50 Book Challenge - Clearing the Backlog
I’ve read these books, but I don’t really feel like writing about them. I’ll count them anyways. Take that, 50 Book Challenge!
Book 20: The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
Book 21: Getting to Yes, by Roger Fisher and William Ury
Book 22: Getting Past No, by William Ury
Book 23: Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean Auel
Book 24: Diary, by Chuck Palahniuk
Not as good as Fight Club or Choke, but better than Lullaby. Creepier than I expected.
Book 25: Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
Book 26: The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell
Book 27: The Two-Income Trap, by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi
Book 28: The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
Look, I finished a Pynchon book! It only had 150 pages, but I finished it! Woo-hoo!
Book 29: The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
Book 30: The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
Book 31: The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman
Okay, I’ll write about these three. But only to say that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy is an awesome series aimed at the young adult set. They are well written and enjoyable to read. There’s some anti-organized-religion stuff in there, but you can handle it.
July 16th, 2005 at 5:35 am
I LOVE the His Dark Materials trilogy. I’ve bought those books for every fifth grader I know. (Not that many, so it wasn’t too expensive.)
Blink, The Tipping Point, and the Two-Income Trap are all on my library request list.
July 16th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
The Crying of Lot 49 is fantastic, I think. And, if you enjoyed it and are not trying to undertake to read Pynchon’s massive Gravity’s Rainbow, I strongly recommend Vineland. It harks back, strongly, to Lot 49 for me, and is of a similarly readable length.
July 16th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
CM: They are great, aren’t they? I don’t know any fifth graders, so I’ve been recommending them to college friends instead.
Alex: I actually attempted to read Gravity’s Rainbow first… Going in blind, without a clue how dense Pynchon is, I broke down just about as soon as you would expect (less than a hundred pages in). I’ll give it another shot later on, but for now, I’m leaving Gravity’s Rainbow alone. I’ll have to check out Vineland, though. Work my way up to the 700-page monster. Thanks for the recommendation.