#0015A The Savior - Eugene Drucker

Here's another book that Krissy and I have both read. Ditto.
3.5 stars

#0018K: Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

I'm just going to put this picture up again and not say too much since Alyse just covered this novel. I thought it was interesting to read this in sequence with Ender's game. Ender is still a main character, but it takes place 3,000 later. Through the wonder of space/time travel, Ender is only 35 years old at this point. That's over 20 years worth of character development missing. I appreciate the continuity, though. Ender chaged a lot, but it wasn't outside of the realm of his personality. I was able to fill in the gaps and draw my own conclusions, which probably added to my relationship with this novel. 3.5 stars, I think, is my final verdict.

#0014A Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane

Amazing. Just amazing. This book had me literally out loud and I normally don't when I'm reading a book. I might chuckle, but never laugh out loud.

I said at in my introduction of this blog that I am not really into non-fiction. Guess what this book is? Nonfiction. One of my friends suggested this book awhile back and it seemed interesting enough just by the front cover. Did I mention is was amazing?

Mike Mullane is a retired astronaut. In this book he goes into every detail (it seems) about his twelve years working and flying for NASA. The stories are hilarious and quite shocking. He goes into waiting on his first flight into space, to watching his fellow astronauts/friends die on missions, to more outrageous stories. He talks about everything there is to becoming/being a true astronaut. Some things you really don't want to know about, but it's mostly part of his sense of humor. This book will have you laughing and in tears. I loved it, loved it, loved it.

OMG 5 stars

#0017K: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

I said that I would expand my reading and include some science fiction, and I've made good on that promise. Alyse gave me Ender's Game to read while I was in Texas. It was a much easier read than I was anticipating, and I got through most of it on the plane ride.
The main character (Ender) is met when he is only 6 years old. It's hard to keep the age in your mind while reading. The kids in this novel are all so intelligent and mature, which is why they're in the Battle School with Ender. I feel like this book is just as political as it is adventurous. Ender is a "Third", or third child of a family. The Earth has apparently been overpopulated, and Thirds are looked down upon. Ender's brother and sister are also included in the novel, and they play the political roles.
Like I mentioned, there is a lot of adventure throughout this novel. There weren't any slow parts, and I never wanted to stop reading. I probably could have gotten through it in one sitting if I didn't have to get off the airplane!
All in all, I think I give this 4 stars. It still isn't my favorite genre, and I'm not sure I would read it over and over, but I am glad I read through at least once. Give it a shot if you want a good story.

#0016K: The Savior by Eugene Drucker

I found this novel on a stroll through Borders Books. After reading the preview on the back cover, I was initially intrigued because it is written by an accomplished violinist.
It was about a violinist at the start of World War II. His job was to play in the hospitals for wounded German soldiers. One day, he was whisked away to play for an experimental group of prisoners at a prison camp. There is a lot of psychological warfare within the main character's conscience. Before the war, his best friend and his girlfriend were both Jewish, a fact he now had to hide away to secure his own safety. While in the prison camp, the Kommandant messes with him even more. Let me tell you, the last 40 pages or so get crazy. I don't want to ruin it, but man. I couldn't put the book down.
I'll say this as well: I completely agree with the reviews on the back cover. They make mention of Drucker's language in relation to music. As a violinist writing about his trade, there is a lot of passion in his words about the pieces mentioned in the novel, as well as an unmatched eloquence in the descriptions. The music's place in the experiment the book is based on is also quite interesting to think about. After killing the experimental group on the inside, the Kommandant wanted to see if they could be brought back to life by music.
As a musician myself, I have felt and seen it done. There is certainly a magic to it. That being said, I would strongly recommend this to people with a musical background, but it would be a great read for anyone. 4 stars.

*another interesting note is that the main character is based on the author's father, his experiences, and some of his friends. This is a fact that isn't revealed until the very end.

#0013A The Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card

The first time I tried to read this book, I got so confused that I just stopped after the first couple chapters. My problem was that I hated reading the introductions and prologues. So, I did it right this time and read everything and boy did that help.

Andrew Wiggin is the speaker of the dead. He is asked to speak at a funeral on behalf of a girls father figure who was killed by the other alien race called the "Piggies" By the time he gets to her planet, it is 22 years later and she doesn't want him there anymore. He becomes involved with her family and trying to save the piggies.

The book is way better than how I can describe it. Not to mention, that you don't have to read Ender's Game to know what is going on in The Speaker for the Dead" It can be read as a solo book as well.

It really didn't take me 17 days to read this book. I started one book and my work had to do inventory so I had to return it before I finished it. And I was only 100 pages before the end of the 400 page book. Boo for that, yay for Ender! 4 1/2 stars

#0015K: Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

I picked up this book after reading a little bit about it. To my understanding, it was about an Iranian teacher who asked a select group of students to come to her home once a week to read banned literature and discuss it.
It goes beyond that by so much. The farther I got into the book, I realized how important it is. The subtitle is A Memoir in Books and various authors and their works are mentioned throughout to help shape Nafisi's memoir. It was a dense read, but I feel like it really spoke volumes on being a woman, literature's place in society, politics, and dreams.
Nafisi was an English teacher at the University of Tehran and the novels she chose for her class to read were quite controversial. Many students would judge a book by the character's personalities, and how well they followed along with being a good Muslim. The Great Gatsby caused a bit of a fuss, so she had her students put the book on trial.

Honestly, there is so much I want say about Reading Lolita in Tehran. I want to say much more, but I don't feel like my words would do it justice. I might come back at another time to try and do a better job for this review. This needs to be read in schools and read often. Although it wasn't what I was expecting it to be, I am quite floored by it. 5 stars.

Read it. Read it. Read it.

An Important Question

This is something that Alyse and I have yet to discuss, but I feel that it's important to our goal to define things a little more. I'm just ruminating here so I remember to ask, or for input from whoever is reading.

Should books of collected poetry count towards the 1000? I am a big poetry nerd and have plenty of poetry books that I have yet to dive into. Does our definition of "1000 books" mean "1000 works in prose" or can it be extended? Is there any reason to see poetry collections as cheating? Many of them can be read in a couple of hours, but they need to be appreciated just the same.

Do we even need a stipulation for this? Lend me your ideas, folks. Peace.

K

#0012A The Reader - Bernhard Schlink

I had no idea what this book was about. I've never seen the movie and probably will not now. I picked it up because of the NY Times Best Seller List. I mean, it cannot be bad if everyone is buying it. I really beg to differ.
*Spoilers*
One third of the book is about a FIFTEEN year old boy who because a 35 year old's lover. That's right, lover. I really could have just put it down then. I'm not one to reading about things like that, but I'm really big on finishing books I have started unless they were just awful by the middle. Thank goodness, it did not go into real detail about things. The woman has the boy read to her. And then there's a trial which I had a hard time following. The woman went to jail and when the boy grew up he realized that she was illiterate, so he sent her tapes of him reading books. She killed herself in the end, right before she got out of jail and that was the whole story.

Nothing happened in the book. It took me too long to read because I was confused through the trial and ending was abrupt and I really had mixed feelings by that time. I did not really like the book. I mean, I can see why it was made into a movie and got good reviews and what have you. It was stationed during the Nazi reign and she was a guard at a concentration camp. I don't think that should be the only reason why something is popular. Really, they did not go into much about it. The book did not go much into anything. Just my opinion. 2 stars

#0011A Water For Elephants - Sara Gruen

I was kind of hesitant to start reading this book. Usually when I hear something is amazing and it only took one day to read because they could not put it down, I sometimes find it not good at all. BUT this was the not the case for this book. Krissy was dead on and I'm really glad she recommended it.

A ninety, or wait...is it ninety-three, year old man retells the story of his life as a young college student. After his parents die he runs out during his veterinary exams and jumps on a train, only to realize this train is carrying a circus to their next stop. The book goes through his struggles of fitting in, falling in love, and teaching a "dumb" elephant tricks.

This book really was great and it ended the way it should have. I really have a problem with most endings in books and I was just overwhelmed with how it played out, that I could have cried. 5 stars

#0010A Sundays At Tiffany's - James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet

What a quick read. I read half the book in an hour and I am a slow reader. There were barely any words on a page, not to say that that makes it bad. It was a cute story of a child who had an imaginary friend named Micheal. By age nine the Micheal has to leave her. Usually the children forget the imaginary friend almost instantly, but of course there would not be a story if the main character forgot her special friend. She grew up and then met Michael and they fall in love. How can she remember Micheal and is he real?

To be honest, after I finished reading this book, I started to think about the story itself. It is really creepy that Micheal, who is 35 falls in love with his friend who is a child many years later. I don't know it's just weird to me, however, I enjoyed it very much. I'm a sucker for romance if it's not sleazy. 3.5 stars

#0009A In the Woods - Tana French

I was never a mystery fan. I just did not get into Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys at the right time. Since I am trying to be open minded about books in this 1,000 book before the end of my life, I seriously just picked up the first one that caught my eye.

Typical mystery with detectives in the book, but there were more twists and excitement than what I originally thought. The main character, when he was younger, was playing in the woods with his two best friends. He never came home for dinner so his mother sent out the police and they found him clinging on to a tree for dear life with someone else's blood in his shoes and he does not remember a thing. Jump back to present time. Another girl was found murdered in the same woods. Does this crime relate to the disappearance of his two friends from so long ago?

Mysteries really are not that bad from what I could remember. I just hope they are not all about detectives because that would get a little boring, but for me to throw a mystery into my broad range every once in awhile will not be as bad as I thought. 3.5 stars

#0008A Handle with Care - Jodi Picoult

The only reason why I picked up this book was because I had to sell them. I'm not a big fan of authors that just push out books a couple of times a year. Most of them are all the same or not very good, but this was my first Jodi Picoult book so I gave it a try.

The mother had a baby with OI (which is the brittle bone disease). They are very tight with their money, but never seem to have enough when it comes to taking care of her youngest daughter. One Disney trip, the little girl fell and broke her leg and the parents were sent to jail because they forgot the doctor's note on how the girl has OI. They go to a lawyer to sue the police, but the police were just doing their job and they had no case. The lawyer reads into the family deeper and lets them know that they technically could sue the OBGYN for "wrongful birth" because they did not find out early on that her daughter had the disease. Basically it meant that if they would have found out sooner then they would have had an abortion. Oh, not to mention that the OBGYN is the mother's best friend.

The book as an entirety was good. But as for me, the ending can really make it or break it. The ending was out of nowhere and if Jodi really wanted that to happen in the book, I think, in my opinion, that it should have happened in the middle of the book instead of letting it happen at the end and make it come out of left field. 3 stars

#0007A You Shall Know Our Velocity - David Eggers

I totally agree with Krissy on this book. Although I think it took me a little bit longer to read than she did. David's writing style is really interesting and it took me awhile to get used to reading it. Really there is not a lot to this book, but it was great.

Two boys have all this money and go around the world, in just a week and give it away. They try different ways of giving people their money. They don't necessarily want the people to know it was them, but they end up sticking it to doors in envelopes or burying it and making a treasure map for kids to find. Why do they have that amount of cash to begin with at such a young age? And why does one of them look like he's been in a horrible accident? 4 stars

#0006A The Shack - William Young

A family goes camping on vacation and their young daughter gets kidnapped and murdered in a shack. Four years later the father, whose faith is going down hill, gets a letter in the mail from God. He wants the father to meet Him at the Shack where his daughter was killed. The main character thinks it's absolutely ridiculous, but goes anyway. God turns out to be an African American woman, Jesus is there as a very ugly Jew, and the Holy Spirit is an Asian woman. During his time there they discuss different points of the father's life and helps him come to understand and accept his daughter's death.

This book took me awhile to read. Within each chapter I had to stop and think about what was going on and what these views were. The really neat part is that the author, William, wrote this book because of what happened to his friend. Even though this book is in the fiction section, his friend believes everything really happened. I loved it. 5 stars

#0005A The Seventh Son - Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite authors to this day. I started out reading Ender's Game and was hooked ever since. I picked up Seventh Son to try out his other book series, Alvin Maker. Alvin Miller is a special boy with a unreal power that he is not completely aware of. He lives in the time of what the American frontier would be like with a little bit of magic. This book just goes through his childhood and lets the reader know how he learned of his power and his becoming of the Maker. 4 stars

#0004A The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

My mom asked me to buy this book for her and read it before I gave it to her. Thanks, Mom. This book was so heartfelt and amazing. I absolutely loved it.

Randy Pausch was a computer science professor. He found out that he only had three months to live, so, what does a man do in his last few months of life? He gives his last lecture. I thought I would be bawling my eyes out by the end of this book, but it really is uplifting. He goes through his life as he was younger, a college student, a married man, and a father and he tells different aspiring tales of how he made his life great even though his life is short. In the end, he gave his last lecture, not for his university or students, he did it for his children. 5 stars

#0003A Dead Until Dark - Charlene Harris

I confess. I read the Twilight series and I enjoyed them. So, craving a new vampire series I checked Dead Until Dark out.

A girl, who has a lot of bad luck, meets and falls in love with a vampire. During the story a lot of people that she knows dies and of course everyone blames the vampires that are living in the town. *spoiler* Elvis was brought into the book near the end and it ruined the book for me. I mean the book, in my opinion, really does not deserve all the hype it has been getting, but that just pushed it over the edge for me. I did keep my attention, but i really would not recommend it. My friends do recommend the HBO series. But alas, 2 stars

#0002A Life of Pi - Yann Martel

I actually found this book out by the dumpster along with some other books. Seriously, this book is not garbage! (Here is well Krissy and I start to over lap) A boy's family is going to America and taking their zoo with them. That's right, they own a zoo. The boat sinks on the way and that leaves little Pi with Richard Parker on the life boat waiting to be rescued. Did I mention that Richard Parker is a 450 pound tiger? Most Def. 5 stars

#0001K-#0014K

My counterpart in this project is clearly not as lazy as I am. I'm going to start this off with a list of what I've read so far and review the last complete book.

#0001K: HG Wells: The Invisible Man [This was a great read, much different than what I was expecting- dark and exciting. A good adventure!]
#0002K: Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera [Marquez was always an author I wanted more of. This book had been on my "to-read" list for awhile, and I'm sad that it's over. It was slow in a few parts, but all together lovely.]
#0003K: Yann Martel: Life of Pi [Alyse gave me this one to read. I had been hearing good things about it for years, and it lives up to the hype. I definitely recommend it.]
#0004K: Sara Gruen: Water for Elephants [I had Alyse read Water for Elephants once I was done. I devoured it in a day and a half. If you're a sucker for a good circus story being told by an old man, please pick it up.]
#0005K: Herman Hesse: Journey to the East [I hate to say it, but I don't remember much of this. I get lost really easily in a writing style like Hesse's, and tend to love the book in the moment. This is another author I need more of.]
#0006K: David Eggers: You Shall Know Our Velocity! [My favorite by leaps and bounds so far. A friend recommended it to me, I passed it along to Alyse and we both thought it was great. The writing style is unlike any I've witnessed before and so so pleasing.]
#0007K: Khaled Hosseini: Kite Runner [I read this book in 3 days. One of those days, I sat for 3.5 hours and raced to the ending. It's a life story that pulls at your heart strings.]
#0008K-#0010K: Anton Chekhov: Ivanov; The Seagull; Uncle Vania [I am working through a collection of plays by Chekhov, but count each one individually. They've all been quite good so far and have just the right sense of humor.]
#0011K: Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Collected Stories [This is a collection of 26 stories, separated into 3 books. Marquez's writing style is much gentler in a short story venue, and very easy to read. Many of the stories had a metaphysical feel to them, which made reading a lot in one go a bit of a challenge. Still, another favorite so far.]
#0012K: Wulf Zendik: a Quest Among the Bewildered [This is an autobiographical stream-of-consciousness book. Zendik is lumped in with the beat generation, and it's clear why. Some of the chapters were heartbreaking, but so gentle. It reminded me of a mix of Bukowski and Brautigan. 5 stars, easy.]
#0013K: Charles Bukowski: Fac-to-tum ["And I couldn't get it up." God bless Bukowski. Read the book to get the quote.

#0014K: Kurt Vonnegut: Jailbird
Vonnegut has been my favorite author for years now, and I still haven't gotten through his entire catalogue. I got an early edition of Jailbird from an online thrift store and read it as soon as it got to my door. It was a beautifully silly story.
We meet the narrator on the day he is to leave prison. He was in for being very loosely involved in the Watergate scandal. In his journey back to normal life, he meets old companions from his college days. One thing leads to another leads to another and he is living with an incredibly wealthy bag lady who is paranoid about people cutting off her hands, and who was once his sweetheart.
I love Vonnegut for his portrayal of the human conditon and all of its absurdities, and Jailbird was no exception. I will definitely be reading this again, and I highly recommend it. Three claps!

#0001A Crank - Ellen Hopkins

(Finished sometime in January 2009)

The reason why I picked this book up was because of my step-sister. She kept going on about how quick and great this book was. If I would have known that I was starting a book blog, I would not have had chosen this as my first one. Don't get me wrong, it was a good book, it just was too real to me. Haha, which is probably the reason why Ellen wrote the book. It was a really quick read, but I just remember crying for the person in the book and at that point in time when I read that, I did not need to be reading it.

So, what is this book about? The title really gives it away. Girl visits dad, girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love, girl gets hooked on drugs with boy. Even though it was upsetting 4 stars.

-Alyse

Intro to Krissy

I think Alyse covered the why of this pretty well, so I'll just start on what I dig reading. Normally, I am really heavy into classic literature, but I've needed a break lately. I've gotten back to reading my trusty Vonnegut collection and books that have been suggested to me. I usually stick to fiction, but a kind of narrow realm of it, I guess. I haven't really read any sci-fi/fantasy, mystery, or historical fiction titles. This will change, I'm sure.

So 1000 books seems a little daunting. At the start of this, I am on my 14th or 15th book, and if I keep up at this pace, the 1000 book goal will still take about 20 years. I am horrible at sticking to things I start, but I love reading, so maybe the next 20 years will see my[our] continued efforts.

On to the books!

INTRO TO ALYSE

So, this is a start of a long process for me, but actually it might not take as long, the way I'm headed. I love reading. That really is an understatement. During college I rarely had time for reading and if I did, it was for a class. After I graduated, I suddenly had pleanty of time to get back to what I love doing. Because of that, my bffffff, Krissy, and I decided to start a goal together to read 1000 books, seperately, before we die and then keep going. (2009)

For those who wonder, I love fantasy and sci-fi the most, but I'm planning on becoming open minded on what I read. And don't be surprised if I throw in a kid book, because i love those too. I might reread some books, but they will only show up on the list once. I'm not a big fan of non-fiction and war books, but I will probably explore those too. I am grateful for any suggestions, so don't be afraid.

And also, Krissy and I will probably be reading the same book here and there, but at least there will be different perspectives.

-Alyse