Books Read in 2010

[vertigo3l]

January
Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel by Jeanette Walls

February
A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
50 Reasons People Give for

Comments

[thecranewife]

Room! You should read 'Room!'

[vertigo3l]

I just looked it up on GoodReads and it looks great! I added it to my "to-read" list. :)

[margotheangel]

Presidents! Have you read any yet? I've read the three that Ellis wrote as well as Mornings on Horseback (only TR's youth, not including the presidency) and Truman (great but LONG) by David McCullough and one on Monroe called The Last Founding Father.

[vertigo3l]

I haven't read any of those! I am obsessed with presidents and American history, and have been decorating the reading nook at our house with presidential memorabilia and campaign posters. Right now I'm reading FDR by Jean Edward Smith and on my next on my night stand is American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Did you like the ones by Ellis? Who did he cover? I was looking at Truman on Amazon and trying to decide if I should order it. But I also kind of want the Lincoln biography by White. So many to choose from!

[margotheangel]

The Ellis ones are:
His Excellency, about George Washington
Passionate Sage, about John Adams
American Sphinx, about Thomas Jefferson

I really liked all of those. (There is some controversy about Ellis - he exaggerated his service during Vietnam - but personally, I don't feel that it diminishes the worth of his books.) He wrote another one called (I think) Founding Brothers, which I didn't think was as interesting - it was a collection of shorter stories, and I found that I preferred reading a longer study of one president, rather than a bunch of stories about dudes who lived around the same time.

I have this nerdy goal to read at least one biography of each president (although there really aren't any good ones of Madison that I could find at my library - the best I found on Amazon seemed to be this one - so I've skipped him for the time being). I liked reading them in order, so the next few I'm going to read are:
John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
American Lion
Martin Van Buren (may not be as good, since there aren't

[vertigo3l]

I love the idea of reading them in order! That would be fun.

I went to a used bookstore last year that was having a nonfiction sale, and I got quite a few books about Nixon and Lincoln (apparently, someone had traded in their collections to this used bookstore and they didn't sell). I just found out this evening that the same used bookstore is going out of business. I'm so disappointed, because it was the last one in this area, but I'm also planning to show up and raid their nonfiction section next weekend. Can't wait to see what I will find...