do it for me -- a combination of the colouring, the text, and the plot.

75. Laurence Hill - The Book of Negroes

A galloping read but ultimately the wish fulfillment aspects (unlikely reunions and safety) trouble. I'd recommend one of Hill's source books--Walker's The Black loyalists: the search for a promised land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870--for information about much of the historical record and Toni Morrison's A Mercy for another view of the painful complexities of an enslaved life in the Americas.

76. Candida Rifkind - Comrades and Critics

32heatherm
Out 12, 2009, 10:14 am

77. Alice Munro - Too Much Happiness

78. Diane Obomsawin - Kaspar

33heatherm
Out 19, 2009, 12:05 pm

79. David Kessler - The End of Overeating

Another book that felt like an over-expanding magazine piece.

80. David Isles - Blood Memory

Awful.

81. Liza Tuttle - The Mysteries

Fantasy isn't my thing but this cross over detective/fantasy was interesting enough especially in contrast with the Isles.

34heatherm
Out 27, 2009, 10:15 am

82. Michelle Tea - Valencia

83. Declan Hughes - Wrong Kind of Blood

84. Pema Chodron - Taking the Leap

35heatherm
Nov 4, 2009, 10:52 am

85. Bill Waiser - All Hell Can't Stop Us

Thought it was time I learned more about this given that the 75th anniversary is around the corner. This is a clear, well-documented account.

86. Binnie Kirshenbaum - Hester Among the Ruins

36heatherm
Nov 21, 2009, 12:14 pm

87. Gwyneth Jones - White Queen

88. Amy Knight - How the Cold War Began

89. David Weinberger - Everything is Miscellaneous

90. Lauren Kessler - Clever Girl

37heatherm
Nov 26, 2009, 12:53 pm

91. Terry Prachett - Unseen Academicals

92. Shauna Cross - Derby Girl
Interesting to see that the movie Whip It had a stronger character development and plot (especially the last quarter) than the YA novel it was based on.

38heatherm
Editado: Dez 7, 2009, 4:28 pm

93. Chris Ware - Acme Novelty Library 16

94. Rebecca Kraatz - House of Sugar

95. Peter Morville - Ambient Findability

96. Zoe Whittall - Holding Still for As Long as Possible

39heatherm
Dez 13, 2009, 8:55 pm

97. David Mazzucchelli - Asterios Polyp

98. Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall

99. Merrily Weisbord - The Strangest Dream

40heatherm
Editado: Dez 31, 2009, 11:12 am

100. Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

101. Marguerite About - Aya: The Secrets Come Out

102. Harvey Pekar - The Beats

41heatherm
Dez 31, 2009, 11:12 am