I just finished going through the rest of last week's thread, and now I have more books on my to-read list thanks to reading those Top 5 lists. When I looked at my own list of books read so far this year, I didn't feel like there was much Top 5 material there. The one book that has really blown me away so far this year is one not on my BaW list because I it's a read-aloud and I like to keep my read-alouds separate from those I read to myself. Anyway, that book is The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt, and I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed reading this to myself. I loved the style and the content. The teacher in the book sometimes gives lessons to the main character that also give the reader hints for what to look for in the author's style and content. (Like, the teacher says, "That is an example of when repetition is not a rhetorical virtue," and repetition is heavily used in the book's style and structure.) Bonus - all three of my sons - ages 10, 12, and 14 - loved the book, too. RE: Clash of Civilizations... I'm glad you enjoyed it, Jane! I really dug the structure of that one. It is yet another instance of Stacia bringing good stuff to the thread. It's been on my to-read list since Stacia read it a couple years ago, and I just happened to see it at the library book sale recently and snagged it. As for my reading this past week, I finished re-reading Howl and Other Poems, which was great, and I'm continuing to listen to Palahniuk's Survivor. I stopped by a used bookstore in or near the town where the Illinois Shakespeare Festival is held, and I grabbed a quirky book called Flaming Iguanas: An Illustrated All-Girl Road Novel Thing by Erika Lopez. Robin - books of essays and poetry that I've particularly loved. Essays, well, I'm terrible at getting those into my reading. One book I enjoyed that feels to me like a combination of poetry/essay/memoir is Bluets by Maggie Nelson. Some other poetry books I loved: (I don't think I can limit myself to 5. Can I stop at 10? Does Bluets count as one?) Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? by Matthea Harvey Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg the meatgirl whatever by Kristin Hatch The Dead Wrestler Elegies by Todd Kaneko To See The Queen by Allison Seay What Narcissism Means to Me by Tony Hoagland A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I finished listening to First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson. This was more descriptive than prescriptive. It talked about how we feed children, the history of school lunches and what was fed to children, eating disorders, including extreme pickiness, methods that have been successfully used to help people relearn how to eat. I re-read Hamlet and dh and I saw it performed last night at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. It was a wonderful performance with Hamlet played by a woman. I started listening to Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk and re-reading Howl and Other Poems, and I'm trying to catch up a little bit on my pile of literary magazines. I've got some spring issues sitting here...

I read R&G this year and saw the performance and was so glad I had read Waiting for Godot a year or two ago. I loved them both, but did not know that I might want to read No Exit too. Thanks! Off to Amazon. Well, maybe my library website first, though I doubt they'll have that.

I finished Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous. I enjoyed the structure of this one. The structure of each character's statement reminded me of Woolf and Palahniuk - how they pick one repeated object or phrase as a means of grounding the reader, mentioning the object then moving out from it into the abstract, then coming back to the object again. The satire was a little heavy handed, to me. Most of the characters were a little over-the-top self-centered and extreme in their beliefs/opinions and what action they say should be taken against those who offend them. It made me think of Arrested Development, but in that case it's supposed to be funny, whereas I didn't get the feeling that the extreme characters were meant to be humorous in the case of Clash of Civilizations. I also felt like the characters all had one voice. They each had their own ideas that they railed about, but they spoke of them in the same manner. Back to the structure - I enjoyed the author's ability to weave the statements and events together with common phrases, topics, etc. For example, one person's dog has gone missing and another compares immigrants to dogs. Great book overall, imo. I'm glad I read it. I also read A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I pulled this off the list of banned and challenged classics so I could mark off the banned books square for BaW bingo. This is a coming-of-age story about high school boys at a New England boarding school during WWII. The prose was smooth and poetic and the setting was used as an analogy for the characters and their situation. I did find the style a little stuffy at times, which could be seen as a positive thing since it effectively gives that stuffy boarding school feel, but still, I just wanted a little more edge or something that felt unique or interesting. The story *was* just a touch uncanny when the two main characters felt a bit doppelgangerish, and it really got my interest at those points. It made me think of a tamer but more realistic Lord of the Flies, where uncivilized land is just the edge of the school grounds instead of an island. Now I must re-read Hamlet before dh and I go see it performed, and I've got Howl and Other Poems sitting here for my "revisit an old friend" bingo square. Oh, and anybody else have trouble with Tor.com's book club book (The Just City) this time? I got the first book on my Kindle just fine, but when I tried to get this one to my Kindle and Kindle apps I got an email saying the file could not be delivered. (I did use the mobi file type.)

I haven't read The Argonauts, but it's on my to-read list because I have read another book by that author: Bluets, which I loved. Glad to hear The Argonauts is great too!

I finished The Return of the King and therefore finished The Lord of the Rings. It's not like I didn't know what was going to happen, but the ending was very sad and made me think of times in life when we form close friendships only to all go our separate ways - high school, college, play groups maybe, marriages sometimes. I loved Sam's reaction to waking up after having been saved. "Have all the sad things come untrue?" I started listening to a book I got when it was the Audible deal of the day -- First Bite: How We Learn to Eat. I got this because the author believes we can train ourselves to like foods we currently dislike, something I also believe because I have done that for myself--adding carrots, peas, pineapples, cucumber, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes and--just to make dh happy--tater tot casserole to my "likes" list. And I guess I wanted to hear how right I am, or just confirm that it's possible for most people - not must me. But also pickiness in the family makes dinner planning frustrating when it should be a joy, and I wanted to see if it would give me any clues as to how to help dh and my youngest ds open up and eat more things. It's interesting so far. I think I need more food related books on Audible. Maybe I will finally read Salt Sugar Fat and The Omnivore's Dilemma if I can listen to them in the car And today I got a tiny start on Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio.

Thank you, Kareni for linking to the Tor eBook club. I just downloaded The Three-Body Problem! Last Sunday I had started The Island of Last Truth by Flavia Company, and I finished it later that day. For me, I felt like I needed more details about how what happened happened in order to really believe it, but it was a relaxing read - easy, compelling and twisty. AND dh read it, which is really great. That's the only book he's read this year. I am now half way through The Return of the King. It draws me into the story often enough, but when I pick it up to read, I am more interested in finishing it than I am in continuing it. Oh, and I scored a copy of Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio for 50 cents at the library book sale.

Yeah, I figured that would be cool, but I actually watched it right before listening to the book and don't want to watch it again so soon. My grandmother had never seen the movie, so my kids and I brought dinner over to her house and watched it with her. Otherwise I didn't think she'd really enjoy listening to a book about the making of it while we drove, and I just thought it was too bad she'd never seen it and it was about time. I agree, plus all the other people they brought in to voice their own comments. I'm sad they couldn't get Mandy Patinkin (who I really love for playing Rube on Dead Like Me even more than for his Princess Bride role), but I loved hearing the people they could get.

I just thought of this this morning. You could subscribe to Stack or, if you're like me and think it's a bit too pricey, just look through their list of previous magazines. Well, the rain cleared up for my grandmother and me last week, and we were able to see Peter and the Starcatcher. It was silly, punny, Jim Carey-ish. I thought, I guess this was what it was like to watch a Shakespearean comedy at the time it was written, when you didn't have to look at the footnotes to understand the pun. I started listening to As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride in the car, and since I had a nice road trip on which to get through a chunk of it, I'm more than half way through. It's light and enjoyable. I especially love the stories about Andre the Giant. And I started reading The Island of Last Truth by Flavia Company as recommended by Stacia last week. I'm half way through and am enjoying it so far.

Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps she was very lucky to have not felt classism for even a portion of her life with poetry.

Nautical, I will come back to that thought. For now, here is what I've finished since I last posted: Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation - This book is a sort of retelling (or continuum) of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, but updated and with a black female poet slant. The thing is, Rilke's letters were actual letters from him to one particular actual person, whereas this book is full of "letters" to no one in particular - to all poets, or perhaps to all beginning black female poets and whoever else happens to pick it up. This book lacks the authenticity (and specificity) of Rilke's letters and sometimes feels self-helpish or sentimental or kind of like an info-dump, where information is unnaturally forced into a "letter." The most interesting parts for me: "Things are so different now, and if there weren't others who inhabited that '90s poetry space with me, I'd think I dreamt it all up. Back in the day no one in my circle--or its orbit--ever asked me where I got my MFA." "When poetry becomes a business (or an elite club or a bid for integration) it can't help but mirror everyday life in this country. In fact even without poetry being a business, it reflects the classism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism of the country in which we live. What you are seeing, at times, is the ugliness of this country in stanza and verse." The Two Towers, which I enjoyed. I'm looking forward to beginning the third book. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh - This is the first book I've read (actually, I listened to this one) by this author, and I'm glad I checked him out, but I doubt I'll read much of his work. It was a little light and self-helpish most of the time. Not my thing. Twelfth Night - This is a re-read for me, and I just saw it performed last night with my grandmother at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. It was a great performance. Now it is raining and we are sitting in the hotel room hoping the weather clears up before tonight's scheduled performance of Peter and the Starcatcher. (No roof on the theatre, so rain means there will be no performance tonight, and since we don't live in Illinois, we probably will not exchange our tickets for another date.)

This looks great, Stacia. My library doesn't have it, but I may just order a used copy.

Even though your DD refuses to read it, it's nice to see someone else enjoying these books. It's hard to say whether book one or four is my favorite in the series, but either way, I think fondly of The Boy Who Lost Fairyland. Definitely a modern fairy tale. I'm trying to think of other modern fairy tales - how about Stardust by Neil Gaiman?

I finished Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marques, which brings together three of his short story collections. There is a big difference between the first stories, which were much darker and more surreal and often reminded me of David Lynch, and the last stories, which leaned a little more towards magical and whimsical. I prefer the latter, partly because of the tone, but partly because some of the earlier stories felt incomplete to me. I've now started on The Two Towers. It's nice to read by the pool while my youngest is in swimming lessons.

Ethel, uggh! That sounds terrible. I think I would need Valium. I finished listening to Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson. It was different from her first book in that it focused on mental illness - rather than on her upbringing and wacky shenanigans (though that's in there too) and similar in that it was a mix of hilarious and sentimental. The author will be speaking at a nearby community college next month, so I hope to see her and am glad to have read (or listened to) both of her books. I am currently listening to Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh and mainly reading Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Okay, well since I don't think I have ever read a novel about mermaids, this actually intrigues me. And it makes me want to share some of the wonderful mermaid poems by Matthea Harvey. The Straightforward Mermaid The Objectified Mermaid The Backyard Mermaid

Dante time again, huh? Well, it looks like somebody has checked the Mandelbaum translation out from the library, but it's due back it two days. Hopefully it will be in my hands soon, and I'll finally read Paradiso and finish the darn trilogy (and hope I never feel like I need to revisit it). I finished reading The Girl Who Raced Fairlyand All the Way Home - the last Fairyland book by Catherynne M. Valente. I read the first three books to my children. We all hated the third book, but middle ds wanted to continue the series anyway, so he and I read the fourth and fifth books together. I'm glad we did. The fourth book was really great, at least as good as the first book. This final book was a little slow, but was good enough and wrapped things up in a charming way. Sadly, I finished listening to A Moveable Feast. I wish I could listen to more of that. It was so pleasant, partially because of the voice and reading style of the narrator, but I know I would have loved it in print, too, and I suppose I might read it normally sometime. It was fun to hear about Hemingway's interactions with and opinions of other authors, and dreamy to hear about him writing and drinking in cafes in Paris all the time. I also read Demian by Hermann Hesse, which is a nice coincidence since it was a pretty philosophical novella about man's path to find his true self. It went along with The Book of Merlyn a bit, so that was a nice coincidence too. What's next? I've got Jenny Lawson's Furiously Happy on CD in the car, but that may go slow since my youngest would not like to listen to so much adult language. I may get a second audiobook to listen to when he's riding along. I'm signed up for the Gabriel Garcia Marquez course on Future Learn, but I don't know how much I'll do or how fast. The course starts with some short stories, and it starts tomorrow, so I suppose I'll at least get some of those in. And I'm waiting for my irl reading buddy to get back to me on what he and I will read together next. Oh, and I've finally got the second LotR book sitting here.

That's amazing! Congratulations to him, and you too. I bet you're proud of him, and I'm sure he couldn't have finished the book without a helpful and understanding wife.

Hey, everyone! I've missed a week, maybe two. But I am still reading. For audio books, I finished Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling. This was fun enough to listen to, rarely particularly interesting, but there were at least a couple chapters that I would recommend to a young artist - chapters about finding your passion, finding/befriending the people who share your passion, etc. And I'm currently listening to A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. I'm loving this, and I was glad to discover that my library has more nonfiction Hemingway on CD. I also finished Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, which was a nice read and added to my to-read list. I doubt I'll retain much of the good information, which books and authors are great examples of this or that. I read one of the Civil War graphic novels before taking my youngest to the movie. And I read The Book of Merlyn by T.H. White. This last was really a pleasure. I was in love with the book probably by the first or second page. My only complaint is that there is quite a bit of repeat from The Sword in the Stone, which was dull and unnecessary, because one should have already read it in the first book, and perhaps could have just been summarized. I still have The Beagle, which I pick at, and my middle ds and I are trying to get through the fifth and final book in Catherynne M. Valente's Fairyland series - The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home.

I read Distant Light by Antonio Moresco. This is a novella, published by Archipelago, and sent to me by Jane. (Thank you!) As she said, it's poetic. The way the author would repeat and expand - sort of like "The House That Jack Built," but not childish/cute/annoying-ish - helped create the slow, calm, isolated winter atmosphere. I loved it until the last chapter, which confused me. I thought I'd see what interpretations the Internet would give for the book/ending, but what I found was more confused people. Kirkus Reviews says, "Though the ending is appropriately inscrutable, it is somewhat disappointing in its tampered uncertainty." I am going very slowly with The Beagle, partly because it is so big I don't want to bring it with me anywhere. I am still reading Reading Like a Writer and enjoying it. Of course, my to-read list just keeps growing as a result of that one. And I started listening to a David Sedaris book in my car - Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls. It's pretty perfect for driving. It's entertaining, but not so interesting that I feel like I really ought to be reading it attentively or that I need to rewind if I miss a few words. Unfortunately, not all the essays are things I want to play with my kids in the car.

I've read five of them. Night by Elie Wiesel On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson There are some others there that are on my to-read list, some I've never heard of, and some I've heard of, but I thought they were fiction. I suppose I probably just assume a book is fiction until I look into it - unless it's called A Biography of Abraham Lincoln or The Eat Clean Cookbook or something like that. I finished The Book Thief. My opinion of it remains the same. Great characters, great pace, touching story - horrible style - overwrought, cliched, sometimes just confusing. Despite my opinion of the style, it's a book I would recommend. One of my children is reading it, and I'll try to get the others to, also. (Or maybe I'll just read it to them.) I also read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and saw a local performance of it. The book was great. (The performance was so-so, but that's to be expected around here.) I definitely want to read more about it, thoughts or analyses written by people who have given it more time and attention, and I hope to get an opportunity to see it performed again sometime. I started Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose and Distant Light by Antonio Moresco.

I finished a book of short stories by Z.Z. Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Good, clean, tight short stories, but nothing that particularly drew me in or interested me. I am enjoying The Voyage the the Beagle. I am so glad I got the illustrated version. Thank you, Rose, for recommending it. I have also been reading The Book Thief. The style of this is a little too cutesy cheeseball for me, and sometimes I feel like the author is trying too hard to be clever. Trying too hard to always use a strong verb, to use figurative language and to make the story more meaningful, and usually falling short (or going over the top), IMO, and just distracting from what is being done well. The characters are charming, and the suspense rises and falls regularly, and enough is given away that the story has some tension even in the good times because you know at least part of what's coming. I am completely engaged and rooting for Liesel, Rudy, Max, Hans and Rosa.

Yes! I haven't watched it yet, though. I'm afraid I'll pay the $2 to rent it, then just fall asleep, as I pretty much always do when I try to watch a movie at home. Maybe if I get myself sugared up first...

I'm about to read that one, too! It is being performed at the local community theatre this month, and since I'll be seeing Hamlet at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in August, I thought I'd better see R&G, too - even if I'd rather see them in the other order. I finished Alice LaPlante's The Making of a Story - the most thorough book I've read on writing thus far. I'd recommend this to anyone who's into writing fiction or creative nonfiction. I also finished 84, Charing Cross Road. This is a charming book of letters between a writer and the workers at a bookstore from which she orders books. They became long-distance friends in addition to merchants/customer. I imagine I'll try the sequel eventually, but my library doesn't have it, so not yet .My ds is reading The Book Thief for school, so I took it off the shelf and started it too. I also started in on The Voyage of the Beagle.

Thank you for the introduction to reading Darwin, Rose. I ordered the book, so hopefully I'll be reading along with you. Boy, that was a tough decision. $25 for a book I've never seen! But it's not available at any library or bookstore within a 30 minute drive, and Amazon doesn't have the "look inside" feature on this one. Well, I've been reading 84, Charing Cross Road today, and I'm so jealous of all the books Helene is buying that I had to get one for myself.