My Wish List

My post over on Buy Books for the Holidays asks people to create book wish lists for themselves.
[Edited 11/14/08]. I was excited to try out IndieBound's wish list feature. I happened upon a minor bug in the system which initially capped my list at 9 books, but it's all fixed now and I'm happy to report two things: 1) there's no limit to the number of books that can be entered, and 2) IndieBound.org offered up a live demonstration of what small businesses have to offer. As soon as he learned there was a problem, the Web Content Coordinator contacted me offering assistance, and the glitch was fixed within twenty minutes of my response. Twenty minutes, people! Now I wish I had more books to wish for.

So, here's the explanation of the 10 books on my wish list:

First of all, I love to read fiction, but you won't find any on my wish list. I don't reread it, so even the books I adore are simply taking up space on the shelves until I find someone to pass them on to. Now, if someone gave me a wonderful novel as a gift, I'd be delighted, as long as they didn't mind me passing it along when I'd finished it.

So what do I want to own?

1. Cookbooks! I love to read a cookbook from cover to cover, marking recipes that I dream of trying one day. I own a lot of cookbooks that I rarely use, and a few that I use often. I love them all. On this year's wishlist I included some vegan cookbooks and Farmer John's The Real Dirt on Vegetables, as well as Jane Brody's Good Seafood Book. But pretty much any cookbook makes me happy.

2. Writing Books! Especially Writer's Market 2009, but there are several others on my list which have been recommended to me or which I've read and would love to refer back to again and again.

3. Material World: a Global Family Portrait and (though I got cut off when I tried to add it to my official list) Women in the Material World. I've gotten the first one from the library many times, and, though it must be somewhat dated now at 14 years old, these photographs of families from around the world, in front of their houses with every possession that they own, never cease to fascinate me and the rest of my family.

4. Song books! I have Rise Up Singing, which has been one of the best book purchases we've ever made. It'd be great to have the updated edition of this so we could share more easily with a group when we're singing around the campfire.

5. Gardening books! I don't have any specific books in mind, but they're always appreciated. My parents always choose better than I ever could in this area.

What's on your wish list? And what types of books do you love to receive as gifts?

National Book Award Finalists

The finalists have been announced for the 2008 National Book Awards, and I'm delighted that The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks has been selected in the Young People's Literature category. It's the only National Book Award finalist that I've read this year, so here are some more books to add to my ever-growing reading list, starting with the YA category because, gosh, it ought to be mentioned first somewhere:

Young Adult Literature
Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now

Fiction:
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project
Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country
Marilynne Robinson, Home
Salvatore Scibona, The End

Nonfiction:
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
Jim Sheeler, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives
Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order

Poetry:
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival
Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems
Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day
Richard Howard, Without Saying
Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler

Congratulations to all the finalists! So, who's read any of these, and what do you think--are they deserving of a National Book Award?

Mock Printz Awards

I'm excited about participating in the 2009 Mock Printz Award workshop at my local library in January, and just received their reading list. So along with my other stacks of books, here are the YA books I'll be reading this fall/winter. I have to admit the only one I've even heard about is Black Box, which I interviewed Lenore about. Have any of you read any of these? Anyone want to read some along with me?

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother
After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.

Green, John. Paper Towns (Release date: Oct. 16)
When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night—dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

Harmon, Michael. The Last Exit to Normal
Yanked out of his city life and plunked down into a small Montana town with his father and his father's boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Ben, angry and resentful about the changed circumstances of his life, begins to notice that something is not quite right with the little boy next door and determines to do something about it.

Kluger, Steve. My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park
Meet T.C., who is valiantly attempting to get Alejandra to fall in love with him; Alejandra, who is playing hard to get and is busy trying to sashay out from under the responsibilities of being a diplomat’s daughter; and T.C.’s brother Augie, who is gay and in love and everyone knows it but him.

Lockhart, E. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Sophomore Frankie starts dating senior Matthew Livingston, but when he refuses to talk about the all-male secret society that he and his friends belong to, Frankie infiltrates the society in order to enliven their mediocre pranks.

Mazer, Norma Fox. The Missing Girl
In Mallory, New York, as five sisters, aged eleven to seventeen, deal with assorted problems, conflicts, fears, and yearnings, a mysterious middle-aged man watches them, fascinated, deciding which one he likes the best.

Meldrum, Christina. Madapple
THE SECRETS OF the past meet the shocks of the present. Aslaug’s mother has brought her up in near isolation, teaching her about plants and nature and language—but not about life. Especially not how she came to have her own life, and who her father might be. When Aslaug’s mother dies unexpectedly, everything changes. The more her story unravels, the more questions unfold: About the nature of Aslaug’s birth; about what she should do next; about whether divine miracles have truly happened; and whether, when all other explanations are impossible, they might still happen this very day?

Myers, Walter Dean. Sunrise over Fallujah
In this new novel, Walter Dean Myers…creates memorable characters…of young men and women and drops them incountry in Iraq, where they are supposed to help secure and stabilize Iraq and successfully interact with the Iraqi people. The young civil affairs soldiers soon find their definition of "winning" ever more elusive and their good intentions being replaced by terms like "survival" and "despair." Caught in the crossfire, Myers' richly rendered characters are just beginning to understand the meaning of war in this powerful, realistic novel of our times.

Pearson, Mary. The Adoration of Jenna Fox
Who is Jenna Fox? Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago. But what happened before that? Jenna doesn't remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?


Schumacher, Julie. Black Box
WHEN DORA, ELENA’S older sister, is diagnosed with depression and has to be admitted to the hospital, Elena can’t seem to make sense of their lives anymore. At school, the only people who acknowledge Elena are Dora’s friends and Jimmy Zenk—who failed at least one grade and wears black every day of the week. And at home, Elena’s parents keep arguing with each other. Elena will do anything to help her sister get better and get their lives back to normal—even when the responsibility becomes too much to bear.

Tamaki, Mariko. Skim
The time is the early 1990s, the setting a girls' academy in Toronto. Enter "Skim," aka Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a not-slim, would-be Wiccan goth. When her classmate Katie Matthews is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. It's a weird time to fall in love, but Skim does just that after secret meetings with her neo-hippie English teacher, Ms. Archer. When Ms. Archer abruptly leaves the school, Skim has to cope with her confusion and isolation, as her best friend, Lisa, tries to pull her into "real" life... Suicide, depression, love, being gay or not, crushes, cliques of popular, manipulative peers — the whole gamut of tortured teen life is explored in this masterful graphic novel by cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki.

Funniest Kids' Books

The short lists for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize for children's literature has been announced by Booktrust (even the name of the prize is sort of funny, if you picture it being announced in a British accent, don't you think?

There are two lists, according the reader age. Since my own personal readers are in the older age category (7-14), I'll start with those books.

Mr. Gum and the Dancing Bear, by Andy Stanton, ill. David Tazzyman. This is the 5th book of the Mr. Gum series, to be released October 6 in the U.K., so we have plenty of time to catch up on the first 4 while we wait. 256 pages.
Paddington Here and Now, by Michael Bond, ill. RW Alley. A new Paddington novel--who knew? 176 pages.
Aliens Don't Eat Dog Food, by Dinah Capparucci. 3 boys, 2 dogs, and a whole lot of trouble. How could they have known that trying to save the world and being accidental reality TV stars would end in DISASTER? 240 pages.
Cosmic, by Frank Cottrell Boyce. This one is up for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize as well, you can read an excerpt by following that link. 256 pages.
Urgum and the Goo Goo Bah, by Kjartan Poskitt, ill. Philip Reeve. The third Urgum book, 332 pages.
Stop in the Name of Pants, by Louise Rennison. The Georgia Nicolson series is quite popular among older girls. I read the first one and felt like it was trying too hard to be funny while never actually making me laugh, but I'm not a teen girl.

The list for kids aged 6 and under:
Stick Man by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler
Elephant Wellyphant by Nick Sharratt
The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers
The Witch's Children Go to School by Ursula Jones, illustrated by Russell Ayto
There's an Ouch in My Pouch! by Jeanne Willis, illustrated by Garry Parsons
Manfred the Baddie by John Fardell

So, what would be on the list of funniest books from the U.S. or Canada? What's the funniest book you read as a kid, or to your kids?

Reading Challenge: The New Classics

Joanna at Lost In a Good Story is hosting a challenge based on Entertainment Weekly's list of New Classics - 100 of their best reads from 1983 to 2008.
The challenge rules are:
1) Copy the list and bold the titles that you have already read.
2) Choose at least 6 other books from the list , read and review them between 1 August 2008 and 31 January 2009.
3)Post links to your reviews at Lost In a Good Story
4) In January 2009, cast your vote for which one of the 100 books on the list is your favorite (and write a post on why). The winning book will be sent to a lucky winner chosen by the scientific method favored here in the blogosphere, i.e. names in a hat.

Any of the titles I haven't read that you recommend?

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993) Saw the play
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)couldn't finish it
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)*
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

At this point I'm leaning toward The Things they Carried (Tim O'Brien), Black Water (Joyce Carol Oates), Naked (David Sedaris), The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion), and Bright Lights, Big City (Jay McInerney), but that's only 5. I'd love some help choosing the 6th.
Edit: I've highlighted 9 books on the list, but I'm still open to suggestions for others. The more I have on my to-be-read list, the more leeway I have to toss one aside if it doesn't grab me!