List: College Board's Top 101

Leave it to the College Board -- creator of the PSAT, the SAT, etc. -- to come up with a list of books guaranteed to make almost every reader humble. Not that these are not excellent choices for a solid grounding in Western culture, 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 the bar mighty high.

Just reading through this list and realizing how many of these books I read long after high school, and how many I still have to read, is sure to inspire that nightmare where I am back in college as an adult, trying to take an exam for a class I never attended.

So much for my English Lit major -- I have only read 79 of the books on this list. Those I have read are in red, with a little notation about when I actually read the book. Those currently (or maybe I should say "still") on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Beowulf (college and adult)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (adult)

A Death in the Family by James Agee (adult)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (college)

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

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (college)

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

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (high school)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (high school)

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (adult)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (college)

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (college)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (high school)

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (adult)

Inferno by Dante (college)

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

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

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (adult)

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

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (adult)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (adult)

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (adult)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (adult)

Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (high school)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (college)

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

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

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

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (adult)

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (adult)

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (college)

Lord of the Flies by William Golding (adult)

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

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (high school)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (adult)

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (adult)

The Iliad by Homer (college)

The Odyssey by Homer (college)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

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

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (high school)

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (adult)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (adult)

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

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (high school)

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee (adult)

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (adult)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London (adult)

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

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

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville (high school)

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

The Crucible by Arthur Miller (high school)

Beloved by Toni Morrison (college)

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

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

Animal Farm by George Orwell (adult)

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

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (adult)

Selected Tales by Edgar Allen Poe (high school)

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (college)

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

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Call it Sleep by Henry Roth

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

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

Hamlet by William Shakespeare (high school)

Macbeth by William Shakespeare (college)

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

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (high school)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (college)

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Antigone by Sophocles (high school)

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (high school)

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (high school)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (adult)

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

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (college)

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (high school)

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

Candide by Voltaire (adult)

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

The Color Purple by Alice Walker (college)

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (adult)

Collected Stories by Eudora Welty

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

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

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (high school)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (college)

Native Son by Richard Wright (adult)


OTHERS WORKING ON THIS LIST

Rebecca Reads
The Bluestocking Society
Word Lily

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

NOTES

Last updated on August 7, 2015.

Review of the Day: Fear of the Dark

Although this is called "a Fearless Jones" novel, the second novel in this series, Fear of the Dark, is really a book about Fearless's friend, Paris Minton. Minton is a used book dealer and amateur sleuth in 1950s Los Angeles. His cousin, "Useless" S. Grant, pulls him into a mystery that reaches from the black community of post-WWII Watts to the white world of moneyed institutions. The book is chock-a-block with interesting characters with clever nicknames, big-finned American cars, jazz clubs, and pool halls. Sound familiar? It is the basic recipe for Moseley’s Easy Rawlins series. Unfortunately, while the Rawlins series was snappy and fresh, Fear of the Dark seems to me like a stale rehash. It never really takes off, it didn’t keep my attention, and Minton’s digressions about the books he's reading (all MAJOR literary classics) come off as barely-relevant intellectual showmanship. I know that this is a very popular series, but I was disappointed. The Easy Rawlins series is an all-time favorite of mine and I gobbled them all up. But I don't see giving this one a second chance.

Review: The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care

In her accessible "citizen’s guide" to health care reform, Sally Pipes examines The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care and offers several patient-driven ideas for change. Pipes looks past the partisan rhetoric to explain, for example, what "46 million uninsured Americans" really means, why importing drugs cannot work, and how expanded Medicaid-type programs would make a bad situation worse.

Pipes, a Canadian native, is her most persuasive when she scrutinizes Canada’s and other nationalized medical systems. Relying on her extensive research and personal experience, she spells out why long waits, restricted access to new medications, and doctors on government payrolls are not the solution to America's problems.

In the debate over health care, Pipes has definitely chosen her side, championing free-market reforms such as allowing the interstate purchase of health insurance and revising the tax code to encourage individually-purchased, instead of employer-provided, insurance. But Pipes is no ranting demagogue. Her arguments are concise and supported by solid research as she tries deal rationally with an issue often freighted with emotion.

While aimed at policy-makers, The Top Ten Myths is lively enough for general consumption. Good reading for anyone interesting in going beyond the soundbites and understanding some of the details of health care reform.

House Moving!

We're moving house this weekend, so no internet for a while. Back soon!

Book Notes: A Summons to Memphis

Set in mid-Twentieth Century Tennessee, Peter Taylor's Pulitzer-winning A Summons to Memphis is a lovely novel of manners that teaches the importance of going beyond forgetting, beyond even forgiving, and trying to actually understand our parents. Wonderful.

Author of the Day: Cara Black

When I was compiling my French Connection list, I included books from a Paris-based mystery series by Cara Black -- part of the fantastic Soho Crime collection of mysteries set in foreign locales.

Black, who lives and writes in San Francisco, has done a masterful job with her Parisian novels. Amiee Leduc is half-American, smart, and feisty as all get out. She runs a computer forensic business, which gives her some investigative skills, but still makes her an amateur sleuth when it comes to solving murder mysteries. The books have solid, out of the ordinary plots with plenty of action and excitement. Black captures the mood as well as the sensory details of semi-contemporary Paris (several of the books, maybe all, are set in the early 1990s, about seven or eight years before the first book was published), but also provides vivid historic context when related to the mystery.

I read the first book in the series, Murder in the Marais, in preparation for meeting Black at a Mystery Writers' Conference I attended in 2005. Although the book had a few rough edges, I was intrigued. I then read the third book (by mistake -- I hate going out of order), found the rough edges smoothed considerably -- it is much a more professional product but kept the charm -- and I was definitely hooked. But I put off reading the others because I wanted to make them last, then unfortunately got distracted by other books, and have just now renewed my interest in catching up with the adventures of Aimee Leduc.

Those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Murder in the Marais

Murder in Belleville (reviewed here)

Murder in the Sentier

Murder in the Bastille

Murder in Clichy

Murder in Montmartre

Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Murder in the Rue de Paradis

Murder in the Latin Quarter

Murder in the Palais Royal

Murder in Passy

Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

NOTE

Last updated April 19, 2012.

Books Read in 2005

This is the list of books I read in 2005, in the order that I read them. For an explanation of my rating system, see here.

Going over this list makes me remember this particular year of reading with surprising clarity. I was trying very hard to work my way through the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I was also starting to focus on Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award winners.

Both goals were sidetracked for a while when I turned my attention to mysteries by the authors who spoke at a Mystery Writers' Conference I attended in the summer, during a period when I fantasized about giving up the practice of law to write legal thrillers.

And, finally, there is a clump of books near the end of the year that remind me of my favorite vacation in Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. It is wonderful how just the titles can pull up such crystal clear memories.

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan (4/5)

Gigi by Colette (on my French Connection list) (4/5)

Total Control by David Baldacci (3/5)

Some Do Not by Ford Maddox Ford (Vol. 1 of Parade's End) (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

No More Parades by Ford Maddox Ford (Vol. 2 of Parade's End) (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

A Man Could Stand Up by Ford Maddox Ford (Vol. 3 of Parade's End) (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

Last Post by Ford Maddox Ford (Vol. 4 of Parade's End) (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell (4/5)

Collected Short Stories by Erskine Caldwell (3.5/5)

The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A. S. Byatt (3/5)

A Room With a View by E. M. Forster (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4/5)

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4/5)

The Hearing by John Lescroart (3.5/5)

Critical Mass by Steve Martini (3/5)

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (on the All-TIME 100 list) (4.5/5)

The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett (4/5)

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (5/5)

The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett (4/5)

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (4/5)

The Travels of Jamie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (out of print; winner of the Pulitzer Prize) (3.5/5)

The Healing Power of Forgiveness by Ray Prichard (3/5)

Suspicion of Madness by Barbara Parker (3.5/5)

In the Moon of Red Ponies by James Lee Burke (3/5)

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the Easton Press list of 100 Greatest Novels; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (3.5/5)

The Deepest Water by Kate Wilhelm (2.5/5)

Loving by Henry Green (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list)(3/5)

The Heat Islands by Randy Wayne White (2.5/5)

The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (winner of the Booker Prize) (3/5)

Straight Life by Art Pepper (3/5)

Deja Dead by Kathy Reicht (3/5)

Maisie Dobbs by Jaqueline Winspear (2.5/5)

The Run by Stuart Woods (2.5/5)

Killing Floor by Lee Child (4/5)

San Francisco as You Like It by Bonnie Wach (3.5/5)

Murder in the Marais by Cara Black (3/5)

The Avenger by Frederick Forsyth (3/5)

Shell Games by Kirk Russell (3/5)

A Darker Place by Laurie King (3/5)

Special Circumstances by Sheldon Sielgel (3/5)

Moist by Mark Haskell Smith (3/5)

Caught Dead in Philadelphia by Gillian Roberts (3/5)

Misdemeanor Man by Dylan Schaffer (3/5)

Die Trying by Lee Child (3.5/5)

Folly by Laurie King (3.5/5)

Incriminating Evidence by Sheldon Siegel (3/5)

Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs (3/5)

The Smoke by Tony Broadbent (3/5)

I Married a Communist by Philip Roth (4/5)

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (3/5)

A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list) (4/5)

Darkest Fear by Harlan Coben (3/5)

In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke (3/5)

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank (3.5/5)

Tishomingo Blues by Elmore Leonard (3/5)

Deliberate Intent by Rod Smolla (3/5)

Fugitives and Refugees by Chuck Pahaluk (3.5/5)

The Case Against Hillary Clinton by Peggy Noonan (3/5)

The Nanny Diaries by Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus (3/5)

A Strong Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (3.5/5)

Courting Trouble by Lisa Scottoline (3/5)

Vernon God Little by D. B. C. Pierce (winner of the Booker Prize) (1.5/5)

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (4.5/5)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4/5)

A Death in the Family by James Agee (winner of the Pulitzer Prize; on the All-TIME 100 list) (4/5)

Three Junes by Julia Glass (National Book Award winner) (3.5/5)

Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke (3/5)

Last Orders by Graham Swift (winner of the Booker Prize) (4/5)

Code to Zero by Ken Follett (3/5)

Native Son by Richard Wright (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4/5)

State of Fear by Michael Critchton (4/5)

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list) (3.5/5)

An Obvious Enchantment by Tucker Malarky (3/5)

True North by Jim Harrison (3/5)

The Americans by John Jakes (3/5)

American Pastoral by Philip Roth (on the All-TIME 100 list) (4/5)

An Offer of Proof by Robert Heilbrun (3/5)

Kim by Rudyard Kipling (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4.5/5)

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (winner of the Booker Prize) (4/5)

Running Blind by Lee Child (3/5)

Slander by Ann Coulter (3.5/5)

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (5/5)

People of Darkness by Tony Hillerman (3/5)

List: The French Connections

I occasionally go through armchair traveler spells when I like to read books about France -- never books in French, as I am a definite monoglot, but books with some connection to France. In anticipation of such spells, I keep a TBR list of Frenchy books and at least a couple on my TBR shelf.

What I liked best about Debra Ollivier's Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl, besides its perfect cover, were the book recommendations salted throughout. In addition to specific recommendations in sidebars labeled "Le Livre," Ollivier included book suggestions in her mini-biographies of "French Girls We Love."

My list of French-themed books follows. These are books that I have read or want to read. Those I had read are in rouge. Those on my TBR shelf are in bleu. Those recommended in Entre Nous are marked with an asterisk.

This is a long list, but I would still welcome suggestions!

Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund

Acquired Tastes by Peter Mayle

L’Affaire by Diane Johnson

An Alphabet for Gourmets by M. F. K. Fisher*

Anything Considered by Peter Mayle

Apéritif : Recipes for Simple Pleasures in the French Style by Georgeanne Brennan

Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger (reviewed here)

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris by A.J. Liebling*

Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan*

Break of Day by Collette*

The Castle of Pictures and Other Stories: A Grandmother’s Tales by George Sand*

Catherine de Medici by Honoré de Balzac

Chanel: Her Style and Her Life by Janet Wallach*

Chasing Cezanne by Peter Mayle

The Cheese Plate by Max McCalman*

Cheri by Colette*

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama

Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet by Stephanie Cowell

Consider the Oyster by M. F. K. Fisher

Corked by Kathryn Borel (reviewed here)

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in Nineteenth-Centur by Joanna Richardson

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Death in the Truffle Wood by Pierre Magnan

The Delta of Venus by Anais Nin*

Le Divorce by Diane Johnson

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Earthly Paradise: Colette’s Autobiography Drawn from Her Lifetime Writings, edited by Robert Phelps*

Elle Décor: The Grand Book of French Style by Francois Baudot and Jean Demachy

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Encore Provence by Peter Mayle

Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl by Debra Ollivier (reviewed here)

The Feasting Season by Nancy Coons

The Flaneur by Edmund White* (reviewed here)

The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris by Patricia Wells*

The Food of France by Waverley Root (reviewed here)

The Fragrant Year by Caire Louise Hunt*

French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew by Peter Mayle

French Spirits: A House, a Village, and a Love Affair in Burgundy by Jeffry Greene

French Ways and Their Meaning by Edith Wharton*

The Gastronomical Me by M. F. K. Fisher*

Gigi by Colette*

The Glass-Blowers by Daphne Du Maurier

A Good Year by Peter Mayle

At Home in France: Eating and Entertaining with the French by Christopher Petkanas*

At Home in Provence: Recipes Inspired By Her Farmhouse In France by Patricia Wells

Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle

How to Cook a Wolf by M. F. K. Fisher*

Inspirations from France & Italy by Betty Lou Phillips

Joan of Arc by Mark Twain*

Joan of Arc: Her Story by Regine Pernoud*

The Josephine Bonaparte Collection (a three-volume fictionalized biography) by Sandra Gulland*

Josephine: The Hungry Heart by Jean-Claude Baker*

The Lais of Marie de France*

A Life in Letters: Correspondence 1929-1991 by M. F. K. Fisher

A Literary Passion by Anais Nin and Henry Miller (letters)*

Living in Provence by Dane McDowellf

The Lover by Marguerite Duras*

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert*

Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford*

Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress by Colin Jones*

Mademoiselle Fifi and Other Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant

Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser*

Le Marriage by Diane Johnson

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vols. I and II, by Julia Child*

Meet Me in Venice by Elizabeth Adler

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

The Messengers of Death by Pierre Magnan

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

A Moveable Feast by Earnest Hemingway

Murder in Belleville by Cara Black (reviewed here);

Murder in the Marais by Cara Black

Murder in the Sentier by Cara Black

My Life in France by Julia Child (reviewed here)

Nana by Emile Zola

Napoleon & Josephine: An Improbable Marriage by Evangeline Bruce*

Paris: A Love Story by Kati Marton

Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

The Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (translated by M.F.K. Fisher)*

A Place in the World Called Paris, edited by Steven Barclay

Postmark Paris by Leslie Jonath

The Power of Style by Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins*

Practicalities by Marguerite Duras*

Provence A - Z by Peter Mayle

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow

Remembrance of Things Paris: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet, edited by Ruth Reichl

The Road from the Past: Traveling through History in France by Ina Caro

Rosa Bonheur: The Artist’s (Auto) Biography by Anna Klumpke*

Saint Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville-West*

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

The Sea Wall by Marguerite Duras*

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir*

Serve it Forth by M. F. K. Fisher*

She Came to Stay [L’Invitee] by Simone de Beauvoir*

Silk Roads: The Asian Adventures of Clara and Andre Malraux by Axel Madsen

Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux*

Son of Holmes by John Lescroat

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Taste of Provence by Francie Jouanin

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fizgerald

Therese Raquin by Émile Zola (reviewed here)

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Two Towns in Provence by M. F. K. Fisher*

The Vagabond by Colette

Vie De France: Sharing Food, Friendship and a Kitchen in the Lorie Valle by James Haller (reviewed here)

The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier

Walks in Hemingway's Paris: A Guide To Paris For The Literary Traveler by Noel R. Fitch

A Well Kept Home: Household Traditions and Simple Secrets from a French Grandmother by Laura Fronly and Yves Duronson*

The Wine Bible by Karen MacNiel*

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle


NOTES
List updated November 1, 2018.

OTHER LISTS/OTHER READERS
Boston Bibliophile's list of French favorites

If you have a similar list or are reading the books on this list, please leave a comment with links to any progress reports or reviews and I will add them here.

Review of the Day: Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Artscatter – a terrific arts and culture blog that just celebrated its first blogoversary – stirred up some punctuation passion the other day. This reminded me to post my mini-review of Lynne Truss's quirky punctuation guide, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It is easy to understand the popularity of this book, because it is far from a typical grammar primer. Truss leans more to anecdote than rote – her guide is sort of a Bridget Jones version of Elements of Style. She uses lots of good examples ("cute" may be more accurate) and is good about pointing out the differences between British and American usage. Although aimed at punctuation sticklers, Eats, Shoot & Leaves would be an entertaining introduction for the punctuation-challenged. It covers all the basic punctuation marks and rules, but not the trickier stuff.

List of the Day: 20 Greatest Oregon Books

Living in Oregon, it seems like a worthwhile goal to read books by Oregonians or about life in Oregon. According to Portland Monthly magazine, these are the "20 Greatest Oregon Books Ever."

Those I have red are in red; those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Here is the list, from the October 2006 issue of Portland Monthly, compiled by Brian Doyle.

1. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

2. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

3. Winter Count by Barry Lopez

4. The River Why by David Duncan

5. Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook’s Lowbrow Northwest by Stewart Hall Holbrook

6. The Country Boy by Homer Davenport

7. Ricochet River by Robin Cody

8. Stepping Westward: The Long Search for Home in the Pacific Northwest by Sallie Tisdale

9. Hole in the Sky by William Kittredge

10. True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff

11. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest by Alvin M. Josephy

12. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis

13. Oregon Geographic Names by Lewis A. McArthur 

14. Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary

15. Fire at Eden’s Gate: Tom McCall & the Oregon Story by Brent Walth

16. The Jump-Off Creek by Molly Gloss

17. Every War Has Two Losers by William Stafford

18. Nehalem Tillamook Tales

19. To Build a Ship by Don Berry

20. In Search of Ancient Oregon: A Geological and Natural History by Ellen Morris Bishop


NOTE

Updated January 6, 2019

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

"Once upon a time there was a little girl name Alice Green who lived on what people who don’t know any better would call a farm, but which her family called their country estate." The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire by C. M. Mayo Kind of interesting -- going with the old tried-and-true "once upon a time" line. You really do not see that in adult books. Either this is going to be a great yarn, or too cute by half. I look forward to finding out.

Review of the Day: Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut may be justifiably famous and a classic of all times, but it was not a book for me. I had avoided reading Vonnegut's best-known novel because I thought it would be unbearably dreary. How could a book about the firebombing of Dresden during WWII not be dreary? But it is on the Modern Library's Top 100 list, so I finally got around to it, and I found my answer. If you write a book about the firebombing of Dresden and fill it with time travel, space ships, and extraterrestrials, it is not dreary, it is goofy. But I do not care for goofy books about extraterrestrials, especially when they are really serious books about the morality of firebombing your enemy during war. Personally, I would rather have a dreary, realistic book than a goofy book. I know others disagree and think this book is the be-all/end-all and that Vonnegut walks on water. In fact, I acquired my first literary stalker when I posted my review of Slaughterhouse-Five on LibraryThing. A fellow reader disagreed with my opinion and wanted to argue me into the ground on every idea and nuance in the book. I had to send him a "lose my number" message and block him from my profile -- pretty harsh measures among bibliophiles. So it is with a little trepidation that I add the note that I just finished Cat's Cradle and I was not particularly wowed by that one either. I enjoyed it more than Slaughterhouse-Five, but I am simply not a fan. So it goes.

More on Julia Spencer-Fleming

After my recent post about author Julia Spencer-Fleming and her Clare Fergusson mystery series, I received a nice email from Ms. Spencer-Fleming:

Thank you so much for featuring me on your blog -- and for letting me know! I'm delighted you're enjoying the series. There is another on the way; I'm working on One Was A Soldier right now, and it should be out in fall '09 or winter '10. In it, a group of Iraqi War vets try to pick up their lives and relationships in Millers Kill. When Russ Van Alstyne rules the death of one of the group a suicide, Clare goes against him and the MKPD to prove the soldier was murdered. (I always feel I should add, "Or was he..?" after that breathless description. I'm terrible at boiling down my own work into a single sentence.) I hope you find the later books as satisfying as the first three! Yours, Julia

The new book sounds great. I will get to work reading the next three on my list so I am caught up with the series when the new one comes out.