Seeing in the Dark by Timothy Ferris
I can never get over our incredibly magnificent universe. How elegant and…ordered. And I get to be part of it - how cool is that?
I’d also like to second Eat,Pray,Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. As a bit of a skeptic about many things spiritual, I found this book really sparked a curiousity I didn’t feel previously.
However, my favorite part was the “Eat” section, centered in Italy 
I’m spacing here but its the book “One thousand ??” whatever by the author of the Kite Runner. I think about the characters so often…can’t get them out of my mind. Middlesex, on the other hand, has been donated to the library. I just couldn’t get into it and gave after about 80 pages.I just didn’t get it at all.
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^^^^^
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
I second the recommendation.
I third “A Thousand Splended Suns”. It is the best book that I have read since “Water For Elephants”. I couldn’t put the book down…read it in two afternoons!
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What’s Water for Elephants about, seiclan?
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Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen is (told in flashback) about a man’s life with a traveling Circus during the depression. It was well written, well researched and an original story. I highly recommend it…another page-turner!
Also on my short list of books to read before 2008:
The Short Bus
Snowflower and the Secret Fan
Eat, Pray, Love
Amy Tan’s book: Saving Fish from Drowning
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
and The Other Boleyn Sister
My D just told me yesterday that I needed to read Water for Elephants. She read it in her English class and enjoyed it.
I also enjoyed The Book Thief, and The Thirteenth Tale. It seems I read another book also about death, because my kids asked me why I kept reading books about death. Can’t remember what book it was.
epistrophy, The Lost is a very unusual book. Mendelsohn uses (experiments?) with a variety of approaches to tell his story.
Biblical exegesis is one of them, and I can’t think of any other book that uses it in this way.
I also read A Thousand Suns, and comparing the reading of these two books is like comparing apples to pomegranates.
I just wanted to give some sense of how I found the book.
I agree - on both counts.
Suite Francaise, a novel by Irene Nemirovsky, about France as the Nazis marched in. It’s a sometimes amusing but ultimately devestating look at the various social classes, as well as an honest portrait of relationships between occupiers and occupied.
Irene Nemirovsky was a well-read novelist in France before the war. She died in Auschwitz, leaving behind a suitcase that her young daughter lugged from place to place as a memento of her mother. The daughter couldn’t bear to open it, until decades later. She thought it contained journals. Instead, it contained the fully-realized first two sections of what her mother hoped would be a five section book.
I loved “A Thousand Splended Suns”, but the one I can’t get out of my mind is “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortinson. This true story of one man’s quest for peace one school at a time was truly inspirational.
It’s been a year or so, but Kill Me by Stephen White is my favorite novel. Very fast-paced, and makes you think about the topic for days afterwards. The topic of the book is: at what point would a decline in your quality of life cause you to want to end your life? I liked the author’s others as well, but this was by far the best.
I’ve just started the “Three Junes”…so far, so good.
I like the Arden second edition especially for clarity of reading and interesting notes.
A Thousand Splendid Suns–just finished it. Loved it mostly, though the end felt a little off to me, can’t put my finger on it.
What is the What–David Eggers. Barely fictionalized story of a Lost Boy in Sudan.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel. Just reread to teach it in my freshman comp class, liked it even better the second time.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle–Barbara Kingsolver. A lovely look at how and what we eat.
Edit: oh, and I second Deathly Hallows!
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a novel set before and during the Nigeria-Biafra war. Every time I read about Africa, I realize how little I know and want to learn more.
Darkmans by Nicola Barker.
I know that she is totally unknown in this part of the woods, unless the Booker favors her tomorrow.
I just heard the author of Lovely Bones on NPR this a.m talking about her new book. It sounded a little close to home to me (middle aged woman caring for her mother afflicted with dementia) but the interview was tops.
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