2/3 of the way there ... more or less

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62. Name Withheld - J.A. Jance
63. Promises in Death - J.D. Robb
64. The Royal Treatment - MaryJanice Davidson
65. StrengthsFinder 2.0 - Tom Rath
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Latest Reads

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8. Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

A simple book, one I've been intrigued by since reading A Million Little Pieces. It wasn't life-altering or anything, but I did find some of the passages meaningful. I think the beauty of this work is that everyone who reads it can find something of meaning, and will likely finish with their own unique take on the material.

9. Fluke - Christopher Moore

I really enjoy Moore's books. They're really well-written, funny and bizzare. He and Carl Hiaasen may well be my two favorite fiction writers ...

10. The Courage To Be Single Mother - Sheila Ellison

Very cool book - I'd recommend to all single moms.

11. Dust to Dust - Tami Hoag

Good crime novel. I like J.D. Robb better, but I like Hoag more than I like Patterson or Cromwell.

12. How to Parent With Your Ex - Brette McWhorter Sembler

More of a pre-divorce primer than an after-the-fact book, especially if you are maintaining a somewhat amicable or better relationship with the ex and you can conduct yourselves like civil grownups where the kid(s) are concerned.

13. We Thought You Would Be Prettier - Laurie Notaro

Eh. I'm kind of over her stuff ...

14. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

Original and (mostly) fun to read, but kind of difficult to read, too. Difficult in the sense of what happens to the characters, fun in the sense of the writing style, the language shifts and the narrative voice.
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Latest Reads

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There seems to be a bit of a self-improvement angle to most of my latest reads. And that's cool. Never hurts to improve oneself, even when you're Practically Perfect in Every Way.

3. What I Know Now: Letters to my Younger Self - Ellyn Spragins
4. Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
5. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
7. Who Moved My Cheese? - Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Breaking Dawn was good, but a bit too clean and neat an ending. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the book, as I did the other three in the Twilight series. Total easy reading, total fluff, but enjoyable, suck-you-in fluff.

The Great Gatsby took a little getting into, but I have to say I really enjoyed it. I can't believe that I had never read it before.

What I Know Now was a collection of letters that famous written would write to their younger selves. I found Camryn Manheim's letter to be the most applicable for me, and the most impressive, but I also jotted down words from Barbara Boxer, Olympia Dukakis, Macy Gray, Jane Kaczmarek and Nora Roberts.

Man's Search for Meaning. Read this book. Do it. The first half is about the author's time in concentration camps during WWII, but it's peppered with so much wisdom and perspective that it's mind-changing. The second half is about his approach to psychotherapy, which he called logotherapy (logos is Greek for meaning). Logotherapy "considers man as a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning and actualizing values, rather than (as psychotherapy does) in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts."

Frankl believes that suffering is noble and has meaning in and of itself. That the meaning of life is found within the world, not within the individual, that man needs tension and disequilibrium to motivate him toward a goal and that "... each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."

There was so much in this book that I found myself nodding about and recognizing in myself and in my own core beliefs, yet there was still more that I found myself realizing I *don't* achieve or recognize.

Who Moved my Cheese? is a small, quick-reading book that hopes to change how we look at and feel about change. Cheese is used as a metaphor for what each of us wants out of life, and the Maze that the Cheese is found in represents where we spend our time looking for the Cheese. Change happens, it's how we react to the change that determines whether we stay in one place waiting for our Old Cheese to come back or whether we venture back into the Maze to find New Cheese.

It's perfect for me at this juncture because I've had a lot of change over the past year, and I have a lot more coming. There's a phrase from the book: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" that I need to incorporate as a daily mantra. I usually embrace and am inspired by change, but the big change coming - my returning to work outside the home and putting my kids in full-time care - scares the heck out of me!

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Latest Reads

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108. Beloved - Toni Morrison

An amazing book. It took a little getting into, but I'm so glad I pushed myself past the first chapter or two.

109. Cross Bones - Kathy Reichs

Her spin on a DaVinci Code-type book. A good read.

110. An Open Heart - The Dalai Lama

Just a very cool book about Buddhist meditation and philosophy.

111. There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - Lauri Notaro

Yeah, she's funny. But she's not the next Carl Hiaasen, which is what her attempt at a novel reaches for. She should stick to column-writing.

112. Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson

I feel like the emperor in "Amadeus", but there are simply too many notes. This was a good book, but just *too* narrative.

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Two to go

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95. Nights in Rodanthe - Nicholas Sparks

I just don't really dig his stuff. I've read two of his books now (this and The Notebook) and the style is just too sappy and too melodramatic for me.

96. Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs

A disturbing memoir, but darkly funny. If you think your childhood was rough, read this.

97. The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson

A compelling true account of a serial killer and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Fascinating history of the Fair, and of a killer's machinations.

98. Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella

Entertaining light reading.
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Books 91 through 94

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91. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers

A good book, but not a great one. In a way, I finished it just to finish it. It started out very compelling, but as the pages slid by, kind of became tedious.

92. Positive Discipline - Jane Nelsen

A awesome book about parenting and "discipline". I read it to help underscore what I took from "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk", and ended up writing a few key phrases from this book down to post in my kitchen. I highly recommend this book to anyone who feels the punitive - or corporal - punishment is NOT the way to go.

93. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen

Loved this book. A great story, with wonderful detail and rich characters. One of those "I can't put it down, so I am tearing through it, but I'm going to be so sad when I actually finish it" books.

94. Autobiography of a Fat Bride - Lauri Notaro

Love her sense of humor and writing style. She and David Sedaris are my heroes :)
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Books 78-81

78. Charlie Wilson's War - George Crile

If I were rating my reads, this would get 6 out of 5 stars.

I loved this book. A review quoted on the cover says "Reads like a best-selling novel ..." and I couldn't agree more. But it's not a fictional novel, it's an unbelievable but true story of how the Afghan war went from a poorly funded and little known covert CIA battle to the massively funded (but still not truly overt) final battle of the Cold War.

Read. This. Book. It's not a fast read, but it is an amazingly rewarding one.

79. Bones to Ashes - Kathy Reichs

Hallelujah - The end of this one didn't find Tempe in the grasp of the bad guys!

80. Drowning Ruth - Christina Schwartz

Well-written, believable characters and an interesting story line. Once I was into this book, I couldn't put it down. I did find the author's writing style a bit ... disjointed, maybe? It was a bit awkward at times, but still a good read.

81. Go Ask Alice - Anonymous

The (allegedly - some controversy surrounds this) true story of a young girl's journey into drug use, Go Ask Alice is one of those 'must read' books I somehow never read. It's heartbreaking and hopeful, and unflinchingly accurate. A haunting book, one I tore through in about an hour. I enjoyed it even more knowing that Sarah Palin sought to have it removed from Alaska's school libraries.

Latest Reads

I've been slacking on updating.

76. Strip Tease - Carl Hiaasen

Another great book, but I miss the Governor and Jim Tile. But at least it had Al Garcia.

77. Death du Jour - Kathy Reichs

I love Reichs' books, even if they make something inside of me recoil in horror.

Since I complain about Nora Roberts' books being 'formulaic', it's only fair to make a similar comment about Reichs' novels. Without fail, the heroine comes face to face with the criminal, (this is only a spoiler if you've not read *any* of her books - if you've read one, you know that the build up and the situation are varied enough to still surprise you) and finds herself in peril at books' end. But so far, the situations and the crimes have been varied, and horrifying, enough to keep me turning the pages with baited breath.

I've been working on Charlie Wilson's War in between these books. This is a fab book, just awesome - but it's taking me forever to read, because I am so into it I'm cross-referencing things and taking notes. I loved the one international relations class I took in college, and this book brings it all back and then some.

I also read a little over half of The Out-of-Sync Child. I've some suspicions that my older daughter has a few sensory issues, but I read enough of the book to know that, even if she does, she's not having serious issues - they're more like quirks. But it's a fascinating read, and it offers a ton of insight into children who have some degree of sensory processing dissonance, even very mild dissonance like my daughter displays.

#33 - Into the Wild

I was kind of underwhelmed. It was a decent book, tho I'm not sure there was really enough material for an actual book, or that the story was compelling enough for an actual book ...

It's the story of Chris McCandless, a twenty-something kid from a well-to-do family whose wanderlust outstripped his common sense. He took off (totally unprepared) on a solo trip into the Alaskan interior and he died. Yeah, that's an oversimplification, but, stripped of romanticism, that's what happened.

I think the author needed McCandless' death to be more meaningful than it was; I'm not belittling the tragedy of death, or the heartbreak Chris' family experienced (and must still experience). But to make a hero out of a self-involved kid who put his own dreams/desires first, who ignored his family and left them no clue he was alive or dead for years, who willingly and blithely walked into the wilds of Alaska without being even remotely prepared for what he'd face ... it's just dishonest.

The author (Jon Krakauer) shared some of Chris McCandless' dreams and exploits, and admittedly was not an unbiased biographer. It felt like the author - in drawing parallels between his experiences, McCandless' experiences and the experiences of a few other men (always men) who followed their bliss into the wild - was attempting to make the acts into something more meaningful, almost transcendent.

What the author, and his self-styled contemporaries, fail to appreciate, in my opinion, is that "The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it" - running away into the wild and climbing mountains doesn't make you braver or better than anyone else.

Girl, Interrupted

Another memoir. This one was a bit more uncomfortable to read, because it asks the question - why is one person crazy enough for an institution while the rest of us aren't? I'm fairly certain we all have some 'crazy' thoughts or thought processes, and that we all experience some of the things the author was institutionalized for ... we just manage to keep the common threads a bit more under control :)

This was a really good book, however, and one I'd recommend. But now I'm on to Lean Mean Thirteen because I need a little fluff!

Zlata's Diary

I wrapped this up this morning. Zlata is a young girl living in Sarajevo, and her diary chronicles the period just before the Bosnian War began, until her departure from Sarajevo in late 1993. It's akin to "The Diary of Anne Frank", without the tragic ending, although it is not without tragedy. It was a fast read, and one I'd recommend, simply for the perspective gained. Most of us are fortunate enough to have led 'normal' childhoods, and have lived without any war or strife - it's important that we recognize and sympathize with those who have not. Both in the hope of learning from them and preventing it from happening again, and also in the spirit of being thankful for all that we have and all that we have not had to experience.