40. The Condition

I fell in love with this quirky New England family. The author took me to the home of any family, with all of the faults, limitations, love, expectations, disappointments and discontent found within the human condition. While the story centers on the family struggle with Paulette, who has Turner's Disease - a condition which causes a halt to normal physical maturity, each of the family members struggles with their own "conditions" which range from sexual choices, drugs, ADHD, fearfulness, and distrust. As the family gathers for one last time in their previously owned cottage on the shore, I found myself cheering for all of them - please take the time to explore and embrace your own conditions - accept one another. I was quite sad when I turned the last page and it was over.

One of my favortie passages ends like this:
That like a grave illness, adulthood had befallen all three of them. That fortuitously or not, their courses in life had been set, the only lives they were going to get. p. 312-313

This reminds me of what I always tell my four grown children: To be happy in this life, find something you love to do and then do it! It took me forty years to find something I loved to do and I am grateful to come to work every single day!

TITLE: The Condition
AUTHOR: Jennifer Haigh
COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 320
TYPE: fiction,
RECOMMEND: I really loved this book.

LibrarysCat

39. All About Lulu

I read a review that said this title was misnamed because the book is really all about Will. In reality the book is all about Will's obsession with Lulu. With a delightful and diverse cast of characters, this is a book to fall in love with - from the beginning where we find Will stranded by the death of his mother leaving him with his champion body builder father and twin brothers who follow Dad's every path. When Dad remarries and brings Willow, a grief counselor, and her daughter Lulu to their home, Will begins to find himself with Lulu's help. He falls in love with Lulu and devotes every waking moment to documenting her every delightful and not so delightful activities. When Lulu turns away from Will, he is devestated. But as we know, life goes on. I fell in love with Will, his brothers, Willow and Lulu. I was left as confused as Will until the very end. Finally, there is redemption and sadness, and finally understanding.

TITLE: All About Lulu
AUTHOR: Jonathan Evison
COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 320
TYPE: fiction, coming of age
RECOMMEND: I really enjoyed this quirky first novel.

Tuesday Things

This week's question: Legacy libraries. With which legacy libraries do you share books? Tell us a little about a couple of them and what you share.

How much fun was this!! Thank you BB, as you always come up with good questions for us. Here is my list:

Marilyn Monroe - 1

Hawaii>

Alfred Deakin - 1

Pride and Prejudice

Carl Sandburg - 4

A Lantern in Her Hand

Pride and Prejudice

The Good Earth

My Antonia

Earnest Hemingway -2

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Pride and Prejudice

William Butler Yeats - 1

Pride and Prejudice

Sylvia Plath - 1

Cranford

Theodore Dreiser - 1

My Antonia

Walker Percy - 2

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Pride and Prejudice

Sir Walter Scott - 1

Emma

I found this wonderful because it brought to mind some of my very favorite books - the book most shared was Pride and Prejudice, and the book that I was most happy people had read was Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

For your second question, I will have to think about it. My mother has been in the hospital for the last three weeks and I am almost brain dead. She has been moved to a physical rehabilitation center, so things are looking up and I may get some sleep! I did get some reading done at the hospital so at least there was that! Thank you for keeping us thinking and sharing.

LibrarysCat

38. A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life

Often when I feel like reading has become a chore instead of a pleasure, I pick up a Young Adult novel and, somehow, I feel renewed and ready to read everything in sight. In this case, I was lucky to have a new list -- Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Book Awards thanks to the Boston Bibliophile. So this was the first book from the list that I decided to read and it was a great choice.

Simone Turner is a sixteen year old girl who is, for the most part, happy with her life. She loves her adoptive parents, rather likes her younger brother, has a crazy best friend, and is dealing with the normal teenage issues. [I loved Simone’s parents, who seemed like hippy activists.] Simone’s biggest problem is that she does not really want to meet her birth mother who has suddenly called and asked to meet her. With only slight pressure from her parents, Simone finally agrees and finds that her mother Rivka was raised in a Hasidic Jewish family and got pregnant when she was sixteen. Rivka was shunned by her family – finally deciding to give her baby to the Turners. Rivka introduces Simone to her brand of the Jewish faith which includes some of the loving rituals that bring her peace. In the beginning, Simone cannot understand this brand of faith as she professes to be an atheist. After a number of awkward family gatherings and a visit at Rivka’s home, Simone comes to understand that faith has the potential to sustain someone in the most difficult times and can be the only thing left to hold on to.

TITLE: A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life
AUTHOR: Dana Reinhardt
COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 256
TYPE: fiction, young adult
AWARDS: 2007 Honor Award for Teens, Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Book Awards
RECOMMEND: I loved it.

LibrarysCat

Lovely contest, Many winners

Devourer of Books is having a wonderful Giveaway in honor of her 100th book review - what an accomplishment and what a contest! The more people who enter, the more books she will give to the winners. You have until October 15th to enter.

Tuesday Thingers (on Friday)

For this week's Tuesday Thingers, I've copied the list of the most-challenged books of the 1990s straight from the ALA website. I've highlighted the ones I've read. Highlight what you've read, and italicize what you have in your LT library.

Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
What's Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What? by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Well, I guess I better get busy - I would hate to miss all of the banned books!

75 Books Every Woman Should Read

Thanks to Jezebel for providing this list. I have read only 18 (in red), have heard of most of them, and should get busy. They also have a must read list for men.


The Lottery (and Other Stories), Shirley Jackson
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Like Life, Lorrie Moore
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
The Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
A Good Man Is Hard To Find (and Other Stories), Flannery O'Connor
The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
Earthly Paradise, Colette
Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
Property, Valerie Martin
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
Runaway, Alice Munro
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
You Must Remember This, Joyce Carol Oates
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
The Liars' Club, Mary Karr
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
The Group, Mary McCarthy
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag
In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
Three Junes, Julia Glass
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
Sophie's Choice, William Styron
Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Face of War, Martha Gellhorn
My Antonia, Willa Cather
Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Harsh Voice, Rebecca West
Spending, Mary Gordon
The Lover, Marguerite Duras
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Tell Me a Riddle, Tillie Olsen
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
Three Lives, Gertrude Stein
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
Possession, A.S. Byatt