2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge

2010 is likely to be the year when it becomes evident that I'm getting hooked on reading challenges.

Here we go:

I'm doing the 2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge.

And while I thought I'd be all set to do the highest level (100 books), I've counted the number of books I actually completed this year, and it's going to be around 75-ish.

So... I'm in at the "Stepping It Up" level, in which I vow to read 75 library books in 2010.

From J. Kaye's Book Blog, here's the deal:

"1. Anyone can join. You don't need a blog to participate. --Non-Bloggers: Post your list of books in the comment section of the wrap-up post. To learn how to sign up without having a blog, click here.

2. There are four levels:

--The Mini – Check out and read 25 library books.

--Just My Size – Check out and read 50 library books.

--Stepping It Up – Check out and read 75 library books.

--Super Size Me – Check out and read 100 library books.

(Aim high. As long as you read 25 by the end of 2010, you are a winner.)

3. Audio, Re-reads, eBooks, YA, Young Reader – any book as long as it is checked out from the library count. Checked out like with a library card, not purchased at a library sale.

4. No need to list your books in advance. You may select books as you go. Even if you list them now, you can change the list if needed.

5. Crossovers from other reading challenges count.

6. Challenge begins January 1st thru December, 2010.

7. When you sign up under Mr. Linky, put the direct link to your post where your library books will be listed. Include the URL to this post so that other viewers can find this fun challenge. If you’d prefer to put your list in the sidebar of your blog, please leave your viewers the link to the sign up page. Again, so viewers can join the challenge too."

This page will be my home base for the project, where I'll list the library books I read in 2010.

The Library Books I Checked out and Read in 2010:

1. A Great Day to Fight Fire: Mann Gulch, 1949 by Mark Matthews

2. The Kennedy Assassination--25 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnson's Pivotal First Day as President by Steven M. Gillon

3. East of Peculiar by Suzann Ledbetter

4. The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig

5. Unclutter Your Life on One Week by Erin Rooney Doland

6. Eggsecutive Orders by Julie Hyzy

7. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

8. Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson by William Langewiesche

9.

Dreams of Stardust by Lynn Kurland

10. Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House by Stacy Parker Aab

11. The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig

12.

The New Frugality: How to Consume Less, Save More, and Live Better by Chris Farrell

13.

The Balance Thing by Margaret Dumas

14.

Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir by Christopher Buckley

15.

Lincoln's Other White House: The Untold Story of the Man and His Presidency by Elizabeth Smith Brownstein

16. They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies behind the Lines in Nazi Germany by Patrick K. O'Donnell

17. Slow Fire by Ken Mercer

18. Live a Little! Breaking the Rules Won't Break Your Health by Susan M. Love and Alice D. Domar

19. The Day Lincoln Was Shot by Jim Bishop

20. The Seduction of the Crimson Rose by Lauren Willig

21. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

22. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

23. Dark Lover by J. R. Ward

24. On the Edge by Ilona Andrews

25. A Night Too Dark by Dana Stabenow

26. Model Home by Eric Puchner

27. Drink the Tea by Thomas Kaufman

28. The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors by Hal Niedzviecki
29. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
30. FDR's Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow, a Soviet Spy, and a Presidency in the Balance by Robert Klara
31. This Is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry
32. The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist by Dan Rather
33. Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas

34. The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur & Orville Wright by Noah Adams

35. The Temptation of the Night Jasmine by Lauren Willig

36. Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home by Matthew Pinsker

37. Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt

38. Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo

39. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

40. Virgin River by Robyn Carr

41.

Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay

42. The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller

43. The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King

44.

The Beckham Experiment: How the World's Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America by Grant Wahl
45. Four Freedoms by John Crowley

46.

Shelter Mountain by Robyn Carr

47.

State Fair by Earlene Fowler

48.

Whispering Rock by Robyn Carr

49.

A Virgin River Christmas by Robyn Carr

50.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

51.

The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

52.

Rolling Thunder by Chris Grabenstein

53.

The Witness by Sandra Brown

54. The Widow by Carla Neggers

55. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

56. War by Sebastian Junger

57. Second Chance Pass by Robyn Carr

58. Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud—American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin by Peter Charles Hoffer

59. Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson

60. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

61. Blue Angels: 50 Years of Precision Flight by Nicholas A. Veronico and Marga B. Fritze

62. The Birthday Ball by Lois Lowry

63. The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Olsen Laney

64. Better Off Wed by Laura Durham

65. Based upon Availability by Alix Strauss

66. George Washington: A Life by Willard Sterne Randall

67. Temptation Ridge by Robyn Carr

68. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

69. A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff

70. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

71. Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in That House by Meghan Daum

72. Coming up for Air: How to Build a Balanced Life in a Workaholic World by Beth Sawi

73.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

74.

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

75.

Writing Reviews for Readers' Advisory by Brad Hooper

76.

Summer Blowout by Claire Cook

77.

What Happens in London by Julia Quinn (read by Rosalyn Landor)

78.

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War by Jerry Della Femina

79.

The Viognier Vendetta: A Wine Country Mystery by Ellen Crosby

80.

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin

81.

Thomas Jefferson by R. B. Bernstein

82.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

83.

Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery by Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz

84.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

85.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

86.

Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster by Jonathan Eig

87. 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

88.

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee

89.

The White House Doctor: A Memoir by Connie Mariano

90.

The Report by Jessica Francis Kane

91. The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory by David Plouffe

92.

Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are by Daniel Nettle

93. How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom

94.

Morning Miracle: Inside The Washington Post: A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life by Dave Kindred

95. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

96.

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

97.

The Left-Hander Syndrome: The Causes and Consequences of Left-Handednessby Stanley Coren

98. Blind Side by Catherine Coulter

99.

Bliss, Remembered by Frank Deford

100.

The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass

101. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

102.

News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist by Laurie Hertzel

103.

Austenland by Shannon Hale

104. Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin

105. Schooled by Gordon Korman

106. Deadlines Past: Forty Years of Presidential Campaigning: A Reporter’s Story by Walter R. Mears

107.

The Fiddler in the Subway: The True Story of What Happened When a World-Class Violinist Played for Handouts… and Other Virtuosic Performances by America’s Foremost Feature Writer by Gene Weingarten

108.

Ape House by Sara Gruen (read by Paul Boehmer)

109.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

110.

Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard (read by Arliss Howard)

111.

Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President by Donald R. McCoy

112. The Shimmering Blond Sister by David Handler

113. Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye

114. Paradise Valley by Robyn Carr (read by Therese Plummer)

115. Herblock: A Cartoonist’s Life: Self-Portrait and Views of Washington from Roosevelt to Clinton by Herbert Block

116. Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles and Scrawls from the Oval Office from the creators of Cabinet Magazine

117. Making Toast: A Family Story by Roger Rosenblatt

118. The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick

119. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

120. William and Harry: Behind the Palace Walls by Katie Nicholl

121. Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie

122. The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy

123. Once upon a Rose by Judith O'Brien

124. Portrait of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House by Richard Reeves

125. The Future of Success by Robert B. Reich

126. A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton

127. 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It by David Niven

128. Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk with the Queen of Talk by Robyn Okrant

129. Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie

130. The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence by Gerald Blaine with Lisa McCubbin

131. Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell (read by Ann Marie Lee)

132. The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown (read by Rosalyn Landor)

133. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Ghost Story

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

It must suck to write a bestselling first novel. Because then the pressure is on, baby!

Audrey Niffenegger hit the bigtime with The Time Traveler’s Wife, a book I liked a lot and thought worthy of all the fuss and excitement it generated.

So with the second book, well… My take on it is badly biased by my preferences as a reader. I require characters I like. And that just didn’t happen here. These people are flawed, and not in ways I found charming.

Now, that having been said, this book was a page-turner—enough so, that I toughed it out with the messed-up characters. The story—with its gradual disclosure of more and more shocking little (big!) secrets—itself is a doozy.

Here’s what I can tell you without saying too much:

Elspeth, a woman who died too young, left her London apartment to her twin nieces Valentina and Julia. Elspeth herself was a twin to the girls’ mother—and the older set of twins had some huge, secret falling-out about 20 years earlier. When Valentina and Julia move into the apartment, they meet Elspeth’s lover Richard, who falls in love with Valentina, somewhat against his will. And that’s when Elspeth reappears on the scene as a ghost.

OK, it just gets more complicated from there—in a good way, which made the book un-put-down-able.

One final note: When I was younger, I thought it would be really cool to be a twin. This book sure would cure a person of that thought.

Grateful

Have you ever wondered: How did I turn into such a reading freak?

I think about this sometimes.

And I have an answer.

This one's fully laid at the feet of my mom.

And I am so stinkin' grateful to her for that.

When I was a kid, she let me read whatever I wanted (except for that one Judy Blume book she "hid"on the top of the bookshelf at the advice of my babysitter; like I didn't know it was there!)

But truly, I was stuck in a Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden reading rut (spree?) for a couple of years, and she never said, "Maybe you'd like to read something different for a change?" Not once. She just hauled my skinny little butt into the library time after time, and then hauled me back home with my haul.

When my sixth grade teacher asked her if she realized I was reading a book about the Armenian genocide--and wasn't she worried about that?--my mom just said, "Yes, I know." Apparently she'd already been watching to make sure I wasn't freaking out about it. (She told me this, years later. I never knew my reading patterns were being observed, thank God.)

So as I spend part of yet another Thanksgiving with my nose in a book, I will be thinking of my mom. And I'll be thanking her.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Thank You, Mr. President: A White House Notebook by A. Merriman Smith

Merriman Smith—what a voice! He had such a light touch; how often do you hear that about a White House correspondent? He was clever, he was funny, his phrasing makes me laugh out loud.

So, of course, for Merriman Smith, things ended badly. Doggone it.

Anyway, back to our story... Here Smith focuses on the presidencies of FDR and Truman, and we get a vivid look at the life of a correspondent during those (rather wild) days, back when average old citizens had access to the White House without having to request a tour 6 months in advance from their senator or representative. And it sounds like liquid lunches were just as common then as in the Mad Men days…

The chapter titled “The Boss” is a terrific portrait of FDR, which acknowledges that the man truly was inscrutable, but then proceeds to convey a clear picture of how Smith perceived him. And Smith was a keen observer of humans, so this character study is a fascinating thing to read.

Smith’s description of the day FDR died is gripping. It’s also strikingly incomplete.

First, the gripping part—Before even hearing the announcement, Smith had grabbed a phone because he knew, having been summoned to the Warm Springs Foundation, that the news was going to be big. His dialogue, calling Washington D.C., to report the news, is interspersed with William Hassett’s announcement of FDR’s death. When Smith screams, “Flash!” into the phone, it’s perfectly shocking. (I am grateful that journalists do what they do. And that they have the fortitude to do this work.)

Here’s the incomplete part—Nowhere does Smith mention that Lucy Mercer was in Warm Springs with FDR when he died. Smith was of that generation of journalists.

Smith is frank about his reaction to Truman’s assuming the presidency—stating that he found it difficult to think of him as the president at first. But he seems to have developed a true appreciation for him. He says that the biggest difference between Roosevelt and Truman could be summed up like this: “Franklin D. Roosevelt was for the people. Harry S. Truman is of the people.” (p. 218) I like that.

Smith went on to be one of the reporters present when JFK was assassinated.



Smith wrote another grand book called Merriman Smith’s Book of the Presidents, which is simply a splendid thing: behind-the-scenes and light in tone.