Almost 200 years but still so good

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

What I can I say...she was an incredible writer

As for the ending...I am with Anna Quindlen...the ending came too soon!

The Science of a Really Bad Day

Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day by Peter J. Bentley

Great book..."the science of a really bad day"

If you love short stories

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories by Kevin Wilson

In Kevin Wilson's first collection of short stories-characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. I am not sure I think of this as Southern Gothic...but then I don't think you have to fit writing into "genres"...only if your a book store

"Grand Stand-In" is narrated by an employee of a Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider—a company that supplies "stand-ins" for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in "Blowing Up On the Spot," a young man works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after his parents have spontaneously combusted.

"Tunneling to the Center of the Earth"...the narrator laments that no one told him that a college degree should lead to employment if he had known that would he have majored in Morse Code (is this a long labored sentence)

After graduation he and two friends spend the summer digging tunnels under the small town where his parents live

Or the Worst case scenario company...that will model for you worst that can happen

"Birds in the house"-dysfunctional family constructs 1000 origami birds to decide who inherits...four sons of a father who owned exploding cows

“The Dead Sister Handbook: A Guide for Sensitive Boys” an experimental story about how you handle the death of an older sister-especially one that have practiced kissing

“The Shooting Man” the narrator can not resist seeing a traveling "circus" where a man shoots himself in the face and blows off the top of his head...the next night does it again...hm

“Mortal Kombat” one the strongest stories about a different explosion two "nerd/geeks" explore their sexuality and play Mortal Kombat...

So far in the 21th century

Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat by Adam Langer

This has it all...real estate boom in New York, hippie parents, rich WASP parents, rich, poor, self-absorbed, a great dog, a clarinet, endless jazz references, did I mention the real estate boom, gentrification, the suburbs, off-off Broadway, a great dog...did I mention the dog
Almost as good as the dog in The Art of Racing in the Rain
If you missed it the conversion of a "rent-controlled apartment" a jazz musician...A-flat

If you like fiction that doesn't fit its "genre" easily...

Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price

Gritty down in the streets "police procedural" mystery from one of the writers of The Wire
Randomness of police/detective work
Unreliability of eye witnesses
Are all "cops" divorced?

Why we love the Irish

Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright


One of the finest contemporary writers

If you love short stories

The Knife Thrower by Steven Millhauser

His stories...well you have to read them

Poetry about love

Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni


Terrific poetry examples-
From I want a shoe
"It shouldn't cost too much
Because I am
After all
Just a poet
thinking way outside
the box"
From-Letting the air out

"This is not
a country song
I am not
a Dixie chick
...I don't have
a pickup truck
I don't do
roadkill
My hair isn't 'big'
There's no breast implants
...We're not going anywhere
Thank God
for Monday Night
Football"

Short stories-In my progress of writing: poetry, short stories, novels

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Most compelling a collection of eight wonderful stories...powerful stories of complex emotions, relationships, secrets...life?

Coning of age in the 1980s

Crossing California by Adam Langer

Thanks to "Pearl's Picks" for this book. She recommended this book. I always cringe at the phrase "coming of age", however, this is one of those books. Coming of age in Chicago in the 1980s, being Black or Jewish, mostly Jewish. It is great book. California of course, is a street a dividing line (i.e., the "tracks") between the world of the "haves" and the "have nots".

The 2009 - 100+ Reading Challenge the 1st 100

Number	Title/Author
1	Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library - Don Borchert
2	This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation - Barbara Ehrenreich
3	Homestead - Rosina Lippi
4	Persepolis 1: The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi
5	Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism - Kevin Phillips
6	St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised Wolves: Stories - Karen Russell
7	Most of It - Mary Ruefle
8	Smile As They Bow - Nu Nu Yi
9	That Little Something: Poems - Charles Simic
10	Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia - Ahmed Rashid
11	The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley
12	Personal Days: A Novel - Ed Park
13	Maps and Legends - Michael Chabon
14	Willful Creatures - Aimee Bender
15	Locas: A Love & Rockets Book - Jaime Hernandez
16	The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories - Aimee Bender
17	The English Major - Jim Harrison
18	All Souls - Christine Schutt
19	Fables: Legends in Exile - Volume 1 - Bill Willingham
20	Magic for Beginners - Kelly Link
21	Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
22	Tender As Hellfire - Joe Meno
23	Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
24	The Digital Plague (Avery Cates) - Jeff Somers
25	The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
26	Feminine Gospels: Poems - Carol Ann Duffy
27	I See You Everywhere - Julia Glass
28	The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead - David Shields
29	The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
30	Demons in the Spring - Joe Meno
31	F.D.R.: The First Hundred Days - Anthony J. Badger
32	Home: A Novel - Marilynne Robinson
33	The Parrot Who Thought She Was a Dog - Nancy Ellis-Bell
34	Tamara Drewe - Posy Simmonds
35	Knockemstiff - Donald Ray Pollock
36	The Forever War - Dexter Filkins
37	The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
38	Seven Notebooks: Poems - Campbell McGrath
39	The Best American Poetry 2008 (Best American Poetry) - Charles Wright
40	Ghost Radio: A Novel - Leopoldo Gout
41	Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood - Mark Harris
42	The Glass Palace: A Novel - Amitav Ghosh
43	The Only Window That Counts - Deborah Keenan
44	Native Guard - Natasha Trethewey
45	A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats - Spike Carlsen
46	God's Silence - Franz Wright
47	Lunch (Wesleyan Poetry) - D. A. Powell
48	Mosquito: Poems (A Tin House New Voice) - Alex Lemon
49	Bellocq's Ophelia: Poems - Natasha Trethewey
50	A Day and a Night and a Day: A Novel - Glen Duncan
51	Wanda Gag - Audur H. Winnan
52	Kingdoms - Deborah Keenan
53	Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
54	Germania: A Novel - Brendan McNally
55	Sleeping Beauties - Susanna Moore
56	The Heretic Hotels - Nolan Zavoral
57	Songs for the Missing - Stewart O'Nan
58	Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
59	First Person and Other Stories - Ali Smith
60	The Black Diamond Detective Agency - Eddie Campbell
61	Sway - Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
62	in the penny arcade - Steven Millhauser
63	Yesterday's Weather - Anne Enright
64	Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynn Truss
65	The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You - Neil Gaiman
66	House of Music - Suzanne Swanson
67	The Numbers Game - Michael Blastland
68	French Milk - Lucy Knisley
69	The Whiteness of Bones - Susanna Moore
70	The Latehomecomer - Kap Yang
71	Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
72	Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
73	Innocent - Ian McEwan
74	Alec: After The Snooter - eddie campbell
75	The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe, 1945-William I. Hitchcock
76	The Strange Hours Travelers Keep: Poems - August Kleinzahler
77	The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan - Gregory Feifer
78	Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking - Aoibheann Sweeney
79	An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories: Volume 2 - Ivan Brunetti
80	Edge in the Kitchen, An: The Ultimate Guide to Kitchen Knives How to Buy Them, Keep Them Razor Sharp, and Use Them Like a Pro - Chad Ward
81	From a Crooked Rib - Nuruddin Farah
82	The Knife Thrower - Steven Millhauser
83	To Siberia - Per Petterson
84	Classics for Pleasure - Michael Dirda
85	Charming Billy - Alice McDermott
86	The Cure for Modern Life: A Novel - Lisa Tucker
87	A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East--from the Cold War to the War on Terror - Patrick Tyler
88	Cancer Vixen: A True Story - Marisa Acocella Marchetto
89	Straight Man - Richard Russo
90	The Outcast - Sadie Jones
91	For the Relief of Unbearable Urges - Nathan Englander
92	Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs - Melody Peterson
93	The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 Louise Erdrich
94	When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel - Kate Atkinson
95	Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems - Deborah Keenan
96	Remainder - Tom McCarthy
97	The book of One Hundred Truths - Julie Schumacher
98	Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith
99	North of the Port -Anthony Bukoski
100	Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
101	Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult
102	Crossing California - Adam Langer
103	1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History - Charles Bracelen Flood
104	Miles from Nowhere - Nami Mun
105	Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories - Kevin Wilson
106	Lush Life: A Novel - Richard Price
107	Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat - Adam Langer
108	Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day - Peter J. Bentley
109	Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
110	The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
111	Tales of Burning Love: A Novel - Louise Erdrich
112	Death With Interruptions - Jose Saramago
113	The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals - Jane Mayer
114	Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You - Sam Gosling
115	The Ascent of Money : A Financial History of the World - Niall Ferguson
116	American Wife: A Novel - Curtis Sittenfeld
117	Blueprint for Disaster: A Get Fuzzy Collection - Darby Conley
118	Spillville - Patricia Hampl
119	Twelve Below Zero - Anthony Bukoski
120	Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays - David Foster Wallace
121	The Washington Story - Adam Langer
122	The Ghost in Love: A Novel - Jonathan Carroll

Give us this day our daily meds

Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs by Melody Petersen


In the period (1980-2003) when Americans doubled what they spent on cars they increased their spending on prescription drugs by 17 times.Big pharmaceutical companies have transformed themselves into marketing machines, selling drugs as they were peddling soft drinks or cars. They sell drugs with video games and soft cuddly toys for children; advertise them in churches, subways, NASCAR races, and state fairs. Americans spent $250 billion in 2005 on prescription drugs more than the combined gross domestic product of Argentina and Peru. In 2004, Americans spent more on prescription drugs than on fast food or gas. In that same year their prescription drug bill was twice what they spent on higher education or new cars. In 2006 the average American collected more than 12 prescriptions.

Ah families

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw

If you haven't read a graphic novel...this might be one to try

Shaw's stunningly conceived and executed comic opus captures one moment of change in a family. Maggie and David Loony have called their three adult children to their childhood home to announce that, after 40 years of marriage, they're getting a divorce. Dennis, the eldest, desperately searches for an answer to why. He believes that if he just finds the right old letters, he'll understand what's happening to his parents, only to find that his answers say a lot more about his own marriage and infant son. Claire, the middle child, has been through her own divorce and is now struggling to raise a teen daughter by herself. The youngest, Peter, who has always felt like a changeling in his family and is drawn with a frog's head, is going through a delayed coming-of-age. Shaw's style deftly combines cartoon drawings with slavish attention to detail. The result feels reminiscent of a photo album, one person's quest to remember everything from the floor plans of the vacation home to the texture of the sand on the lake beach. Masterfully using the comics medium to juggle all the different characters, weaving their stories together seamlessly, Shaw allows the Loonys' emotions to play out naturally without forced resolutions, leaving a wistful hopefulness that feels just as conflicted and confusing as every family is.

Answers to life's persistent questions

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Ah the man can write...

Murakami's latest is a nonfiction work mostly concerned with his thoughts on the long-distance running he has engaged in for much of his adult life. Through a mix of adapted diary entries, old essays, reminiscences and life advice, Murakami crafts a charming little volume notable for its good-natured and intimate tone. While the subject matter is radically different from the fabulous and surreal fiction that Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) most often produces, longtime readers will recognize the source of the isolated, journeying protagonists of the author's novels in the formative running experiences recounted. Murakami's insistence on focusing almost exclusively on running can grow somewhat tedious over the course of the book, but discrete, absorbing episodes, such as a will-breaking 62-mile ultramarathon and a solo re-creation of the historic first marathon in Greece serve as dynamic and well-rendered highlights. Murakami offers precious little insight into much of his life as a writer, but what he does provide should be of value to those trying to understand the author's long and fruitful career. An early section recounting Murakami's transition from nightclub owner to novelist offers a particularly vivid picture of an artist soaring into flight for the first time.

How does that go...repeating history...sigh

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald

All too relevant...same accounting changes have been approved again....we don't learn from our mistakes!

This enormous, intimate blow-by-blow of Enron's implosion gets as close to what actually happened, in terms of people making (bad) decisions in real time, as anyone who wasn't there with a concealed video-phone possibly could. Having combed endless documents and interviewed countless principals and peripherals, Eichenwald (The Informant) presents short declarative sentences (and lots of sentence fragments) that may have run through the heads of men like top executives Skilling, Lay and Fastow as they managed to cook a very large set of books, as well as men like Stuart Zisman, a lawyer in the firm's wholesale division who wrote an early memo titled "Overall Book Manipulation" that stated "the majority of investments being introduced to Raptor are bad ones." Eichenwald's bald depictions ("Skilling sank deeper into depression"; "It couldn't be true, [Anderson partner Tom:] Bauer thought") make for real tension. Collegial meetings at the White House with Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and others; charged conference calls with skeptical investors; endless buy-ins, buyouts and acronyms—all are presented in a rat-a-tat style thick with corporate anxiety, keeping pages turning even as the details themselves are numbing. (Luckily, Eichenwald includes a "Cast of Characters" and "List of Deals" so that readers can remind themselves of past carnage.) As an unadorned attempt to get into the heads of some major manipulators, this book can hardly be bettered.

Anything she writes...sigh

The Whole World Over: A Novel by Julia Glass

I love her writing...

In her second rich, subtle novel, Glass reveals how the past impinges on the present, and how small incidents of fate and chance determine the future. Greenie Duquette has a small bakery in Manhattan's West Village that supplies pastries to restaurants, including that of her genial gay friend Walter. When Walter recommends Greenie to the governor of New Mexico, she seizes the chance to become the South westerner's pastry chef and to take a break from her marriage to Alan Glazier, a psychiatrist with hidden issues. Taking their four-year-old son, George, with her, Greenie leaves for New Mexico, while figures from her and Alan's pasts challenge their already strained marriage. Their lives intersect with those of such fully dimensional secondary characters as Fenno McLeod, the gay bookseller from Three Junes; Saga, a 30-something woman who lost her memory in an accident; and Saga's Uncle Marsden, a Yale ecologist who takes care of her. While this work is less emotionally gripping than Three Junes, Glass brings the same assured narrative drive and engaging prose to this exploration of the quest for love and its tests—absence, doubt, infidelity, guilt and loss.

The secret world of underground racing

The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World by Alexander Roy


On his deathbed, Alex Roy's father dropped tantalizing hints about the notorious Cannonball Run of the 1970s, the utterly illegal high-speed nonstop race from New York to L.A. that was nothing at all like the one portrayed in the Burt Reynolds movie. Inspired by his father's dying words, and against the advice of his loyal, lifelong friends, Roy enters the mysterious world of road rallies and underground races—trying both to find himself and to locate The Driver, the anonymous organizer of the world's ultimate secret race—neither of which may exist. But in order to get noticed by The Driver, Roy must first become a force to be reckoned with. In this riveting memoir, Roy straps you into his highly modified BMW M5 and takes you on a terrifying 120 mph lap of Manhattan (his version of the French cult film Rendezvous), then tackles the Gumball 3000 and the Bull run—the two most infamous road rallies in the world. He creates a character for himself and his car, Polizei Autobahn Interceptor, and they stick out among the Lamborghinis and Ferraris driven by millionaire playboys, software moguls, Arab princes, movie stars, leggy Czech supermodels, gear-heads, and tech whizzes. Out of the hundred-plus rally drivers, a select few—Alex Roy among them—compete as if these are full-on honest to-god road races, traveling from London to Morocco, from Budapest to Rome, from San Francisco to Miami at speeds approaching 200 mph.
With his M5 armed with a myriad of radar detectors, laser jammers, and police scanners, and his trunk crammed with a variety of fake uniforms, the obsessively prepared Roy evades arrest at almost every turn, wreaking havoc on his fiercest rivals, and gaining the admiration of police forces around the globe. But his rise to the top of the rally-driving world ultimately proves hollow, until he meets a young film producer documenting the obscure post–Cannonball Run races and the holy grail of cross-country racing—the N.Y.-to-L.A. speed record of thirty-two hours and seven minutes set back in 1983. Can that time even be approached today, much less beaten? As Roy reveals in The Driver, there are reasons why no one has tried in twenty-four years. But should he try? Can he do it? Full of hilarious, sexy, and shocking stories from a life lived at the right-hand edge of the speedometer, The Driver offers a never-before-told insider's account of the fast, dangerous, and unbelievable society that has long been off limits to most of us. Filled with insane driving and Roy's quixotic quest to win both for his late father and for himself, The Driver is the tale of one man's insatiable drive beyond life in the fast lane.

If I could only be the person my dog thinks I am

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein


Defies genre superb story...wow...

If you've ever wondered what your dog is thinking, Stein's third novel offers an answer. Enzo is a lab terrier mix plucked from a farm outside Seattle to ride shotgun with race car driver Denny Swift as he pursues success on the track and off. Denny meets and marries Eve, has a daughter, Zoë, and risks his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of oppositional thumbs, watches Denny's old racing videos, coins koan ike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life, and hopes for the day when his life as a dog will be over and he can be reborn a man. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo remains his most steadfast if silent supporter. Enzo is a reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, though the string of Denny's bad luck stories strains believability. Much like Denny, however, Stein is able to salvage some dignity from the over-the-top drama.

Stalin era serial killer?

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith


A first novel...most impressive
Story based on a real serial killer
Story takes place towards the end of Stalin's rule...
Pathology of Stalin's rule has yet to be adequately told

Bill Knott The Unsubscriber

The Unsubscriber: Poems by Bill Knott

He has not published many poems because he insists on designing the cover. He is also famous for publishing his obituary.

Some favorite lines

Poem-Suite (for Hoko)

"A poem is a room that contains
the house it's in, the way you
accommodate me when I lie
beside you..."

Poem As Usual

"Immediately I'm dead
Body laid out straight
Please don't hesitate
Just cut off my head
Lift it and lay it a foot
Or so below my feet
shift it till I look like
an exclamation mark"

Poem a lesson from the orphanage

"If you beat up someone smaller than you
they won't (and histories prove this) tell..."

True story

" We stole the rich couple's baby
and left our own infant with
a note demanding they raise our
child as if it were theirs and we
would do the same. Signed,
A Poor Couple. Decades later
our son racks summa cum laude
while theirs drapes our igloo
with beer cans."

Wrong

"I wish to be misunderstood;
that is,
to be understood from your perspective."

Deborah Keenan's Willow Room, Green Door

Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems by Deborah Keenan

Some favorite quotes:

It's a book about summer, so cottonwoods and the river are key-

"She has to remember that forty-nine dead in London outweigh thousands of dead women, children, and men in Iraq and Afghanistan."

It's a poem about summer and summer is over-
The Gulf Coast washed out to sea, the dead bodies
Colliding with the oil rigs washed to shore.
New Orleans destroyed, and the National Guard
Who long to help their country instead patrol the dusty
streets and lethal highways of Iraq. It's a poem about summer,
So we thank God that our president had
To cut only two days off his vacation to direct
The vast rescue and rebuilding operations;..."

The man who knew about winter-

"He didn't understand why, she kept on not leaving, and that was
good enough for him."

Divorce-

"I'd like to be proud of all the things I've resolved never to
learn how to do, as if to prove that everything I know how to
do is enough, and it's time to rest."

Why they belong together-
"My baby's arms are outstretched with passion toward the dog
coming down the street toward us. Clearly he could take her face
off before I could stop him, but she offers herself up, her face
a pond for every dog she embraces."

Growing "up" can be hard

The Outcast by Sadie Jones

Coming of age, hypocrisy of the "middle class" revisited...hard to believe this is her first novel. The "protagonist" is a very sympathetic character...a victim on many levels. The novel has all the "themes" self-mutilation (albeit a male), abusive husband and father, seductive step-mother, the "easy" older woman, and every character drinks like a fish (such a strange cliche do fishes drink?).
Abandonment-physical by biological mom (also a serious drinker) did she drown or did she commit suicide. Cold father who spends all his time at work and sends the son off to boarding school...Being abandoned the flip side of being an outcast? Another them is parents not being parents...
It is great book

Ah poetry

The Strange Hours Travelers Keep: Poems by August Kleinzahler

As a lover of poetry, I think August Kleinzahler is one the best contemporary poets writing

A couple of quotes:
1. from An Englishman Abroad (for Christopher Logue)
"The talk-radio host is trying to shake the wacko
with only a minute left
to get in the finance and boner-pill spots
before signing off"


2. Epistle VIII

"There's good reason why the folks you find up-country tend
to be dull.
It's because they spend their days talking to animals, you know."

3. Christmas in Chinatown

"One reads that the digestive wind passed by cattle
is many times more destructive to the atmosphere
than all of the aerosol cans combined.
How does one measure such a thing?
The world has been coming to an end
for 5,000 years. If not tomorrow,
surely, one day very soon."