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 ~