Looks like I am well on my way to owning all of the 101Books We Can't Live Without!

The Imperfectionists: Book One

Starting The Imperfectionists, I must admit I was a little confused. It seems that when I first pick up a book and read the back cover, it doesn’t actually register with me. I don’t seem to understand what the book is actually about until I start reading it. But, I like it that way. Always a surprise when reading a book. 

After reading the first two sections, you might, as I immediately thought, think that this is a collection of short stories. But, The Imperfectionists is more than that. As you keep reading, each of the characters begin to appear in other stories, keeping them all tied together. 

Basically, this story is about journalists and readers who are involved some way with this particular newspaper. But digging deeper, it's about so much more than that. It's about people compromising their beliefs because sometimes they're just tired of waiting around for things to get better. It's about people who are tired with living their lives the way they have been. It's about people who think they are a certain type of person, only to discover that they aren't that person at all. 

Generally, I am not a fan of writing in present tense. But author Tom Rachman did it flawlessly. He was able to write with such beautiful language, that it almost transcended past/present tense. It's like I didn't even pay attention to the individual words, because the deeper meaning of the story was so much more wonderful. Rachman found beautiful ways to say even the most mundane things…. 

"Over the next few weeks, she hangs around the apartment, drinking herbal tea, watching Italian variety shows. She is crotchety with him, then apologizes. Once healed, she resumes her photography project on graffiti but does not return to yoga." 


This is definitely going on my list of books that I couldn't live without! 

Writing By Hand

One of the first books that I remember reading and absolutely loving was A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving There's always just been something about the way that Irving writes. It grabs me and I can never seem to put the book down. Through Twitter I recently found this article in the New York Times. It just a simple article, some questions and answers. But, there's a line in it that Irving says which I love. 

 "I don’t read anything electronically. I don’t write electronically, either — except e-mails to my family and friends. I write in longhand. I have always written first drafts by hand, but I used to write subsequent drafts and insert pages on a typewriter. Now (for the last two books) I write all my drafts by hand. It’s the right speed for me — slow."

It shows in his books. And I think that I'm the same way. I type so fast that often times, I don't even have the time to think about what I'm writing before I write it. 

It's still nice to put a pen to paper every now and then. 

Delays and BEA

Turns out I picked an awful two weeks in my life to decide to start blogging. I attended Book Expo America in New York City last week as an Exhibitor/Buyer and so the week was completely full of books, friends, excellent meals, tasty drinks and Broadway Plays.

I received some great galleys that I'm really excited about!

As for the positive tune that everyone is singing about BEA in articles, well, that wasn't exactly the same tune I was hearing on the floor. Everyone I talked to agreed that while it was cool that many civilians were there, actual sales for the books were at an all-time low. All the civilians were there just to pick up free books (obviously! because who wouldn't want to, right?). So, it merely gave the allusion that there were lots of people there. Smart on the planning of BEA.

Anyways... enough about that. I should start posting reviews here soon. I don't have another trip planned for a while!

The Books

Here's the complete list of books that are on Daily Candy's 101 Books We Can't Live Without.

1. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
2. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers
3. The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss
4. A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway
5. The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman
6. You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense, by Charles Bukowski
7. The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
8. The Harry Potter Series, by J.K. Rowling
9. Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee
10. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
11. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
12. Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
13. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
14. Lunch Poems, by Frank O'Hara
15. Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell
16. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
17. Little Bee, by Chris Cleave
18. The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
19. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
20. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
21. Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates
22. The Sookie Stackhouse Series, by Charlaine Harris
23. White Noise, by Don DeLillo
24. Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume
25. The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
26. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
27. The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien
28. Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
29. Scruples, by Judith Krantz
30. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
31. We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver
32. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
33. Garner's Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner
34. Kissing in Manhattan, by David Schickler
35. A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
36. Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
37. Bastard Out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison
38. Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn
39. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
40. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
41. Naked, by David Sedaris
42. Prep, by Curtis Sittenfield
43. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
44. The Other Boleyn Girl, by Phillippa Gregory
45. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
46. The Stand, by Stephen King
47. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
48. The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
49. Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott
50. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
51. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
52. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon
53. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
54. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers
55. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
56. Skinny Legs and All, by Tom Robbins
57. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
58. The Feast of Love, by Charles Baxter
59. Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
60. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
61. A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson
62. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
63. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
64. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
65. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
66. The Cider House Rules, by John Irving
67. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
68. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
69. Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
70. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
71. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Haddon
72. Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
73. Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem
74. Tao Te Ching, by Stephen Mitchell
75. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
76. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
77. What is the What, by Dave Eggers
78. The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen
79. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
80. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
81. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
82. Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger
83. Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson
84. The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
85. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl
86. A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey
87. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, by Peter Godwin
88. Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann
89. The Millennium Trilogy, by Stieg Larsson
90. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
91. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
92. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
93. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
94. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
95. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
96. Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
97. I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe
98. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
99. Flowers in the Attic, by V.C. Andrews
100. Damage, by John Lescroart
101. A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami

The Challenge

It’s been a goal of mine for a while now to start writing every day, but I needed something to write about. Last week I found what I feel is the perfect motivation. 101 Books We Can’t Live Without  from Daily Candy. I'll be reading and writing about books from a large portion of this list over the next year. 

Why did I choose this list? I need a bit of a challenge. I need some reason to start reading and writing every day. I found this link through Penguin USA’s Facebook & was immediately intrigued by the books on this list. I feel it’s a great mix of classics and modern literature… and even some just flat out fun reads (i.e. Sookie Stackhouse) in the mix.

I have read about 38 of these titles and own even more, but I am going to go back and re-read some of the ones that I "read" during high school. Because sometimes I didn't really fully read those books. :) You know what I'm talking about. 

I’m really excited to start this journey and hope that you’ll come along for the ride! And hopefully by the end of all this, I’ll have created my own 101 Books I Can’t Live Without.

Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella

Man, where to start with this book.

First of all, this book was nothing like what I thought it was going to be. Absolutely nothing.

It starts out with the main character, Lara, going to the funeral of her Great Aunt Sadie. While at this funeral, Sadie appears to Lara as a ghost, demanding for her necklace. So, Lara goes on the quest to find Sadie’s necklace so that she can rest in peace.

Now, maybe it’s only because I didn’t realize Sadie was going to be an actual “ghost” or maybe it’s just because I think writing about a ghost is absolutely ridiculous, but either way, I wasn’t a fan.

Sadie was an absolutely obnoxious character that I couldn’t stand. From what I heard, that’s what Kinsella was going for, but still. I mean, it pained me to read page after page where she was talking. Secondly, the events that transpire during this novel are absolutely 100% ridiculous. Now, I love my fiction novels (especially chick lit) just as much as the next girl, but really. Do you honestly expect me to believe that this Lara girl just walked into some random office and sat down in the middle of a meeting to ask some guy out. And that he said yes and then followed through it? Or that she wore all 20’s style clothing to the date just for Sadie? Or that one the date he spilled his entire life story about his ex-wife? And then Sadie got mad when Lara and this fellow actually wanted to start dating. It was all just way too far fetched and really lame. It really wasn’t even funny. And I hate to say that. Because I really enjoy most of Sophie Kinsella’s books, but seriously? This book was lame.