Book Review - Water Music + Status Update

Hi Everyone,

I've been away, sucked into that drug of a book Infinite Jest, (which I have still not finished, and now must go back and start over). I've put it aside now awhile in order to get back on my FITG list.

I just finished Water Music by T.C. Boyle and I liked it quite a lot. Recommendations go out to the rest of you who like fast moving stories, adventure in Africa, and totally deranged plot twists. It was a great read and assuming I don't get hit by the proverbial bus anytime in the near future, won't be my last encounter with Mr. Boyle. Any author who makes a bushpig say: “snark snark” has a firm place on my Authors-To-Read-More-Of list.

My full review is at my blog.

I've also finished: The House of Spirits (Isabel Allende), On Beauty (Zadie Smith), The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz), The Spanish Bow (Andromeda Ramano-Lax), and most recently The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (Tom Spanbauer - swoon) but not written reviews yet, so they don't quite count according to my (personal) rules.

Emily, I see you have been busy! The site is looking greater than ever! Thanks for all your work.

Nancy's List

Here is my working list. You'll see that it's not full. I'm afraid it'll take me five years to read one hundred books in the first place and I'm looking for a perspective in which it is ok to to plan my entire five years of reading in advance. I'll be filling in the blanks as soon as I can commit myself.

My criteria are:

1. 30 authors previously read
2. 10 short story collections
3. 15 debut novels (since 2005 and into the future)
4. 5 poetry collections
5. 30 authors previously unread
6. 10 novels in German (original language, or translations of non-English originals)

30 Authors Previously Read

1. The Messenger - Markus Zusak - My Review
   
2. A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
   
3. The House of Spirits - Isabel Allende
   
4. The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie
   
5. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
   
6. Alias Grace - Margret Atwood
   
7. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
   
8. The Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving
   
9. The Brothers Karamazov - Fydor Dostoyevsky
   
10. The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
    
11. A Handfull of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
    
12. 1x - Haruki Murakami
13. 1x - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    
14. 1x - Richard Russo
    
15. Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje
    
16. 1x Iris Murdoch
    
17. True Notebooks - Mark Salzman
    
18. Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson
    
19. 1x Tom Robbins
    
20. 1x A.S. Byatt
    
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30. 
    

10 Short Story Collections

1. 10 Short Stories - V.S. Pritchett
   
2. Collected Short Stories - Graham Greene
   
3. A Belfast Woman - Mary Beckett
   
4. The Lost Stories - Louisa May Alcott
   
5. Heat - Joyce Carroll Oats
   
6. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
   
7. St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves - Karen Russell
   
8. Difficult Loves - Italo Calvino
9. 
   
10. 
    

15 Debut Novels

1. The Girl She Used to Be - David Christifano
2. The Jewel of Medina - Sherry Jones
3. The Spanish Bow - Andromeda Romano-Lax
4. The Crash of Hennington - Patrick Ness
5. The Twelve - Stuart Neville
6. 
   
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5 Poetry Collections

1. Collected Poems - Wendell Berry
2. The Book of Longing - Leonard Cohen
3. Liebesgedichte - Erich Fried
4. 
   
5. 
   

30 Novels - Never-Before-Read Authors

1. 1x - Philip Roth
2. Beauty and Sadness - Yasunari Kawabata
3. The Brief and Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Díaz
4. An American Dream - Norman Mailer
5. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - Paul Torday
6. On Beauty - Zadie Smith
7. The Hive - Camilo Jose Cela
8. The Republic of Wine - Mo Yan
9. Lolita - Vladimir Nabukov
10. The Orange Tree - Carlos Fuentes
11. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love - Oscar Hijuelos
12. The Velvet Bubble - Alice Winter
13. The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
14. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranianian - Marina Lewycka
15. The Vatican Cellars - Andre Gide
16. Water Music - T.C. Boyle
17. Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
18. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
19. The Labyrinth of Solitude - Octavio Paz
20. The Bostonians - Henry James
21. Accordian Crimes - Annie Proulx
22. Soul Mountain - Gao Xingjian
23. One Hot Summer in St. Petersburg - Duncan Fallowell
24. 1x - Michael Chabon (because he is, after all Moonrat's secret boyfriend.)
25. The Flying Troutmans – Miriam Toews
26. 1x Ian McEwan
27. Irisches Tagebuch - Heinrich Böll, who landed too late on my radar to fit in the German category.
    
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10 Roman (auf Deutsch)

1. Mieses Karma - David Safir (Original: German) - My Review
   English Title: as yet untranslated
2. wie der Soldat das Gramaphone repariert - Sasa Stanisic (Original: German )
   English Title: How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
3. Die Insel der Linkshänder - Alexandre Jardin (Original: French)
   English Title: as yet untranslated
   French Title: L'Ile des Gauchers
4. Der Vorleser - Bernhard Schlink (Original: Deutsch)
   English Title: The Reader
5. Maria, Ihm schmeck's nicht - Jan Weiler (Original: Deutsch)
   English Title: as yet untranslated
6. Die 13 1/2 Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär - Walter Moers
   English Title: The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear
7. Das Parfum - Die Geschichte eines Mörders - Patrick Süskind
   English Title: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
   
8. Kazt und Maus - Günter Grass
   English Title: Cat and Mouse
   
9. 1x - Irmgard Keun
   
10. 1x - Christa Wolf