Books books books!

I feel as if my last few blog posts have been questionable in terms of their relevance to science, sewing, or sautéing, so in the interest of “crafting” (sewing’s cousin, right?) here are two things I made in pottery class this year. I call them “bird mug” and “flower bowl.”

Ah, I feel like a legitimate part of the group now. Legit enough to get to my real post: books books books! I begin with a sad fact: I lost my list of books to read some time ago. It’s hard enough trying to recreate a list of books that you came up with yourself, but it’s a whole new ballgame when you’re attempting to recall titles and authors that other people had suggested. Unfortunately, at least 83% of my list was made up of other people’s suggestions. Needless to say I gave up and started over, hence the book email I sent to you all a few months back.

Keeping in line with my first book list, I did not want to be confined by my own literary experiences—it’s more fun incorporating other people’s recommendations into the mix. I also realized that in addition to discovering what others have read and enjoyed, I was interested in knowing what folks intended to read. So here’s a little compilation of titles and authors, courtesy of you all:

The Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins
Bossypants	Tina Fey
In the Garden of Beasts	Erik Larson
A Game of Thrones	George R.R. Martin
Medium Raw	Anthony Bourdain
Kitchen Confidential	Anthony Bourdain
The Sisters Brothers	Patrick deWitt
The Paris Wife	Paula McLain
The Help	Kathryn Stockett
Modoc	Ralph Helfer
Polar Dream	Helen Thayer
A Complicated Kindness	Miriam Toews
Anna Pigeon series	Nevada Barr
Something Fierce	Carmen Aguirre
The Big Year	Mark Obmascik
Pink Boots and a Machete	Mireya Mayor
The Corrections	Jonathan Franzen
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective's Agency	Alexander McCall Smith
Sometimes a Great Notion	Ken Kesey
Merlin trilogy	Mary Stewart
The Power of One	Bryce Courtenay
Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card
Best Laid Plans	Terry Fallis
1Q84	Haruki Murakami
The Orphan Master's Son	Adam Johnson
A Study in Sherlock	Laurie R. King (editor)
The Night Circus	Erin Morgenstern
Still Alice	Lisa Genova
The Glass Castle	Jeannette Walls
Josephine B trilogy	Sandra Gulland
Trinity	Leon Uris
Song of the Dodo	David Quammen
A Primate's Memoir	Robert Sapolsky
Why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcers	Robert Sapolsky
South	Ernest Shackleton
Sand County Almanac	Aldo Leopold
Foutainhead	Ayn Rand
Three Cups of Tea	Greg Mortenson
Three Day Road	Joseph Boyden
The Hakawati	Rabih Alameddine
the Arthurian saga	Jack Whyte

The Lacuna                                       Barbara Kingsolver

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And this is the result of those emails...so far...

Almost all of these books, authors, or genres are on people’s “to read” list, and helped guide my wandering eyes while in the bookshops. Libraries are great, but there is something to be said about adding a couple new titles to the ol’ bookshelf, know what I mean? If you’ve forgotten, I suspect you’ll remember sooner rather than later. ;-)

Happy Reading!