Rambling ...

I'm an Irish Girl, A Dubliner, with the 'Gift of the Gab' ... I like to talk & to tell you things. In Celtic times news, views and comment were carried from place to place by wandering Seanachaí ~ Storytellers ~ who relied on their host's hospitality and appreciation. I will need that from you too, as I venture to share Politics, Poetry, Laughter, Love, Life & everything in-between ... from Bog to Blog!!


Saturday, January 1, 2011

A Bookshelf Blog!


 "Where are your books? ~ that light bequeathed
to Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
from dead men to their kind." 
  
~ William Wordsworth, 1798 ~

In starting a new year people are fond of doing two things,  'Resolutions & Reviews' .    I'm not about to declare (or even think of any resolutions today)  but I do like to review & isn't it just the perfect day to do that??   To review my status in all areas of my life in preparation for the year to come.  I'm not sharing that one,  but,  If you have been reading my blog you will know I have a penchant for movies & fantasy worlds,  so it may not surprise you too much to know that I also adore books.   Ever since I was a very  little girl who learned to read, (aged about 3 & a half)  I have adored books.  How they looked on a shelf,  how they felt to hold,  how they smelled .... real world manifestations of the wonderful worlds contained within.  These worlds were made of words,  & words  have danced through my head and in my heart ever since.   By Day legitimately & by night illicitly .... isn't that what the night is for after all .... illicit liasons???

  My most illicit liasons have always been with forbidden books ..... & Insomnia has always played a part in my life.   I'm not sure if that helps my wonderment with words or hinders my real life communication,  but at this stage I'm afraid it's institutional!    Anyways,   I decided there has been a dearth of book reviews here blogged & to make that up I am reviewing  last year's reads & arranging my reads for the next month for you all to share.

It seems I have read 67 books in 2010.  Kind of an average year  .... Not too bad I suppose!!    Obviously,  I cannot review all of them for you here.  So, the emboldened ones are the books I really liked.   A few that are marked in  italics are the books I hated or really disliked for some reason.  The rest can go into the mediocre pile.  Ask me individually if you like!

Grab a latte,  adjust your comforter &  peruse ......


I've read these books in 2010 ...

Neil Gaiman ~ Graveyard Book
Stieg Larsson ~ The Girl with Dragon Tattoo
Ray Bradbury ~ Something Wicked This Way Comes
Iain Banks ~ Walking On Glass
Junot Diaz ~ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Richard Yates ~ Revolutionary Road
Ian McEwan ~ Enduring Love
Franz Kafka ~ America
Kazuo Ishiguro ~ A Pale View of Hills
Fyodor Dostoevsky ~ The Insulted and Humiliated
Virginia Woolf ~ A Room of One’s Own (Re-read for an Article!)
Virginia Woolf ~ Mrs. Dalloway (Re-read for an Article!)
Michael Cunningham ~ The Hours (Re-read for an Article!)
Michael Cunningham ~ A Home at the End of the World
Lawrence Durrell ~ Justine
Lawrence Durrell ~ Dark Labyrinth
Jonathan Safran Foer ~ Everything is Illuminated
Khalil Gibran ~ Spirits Rebellious
Dave Eggers ~  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Margaret Atwood ~The Blind Assassin
Charlaine Harris ~ Club Dead
Audrey Niffenegger ~ The Time Traveler’s Wife
Moliere ~ The Miser
Paul Auster ~ Invisible
John Updike ~ Run Rabbit Run
Stephen King ~ The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower 1)
Stephen King ~ Drawing of the 3 (The Dark Tower 2)
Ian McEwan ~ On Chesil Beach
Paul Bowles ~ Sheltering Sky
Yevgeny Zamyatin ~ We
Ursula Le Guin ~ The Eye of the Heron
Don DeLillo ~ White Noise
Iris Murdoch ~ Time of the Angels


The Uses of Enchantment ~ Bruno Bettelheim
Margaret Atwood ~ Moral Disorder
Vladimir Nabokov ~ The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Albert Camus ~ The Possessed
Henry Miller ~ Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Douglas Coupland ~ Girlfriend in a Coma
Le Clezio ~ Ritournelle de la faim
Toni Morrison ~ Bluest Eyes
Bernhard Schlink ~ The Reader
Kate Chopin ~ Awakening
Leo Tolstoy '~ Master and Man
Leo Tolstoy ~ Three Deaths
Zadie Smith ~ White Teeth
Jon McGregor ~ So Many Ways to Begin
Heinrich Böll ~ And Never Said a Word
Suzanne Collins ~ The Hunger Games
E.L.Doctorow ~ Waterworks
Ursula Le Guin ~ The Beginning Place
Pauline Melville ~ The Ventriloquist’s Tale
Diane Setterfield ~ The Thirteenth Tale
Kurt Vonnegut ~ Slaughterhouse Five
J.D.Salinger ~ Nine Stories
Margaret Atwood ~ Oryx and Crake
Stieg Larsson ~ The Girl Who Played with Fire
Hermann Hesse ~ Demian
Vladimir Nabokov ~ Masenka
Primo Levi ~ Surviving Auschwitz
Stephen Leather ~ Private Dancer
Stephanie Meyer ~ Eclipse
Elinor Burkett  ~ Golda Meir ~ The Iron Lady of the Middle East
Sugihara Yukiko ~ Visa's for Life
Stephanie Meyer ~ The Secret Life of Bree Tanner
Charlaine Harris ~ Dead in the Family
Tanya Huff ~ Smoke & Shadows

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art ~ write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself      ~ Neil Gaiman ~

3 comments:

  1. My Quest in All of my 27 years so far on this earh have been to make that Magic world of words become my Reality!!!

    That my existence would be filled with "filled with magic and dreams and good madness".

    I'm still dumb enough to pursue that hope!

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  2. I can see you are quite the bibliophile. :)

    I have read some of your list. The Gunslinger series started off well, but goes astray later. Slaughterhouse Five is brilliant. If you haven't read much of Stephen King, may I recommend The Stand & The Shining? (The Shining was his first smash success.)

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  3. Pixel, when we stop pursuing magic and hope that is when we become less then ordinary. And you are both intelligent and extra ordinary!

    ReplyDelete