2011 Book Roll

It's probably wrong that I'm taking the time to write this post when I have yet to write Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Hunger Games posts... But I've been waiting to do this all year.

I joined the Goodreads.com 2011 Reading Challenge with a goal of 50 books. I was then inspired by the lovely Nina Badzin to read a book a week. I had no life at the beginning of 2011 and was burning through books at a rate much faster than one a week so I decided to really challenge myself and upped the goal to 100 books. I was right on target until about October. Life got busy, book club books slowed me down, Game of Thrones really slowed me down and I burnt out. I think during the entire month of October I finished all of one book.

To offset that between December 26th and 30th I read 5 books, bringing my total for 2011 to 88 books. In addition to that I discovered books on tape... or more appropriately books on MP3. I listened to a total of 20 books. So you might say I exceeded my goal... Although I'm not convinced that listening to a book counts as "reading" a book.

So here you go the 88 books I read in 2011:

I keep getting asked which was my favorite and what I'd recommend and those are such hard questions to answer because there are so many good qualities to almost all of the books I've read. But I've tried to pick some category winners:

Least Favorite Adult: Follow the River or Tinkers.

Least Favorite Young Adult: the entire House of Night series

Best Adult Paranormal Series: Fever

Best Young Adult Paranormal Series: Mortal Instruments or Vampire Academy

If I had to choose an overall favorite: Hunger Games

Honorable Mentions: Divergent, The Graveyard Book, and The Giver

Honestly as I look over the book covers I loved so many of them and depending on your genre preferences I could recommend 95% of them to one person or another. It makes me sad that I can't include ALL of them on my favorites list.

I'm going to aim for a goal of 52 books in 2012. I don't think I'll have a problem reaching that goal but I do plan on reading at least 8 classics and 2 non-fiction. I'd love to hear about your 2011 reads and plans for 2012!

Happy New Year... or as Lanna says Have a New Year! 

Book Club: The Book Theif and Normandie Cafe

I'm a little behind on my book club reviews so let's just do a quick synopsis before I get to today's:

The Room by Emma Donoghue at Village Inn. This was a solid 3 star book. An interesting yet unbelievable story of a woman who was kidnapped and kept in a shed (Room) for years. The story is told from the perspective of her son, who was born in the room conceived by her kidnapper. Worth reading but not worth bumping to the top of your list. Village Inn was well generic.

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card at Training Table. Wonderful book one of my favorite in the Ender's series. I HATE sci-fi and yet I loved this book. Card does a wonderful job of moving the story line along while still developing the world around him in an understandable way. Worst book club meeting I've ever been too. Everyone bailed. Training Table was blah - completely overrated I probably wont ever eat there again.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson at Chicago Pizza. When I first finished the book I HATED it. HATED.IT. It was slow and boring; it could have been so exciting but it just wasn't. However after the meeting and the awesome discussions I bumped my rating from a 2 to a 3.5. It's definitely not my cup of tea but I had to admit that there was a lot of very interesting history embedded into the story. The fact that it's a non-fiction makes it great but also leads to the boringness. If you enjoy American history or like architecture it's must read. Chicago Pizza was surprisingly tasty. A little over priced - but then again I think most pizza places are. I went simple and shared a thin crust prosciutto pizza and the house salad and was quite satisfied.

Today's book was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This was one of the first books that I listened to on MP3. It was amazing. I honestly loved it. A non-Nazi family in Nazi Germany. The story its told from the perspective of Death. Really a brilliant tale; it made me laugh out loud and then sob. I really think everyone should read this book and I would love to see it in school curriculum. The discussions about the book were good, we did get off on some tangents but over all it was interesting. A lot of people there were history buff which I am not so it was interesting to listen to their additional knowledge. The restaurant we ate at was Normandie in Holladay. My review? Meh. The food was fine but way over priced for the portion size and quality. Teardra got a mac-n-cheese that she deemed the best she's ever had. I got a steak sandwich and caesar salad and it was fine.

There are a ton of meetings coming up that I'm really looking forward to including The Giver, Tinkers, and The Reader (the last two I haven't read yet but look):

If by chance you are a historical romance or period piece person pick up The Gentleman Poet by Kathryn Johnson. I picked it up on the whim at the library and I was pretty sure I'd hate it and not finish it but I LOVE it. 

Happy Reading

Book Club #2 - Matched and Blue Plate

My second book club meeting was for the book Matched by Ally Condie.

After my first book club experience I was looking forward to discussing a book I actually liked (rather than seriously hated). This book has been compared to the Hunger Games - one of my all time favorite series. And I should have known - because I've done this before - that going into a book with high expectations is a mistake.

A side note: After seeing a tweet by the ever amazing Nina Badzin I'm going to try to be fair but not mean in my reviews. I don't think I mentioned this in the first post but if you're a writer, an aspiring writer, or dream of being a writer you really should follow Nina on twitter and subscribe to her blog.

On to the review. I don't know if it's because I read this with the thought that I will be discussing it for a book club in the back of my mind or if it really just wasn't up to my expectations but I felt extra critical of this book. Matched was slow. Very very slow. When I read a book I want to connect with my heroine and for the first 300 (out of 400) pages Cassia is dull; void of personality and character. I think a good author can build up the back story at the same time as she moves the plot along. IE I don't want 300 pages of back story and explanations. I found myself being easily distracted and having to go back and re-read paragraphs because while my eyes saw the words my mind didn't register the meaning. It just wasn't keeping my attention.

My second problem is that I don't consider myself well read. Yes I read a lot but I read a lot of fluff. And one of my literary pet peeves is when authors extensively use quotes and poetry that I recognize. There are so many amazing poems out there to choose from that when I see one in a book that I recognize I think the author was not motivated enough to search from something unknown and they took the easy way out. This stems from the fact that I don't usually recognize poetry quotes because of the actual poem but because they are quoted so often by others. Condie bases a large chunk of Matched on Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night. Who doesn't recognize the words "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Thirdly, I think Condie just tried too hard. She has a habit of repeating a sentence twice. She would take Cassia's thoughts and try to turn them into poetry. I understand she wants Cassia to be a poet and passionate but it felt forced - particularly during those first 300 pages when Cassia had no passion or personality.

But this reviwe is not all bad. After the first 300 pages Condie had me falling in love with Cassia and Ky, and even Xander and her parents. Finally everyone had fire and passion and emotions that I can connect with. I admit to crying on Trax and almost missing my stop because I was so into the story. If only she could have written like that from page 1 or even page 100. And that's where I feel like this book falls short of Tanya's standard of literary greatness. I have high hopes for the next two books. Hopefully Condie can keep the momentum and fire alive and not revert to Society dullness.

The meeting itself was GREAT! I had my doubts after the first meeting which only lasted 45 minutes, had very little discussion, and terrible food. This time we met at Blue Plate. The family took me there after my confirmation earlier this year so I knew I liked it. I'm sorry the conversation was so good that I forgot pictures. I got the corned beef and hash with eggs. True to the waiter's words the corned beef is made in house with the breakfast potatoes as the hash. They add shredded cheader cheese - which is good but unnecessary and oily. Next time I'll get it with poached eggs sans cheese. The portion is huge and I'm excited to eat it for breakfast.

Next Tuesday we're meeting at Chapin Cafe and reading Room by Emma Donoghue. I plan to take notes as I read and write up a few questions that I hope encourage better discussions and analysis of the book. Why yes I am a nerd.

Synopsis:
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.


Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

Books And Brioche

Books and Food! The two loves of my life after my naughties (ok maybe tied with my naughties).

I found a book club through meetup.com after being inspired by one of Nina Badzin's recent post. I've always wanted to join a book club but have never really made the effort to find one. One of my biggest concerns was how opinionated I am... I have strong feelings about books and I don't think I should have to censor myself. My second concern is my choice of books. If you're my friend on GoodReads.com you know I have an ummm immature taste in books. I'm currently trying to remedy this by reading through Time's 100 novel's everyone should read list but over all I'm a young adults or urban fantasy addict.

Then I realized a book club would be great because of those two concerns. I like to be opinionated and my reviews on GoodReads.com isn't always enough to satisfy my need to opinion-ate. And what better way to expand my reading list then by reading books others have suggested.

So for this first book club meeting we read Follow the River by James Alexander Thom. 

I was a little apprehensive when I read the synopsis...

"This is a true story about a young woman during the French and Indian War who witnesses much of her family and village massacred and then is taken by Indians. With her two young sons, and a baby due any day, she travels hundreds of miles on horseback and foot to the Indian camp, then has to make a heart-wrenching decision - stay and marry an Indian, even as her two sons are taken away to another Indian camp, or leave her baby in the care of another Indian woman and travel on foot with nothing but a tomahawk and the clothes on her back back to her home and husband."

Wait what? Leave her kids? So she could go back to civilization and be with her husband? But I read it, and hated it because yes indeed she leaves her kids in the hands of the savages. Top that off with 200+ pages of walking through the woods, eating roots, and having diarrhea, the book was a huge fat bust in my opinion. This of course made me worried about the meeting because I STRONGLY hated the book and the main character. 

We meet yesterday at Stella's - which incidentally had TERRIBLE food - and it was a group of 6 other women. 3 who were regulars and 3 who were new like me. 

After ordering food, discussing the upcoming books and doing a little "tell me something about yourself" we get to the point where we discuss Follow the River. As it turns out it's one of the girl's FAVORITE book of all time. After she talks about why she loves it. Teardra the book club leader asks me what I like about it... Pause... "Nothing." Then I go on to explain and it turns out everyone else hated it too. Over all it was a lot of fun, the other girls were nice - even if they were a little condescending about my genres of choice.  The next meeting I'm going to is at Blue Plate (a restaurant that I love) and the book is Matched by Ally Condie, a book that I'm truly looking forward to.

And now the best part: Brioche. At 10:30 last night after book club I thought to myself "what would be better than chocolate brioche for breakfast?" So I dragged myself out of bed and made some dough. I followed this recipe loosely http://www.cookyourdream.com/2010/02/chocolate-brioche-and-monthly-mingle.html.

I was pretty worried because when I say loosely I mean, I used the right ingredients and proportions but didn't follow the instructions at all.

Still the results were fantastic! The only thing I'll do different next time is put more chocolate in the middle.

Happy Reading and Happy Baking!