JANUARY

Cat Playing Cupid by Shirley Rousseau Murphy 4/5
Birchwood by John Banville 4/5

FEBRUARY

The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein 2.5/5 [somewhat dated, but a sweet love story and a cat.
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann 4.5/5

MARCH

The Killing Ground by Jack Higgins 3/5
The Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte 5/5
The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz 2.5/5

APRIL

The Stranger by Albert Camus 4/5
East, West by Salman Rushdie 4/5 [a collection of short stories]
In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster 3.5/5

MAY

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale 4/5
Come to Me by Amy Bloom 4/5
Star Trek [movie tie-in] by Alan Dean Foster 4/5

JUNE

Horrors of horrors, I didn't finish one book in June, many pending.

JULY

The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer 5/5
The Gurensey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows 4/5
The Cryptographer by Tobias Hill 4/5
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household 5+/5
Persuasion by Jane Austen 3.5/5
The Deadwood Beetleby Mylene Dressler 5/5
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro 5/5

AUGUST

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter 3/5
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson 5/5
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin 3/5
Up Till Now by William Shatner with David Fisher 3/5
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston 3/5

SEPTEMBER

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon [reread] 5/5
Dragon Fly in Amber by DG 5/5
Voyager by DG 5/5
Drums of Autumn by DG 5/5

OCTOBER

An Echo in the Bone By Diana Gabaldon 5/5
Cat Striking Back by Shirley Rousseau Murphy 3/5

NOVEMBER

Call in the Dead by John Le Carré 4/5
Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum 4/5

I'm so excited I can't stand it! In all the clearing and sorting I've been doing, the other day I cleared out a closet that had not been opened even since we moved up here, almost 14 years ago. Phew! Found some good china I hadn't known where on earth it was, but the really good news, the really super news, is that I found two boxes of books! /sigh/

The list is as follows.

Oh, and barring one, they are all hardbacks.

The Three Edwards by Thomas Costain
The Conquering Family " "
The Magnificent Century " "
The Last Plantagenets " "
The Double-Cross System by J.C. Masterman
Encyclopedia of Astrology by Nicholas Devore :rolleyes:
Calder Born, Calder Bred by Janet Dailey
Knowing the Score by Betty Lehan Harragan
The Deadly Decisions by Helen MacInnes
Star Trek Enterprise by Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek The Voyage Home by Vonda N. McIntyre
A Stranger is Watching by Mary Higgins Clark
The Gargoyle Conspiracy by Marvin H. Albert
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
Whirlwind by James Clavell [2 volume set]
The Child From the Sea by Elizabeth Goudge
QB VII by Leon Uris
SS-GB by Len Deighton
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Half-Crown House by Helen Ashton
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer [Sherlock Holmes]
The West End Horror by " " "
Exit Sherlock Holmes by Robert Lee Hall
O Jerusalem! by Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre
Those Who Love by Irving Stone
The Origin by Irving Stone [a biographical novel of Charles Darwin]
The Prize by Irving Wallace
Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
The Chinese Room by Vivian Connel
Killer by Joey
Home Front by Patti Daves with Maureen Strange Foster
The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell
Time After Time by Allen Appel
Against The Fall of Night by Michael Arnold
A Quiet Voyage Home by Richard Jessup
The Shadow of The Lynx by Victoria Holt
The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth
Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor [my original hardback copy]
Wired by Bob Woodward [the short life & fast times of John Belushi]
Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell
The Time of the Dragon by Dorothy Eden
Drop Zone Sicily by William B. Breuer [Allied Airborne Strike July 1943]
Prelude to Terror by Helen MacInnes
The Further Prophecies of Nostradamus by Erika Cheetham
Lie Down With Lions by Ken Follett
Gemini by Domini Taylor
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell [my original hardback copy!]
11 Harrowhouse by Gerald A. Browne
Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge
Time and Again by Jack Finney
God's Men by Pearl S. Buck
Judas, My Brother by Frank Yerby
Fortune Made His Sword by Martha Rofheart
Brain by Robin Cook
Outbreak by " "
Zemindar by Valerie Fitzgerald
White Lotus by John Hersey
O-zone by Paul Theroux
Understanding Vitamins and Minerals from The Prevention Total Health System

Hmmm, the Library Sale is this coming weekend, wonder if I should go....... :?:

I looked at that list for a moment Katherine and thought, blimey that can't be your February list surely! lol


I'm not sure about the sale Katherine, any of them you want to keep?

LOL I wasn't sure at the time where to put it, but now think maybe it should have gone in the thread about books recently purchased...maybe could you move it?

Oh, yeah, I'll keep them all, natch, even though I've read more than half of them, some I've read I don't actually remember.

Not without moving the whole of the thread katherine It's fine where it is really, but if you wish to move it yourself to somewhere you'd rather it be then simple edit, select all, copy then paste it where you wish it to go. After than you may delete the post containing the list and all subsequent posts of Marc's and my own I will also delete so it looks neat and tidy.

It's ahuge list there! If it were me, I'd be honest with myself. I'd ask if it was likely I would ever want to re-read any of the books again? If the answers yes, keep those. If the answer's no, I'd sell them and put the money towards either new releases or something else you enjoy.

( don't you just love the smell of masses of books? )

That's no problem Margo, I'd say the list is fine where it is

Oh, well, ok...I'll leave it where it is then. Thanks.

I finished Death in Venice by Thomas Mann last night,
At only 73 pages this novella should have only taken me a couple of hours to read, instead it took almost a week. Partially on account of my topsy-turvy schedule, but partially because I had to keep rereading the first 14 pages or so. Short, yes, but very dense prose that calls for a great deal of concentration. I know I still haven't taken in all of those first pages, but finally had to go on and be satisfied with the general outline.
It's a little too introspective, even for me.

After that though, it is a heart-breaking love story, unfulfilled love that is of the sort that shouldn't be fulfilled, an aging author of complex and deep novels falls head over heels in love with a young boy. No, he never approaches the boy, it is all from afar. One could almost call his love for the boy pure. . He finds the boy so breathtakingly beautiful and unsullied by Life that he cannot bring himself to speak to him. Only a few words once or twice in passing are exchanged between them. Aschenbach, the author, secretly mourns the fact that it is apparent the boy will not live long, and from the beginning we are led to believe it is the boy's death announced in the title. But is it?

I gave the book only 4 and a half stars, I had to deduct half for the impenetrability [for me] of the first 14 pages. Otherwise I highly recommend it.

you have a list. incredible.
Are you a Trekkie?

LOL, yes, but not rabidly so.
Mostly a fan of the original series, the one I watched as a teenager.

The Three Amigos...Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

I have a couple of hundred of the paperbacks.

Nah, I won't get rid of them, I'm afraid I'm a collector, and hate to part with a book. The ones I've read, I'll reread sometime, as it's been at least 15 years since I've read them, they've been in the closet for 14 years...!

Last week I happened across the new version of the film The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on television, and was entranced by it. I'd never seen it before, and I've never read the books.
Now I want to read all of them.

Have y'all read them? What did you think? Are they something a person of any age can appreciate?

Queen of the South is an extraordinary story about an extraordinary woman. It begins with her running for her life from drug lords in Mexico, as her boyfriend, a pilot, has been executed by them for stealing from drugs. The true reasons however don't come out till the very end.

Insanely enough, she ends up in Morocco, one of the prime movers of drugs in that area, hence "Queen of the South". It's based on a true story, embellished a bit, but not too much I think. If anything I have to think it is toned down for human consumption.

In many ways it is a grim story, but embedded is a love story, and a twist ending we do not expect.

I've read all of them and i believe they can be completely understood only by adults I am sure you will enjoy them!

Thanks Durga, I appreciate that. I thought that must be the case, but really wondered.

For years I've heard about The Stranger by Albert Camus, how it was so difficult, ahead of it's time, etc.
Well, I'm not sure about ahead of it's time, I have to say, considering it was written in 1946, it's entirely possible. But difficult? No, not a bit of it. Camus style is simple and easy to follow.

It's basically a story of alienation, the protagonist is, in my opinion, a sociopath. Unable to relate to even his own mother, he cannot mourn her death, and feels practically nothing when she dies in a home, far away from him. He thinks he's done the best for her by sending her to the home, and really considering his personality, or lack there of, he may be right. From all accounts, she was happy there, and had friends, and even a "fiancée".

He is a most passive sort of person and falls in with a neighbor that is rather a gangster, probably a sort of pimp from what I could tell, and he even falls into a "love" affair with a co-worker. But he only in retrospect realizes that he is actually in love with this woman, and only in a sort of Oh! Really! sort of manner. Through his neighbor/friend he is drawn into a circumstance that causes him to murder a man. It wasn't premeditated, it wasn't done with an ounce of passion, one way or the other. It just seemed to happen, almost by it's self. This man was not capable of premeditation IMO.

However he is ground up in the legal system, and is convicted and sentenced to death. He is shocked, but then settles into a sort of acceptance, and then even looks forward to the pomp of the coming ceremony, a beheading.

Complete disconnection with his surroundings is the main theme as far as I can gather, everything is seen through his dispassionate eyes. Most interesting to see inside of a mind of that sort.



It's fairly quick read at only 123 pages, and well worth the time, I recommend it.

Come to Me is a neat collection of quirky, sometimes out of the ordinary love stories. I read the entire thing last night, a pretty short book, at only 175 pages. It pulls you along, as some of the stories are connected, covering different characters of the same story at different times in their lives.
I would definitely pick up another of her books.

I have at last updated my reading list for this year. June was a dry reading month for what with one thing and the other, but I'm picking up again. As I mentioned in another thread, I'm reading Rogue Male right now, and it's an easy read, and quite exciting.

I'll be picking up Persuasion by Austen next I believe, maybe one more in-between, one of my cat mysteries perhaps.

I am ambivalent regarding Persuasion, on one hand I found it boring, and a bit silly. On the other hand, I enjoyed the last one-third very much. For some reason it didn't speak to me as Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility did. Oddly enough I've seen opinions that name Persuasion as Austen's best book.

I have to say I'm glad I read it, but in truth, only glad as a milestone, not especially for the enjoyment received by reading it.

The Deadwood Beetle is an exploration of the nature of guilt, forgiveness and even love that will stay with me a long time. Understanding of our guilt, generational guilt, a child's innocent guilt is beautifully rendered by Mylene Dressler in compact and emotional language. Emotional, yes, but there is nothing maudlin in this novel. While allegory is used, it is also direct and to the point.

Highly recommended.

Can you tell I loved this book?

I just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and cannot praise it highly enough. So many complete stories rolled into one book that somehow I know at the end of the trilogy will tie up, and I have some strong suspicions, and can't wait to read the next one, The Girl Who Played with Fire. I have it on order, and should be arriving next week sometime.

Larsson keeps so many balls in the air, but doesn't lose a beat. Believable and unbelievable at the same time, from a serial killer to a dysfunctional girl genius, to a financial, mafia style crime....it's all here.

Definitely. Highly. Recommended.