Who must you have read to consider yourself ‘well-read‘?
A discussion ensued from my last post where I purported that I only finished The Enchantress of Florence to enhance my literary ‘roundedness.’ This question has been asked and answered many times, probably most notably and completely in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon.
What I’m going for here is much less scholarly, much more real life. Even so, I realize that there are some intrinsic problems with posing the question. Do I limit the lists to a certain number – say five or …

Those of you who have been reading BBB for awhile know that I have recently acquired the ability to put down a book that I don’t feel is worth my time finishing. Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence may have been one such book had it not been for the fact that it was written by, well, Salman Rushdie.

You see, while there is this side of my brain that has rationalized not wasting time with some books, there is the other side of my brain that says if I’m going …

Typically I shy away from books on tape that are read by the author – I mean, if you’re a talented writer, chances are you are not a talented reader. To be a good reader for a book on tape, you practically need a stage voice, an actor’s voice. Joshilyn Jackson’s Between, Georgia is quite the exception.
This is the second of Jackson’s books I’ve listened to – the first being God’s in Alabama, which, by the way, was not read by Jackson. I have a third book by her – …

I love reading. I love the experience of holding a book in my hands, smelling the print, turning the paper pages expectantly, tracking the pages I’ve read and how many I have to go. Just for the record, I am not a candidate for a kindle. Mark if off your Christmas list for me now. I would much rather have this, this or these. (There’s no theme there…)
Because I love the experience of reading so much, when I’m looking for a book on tape, I typically pick something …

Same Kind of Different As Me is the story of the miracle that God performs in the hearts of men to make unlikely friendships a reality. This book has been on my TBR pile for about a year – since my college roomie wrote about it on her blog here in a post called “Two Books that Can Change You.”

The parallel true stories of Ron Hall and Denver Moore, this quick read is anything but light. Subtitled ‘a modern-day slave, and international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound …

Laura Moriarty’s novel The Rest of Her Life is the story of a strained relationship between a mother and daughter when tragedy hits.
Kara – the daughter – is just days away from high school graduation and weeks away from embarking on college and the rest of her life, when she kills a pedestrian (and fellow student) because of careless driving. It is told from the mother’s point of view – Leigh – and so then the story is less tragedy and more relationship, and even then is less about the …

For YA (young adult) fiction, Mark Zusak’s novel The Book Thief holds it’s own on any adult’s bookshelf.
Narrated by the omniscient character of Death, this novel set in a Nazi German village does well what other books have fallen short of (Chris Bohjalian’s Skeleton’s at the Feast, to name one) – portray what it might have been like to be German during World War II.
Death tells the story of a young girl from age 10 to 14, adopted by a German couple; the reason her mother gives her …

One of my good friends and fellow book lovers posed an interesting thought to me the other day: is there a trend in current fiction to create characters who are so flawed that readers lose interest?
This idea came to her after reading two books that, from their descriptions, she should have loved. However, she hated them. In an attempt to provide ‘depth’, the authors had given the characters – all of them – such extreme flaws that she (as the reader) couldn’t empathize with any of them and so was …

October is National Reading Group Month, so I thought I’d use this opportunity to introduce you to mine and allow you to introduce yours.

How’s this going to work? You’ll notice a couple of pictures of my group, and I’m going to tell you a little about us in a bit. And, throughout the month, if you’ll send me a picture of your group (and answer a couple of the posed questions below) I’ll create a post on my blog about your group. This is all to honor our common love …