Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic 50 Book Challenge 2011

I'm not really doing the 50 book challenge, although I may read nearly that many.
I'd like to recommend a series of books by Brett Battles:
The Cleaner
The Deceived
Shadow of Betrayal
The Silenced
They are on Amazon and Sony Reader in both paper and epub. I'm reading The Silenced right now and it is very good. It's an international mystery/thriller type series. The author is a family friend getting his foothold in the business. He got to quit his day job! Yay!
regards
Artemis

#22 "New Moon" by Stephanie Meyers...again!!

#23 "The 39 Clues, book 4: Beyond the Grave" by Jude Watson

I've read "The Host" a bunch of times and would highly recommend it!

Well, almost at the middle of the year I'm joining the challenge.

So far...

#1 Demasiado/Too Much - Diana Andringa

# 2 Palestina, Viver na Intifada/ Palestine, Living in the Intifada - Ricardo Alexandre

#3 In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

And also

#4 Lord of the flies - William Golding

#12 Black out by Connis Willis

Time traveling historians are trapped in WW2 England during the Blitz. Of course the story builds to a huge climatic point...and then is continued in the next book!

Joan

#24 - "Lost" by Gregory Maguire

Whoa! Way too long since I posted in this thread.

13. Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles deLint.
Delightful tale, tangentially related to deLint's "Newford" stories. "Fourteen-year-old T. J.'s family has been forced to move to a suburb, leaving behind their family farm and T. J.'s beloved horse. Shy and awkward, T. J. has trouble finding a niche in her new school, and she misses her old friends desperately. Enter Elizabeth Wood, a 16-year-old "Little" who is six inches tall and all punky attitude (four-letter words abound)." Recommended.

14. Howl's Moving Castle
15. House of Many Ways
16. Castle in the Air all by Diana Wynne Jones.
I was saddened earlier this year by the news of Diana Wynne Jones's death. She has always been one of my favorite fantasy authors, ever since I read her "Dogsbody" years and years ago. "Howl's Moving Castle" made it to the movies, and unfortunately I haven't seen the cinematic version. The books, like all of DWJ's work, are highly recommended.

17. The Apothecary's Daughter by Julie Klassen.
I found this rather blah. Don't bother unless you're hard up for reading material.

18. Agent To The Stars by John Scalzi.
Loads of fun, about a benign alien race that comes to Earth and needs a PR agent to orchestrate their revealment. Better than I'm making it sound. Recommended.

19. After The Downfall by Harry Turtledove.
A generic Harry Turtledove character (in this case, a Nazi) escapes the last days of WWII as the Russians are invading Berlin. He is transported into an alternate universe where he must learn that things are not what they seem. Nothing that Turtledove hasn't done better before. One star out of five.

20. The Annotated Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, annotated by Isaac Asimov.
Reading "Little (Grrl) Lost" (see above) got me interested in Lilliputians, so I went to the source. Asimov deftly delineates the finer points of satire which would be missed today. There's a reason that "Gulliver's Travels" is still in print, almost 300 years after it was written. Recommended.

21. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker.
"In an upstate New York backwater, Truly, massive from birth, has a bleak existence with her depressed father and her china-doll–like sister, Serena Jane. Truly grows at an astonishing rate—her girth the result of a pituitary gland problem—and after her father dies when Truly is 12, Truly is sloughed off to the Dyersons, a hapless farming family. Her outsize kindness surfaces as she befriends the Dyersons' outcast daughter, Amelia, and later leaves her beloved Dyerson farm to take care of Serena Jane's husband and son after Serena Jane leaves them. Haunting the margins of Truly's story is that of Tabitha Dyerson, a rumored witch whose secrets afford a breathtaking role reversal for Truly."
OK but not really what I wanted at the time. Three stars of five.

22. Terra Incognita
23. Medicus
24. Persona Non Grata
25. Caveat Emptor all by Ruth Downie.
Enjoyable historical fiction about a Roman military doctor in the time of Hadrian. "The salacious underside of Roman-occupied Britain comes to life in Britisher Downie's debut. Gaius Petrius Ruso, a military medicus (or doctor), transfers to the 20th Legion in the remote Britannia port of Deva (now Chester) to start over after a ruinous divorce and his father's death. Things go downhill from there." Good mysteries and recommended if you like historical fiction.

26. Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded by John Scalzi.
Collection of essays off his blog "Whatever". Great fun and highly recommended. It won the Hugo Award.

27. The Nineteenth Wife by David Ebershoff.
Good tale about the supposed 19th wife of Brigham Young of Mormon fame, mixed in with a contemporary story about a young man escaping from a polygamist compound. Recommended.

28. I, Sniper by Stephen Hunter.
Good thriller. Read it.

29. Hell's Corner by David Baldacci.
Another fun thriller. "The night after the U.S. president persuades former assassin Oliver Stone (aka John Carr) to re-enter government employment to tackle the growing threat of Russian drug gangs, Stone finds himself in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, when gunfire breaks out and a bomb explodes. Apparently, the intended target was the visiting British prime minister, who was scheduled to walk across the park before an ankle injury modified his plans. Taken off his original mission, Stone seeks to identify the forces behind the assassination attempt." Implausible but it sure is fun to read.

30. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein.
Just what it says. A scholarly yet readable dissertation on how archaeology has helped to illustrate conditions at the time various portions of the Old Testament were committed to writing. The authors posit that much happened after the fall of Israel, the northern kingdom, after its defeat by the Assyrians in (I believe) 753 B.C. Many refugees flocked to the southern kingdom of Judah, and Jerusalem, where much of the Bible was written down. Better than I'm making it sound.

31. The Devil You Know
32. Vicious Circle
33. Dead Men's Boots
34. Thicker Than Water
35. The Naming of the Beasts all by Mike Carey.
Mike Carey is probably better known for the comic books he pens, but these stories about Felix Castor, exorcist, are well worth a read. Review for "The Devil You Know":
"Felix Fix Castor is an itinerant exorcist who (like a certain famous group of Hollywood ghost-evicters) alternates between dispatching spooks and doing stage magic at ungrateful children's birthday parties. When he's summoned to end a haunting at London's prestigious Bonnington Archive, he finds a vengeful specter with a blood-veiled face that resists methods for extirpating the usually docile dead. When Castor begins probing more deeply, he quickly finds himself harassed by a ravenous succubus, a belligerent fellow exorcist and a slimy Eastern European pimp. The resolution of this ingeniously multilayered tale will satisfy fans of both fantasy and detective fiction. Fix Castor's wisecracking cleverness in the face of weird nemeses makes him the perfect hardboiled hero for a new supernatural noir series."

36. Darkfever
37. Faefever
38. Bloodfever
39. Dreamfever
40. Shadowfever all by Karen Moning.
Romance novels with a plot involving the movement of the Fae into our world, with catastrophic consequences. Only Mac (our heroine) can save the day, but can she overcome her lethal love for the unsuitable (but very hot) mysterious guy? Fun to read if you're into smutty paranormal romance, otherwise don't bother.

41. The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh.
Meant to be a prequel to the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers and those characters appear, but re-reading Sayers only makes it clear that she was inimitable. Nevertheless, worth a read if you don't have anything better to do or if you are a dedicated Wimseyite, like me.

42. The Millionaire Mind by Thomas Friedman.
Why do some people become millionaires and others languish? Millionaires have many shared characteristics. Friedman examines how and why they became millionaires and why others didn't. Another book that's better than I'm making it sound. Recommended.

43. The Best American Mystery Stories of 2010 ed. by Lee Child.
Yep, it's the best American Mystery Stories of 2010. Truth in advertising.

44. Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci.
Another competent thriller, but it didn't stick in my head enough that I could remember the details to tell you here.

45. Dead Zero by Stephen Hunter.
Repeat the comment above. It was fun to read at the time.

46. The Eyre Affair
47. Lost In A Good Book
48. The Well of Lost Plots
49. Something Rotten
50. Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
51. One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing all by Jasper Fforde.
When the latest Thursday Next book came out, I just had to re-read the rest of the series. Fforde writes hysterically funny literary in-jokes and even his misses are still worth a laugh.
Here's the review for "First Among Sequels":
"Fforde's fifth novel to feature intrepid literary detective Thursday Next (after 2004's 'Something Rotten') blends elements of mystery, campy science fiction and screwball fantasy à la Terry Pratchett's Discworld. With the Stupidity Surplus reaching dangerously high levels all over England, Acme Carpets employee and undercover SpecOps investigator Next has her hands full trying to persuade her 16-year-old slacker son, Friday, to join the ChronoGuard, which deals with temporal stability; if Friday continues to sleep away his future, the end is near — for everyone. To complicate matters, a malicious apprentice begins making classic works of literature into reality book shows ('Pride and Prejudice' becomes 'The Bennets' with one daughter to be voted off the estate), a ruthless corporation tries to turn the Bookworld into a tourist trap, and the Cheese Enforcement Agency tries to bust Next for smuggling killer curd. The fate of the world may lie in a Longfellow poem. Fans of satiric literary humor are in for a treat."

The whole series is highly, highly recommended.

#12 Love the One You're With - by Emily Giffin

This writer does a nice job fleshing out characters. While I like where the main character ended up, I didn't see her growing or changing much in the process.

Joan

Well, I've finally gone and done it. After much gnashing of teeth and digging in of Luddite heels, I've joined the Kindle generation. It just made too much practical sense not to any more.

I'm still not over my conviction that lines of text on a screen aren't 'proper, real books', but I suspect time will erode that for me. Certainly, I can already think of lots of advantages to reading on Kindle and I'm sure I'll come up with more once I get going.

Just waiting for the device to arrive, but I've already dipped a toe in the water with the Kindle for PC download and this was the first free book I dl for it:

#47 Her Vampire Husband - Michele Hauf

Not my kind of thing normally and you couldn't call it the best book written of the genre, but I actually had a lot of fun with it. Kind of like reading a vampire romance nfic.

LabRat

How do you like it, LabRat? I got a Nook for Christmas and I'm still getting used to it. I like being able to adjust the type set/size and the ease of carrying it around, but I tend to borrow more books than buy them. Many titles aren't available electronically to borrow and I'm still getting used to the lending system.

Downloading fanfic might be fun but I haven't played around with it yet.

Joan

What the hey - I'll jump in even though it's mid-year.

#1 - As Sure as the Dawn by Francine Rivers

Third book in the Mark of the Lion Series which are all EXCELLENT. Francine Rivers is a Christian fiction author who will astound you. She writes some of the most brutally realistic scenes I've ever read - very good historical fiction!

#2 - Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina by multiple authors

Some are okay, some are just bad. I own about 65 Star Wars books that I started reading when I was in middle school. I was thinking about getting rid of them recently but decided I would re-read all of them again to see if I changed my mind. This book was not a good starter.

I could have sworn I was a bit further ahead than this.

Transitions
12. The Orc King
13. The Pirate King
14. The Ghost King - R. A. Salvatore

This is a trilogy that follows other trilogies, based on the author's famous character, the drow (dark elf) Drizzt Do'Urden and the Companions of the Hall, set in the Forgotten Realms universe. If you have a love of fantasy, especially D&D-type stories, I recommend his books. However, I kept getting confused as I read these books, keeping track of what was going on. I'm not sure if it was his writing or my state of mind.

Okay, I give in. It arrived this morning, I spent all afternoon reading my first book on it and I am throughly hooked. What an absolute pleasure reading on Kindle is. <happy sigh> This is the best device known to mankind, I swear. How could I miss out on this for so long?


LabRat

# 5 - The Great gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

# 6 - Mini Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella

#48 Michael Connolly - Void Moon
#49 Michael Connolly - The Closers
#50 Michael Connolly - A Darkness More Than Night
#51 Michael Connolly - Lost Light
#52 Michael Connolly - The Black Echo
#53 Michael Connolly - The Black Ice
#54 Michael Connolly - The Concrete Blonde
#55 Michael Conolly - The Last Coyote
#56 Terry Pratchett - Making Money
#57 Terry Pratchett - Lords and Ladies

#58 Apartment 16 – Adam Neville

I know it’s something of a paradox, but I don’t tend to read horror novels for the gore. I prefer those examples of the genre which use plot and character and twists and turns to crank up the sense of foreboding and the chills down the spine. This novel had just a little too much of the grotesque to be enjoyable for me.


LabRat

#7 - Jornal Nacional, Modo de Fazer - William Bonner

I was a bit conflicted about posting this book here. It could be considered an academic manual of sorts but at the same time - for those folcs who read in portuguese - it can actually be interesting.

The book was written by the editor in chief and one of the anchors of Brazil's most popular news bulletin(I'm not quite sure if this is the correct term): Jornal Nacional.

It's easy to read and interesting because it takes you behind the scenes of Jornal Nacional without being boring.

#25 "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant

#26 "The Red Garden" by Alice Hoffman

#27 "Nightlight" by The Harvard Lampoon (a horrible spoof of Twilight - if you're a fan of the original, I wouldn't recommend it)

Since you have a Nook have you looked at the ebooks at Baen?

Baen\'s ebook store
Baen\'s free library

Onward to books

• 1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint
• 1636: The Saxon Uprising by Eric Flint
• Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Disappearing Act by Margaret Ball
• Higher Education by Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle
• In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V by David Weber
• Outward Bound by James P. Hogan
• Putting Up Roots by Charles Sheffield
• Starswarm by Jerry Pournelle
• Hot Money by Dick Francis
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour Vol 1 by Louis L'Amour
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour Vol 2 by Louis L'Amour
• Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour Vol 3 by Louis L'Amour
• Proof by Dick Francis
• Decider by Dick Francis
• If the Witness Lied by Caroline B. Cooney
• Banker by Dick Francis
• Straight by Dick Francis
• Passin' Through by Louis L'Amour
• Blind Waves by Steven Gould
• Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
• Wildside by Steven Gould
• Reflex by Steven Gould
• The Billion Dollar Boy by Charles Sheffield
• The Cyborg From Earth by Charles Sheffield
• The Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and
  Jerry Pournelle
• The Mote in God's Eye by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven