Best Hunger Games Video EVER!

I think my title says it all. I could just watch this video over and over and over again.

If you're wondering where my reviews are, they're coming. I promise. I'm on book #60 of the Cybils and I'm reading about 4 hours a day...I just haven't had time to post the reviews. BUT I WILL!

And stay tuned...publishers are sending me more free books than I know what to do with, so sometime in the new year I will be having a HUGE giveaway. At least 50 or so books. :)

How Many Have YOU Read?

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.



*Bold those books you've read in their entirety.

* Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.

*Bold and italicize books you have read more than once





1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen



2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien



3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte



4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling



5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee



6 The Bible (Old Testament Only)



7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte



8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell



9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman



10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens



11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott



12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy



13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller



14 Complete Works of Shakespeare



15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier



16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien



17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk



18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger



19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger



20 Middlemarch - George Eliot



21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell



22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald



24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy



25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams



27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky



28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck



29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll



30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame



31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy



32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens



33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis



34 Emma -Jane Austen



35 Persuasion - Jane Austen



36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis



37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini



38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres



39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden



40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne



41 Animal Farm - George Orwell



42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown



43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez



44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving



45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins



46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery



47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy



48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood



49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding



50 Atonement - Ian McEwan



51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel



52 Dune - Frank Herbert



53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons



54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen



55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth



56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon



57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens



58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley



59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon



60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez



61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck



62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov



63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt



64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold



65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas



66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac



67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy



68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding



69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie



70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville



71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens



72 Dracula - Bram Stoker



73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett



74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson



75 Ulysses - James Joyce



76 The Inferno - Dante



77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome



78 Germinal - Emile Zola



79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray



80 Possession - AS Byatt



81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens



82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell



83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker



84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro



85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert



86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistr



87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White



88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom



89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle



90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton



91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad



92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery



93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks



94 Watership Down - Richard Adams



95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole



96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute



97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas



98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare



99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl



100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Book Review: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

Donnelly, Jennifer. Revolution. New York: Delacorte Press, 2010

"Take it down," I said, my voice cracking.

Dr. Becker held up his hands. "Okay, Andi, If you would like me to take the picture down, I will."

"Now."

"Damn it, Andi! Who do you think you're talking to?" Dad shouted.

"I can't do it right now," Dr. Becker said. "I need maintenance to do it. But I give you my word that it will come down, all right?"

I nodded stiffly. It was something. Some small win. I couldn't protect my mother from Dr. Feelgood but at least I'd saved her from Thomas Kinkade.

The traffic jam gives a bit. We pick up speed and few minutes later, we're on the outskirts of Paris. The road to the city is lined with shabby stone houses, used-car lots, falafel dens, and hair salons, their signs all shining garishly in the dark.

"It might do you good, you know," my father is saying as we hit the Boulevard Peripherique. "It might take your mind off things."

"What might?"

"A change of scenery. Paris."

"Yeah. Sure. My brother's dead. My mother's insane. Hey, let's have a crepe."

We don't talk for the rest of the ride.

After Andi's brother died, her family essentially fell apart. So when her father swoops back in and sends her mother to a psych ward and drags her off to Paris, she is not happy.

Then she discovers a guitar that’s over two centuries old. And with it, a diary that reveals a side of history that no one has ever heard before.

Brilliant concept. I LOVED the diary parts. As well as the music reports. The character is smart and creative, and it’s difficult not to adore her, even though she can be pretty snarky.
I wasn’t thrilled with the way it ended, but overall, it’s definitely worth your time. And if you love European historical fiction, you can’t miss out on this book.

Buy this book now!

Book 12--done!

Book Review: Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen

Godbersen, Anna. Bright Young Things. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

The faces of each guest turned toward the bride, and though some of them tried to smile, their eyes seemed to say, I know what you’ve done.
Lest their looks cut her, Cordelia reminded herself that she was only half one of them. While her mother had been raised in Union, the other half of Cordelia came from some glittering, far-off place, and like Letty, she was too big for the town she’d grown up in. Letty was right, Cordelia now realized with some relief, to have insisted on a veil. Not only to protect her from the guests’ stares and the judgment in their expressions, but also because of John, who was now reaching for her hands. His eyes were shining, but she couldn’t meet them. She didn’t want any memory of the happy, expectant way he was gazing at her.

Cordelia and Letty believe that their destinies lie far beyond the dull small town they've been raised in....they belong in New York City. Letty is going to be an actress, a singer, a star. And Cordelia is determined to find her father.

Beautiful prose. And I love that it's a historical fiction set in the 20's, we don't see much of that. Lots of twists and turns, you're never quite sure what's going to happen next. The characters were just reckless and stupid enough to make me happy...it made them real. Especially since they admitted they were being stupid. Then did it anyway.

If that doesn't ring true as a teenager, I don't know what does.

If you're a huge fan of Chicago, then this is a great book for you. I can't wait to see what happens in the rest of the series.

Buy this book now!

Yay for Book #12! I'm so excited to be liking books again!

Nameless Book Review #5

Yep...I was right about Book #11.


The first twenty pages were so abominable that there wasn’t much chance of it being redeemed. Don’t get me wrong, it tried. The middle parts were decent. But then the ending got all screwed up again. That whole incest subplot? It did NOT work for me. It came out of the middle of nowhere, and had no reason to be there. Nothing was even remotely resolved. When you write a novel from alternating POVs, there must be a REASON. Especially if you’re just going over the same old ground over and over again. There was no reason for the POVs, and there was no reason for the novel in general.

I've heard good things about Book #12, though...

Nameless Book Review #4

Book #10

Not impressed….the slang constantly took me out of the story. Also, I didn’t realize the setting until I was halfway through the book. The plot was fairly uninteresting, though it did pick up a little at the end. And why were there three mini-climaxes? I want one big climax! Come on, people, give me a solid story arc!

Nameless Book Review #3

Okay...so I can't tell you what I didn't like about Book #9, because that would give away what book it was.

I'll just say this...It's been awhile since I've been this excited about a concept, and I was SO disappointed. *sigh*

Books #10 and #11 aren't looking too promising either, but I'll push through!

Book Review: The Twin's Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Baratz-Logsted, Lauren. The Twin’s Daughter. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.

I could her her step growing closer to the doorway, and I rose from my seat thinking to go to her, to warn her somehow first—although warn her of what exactly, I couldn’t say—but her energetic glide was too quick for me and as she blew into the room, the woman who had been seated across from me rose as well.

I stood between them looking from one to the other: the one who was dressed and coiffed in a way that showed she had every advantage in the world—my beautiful, gorgeous mother—and her mirror image, but dressed and coiffed far differently. I can say with near certainty that I am the only child in the world who can claim she was there the first time her mother met her twin.

My mother fainted dead away.

Lucy’s mother and her Aunt Helen were separated at birth…but now Aunt Helen has found her twin, and is determined to find her rightful place in society.

But there are darker motivations at work…and if Lucy fails to uncover them, she could become the next victim.

Another one that I loved!! It’s sort of like Little Women meets Edgar Allen Poe. Creepy. Twisted. Brilliant.

I kept thinking I had it all figured out. I kept being wrong. It had my favorite feature of a well-written novel…not one wasted word. Everything was there because it was essential to the climax. This is the first novel of this length that I’ve ever seen do that. It was so incredibly impressive to me.

I loved the characters I was supposed to love, I hated the characters I was supposed to hate, I was confused about nearly everyone else…just as the author intended. I fell for every red herring, like I was supposed to. It was amazing, knowing that the author could control me the way she did. Brava, Lauren Baratz-Logsted.

Yay for Book #8!

Buy this book now!

Book Review: Not That Kind of Girl by Siobhan Vivian

Vivan, Siobhan. Not That Kind of Girl, New York: Push, 2010.

“Hey! Come on, Natalie. I’m only kidding with you.” His smile lengthened into a sneer. “You could never give me a hard-on. You’re like…dick repellant.”

Anger burned hot through my body, and I gripped the sides of my chair. Mike Domski wanted to hurt me, and the best way he knew was to call me ugly. I hated that, despite the fact that I would rather eat vomit than touch a hair on Mike’s head, it worked. It took all my self-control not to hock the biggest, wettest ball of spit right between Mike’s eyes.

Natalie has the perfect plan for senior year. She’s going to get elected to student body president, still get perfect grades, and get into every college she applies to. She and Autumn will stay just as close as ever. And no boys will get in the way.

Then Spencer comes along…a girl who isn’t even remotely afraid to show off her sexuality. And Natalie finds herself wanting to save her, to show Spencer what people are saying, and convince her that taking your shirt off in the middle of a crowded hallway is the wrong way to get attention. Which should be easy—if Natalie could stop getting distracted by a boy that is wrong for her in every way.

I loved this novel, and I’m not sure why. I know I definitely related to the main character…but I’m pretty sure that to most people, Natalie would be sort of unlikeable. Hmm. I’m not going to think about what that says about me.

Also, I loved the take on feminism. Both sides of the argument are brought up, and I think they’re dealt with well. It’s clear that the author is on one side of the fence, but I think you can read it and not cross over.

The voice was vibrant, the characters are memorable, and the overall plot is done well. I had some trouble putting this one down. As a warning, there is some sexual content. I thought it was tasteful, but I can definitely see some controversy for conservative areas or younger readers.

Back on track with Book #7!

Buy this book now!

Nameless Book Review #2

Book #6

Ugh. That's all I have to say.

I'm just kidding. I always have more to say.

It was predictable, it was BORING, and it was utterly unoriginal. Nothing I hadn't read before. I finished it, just to see if it would redeem itself...it didn't. I was so happy to get to the last page. It reads like a first draft, and I'm wondering if an editor ever got a chance to even glance at it.

Seriously, how do these books get published?