What have you read recently that you particularly enjoyed? Loosing My Espanish by H G Carillo The Dark Valley: a panorama of the thirties Wired magazine The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce The Last of Her Kind by , Sailing My Shoe to Timbuktu by Joyce Thompson, Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap Dreams from My Father ­ Barack Obama Digging into America ­ Thisbe Nissen’s Osprey Island The Reluctant Fundamentalist­­­Moshin Hamid Life Of PI­­­Yann Martel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan­­­ Lisa See A Single Shard­­­Linda Sue Park Broken­William Cope Moyers 'Cod' 'My Life as a Fake' 'Atonement' Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown Eduardo Galeano's 'Voices of Time: A Life in Stories' translated by Mark Fried, The entire Narnia series (finally got around to it!) by C.S.Lewis 'Being Geniuses Together' by Robert McAlmon & Kay Boyle 'Untold Stories' by Alan Bennett 'Airports and Other Wasted Days (poetry) by Kevin Ireland 'Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes' (poetry) by Billy Collins All of Carl Hiassen's books and most of Tim Dorsey, last one Hurrican Punch. The Biology of Cancer by Robert Weinberg (non fiction) High Lonesome by The Story Behind the Story, 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and How They Work Forever Summer by Resolution by Denise Mina The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks 'The Prestige'; 'The Tenth Circle'; 'The Kite Runner'; 'Year of Wonders' I'm re­reading some Maeve Binchy and Debbie Macombre books. Also I listen to books on tape (a lot since I live very rural and every place I want to go is at least 1/2 hour of driving.) On tape I'm reading/listening to THE GODFATHER­II. Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Any Human Heart by William Boyd, Aenied by Virgil, translated by Fagel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess The Atlas by William T. Vollmann Twilight by William Gay Lee and Bob Woodruff, IN AN INSTANT Jay Baruch, Fourteen Stories Movie review by Anthony Lane in The Greatest Sailing Stories Ever Told From Beirut to Jerusalem 'The Summer of Ordinary Ways' by Nicole Lea Helget 'The Insufficiency of Maps' by Nora Pierce How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona by Ryan Harty A Relative Stranger by Charles Baxter Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg How Far She Went by Mary Hood The Love of the Last Tycoon, the Bruccoli edition of Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel. Some feel it lacks the magic of his previous work, and maybe that's true, but ol' Scottie was working at it hard. 's Paris Stories, A Collection of Robert Hass' poetry columns, called Now and Then The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb. This is my second reading of this book, but I enjoyed it immensely. Mainly because at this time in my life I'm dealing with mental illness in my own family and related so much to his insights into the 'sane' twins responses. Just discovered Pam Houston's short stories. Wow! The Closing of the Western Mind Winter House by Carol O'Connel susan mcdonald, [email protected], nashville Of Mice and Men, newest issue of Wired, a Todd McFarlane's run of Spider­man Drive by James Sallis. I'd like to warn anyone who picks up this novel; either don't sit in the sun or use a strong sunscreen ­­ you won't want to put it down to move into the shade. Caren Cote, Portland, OR James Wright's collected poems 'His Lovely Wife' by Elizabeth Dewberry Teresa Tumminello Brader 's Until I Find You (reading it now)

1 The Birth House We Have To Talk About Kevin The Red Tent Two Lives by William Trevor The Sea by John Banville To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf Robt Fagles' Translation of Virgil's Aeneid Ulysses (yes, I really read it, along with a 24 lecture from The Teaching Company) , 'Specimen Days' Ryan Boudinot, 'The Littlest Hitler' Verlyn Klinkenborg, 'Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptile' Irene Nemirovsky, 'Chaleur du Sang' in French The Tender Bar by Moehringer, Stuffed by Patricia Volk Primo Levi's 'Se questo e' un uomo' ­ in Italian High Country by Nevada Barr Orient Express by The 1929 World Alamanac and Book of Facts (riveting!) The Children of Men by P.D. James I recently read Hunts in Dreams by Tom Drury, and now I am plowing through Middlemarch­­and I'm surprised by how entertaining it is! Monty Python's Flying Circus, the complete 1st season. George B. Miller, Jr. Newington, CT I loved Robert Goolrick's 'THe End of the World as We Know It' and 'Sword Bird' by Nancy Yi Fan Hannah's Gift, by Maria Housden; The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, by Terry Ryan The Good Husband of Zebra Drive; Reading Lolita in Tehran I finally read all the Harry Potter books. I'd snobbishly put it off for all these years, but in the end, I had to see what everybody was talking about. The pure depth of J.K. Rowling's imagination is astonishing. Granted, the prose isn't advanced or complex ­ she meant to target children, after all. But her talent is such that she can even draw skeptical adults into Harry's world and make enjoy it. Now that's impressive. A Perfect Mess by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman Some Things I never Thought I'd Do by Pearl Cleage a wide variety of cook books Newspapers Sacred Texts of the Baha'i Faith the Bible things my children read including graphic novels such as Bone A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute any murder mystery, especially by Agatha Christie or Margret Trueman Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Memory Keepers Daughter, Eat, Love, Pray, At Risk, Murder in Union Station, Suite Francaise, A Year in the World the latest print issue of the paris review, the latest 'issue' of ruined music (online), the biography of frida kahlo. (Edward P. Jones) Mistress of the Art of Death (Ariana Franklin) The Hummingbird's Daughter (Luis Urrea) The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty­First Century by Thomas L. Friedman A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, eye­opening memoir, beautifully written; Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende, powerfully written, wonderful construction. 'One for the Money,' Janet Evanovich 'Two for the Dough,' Janet Evanovich 'Delores Claiborne,' 'Gone with the Wind,' 'Heidi,' Spyri 'Catcher in the Rye,' J.D. Salinger 'Suffer the Fall,' Doug Crandell Cassandra King's The Queen of Broken Hearts Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ­ Hunter S. Thompson Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me ­ Richard Farina Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch ­ Colossus of Maroussi ­ Henry Miller Gallatin Canyon ­ Tom McGuane A Bit on the Side ­ Willian Trevor This is the last three weeks reading. I'm on a bit of a nostalgia trip. Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass The Bible According to Mark Twain Best Short Stories of the Century, edited by '' I know­­I should have read it sooner. 'Here They Come' by Yannick Murphy­­should get more attention articles in 'The Villager' NYC weekly online brink.com, failbetter.com, elimae.com Orhan Pamuk's Snow. VS Naipaul Half a Life. Malcolm Gladwell. Namesake by Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World Mary Otis, 'Unstuck' (from 'Yes, Yes Cherries') Holiday Reinhorn, 'Big Cats' Charles D'Ambrosio 2 , , , by Cormac McCarthy GLIMMER TRAIN 'Gathering Up the Little Gods' by Courtney Angela Brkic in THE MISSOURI REVIEW THE STONE FIELDS: Love and Death in the Balkans by Courtney Angela Brkic THE DISCONTINUITY OF SMALL THINGS by Kevin Haworth COME! MEET MY FAMILY by Paul Beckman RED STICK MEN by Tim Parrish WILLINGLY by Tess Gallagher TOMORROW THEY WILL KISS by Eduardo Santiago BELIEVERS by Nathan Leslie 'Grappling' by Jacob M. Appel 'Everlasting' by Che Parker CLOSE RANGE by EVERYTHING DAN WICKETT WRITES ON EMERGING WRITERS NETWORK THE WRITER'S LIFE, ed. Carol Edgarian and Tom Jenks THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by DANCE OF THE HAPPY SHADES by Alice Munro THE RED DRESS by Arlene Sanders Stain of the Berry by Anthony Bidulka The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier Joanna Scott, Everybody Loves Somebody. Alice Munro, Runaway. JR Moehringer, The Tender Bar. After This ­ Alice McDermott The Mission Song ­ John LeCarre The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud­ Julia Navarro Bleeding Hearts ­ Ian Rankin And She Was ­ Cindy Dyson Crows OVer the Wheat Fields ­ Daran Braver The Holy Road ­ Michael Blake (Dances With Wolves) The River Killings ­ Merry Jones Along Came Mary ­ Jo­Anne Mapson The Bee's Kiss ­ Barbara Cleverly A book about writing that focuses on getting the darn thing into print, titled, Your First Novel, by Ann Rittenberg and Laura Whitcomb. Ann is a literary agent in NYC and Laura is a terrific writer. The book is funny and serious, a nice combo. Plus it has a great intro/pep talk written by Dennis Lehane. If, you're feeling poorly or just need a wee boost, just read this intro and you'll be ready to face your blank pages again. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan Thunderstruck by Erik Larson 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos Watchmen by Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan. and William Trevor, everything they wrote Gravity's rainbow by Incredibly Loud, Dangerously Close, Foer , Stegner Snow, Orhan Pamuk Kafka on the Shore, Murakami Lois Ann Yamanaka's Behold the Many Kianna Davenport's Song of the Exile I've been reading a collection of American short stories. The anthology is in chronological order. It is fascinating to see how the 'modern' has changed since its beginnings in the 19th century. the bluest eyes Berlin Stories The Undercover Economist The Places in Between Actually reading a collection of vampire­pulp short stories called 'Weird Vampire Tales' which is a very fun read. Even in the early part of last century, the writer's knew how to scare today's readers. As horrible as things are in the world today, a vampire or two could really ruin a person's day :­) Craig Ferguson's Between the Bridge and the River the wheel of time by Robert Jordan 'Fascination', A collection of short stories by Willima Boyd, 'Of Human Bondage' by Somerset Maugham, 'Reunion', by Fred Uhlman, 'Stories', by Katherine Mansfield, 'The Book of Evidence', by John Banfield. Gulag by Anne Applebaum William Maxwell, Glimmer Train 61 3 volumes of Carver's stories, T.C. Boyle's Tooth and Claw, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Steinbeck's Journal of a Novel, then a re­read of its subject, East of Eden. In nonfiction, Hooked by G. Bruce Knecht. “The Wolves of Minnesota: A Howl in the Heartland by David L. Mech" I just finished Little Children by Tom Perotta. Before that I read The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio, which I found inspirational. (Imagine having 10 kids and finding time to write!) Prior to that one I had read by Michael Cunningham, which was full of lovely writing. Poetry Magazine Too many poems and short stories to mention. Garry Disher's Inspector Challis books 3 The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler Victoria Lowery, Fountain Inn [email protected] The Pilot's Wife, Anita Shreve The Cider House Rules, John Irving anything by Dana Stabenow, an Alaskan writer 'Antigua Vida M¡a', a novel by Chilean writer Marcela Serrano. I'm getting to grips with my Spanish enough now that I can appreciate her style and use of words. Also, non­fiction, 'States of Denial' by Stanley Cohen, about people's and states' denial of and responses to atrocities and suffering. Very well written, and frequently uplifting as well as depressing about humanity. Today Matters by John Maxwell No 1 Ladies Detective Agency Interview with Andrea Cohen by The Black Swan by Mercedes Lackey Truman Capote's posthumously published 'Summer Crossing.' The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron Articles and readers' forums in , Rick Reilly's column in Sports Illustrated, various daily comic strips, Readers' Digest 1. A Happy Death (Albert Camus, 1971) 2. Exile and the Kingdom (Albert Camus, 1957) 3. The Ice Queen (Alice Hoffman, 2005) 4. (Marilyn Robinson, 2004) 5. Blindness (Jose Saramago, 1995) All of the above are relatively short books, about the same length, 200­300 pages. Camus is probably the most intense, and by far the most philosophical. Grace (Eventually), by Anne Lamott Housekeeping, by John Kinsella's The New Arcadia (poetry) 'A Crisis for Mr. Lion' by William Preston, winner of Zoetrope All­Story 2006 contest. The mammoth encyclopedia of unsolved mysteries ­ Colin Wilson La spiritualit… del corpo ­ Alexander Lowen The Black Dahlia ­ James Elroy A George R R Martin book, A Feast for Crows. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey; some short stories by 100 Years of Solitude, Marquez Lolita, Nabokov History of Love, Nicole Krauss Carried Away, Alice Munro The Bible The Tender Bar, JR Moehringer Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy The Piano Tuner Nonfiction: Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill, by Jeremy Taylor, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Fiction: The Windup Bird Chronicles by The Road by Cormac McCarthy A Gift Upon the Shore by MJ Wren The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk The Namesake by J Lahiri, Through the Children's Gate by A Gopnik, , Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (second time), Pocketful of Names by Joe Coomer, The Glass Castle by J.Walls, Different Hours (Poems) by Stephen Dunn, The Discomfort Zone by , Dress Your Children in Corduroy by D Sedaris, Last Days of the Dog Men by Brad Watson (for the 3rd time ­ a better question might be: What books do you find yourself reading more than once?), Marley and Me by J. Grogan, Connecting the Dots (Poems) and To Make a Prarie both by Maxine Kumin Compression Scars, story collection by Kellie Wells Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood I have recently all but consumed a Sophie Kinsella novel (Can You Keep a Secret) which was a fast, yet humorous and well­written read. I have also read a collection of Ray Bradbury, which I read about ten years ago. I find now that I have new appreciation for his work. Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (John Banville) mary robison, bukowski 'One Mississippi' by Mark Childress Amy Hempel’s collection of stories, Mother Knows 4 Daniel DeFoe ­ Journal of the Plague Year ­ Servants of the Map Sigrid Undset ­ Kristin Lavransdatter I recently read 'Jane Eyre.' It is an oldy, but definitely a good one. Thunderball by Ian Fleming Him Her Him Again The End of Him, by Patricia Marx; You Suck, a Love Story by Chris Moore; [reread] The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank; The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (I didn't think I'd like, it was really good!) [reread] Lapham Rising by Roger Rosenblatt Grace Eventually by Anne LaMott (and I was also thrilled to meet her at a reading), and Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. VOYAGERS, by Margaret Elphinstone I just reread everything Charles Baxter has published. He’s a master. Wish he wrote more. Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson, for a mother­daughter book group. Very unsentimental YA portrayal of a foster child situation. No pat answers or easy happy endings. I was pretty impressed. I also just completed reading the review galleys of Nathan Englander's novel, The Ministry of Special Cases. I had not liked his short story collection that much, but I found the novel, once I got into it, riveting. I'd recommend it. The whole period of 'the disappeared' in Argentina is close enough in time to be horribly disturbing and Englander handles it well, bringing in elements of dark humor and the mounting sense of frustration and fear. Marla Cohen, [email protected] The Last Girls by Lee Smith Road Virus by Stephen King The History of Love by Nicole Krauss Read and loved Zadie Smith's On Beauty. I am currently re­reading The Namesake. I re­read Cat's Cradle, last week. I hadn't read that in about 15 years. When Vonnegut died my book group decided we would read it. Not only was it still wonderfully entertaining, and at moments brilliant, but it seems even more relevant now, somehow. I also recently read The Birth House, which I greatly enjoyed. I am really enjoying Ann Rinaldi's teenfiction books. She writes amazing historical fiction that opens your eyes to little details such as the caring of George Washington's house during the Civil War. Lately, the more I'm writing, the harder it has been to just purely enjoy a book. But I did recently finish Alice Munro's new collection of short stories and I especially loved the second half of it. Beautiful. Doris Grumbach memoir series Bill Cosby's 'Time Flies' The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott Latest issue of Poets and Writers, The Bitch Posse by Martha O'Connor The Pursuit of Happyness By Chris Gardner 'The Reformation: A History' by Diarmaid MacCulloch The picture book O'Sullivan's Stew by Hudson Talbot Thank You Your Opinion Means Nothing to Me by Nancy Blair The New Menopausal Years by Susun Weed I just finished Wallace's Infinite Jest. It's one of the best books I've ever read, definitely a new classic. He's the most creative author I've read since Kurt Vonnegut. I plan to read all of his books. 'Twilight' and 'New Moon' by Stephanie Meyer were fantastic, very believable characters (in spite of vampires) and realistic situations. 'The God of Mischief' by Paul Bajoria was a pleasant sequel to 'The Printer's Devil.' 'rob&sara.com' and 'Anything Can Happen in High School' are two offbeat, neat teen books. 19 Minutes by Jodi Piccoult Carribbean by James Michener Seven Ancient Wondeer by Matthew Reilly Overleaf Hong Kong by Xu Xi. The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans (well­written and informative) The Complete Enderby ­ Anthony Burgess ­ About a Boy ­ Nick Hornby the curious incident of the dog in the night­time ­ mark haddon My Antonia ­ Play It As It Lays ­ Joan Didion The Hotel New Hampshire ­ John Irving The Crystal Desert ­ Summers in Antarctica by David G Cambell 5 Sara Gruen ­ Water for elephants The Sun magazine, which I always enjoy. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch, Intuition by Allegra Goodman. The Missing World by Margot Livesey The Barnum Museum by Stephen Milhauser Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi Four Seasons of Love by Niall Williams Recently, I've been on a short story kick. I'm currently reading three different collections, all of which are just exceptional. I have only small pockets of time in which to read, so it's deeply gratifying to experience a full story arc in one sitting. I'm almost finished with Julia Whitty's lyric, somewhat subversive, smart collection called 'Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga,' which I hate to see end, so I've begun reading Ben Fountain's gripping, darkly humorous, sometimes savage, often moving compilation 'Brief Encounters with Che Guevara,' which I'd recommend to anyone. Rounding out my triptic of literary deserts is Flannery O'Connor's seminal collection 'A Good Man is Hard to Find.' Oh, and I read the New Yorker weekly, only the fiction! The last full­length fiction I read was Dave Egger's 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,' which I fell madly in love with. Zorro, by Isabel Allende Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris, Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman, Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd, Several by Anne Rivers Siddons, She's come undone by Wally Lamb. king rat; the stand; rebecca; huck finn; of mice and men; the prestige; dry. Eat, Pray, Love and www.therainfarm.com The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos Fast Food Nation, Cormac McCarthy, Jonathan Franzen 'The Lay of the Land' by 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy 'Acts of Faith' by Philip Caputo 'The Driftless Area' by Tom Drury Cormac McCarthy's The Road 2006 Best American Essays Michael Parker's 'Hidden Meanings . . .,' from The Oxford American The History of Love by Nicole Krauss A River Runs Through It ­ Norman Maclean A Miracle of Catfish ­ Larry Brown Very recently, all pretty good reads: Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst Travelling Mercies, Anne Lamott Goodbye Lemon, Adam Davies A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson River Horse, William Least Heat­Moon , A. B. Guthrie PAULA SPENCER, by Roddy Doyle Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno Walter Mosley's Walkin' the Dog 'Fall On Your Knees' by Ann Marie MacDonald. Mystery Train Parasite Rex I am a Strange Loop I recently read a great piece of short fiction called 'Wild American Ways' by a Filipino author. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks The Songcatcher, by Sharyn McCrumb I've been on a huge Faulkner kick lately and have been reading everything I can get my hands on ­ I must have read four times in the last few months. I also really liked Susan Steinberg's collection, The End of Free Love. Her writing is like music in that certain phrasings and rhythms get stuck in my head like a catchy refrain. collection of John Cheever Three novels by the late Don Carpenter: 1. Hard Rain Falling 2. From A Distant Place 3. A Couple Of Comedians Chapter After Chapter ­ Sellers Artistic Cats ­ Heather Hacking The Writer ­ magazine I John ­ The Bible Inlandia

6 A number of Stephen King works. Needful Things, Cell, and The Stand. The Genizah at the House of Shepher, Tamar Yellin The Glamour, Christopher Priest The Bone People, Keri Hulme Our Ecstatic Days, Steve Erickson Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Nick Flynn The History of Love Piano Tuner Biography of Leonard Woolf (can't think of title) Hillbilly Gothic by Adrienne Martini Dreaming in Code (Scott Rosenberg) Gift economies and open source programming: an anthropological view (online article by Zeitlyn, but I can't find it again, just the abstract.) Building Games with the Wright Stuff (Dave Kosak) Most of the regular reading I can justify is related to work. Fortunately, I can stretch a work justification for just about anything. I'm a Project Manager and Strat Planner, so being a polymath is a job requirement. As you can tell by these titles, my next project is a major custom software design. What makes this list of works great is their ability to link universals to specifics, in a way that makes the specifics appear as compelling and meaningful as the universal. (An anthropological treatise on systems of resource distribution within human societies, related to the open source code phenomenon, is a perfect example). They're also written with a lot of sharp wit and humor. Anything with a good solid story. Good writing. Witty dialogue. Excellent characters. And a good ending. So much today is soooo emotionally unsatisfying, terribly dull in its writing, and have lackluster, awful endings (or non­endings half the time). It's gotten so bad that sometimes I want to write editors and somehow ask for that hour or two back I regrettably wasted reading an unengaging short story. Some magazines are good in this regard (good, gripping, profound stories). Others are terrible (and I've had to put off ever reading their magazines ever again). There seems to be an incredible lack of humorous writing, too, as though Mark Twain and other writers can't be great if there's no sturm and drang involved, no 'urban blight,' no terribly depressing storyline (as if this is supposed to mean it's great literature ­­ think again). Rober Service A Biography. Ordinary Heroes, novel To Be Told by Dan Allender Making A Literary Life by Carolyn See Grace (Eventually)by Anne Lamott Breakfast of Champions, The Mists of Avalon Diary of a Mad Housewife Bel Canto, The Oregon Trail, Holy Cow (It had its problems, but offered valuable insights.) Lots of gardening magazines. The Time Traveler's Wife, and The Mermaid Chair I'm now finishing In Our Time by Hemmingway To the Wedding­John Berger, The Gangster We Are All Looking For­Le Thi Diem Thuy, A Crowded Heart­ Nick Papandreou Hitler's Niece by , Too Brief a Treat­­the Letters of Truman Capote , East of Eden Ben Ames Williams, Leave Her to Heaven John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale Carol Del Col ­ Philippi, WV ­ [email protected] The Gazebo Strange Harvest, by Leslie A. Sharpe. Roget's Thesaurus of Phrases. Granta's Young Novelists issue St. Lucy's Home for Girls, Karen Russell Old School by Tobias Wolff, American Home Front 1941­1942 by Alistair Cooke Elizabeth Bishop, Mehta’s Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker E.D. Hirsch's The Schools We Need, and Redesigning Education, by Wilson and Davis Reread The Sound and the Fury. Teacher Man by Frank McCourt Forbidden Words: Selected Poems of Eugenio de Andrade Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems Volume Two The Road by Cormac McCarthy There was an article in Poets and Writers about taking an internet vacation. Very illuminating. Could I do without it? I think so, since so much of my writing relies on personal contact with my subjects (nonfiction) or internal dialogue (fiction). 'The People's Act of Love' by James Meek Leaving Church, by Barbara Brown Taylor Housekeeping stories by flannery o'connery 7 Umberto Eco's 'audolino' and 'Latitude' by Dava Sobel Books 1, 2, 3 of A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) , by Francine Prose The Dogs Who Found Me, by Ken Foster The Best American Short Stories 1998. was kinda pathetic. The Historian is shallow. Snow by Patak Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel; Fledgling by Octavia Butler; Twisted by Jeffrey Deaver; Domino magazine Dr. Marilyn Hope Lake, Hutchinson KS I read a young adult book, SHADOWS OF GHADARMES, about a young woman trapped in a repressive society that separates the everyday lives of the men and the women. She, her mother and her father's second wife have ways of working around the rules. Very well written and interesting. It is on a reading list for United Methodist Women. I'm reading Jimmy Carter's memoir of his youth in Plains and surrounds. Extremely interesting but I wonder if I would keep reading it if it were not Jimmy Carter's life. I think I would. Indiana Review, Winter, 2006 Various articles by Anis Shivani The Road by Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez No Man Knows my History by Fawn M. Brodie The Defense by Vladimir Nabokov The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard The Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck 'Fabulous Small Jews' by Joseph Epstein 'That Old Ace In The Hole' by Annie Proulx 'The of Folly' by Barbara Tuchman 'A Hole In The Heart of the World' by Jonathan Kaufman 'The Messiah Comes Tomorrow' by Alan Lupo submitted by Steve Fayer, . Nicholas Sparks ­­ THE WEDDING Brave New World Slaughterhouse Five Catch­22 Alias Grace The Time Traveler's Wife Ahab's Wife The Interpreter of Maladies I re­read John Updike's essays and criticism, 'More Matter.' People I Wanted to Be by Gina Oschner The Year of Magical Thinking ­ Joan Didion I recall the hours of last month where I was absolutely knocked off my feet, brought to my knees by superb writing. I lead off with Wendell Berry's 'Memories of Old Jack,' 'Jayber Crow,' 'Hannah Coulter' and a collection of five short stories, 'Fidelity.' In a quick follow­up, knowing I'd be back to Berry in a shot, I was buried in J. M. Coetzee's 'Life and Times of Michael K,' 'Foe,' 'Disgrace,' and 'Slow Man.' I finished my month with Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road.' I don't know how many times I was mesmerized, but I will go back over a most significant path of personal pleasure, going right back to Wendell Berry, where one man touches perfection. ­ Where I'm Calling From, George Saunders ­ Civilwarland in Bad Decline, Henry Roth ­ Call it Sleep 'Recitatif,' by Where You’ll Find Me – Ann Beattie

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