Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Nothing to Read Here

I read a book intending to review it for the May meeting of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. I decided against writing the review, though.

You know what everyone's mother says about if you can't say anything nice . . . ?

Well, that's not the case here. It's more like I'd be damning the book with faint praise.

And since I didn't have a really strong reaction to the book either way I'm simply not going to review it.

So I could dust off an old review, like this one of Percival the Plain Little Caterpillar.

Or I could review another book I've read recently, like Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls or Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout.

Or I could just take a month off. I've chosen to do the latter. I'll also include a list of the books one of my book clubs has discussed:

2006
The Tender Land by Kathleen Finneran (memoir)
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (graphic memoir)
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
Plainsong by Kent Haruf

2007
Night by Elie Wiesel (memoir)
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore (short stories)
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah (memoir)
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dangerous Life of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Bearing Witness by Michael A. Kahn
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

2008
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
Lamb by Christopher Moore
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts (play)
Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott
Him Her Him Again the End of Him by Patricia Marx
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (memoir/essays)
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Women by Clare Luce Booth (play)

2009
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey by Alison Weir
Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Life of Pi by Yann Martel

2010
Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle (short stories)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan
A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher


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4 comments:

grace said...

just finished the graveyard book. read it one sitting. it was wonderful. but i think all of his books are and have pretty much read every one of them.

Sarahlynn said...

My book club was torn on it. Most loved it (as I did) but some of the moms found the beginning a bit hard to take. I just took a deep breath and plowed through that as fast as possible, reminding myself "these are fictional characters. none of this is real" until we were safely with the ghosts and Silas.

kayerj said...

That's a nice list of books. I've read a few. That's the best thing about book blogging you hear about so many interesting books.

You asked about the age group for the Fablehaven. It is probably geared to the middle grades.

Sarahlynn said...

Kaye, that's also why I love being in book clubs; they prompt me to read books I'd otherwise pass by.

Thanks for letting me know about Fablehaven; I adore middle grade fiction.

Oops. Just hit my semicolon quota for the day.