A Piece of Cake is being given to...

Lisa!

Please email me at pandabear 102205 at gmail dot com so I can get you mailing information.

Thanks to everyone who commented.

Sunday Salon # 9

Hello everyone! I've missed some weeks so it seems like I have a lot of catching up to do. Since my last Salon I've finished the following books

• A Piece of Cake: Cupcake Brown (Review)
• The Shadow of the Wind: Carlos Zafon (Review)
• Number the Stars: Lois Lowry
• Ozma of Oz: L. Frank Baum (audio book)
• The $64 Tomato: William Alexander (Review)
• The Awakening: Kate Chopin
• Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone: J. K. Rowling (Review)

I enjoyed A Piece of Cake so much I'm giving it away to one lucky person. Just visit my review and leave a comment. I'm picking the person to mail it to tomorrow or Tuesday. Shadow of the Wind was another great read as well. I was disappointed in the $64 Tomato and really did not like The Awakening at all.


CURRENTLY READING:

Decipher: Stel Pavlou. For a book that looked very exciting so far it has been bogged down in unnecessary detail making it slow and tedious to read. Basically the city of Atlantis has been discovered and has been sending us warnings for 12,000 years about the destruction of the world. We have one week left to figure out what it is trying to tell us. Should be a nail biter. Right now I'm using it to keep my coffee table from getting water marks. I'm about 150 in and I think the idea has such potential that I'm going to keep going.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO:

The Cinema Murder by E. Phillips Oppenheim. I literally just download this from Librivox so I just wanted to mentioned that I will be starting this soon. I am still slowing working my way through the Innocence of Father Brown. I think I have a small crush on the narrator. His voice puts me to sleep in seconds.

WHAT I BOUGHT THIS WEEK (what showed up from PaperBack Swap and can you tell I hit up Goodwill?)

• Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War byJudith Miller
• The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes
• The Judas Strain (Sigma Force Novels) by James Rollins
• Black Order: A Sigma Novel by James Rollins
• The Uncrowned Queen: A Novel by Posie Graeme-Evans
• the name of the rose by Umberto Eco
• Tangerine by Edward Bloor
• Intrepreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
• Mortal Love: A Novel by Elizabeth Hand
• Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research

CHALLENGE UPDATE:

I joined the New Classics Challenge, Summer Reading Thing 2008, and A Daring Book Challenge. Directly below this post is a list of all the books I need to finish before the year is over. It is pretty long but I'm looking forward to the challenge. I also have no problem substituting new books as I find them and I'm also OK with not finishing a challenge (although I do try my best to finish each one). Sometimes I just come across a really good book I want to read and it doesn't fit into any of my challenges. If that means a challenge doesn't get completed...for me that is fine.

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For me it is now back to stripping the wood work in my kitchen. For my next break I'll be visiting other Salons. Happy Sunday!

What Do I Need To Read Before The Year Is Over?

This could be scary!

1. The Accidental Tourist (A-Z)
2. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Notable & In Their Shoes)
3. All Creatures Great and Small (Decades)
4. Alvin Journeyman (Cardathon & Series)
5. American Gods (A-Z)
6. Beneath a Marble Sky (Historical)*
7. The Crystal City (Cardathon & Series)
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (A-Z)
9. Decipher (A-Z)
10. The Devil's Arithmetic (A - Z and Orbis Terrarum)*
11. Ella Minnow Pea (A-Z)
12. The Family That Couldn't Sleep (Non Fiction 5)
13. Fieldwork (Notable)
14. Forcing Amaryllis (A-Z)
15. Harem (Historical)*
16. Heartfire (Cardathon & Series)
17. The Inheritance (19th Century Women)
18. Jane Eyre (Classics & 19th Century Women)
19. The Joy Luck Club (A-Z)
20. Like Water for Chocolate (A-Z)
21. Lucky (In Their Shoes)*
22. A Million Little Pieces (In Their Shoes)*
23. Murder on the Orient Express (Decades)
24. Of Earth and Sky (A-Z)
25. The Phantom Tollbooth (A-Z)
26. Pig Island (What's In a Name)
27. Queen Bees and Wannabees (A-Z)
28. The Rasputin Relic (A-Z)
29. The Republican War on Science (Non Fiction 5)
30. The Scarlet Pimpernel (Classics)
31. The Secret Garden (Classics)
32. Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood (Non Fiction 5 & In Their Shoes)
33. The Sixteen Pleasures (Historical)*
34. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Classics)
35. Soul Mountain (A-Z)
36. Snow Falling on Cedars (Herding Cats)
37. Stargirl (Herding Cats)
38. The Thieves of Heaven (A-Z)
39. The Time Traveler's Wife (A-Z)
40. Q--? (A-Z)
41. Whose Body? (Decades)
42. A Widow for One Year (A-Z)
43. Wuthering Heights (19th Century Womens)
44. X--? (A-Z)
45. Y--? (A-Z)
46. The Zookeeper's Wife (A-Z)

one more books for the classics challenge

two books for suspense and thriller

* = do not NEED to finish, I have enought alternates to cover the challenge but it was on my original list

I need to find some cross overs. I'll never finish and didn't include challenges that ended in January or Febuary. Funny, this won't stop me from joining challenges though. Most of the fun is in seeing how far along I can get and seeing how many books I can get to cross over.

Happy Fourth of July

New Classics Challenge

Joann from Lost in a Good Story is hosting the New Classics Challenge. She writes...

Deb from the A Novel Challenge yahoo group posted a link to this list of Entertainment Weekly's list of new classics, what they call the best reads from 1983 to 2008. I loved the list - many of my recent favorites are on it so I'm intrigued
to see what some of the ones I haven't read yet will be like.

So the challenge rules are:

1) Copy the list (which I have pasted here, just in case that link ever disappears) 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.

2) Come back here and post links to your reviews.

3) 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. Other contests are very probable too, I have some ideas, but they need planning.

4) Have fun! :-)

THE LIST
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)
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)
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)

SIX BOOKS TO READ

1. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
4. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
5. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
6. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)