Little Big Man by Thomas Berger -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I feel like I have my life back! After five weeks of zoom trial in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy case, I finally gave my closing argument on Tuesday and the judge heard the last of all the closing arguments yesterday. It's done! Now we all wait for the judge to mull over all the evidence and arguments and issue her ruling, which might take a few more weeks. Whew!

A long, entertaining book is exactly what I need right now and Little Big Man fits the bill perfectly! It's been on my TBR shelf forever. 

Please share the opening sentence or so of the book that caught your fancy this week. Leave the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below.

MY BOOK BEGINNNG

I am a white man and never forgot it, but I was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians from the age of ten.

-- Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. 

Little Big Man was a best seller when it came out in 1964 and has never gone out of print. It is a sprawling Western saga narrated by the 111-year-old Jack Crabb. Crabb lived as a Cheyenne, then turned Indian scout, so he saw first hand much of the history of the American West. There is a 1970 movie version with Dustin Hoffman.

I just started it but it promises to be the kind of shaggy, absorbing story I love. I can understand why it remains popular. It has been on my radar because I'm working my way through the BOMC's Well-Stocked Bookcase list. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnigns. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Little Big Man:

Several snows had fell and melted since I joined the Cheyenne, and I must have been going on thirteen years of age. We boys was playing war one day and Younger Bear, growing taller by the month, shot a blunt-head arrow with such force that when it struck a lad called Red Dog in the forehead he was knocked cold. 

The College Board's List of 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers -- BOOK LIST

THE COLLEGE BOARD'S LIST OF 101 GREAT BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR COLLEGE-BOUND READERS

Back around the turn of the Millennium, when Top 100 book lists were all the rage, thanks in large part to the popularity of the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century List, the College Board came up with a list of "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers." 

Leave it to the creator of the PSAT, the SAT, etc. to come up with a list of books guaranteed to make  every reader feel humble. I'm a fan of classics and do not have a problem with the idea of a "canon" to provide a solid grounding in Western literature. But to suggest that students should read all "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers" while they are still in high school is setting some pretty high standards! Maybe that's why the list has completely disappeared from the College Board's website. 

I can now, in my 50s, look at this list and say that I've read most of them, 86 of the 101. But I read 66 of those when I was in college -- as an English Lit major -- or after college. I only read 20 of these when I was in high school, and I was a complete nerd. The idea that I would have read all of them in high school is enough to trigger that nightmare where I am back in school as an adult, trying to take an exam for a class I never attended!

Here is the list, with notes about whether I have read the book and when, if it is still on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

Beowulf  FINISHED (college and adult)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe FINISHED (adult)

A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED (adult)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen FINISHED (college)

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin FINISHED (adult)

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett FINISHED (college)

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte FINISHED (high school)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte FINISHED (high school)

The Stranger by Albert Camus FINISHED (adult)

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather FINISHED (adult)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes TBR SHELF

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer FINISHED (college)

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov TBR SHELF

The Awakening by Kate Chopin FINISHED (college)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad FINISHED (high school)

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper ON OVERDRIVE

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane FINISHED (adult)

Inferno by Dante FINISHED (college)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe FINISHED (adult)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens FINISHED (high school and adult)

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky FINISHED (adult)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass FINISHED (college)

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser FINISHED (adult)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas FINISHED (adult)

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot FINISHED (adult)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison FINISHED (adult)

Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson FINISHED (high school)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner FINISHED (college)

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding FINISHED (adult)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED (high school and adult)

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert FINISHED (adult)

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford FINISHED (adult)

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe FINISHED (college)

Lord of the Flies by William Golding FINISHED (adult)

Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy FINISHED (college)

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne FINISHED (high school)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller FINISHED (adult)

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED (adult)

The Iliad by Homer FINISHED (college)

The Odyssey by Homer FINISHED (college)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo TBR SHELF

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED (college and adult)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley FINISHED (high school)

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen TBR SHELF

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James FINISHED (adult)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James FINISHED (adult)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka FINISHED (high school)

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston TBR SHELF

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee FINISHED (adult)

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis FINISHED (adult)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London FINISHED (adult)

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann TBR SHELF

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez FINISHED (adult)

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville FINISHED (high school)

Moby Dick by Herman Melville FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Crucible by Arthur Miller FINISHED (high school)

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED (college)

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor FINISHED (adult)

Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill TBR SHELF

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED (adult)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath FINISHED (adult)

Selected Tales by Edgar Allen Poe FINISHED (high school)

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust TBR SHELF

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon FINISHED (college)

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque FINISHED (adult)

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth FINISHED

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger FINISHED (high school)

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw TBR SHELF

Hamlet by William Shakespeare FINISHED (high school)

Macbeth by William Shakespeare FINISHED (college)

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare FINISHED (college)

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare FINISHED (high school)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley FINISHED (college)

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko TBR SHELF

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn TBR SHELF

Antigone by Sophocles FINISHED (high school)

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles FINISHED (high school)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED (high school)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED (adult)

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift FINISHED (college)

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray FINISHED (adult)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau FINISHED (adult)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy FINISHED (adult)

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev FINISHED (high school)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain FINISHED (high school and adult)

Candide by Voltaire FINISHED (adult)

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut FINISHED (adult) (reviewed here)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker FINISHED (college)

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton FINISHED (adult)

Collected Stories by Eudora Welty TBR SHELF

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman TBR SHELF (reading now)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde FINISHED (high school)

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams FINISHED (high school)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED (college)

Native Son by Richard Wright FINISHED (adult)

NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. 

This is a reposting of a list I first posted in 2009. The links needed refreshing, particularly the link to the College Board because the book list itself is no longer available on the College Board's website. 

The wonderful book blogger and book reviewer, Rebecca Reid at Rebecca Reads, is also working on this list. 

If anyone else adopts this list, please let me know in a comment and I will add your link.

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary by Laura Stanfill -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Laura Stanfill's new novel, Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary, launches on April 19 and I am so excited to get my hands on an early copy. What a delightful book of historical fiction! 

What book has you excited this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) here on Book Beginnings on Fridays. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Our story begins with the grandparents of our hero, who believed their village to be as normal as any other, despite its pervasive gloom. 

-- from Chapter One, "An extraordinary occurrence," in Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary by Laura Stanfill. 

Singing Lessons starts in the French village of Mireville in the 1800s. Henri Blanchard's father George is revered as a master sirinette maker. But Henri wants to make lace, not sirinettes. Henri discovers a stash of letters and learns  that his father had son with one of his American customers. When circumstances drive Henri to flee to America, he meets his half-brother and discovers a world beyond Mireville.

Laura Stanfill is the prize-winning editor and publisher at Forest Avenue Press, a independent publisher of literary fiction and memoir here in Portland. Singing Lessons is her first novel. It launches on April 19 from Lanternfish Press and is available now for pre-order. For those in Portland, Laura will be reading at Powell's City of Books on Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 7:00 pm. Signed copies are available for pre-order from Powell's or available at the event.

Read a glowing review of Singing Lessons on Publishers' Weekly. Read Beth Kephart's review of this "utterly beguiling" novel on Cleaver.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please link to your Book Beginning post and use the #bookbeginnings hashtag if you share on social media. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Singing Lessons:

The next morning, Delia found an apologetic note from George on the formal dining table. He was quite sorry that he had overstayed his welcome; he needed to return home immediately. 

I had hoped to read Singing Lessons this weekend to celebrate finally finishing the Boy Scout bankruptcy trial that has been taking all my time and attention since March 14. Unfortunately, the trial didn't finish today like I hoped it would and I still have to make my closing arguments next week. Ugh! As soon as the trial wraps up, I will dive in to what promises to be thoroughly charming story!

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Do you reread books? 

I didn't used to. But in the last year or so I've been revisiting some favorite books that I read in high school and college. It's time. So far, I've concentrated on my favorite classics, like Lucky Jim, Oliver Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities. But I plan to make more of a habit of rereading and broaden my scope to include general favorites.

What are you reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) with us here on Book Beginnings. You can also share the first lines from a book you want to highlight, even if you aren't reading it right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I am rereading my favorite book from high school:

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about halfway between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. 

-- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I went through a big Fitzgerald phase in high school. Jazz Age Paris and the American authors who were part of that scene are always popular and I fell hard for the whole thing. 

Reading Tender is the Night again, I am surprised that I remember none of the plot! I remember that Dick and Nicole Diver hang out at the French Riviera. But I remember nothing about what happens. I find it more entertaining -- if less fraught with meaning -- than I did as a teenager. 

My reread of Tender is the Night is one of my Classic Club books. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the Linky box below. Use the #bookbeginnings hashtag if you share on social media. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Tender is the Night:

They were all very nice people for a while, very courteous and all that. Then they grew tired of it and they were funny and bitter, and finally they made a lot of plans.

The BBC's Big Read -- BOOK LIST

THE BBC'S BIG READ

Starting in April 2003, BBC began a search for Britain’s best-loved novel. Viewers voted for their favorite book and the top 100 books were compiled in a list called the BBC's Big Read. The books ranked 101 - 200 are sometimes referred to as the Bigger Read. 

The Top 100 list is below. This is definitely a people’s choice list. There are some excellent books here, but the list reflects the popular tastes of the early 2000s as much as literary merit.

So far, I've read 68 of the 100. I doubt I will finish all these because I don't see myself reading Harry Potter (with apologies to fans) and I am not a fan of sci-fi or fantasy. Now that I have grandkids, I may read some of the kids' books I didn't originally think I would. So never say never. 

See any of your own favorites on here? What about personal clunkers, books you didn't like?

Here's the list, with notes about whether I've read it, it's on my TBR shelf, or it is available as an audiobook from my library. Not many of these are on my TBR shelves because if I haven't read it it is most likely not my cup of tea. But I might give it a go as an audiobook.  

1. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien FINISHED

2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen FINISHED

3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman ON OVERDRIVE

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (reviewed here) FINISHED

5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J. K. Rowling ON OVERDRIVE

6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee FINISHED

7. Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne FINISHED

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell FINISHED

9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis FINISHED

10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë FINISHED

11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller FINISHED

12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë FINISHED

13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks FINISHED

14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (reviewed here) FINISHED

15. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger FINISHED

16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (reviewed here) FINISHED

17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (reviewed here) FINISHED

18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott FINISHED

19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres FINISHED

20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy FINISHED

21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

22. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J. K. Rowling ON OVERDRIVE

23. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling ON OVERDRIVE

24. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling ON OVERDRIVE

25. The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien FINISHED

26. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy FINISHED

27. Middlemarch, George Eliot FINISHED

28. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving FINISHED

29. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck FINISHED

30. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll FINISHED

31. The Story of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson

32. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez FINISHED

33. The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett FINISHED

34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens FINISHED

35. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl FINISHED

36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED

37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute FINISHED

38. Persuasion, Jane Austen FINISHED

39. Dune, Frank Herbert ON OVERDRIVE

40. Emma, Jane Austen FINISHED

41. Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery FINISHED

42. Watership Down, Richard Adams ON OVERDRIVE

43. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED

44. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas FINISHED

45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh FINISHED

46. Animal Farm, George Orwell FINISHED

47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens FINISHED

48. Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy FINISHED

49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian

50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher (reviewed here) FINISHED

51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett FINISHED

52. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck FINISHED

53. The Stand, Stephen King ON OVERDRIVE

54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy FINISHED

55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth ON OVERDRIVE

56. The BFG, Roald Dahl ON OVERDRIVE

57. Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome

58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell FINISHED

59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer ON OVERDRIVE

60. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky FINISHED

61. Noughts and Crosses, Malorie Blackman ON OVERDRIVE

62. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden FINISHED

63. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens FINISHED

64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough FINISHED

65. Mort, Terry Pratchett

66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

67. The Magus, John Fowles FINISHED

68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman ON OVERDRIVE

69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett

70. Lord of the Flies, William Golding FINISHED

71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind ON OVERDRIVE

72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell ON OVERDRIVE

73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

74. Matilda, Roald Dahl ON OVERDRIVE

75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding FINISHED

76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt FINISHED

77. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins FINISHED

78. Ulysses, James Joyce FINISHED

79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens FINISHED

80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson

81. The Twits, Roald Dahl ON OVERDRIVE

82. I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith FINISHED

83. Holes, Louis Sachar ON OVERDRIVE

84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake (reviewed here) FINISHED

85. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy FINISHED

86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson

87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley FINISHED

88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons (reviewed here) FINISHED

89. Magician, Raymond E Feist ON OVERDRIVE

90. On the Road, Jack Kerouac FINISHED

91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo FINISHED

92. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M Auel

93. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho FINISHED

95. Katherine, Anya Seton FINISHED

96. Kane and Abel, Jeffrey Archer FINISHED

97. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez FINISHED

98. Girls in Love, Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot ON OVERDRIVE

100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie (reviewed here) FINISHED


NOTES

Updated on July 3, 2025. 

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary by Laura Stanfill -- MAILBOX MONDAY

 

MAILBOX MONDAY

Work obligations and family life have kept me hopping the last few months and I haven't visited Mailbox Monday as often as I would like. 

But I am so excited about Laura Stanfill's new novel, Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary, that I had to post it on Mailbox Monday. Even if I am typing this post while keeping one eye on the zoom trial of the Boy Scouts' bankruptcy so I don't miss my turn to cross examine this BSA witness!

Singing Lessons is historical fiction set in France and America during the 1800s. Henri Blanchard is the son of a music-box maker who would rather make lace than follow in his father's footsteps. Henri discovers his father had son born before him to one of his father's American customers. When circumstances drive Henri to flee to America, he meets his half-brother and discovers a world beyond his small French village.

Laura Stanfill is the editor and publisher at Forest Avenue Press, a prize-winning independent publisher of literary fiction and memoir. She is a fine essay writer whose work has appeared in
Shondaland, The Rumpus, Catapult, The Vincent Brothers Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, and several print anthologies.

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary is Stanfill's debut novel. It launches on April 18 from Lanternfish Press and is available now for pre-order. For those in the Portland area, Laura is reading from Singing Lessons at Powell's City of Books on Thursday, April 21, 2022 at 7:00 pm. Signed copies are available for pre-order from Powell's or available at the event.

Read a glowing review of Singing Lessons, recommending the book for fans of Joanne Harris, on Publishers' Weekly.

Read Beth Kephart's review of this "utterly beguiling" novel on Cleaver.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

As a firstborn son of a master craftsman, Henri Blanchard is expected to inherit the family barrel organ workshop, but he would prefer to make bobbin lace like his best friend Aimée. In an effort to put his misgivings aside and prove himself a worthy heir, he attempts dramatic feats that draw derision from the townsfolk and finally land him in jail, accused of murder. Threatened with the hangman’s noose, he is forced to flee the cozy village of Mireville—and discover a world beyond that may be big enough for even the rarest bird to find a nest.

Suspenseful and heartwarming by turns, Laura Stanfill’s debut is a whimsical journey full of friendship, adventure, and self-discovery.

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house last week. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of vvb32reads graciously host Mailbox Monday.

Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I'm about halfway through the zoom trial on the Boy Scouts bankruptcy. I'm pretty frazzled. But at least I remembered to post this week's Book Beginnings on Fridays post! 

I can't read anything too complicated during trial, so Stanley Tucci's food biography is the perfect escape for me when I finish for the day. 

What do you like to read with your life is hectic?

Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading or a book you want to highlight. 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I grew up in Katonah, New York, a beautiful town about sixty miles north of Manhattan. We moved there when I was three years of age from Peekskill, New York, a small city with a large Italian population on the Hudson River where my father's family had settled after emigrating from Calabria. 

-- Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci. Is there anyone who doesn't like Stanley Tucci? 

I'm reading this one with my ears, which is particularly wonderful because Tucci reads it himself. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the linky box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Taste:

That basement to me was a wonderful kind of time capsule and sanctuary. Divided by a staircase that led to an upstairs hallway, it boasted the makeshift auxiliary kitchen on one side (complete with an old washing machine with hand-cranked rollers that was still very much in use) as well as my grandfather Vincenzo’s workshop on the opposite side.

Tucci's childhood memories are my favorite parts of the book. 

Meanwhile, back in real life, trial runs from 7:00 am - around 3:00 pm for me every week day because I'm on the West Coast and the court is in Delaware, on East Coast time. This is a picture of me at 7:30 in the morning, listening to the second day of mind-numbing testimony from BSA's data expert, after I had already cross examined him. It I look awake, don't be fooled! 

All-TIME Best 100 English-Language Novels -- BOOK LIST

ALL-TIME BEST 100 ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NOVELS

In 2005, TIME Magazine critics Richard Lacayo and Lev Grossman picked the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923, the year TIME began publishing. Lacayo offers a thorough explanation of their process on the magazine's website, along with descriptions of each book.

As Lacayo said in his article, "Lists like this one have two purposes. One is to instruct. The other of course is to enrage." Everyone can argue about books they think should have made this list and others that should have been left off. 

Personally, I'd prefer seeing Mary McCarthy, Barbara Pym, and Penelope Lively on this list and jettison Pynchon, Kosinski, and DeLillo. I've read 88 of the 100 books on this list so far, but I may never finish all 100. I know I'm never going to read Infinite Jest, for example. And I will probably never read Gravity's Rainbow. 

How about you? What are your thoughts?

Here is the complete list in alphabetical order, with notes if I've read it, it's on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library. 

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (reviewed here) FINISHED

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (reviewed here) FINISHED

American Pastoral by Philip Roth FINISHED

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser FINISHED

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara FINISHED

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume FINISHED

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (reviewed here) FINISHED

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien TBR SHELF

Atonement by Ian McEwan FINISHED

Beloved by Toni Morrison FINISHED

The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood TBR SHELF

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler FINISHED

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood FINISHED

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy FINISHED

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh FINISHED

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder FINISHED

Call It Sleep by Henry Roth FINISHED

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller FINISHED

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger FINISHED

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess FINISHED

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron FINISHED

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen FINISHED

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon FINISHED

A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (discussed here) FINISHED

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West FINISHED

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather FINISHED

A Death in the Family by James Agee FINISHED

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen FINISHED

Deliverance by James Dickey FINISHED

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone FINISHED

Falconer by John Cheever TBR SHELF

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles FINISHED

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing FINISHED

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin FINISHED

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell FINISHED

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck FINISHED

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon ON OVERDRIVE

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald FINISHED

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh FINISHED

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers FINISHED

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene FINISHED

Herzog by Saul Bellow FINISHED

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson FINISHED

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul FINISHED

I, Claudius by Robert Graves FINISHED

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace ON OVERDRIVE (but 56 hours!)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison FINISHED

Light in August by William Faulkner FINISHED

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis FINISHED

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

Lord of the Flies by William Golding FINISHED

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien FINISHED

Loving by Henry Green FINISHED

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis FINISHED

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead ON OVERDRIVE

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (reviewed here) FINISHED

Money by Martin Amis (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy FINISHED

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs FINISHED

Native Son by Richard Wright FINISHED

Neuromancer by William Gibson ON OVERDRIVE

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro FINISHED

1984 by George Orwell FINISHED

On the Road by Jack Kerouac FINISHED

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey FINISHED

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski (I finished as much as I could stand) FINISHED

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov FINISHED

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster FINISHED

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion (reviewed here) FINISHED

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth FINISHED

Possession by A.S. Byatt FINISHED

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene FINISHED

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark FINISHED

Rabbit, Run by John Updike FINISHED

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow FINISHED

The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett FINISHED

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates FINISHED

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles FINISHED

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (reviewed here) FINISHED

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson TBR SHELF

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth TBR SHELF

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford FINISHED

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre FINISHED

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston FINISHED

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe FINISHED

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee FINISHED

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf FINISHED

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller FINISHED

Ubik by Philip K. Dick ON OVERDRIVE

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch FINISHED

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry FINISHED

Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

White Noise by Don DeLillo ON OVERDRIVE

White Teeth by Zadie Smith FINISHED

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (reviewed here) FINISHED

NOTES

Updated October 26, 2023. This is a repost of the list I first posted back in 2009. The links needed refreshing. 

It's My Blogiversary! 14 years of Rose City Reader

IT'S MY BLOGIVERSARY!

Rose City Reader has been around for 14 years now, since 2008. The popularity of book blogging seems to have waxed and waned over those years. Other social media platforms have lured away bloggers and potential bloggers with shiny new options, some which faded away themselves and some which are going strong like Instagram. 

My own blogging activity changes over time, depending on what else is going on in my life. Usually it is my work that takes me away. Don't you hate it when your job interferes with your hobbies? But I persevere with Rose City Reader because I love it and look forward to "someday" when I can spend less time in the office and more time reading and blogging. 

Book Beginnings on Friday -- Trial Edition

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

I'm tied up in the Boy Scouts' bankruptcy confirmation trial (by zoom). I forgot all about Book Beginnings! I have to cross examine a witness in a few minutes, but just remembered I forgot to post anything here. 

Here's the Linky box. That's all I've got this week. Have fun!

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
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PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Winners -- BOOK LIST

PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction honors the "best published works of fiction by American permanent residents in a calendar year." 

National Book Award winner Mary Lee Settle, with help from her friends, organized the award in 1980 as a peer-reviewed competitor of the National Book Award. They allied themselves with the Ineternational PEN organization (Poets, Editors, and Novelists) and named the award after William Faulkner who donated his Nobel Prize money to fund the award.

I am not going to keep updating the winners after 2021. My enthusiasm for prize-winners is waning with the 2020s. I may focus my efforts on reading the winners up to 2020 then declare victory and move on to other bookish projects.

Here is the list of all the winners, with notes if I've read the book, it is on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook on Overdrive from my library. So far, I've only read 14 of the winners.

2021 The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw ON OVERDRIVE

2020 Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis ON OVERDRIVE

2019 Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi ON OVERDRIVE

2018 Improvement by Joan Silber ON OVERDRIVE

2017 Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue ON OVERDRIVE

2016 Delicious Foods by James Hannaham ON OVERDRIVE

2015 Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish

2014 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler FINISHED

2013 Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

2012 The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka ON OVERDRIVE

2011 The Collected Stories by Deborah Eisenberg

2010 War Dances by Sherman Alexie ON OVERDRIVE

2009 Netherland by Joseph O'Neill ON OVERDRIVE

2008 The Great Man by Kate Christensen TBR SHELF

2007 Everyman by Philip Roth FINISHED

2006 The March by E. L. Doctorow ON OVERDRIVE

2005 War Trash by Ha Jin TBR SHELF

2004 The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike TBR SHELF

2003 The Caprices by Sabina Murray TBR SHELF

2002 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (reviewed here) FINISHED

2001 The Human Stain by Philip Roth (reviewed here) FINISHED

2000 Waiting by Ha Jin FINISHED

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham FINISHED

1998 The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor FINISHED

1997 Women in Their Beds: New and Selected Stories by Gina Berriault TBR SHELF

1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford FINISHED

1995 Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson FINISHED

1994 Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth FINISHED

1993 Postcards by E. Annie Proulx FINISHED

1992 Mao II by Don Delillo FINISHED

1991 Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman

1990 Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow FINISHED

1989 Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter FINISHED

1988 World's End by T. Coraghessan Boyle

1987 Soldiers in Hiding by Richard Wiley TBR SHELF

1986 The Old Forest and Other Stories by Peter Taylor

1985 The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff

1984 Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman

1983 Seaview by Toby Olson TBR SHELF

1982 The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

1981 How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish TBR SHELF



NOTES

Updated July 3, 2025. 

This is a redo of the list I first posted in 2010. The links needed a refresh!