100 books

I came across another list today while bumming around the internet. The website BookMovement.com keeps a club bestseller list of the top 100 book club books. The site was founded in 2001 as a kind of hook-up on a national level for book clubs. I think I’ll recommend the site to my book club members. We usually stumble along for twenty minutes or so at the end of meetings trying to agree on our next book. Often our favorite reads in the past were recommended by other book clubs and now we can tap into a whole new source for ideas. All the books listed have reading group guides too which will save us (me!) from hunting them down on the web. Excellent!

2007 book lists

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Young Girl Reading by Mary Cassatt

Once the hustle and bustle of the holiday’s die down, you may want to put your feet up and curl up on the couch with a good book. In case you need some inspiration and direction, I’ve gathered a few of the best book lists of 2007 below for your perusal…

Publisher’s Weekly

The New York Times

ALSC Notable Children’s Books

Amazon.com

Library Journal

Salon

Slate

Time Magazine

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Economist

Guardian Unlimited (writers and cultural figures pick their favorites)

bake a book

When I’m not working on my iStock portfolio, I’ve been tinkering with book number three. It’s good to set a novel aside during the writing process, let it set up a bit, and then read through it with fresh eyes. Writing is sort of like baking bread, you work hard at it in the beginning and about the time you ask yourself why am I doing this when I could just run up to Kroger and buy a loaf of freakin’ Wonder Bread? you get to set it aside and let it rise on it’s own. I still have a ways to go with new chapters needed to bring it to a proper conclusion, but right now I’m enjoying punching down those chapters I already have and kneading them into shape.

Maxine stared a weathered redwood trellis on the other side of the terrace. It was draped in twining morning glory vines. When she first sat down the green vines were covered with open bell shaped flowers, hundreds of starry blue faces turned toward the cool morning sun: but now the flowers had begun to curl, to fold in on themselves so quickly that she could almost watch it happening.

read it

manhunt.jpg I finished Manhunt, by James Swanson the other night and I really liked it a lot. Whenever we choose a historical novel for book club I’m always afraid it will be dry and a chore to read. But the good ones pull you in and take you back in time and this is a really good one, right up there with one of my other favorite historical novels, Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen. Heavily researched narratives like this really do make history come alive. I felt like I was there in the audience at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. in 1865 watching the dramatic assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, at Lincoln’s bedside as he lay dying, and I rode along on the engrossing twelve day manhunt for Booth that followed. A vivid can’t put it down good read!

friday rerun

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I posted this great gadget (one of my faves) on my old blog and it’s time for a rerun. Here’s a couple of quick tips for saving your card. You can right click and copy the image then paste it into a photo program, or right click the mouse over your image and “save image as” to a folder (where you’ll be able to find it!). It saves as a png file so if you want to blog it you’ll have to change it to a jpg. Just open it in your photo editing program, adjust the lighting or contrast if need be, then “save as” a jpg. Easy, now click here and go make your own!

book doings

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Author Micheal Connelly

Okay, since I am the “book”babie here’s a quick roundup of some interesting book news that I’ve gathered from the vast webosphere for your perusal. Oscar Villalon, the book editor at The San Francisco Chronical did a piece on new books coming out this fall and he says the lineup is top notch. Bookreporter.com keeps a running list of books being made into movies. I know, I know, they’re never as good as the original books, then again I’ve read some so-so books that are better as movies! If you’ve burned through your summer reading list check out the Under The Radar post on Chasing Ray, there might be a hidden gem there you’d like. The Millions blog has a fun post for August 26th with links to books we can’t read (I just wish they’d fix that typo in the post heading! Edit: Max says it was a play on words as in objet d’art, duh, I get it now). Like Crime Fiction? NPR has an excellent article and podcast about Micheal Connelly, one time beat reporter and crime writer who’s’ character of homicide detective Harry Bosch prowls the mean streets of L.A.