Every year since 1993, I’ve compiled a list of favorite books read during the year. What started as an insert to my holiday cards evolved into this blog, and over two decades later, the tradition continues.

In putting together this year’s list, I’ve noticed that it’s very heavy in very recent releases (five titles from 2012 alone) and marks the first time I’ve had husband and wife writers make the list (Geraldine Brooks and one of my favorite authors, Tony Horwitz.)

So here, in no particular order, I am pleased to present my twenty-first annual recommended reading list. Happy reading!

Continue reading “My 3000th Blog Post = My 21st Annual Recommended Reading List!” →

Every year since 1993, I’ve compiled a list of favorite books read during the year to share with friends. I never could have imagined that twenty years later, my reading tradition would continue. So here, in no particular order, I am pleased and proud to present my twentieth annual recommended reading list. Happy reading!

Continue reading “My 20th Annual List of Recommended Reading!” →

Every year since 1993, I’ve compiled a list of favorite books read during the year to share with friends. This year’s list solidly falls under the “better late than never” category. So here, in no particular order, is my nineteenth annual recommended reading list. Happy reading!

• The Hunger Games series  Suzanne Collins
• Started Early, Took My Dog  Kate Atkinson (2011)
• My Life in France  Julia Child (2005)
• One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd  Jim Fergus (1998)
• Bossypants  Tina Fey (2011)
• Wish You Were Here  Stewart O’Nan (2002)
• Game of Thrones  George R.R. Martin (1996)

Every year since 1993, I’ve compiled a list of favorite books read during the year to share with friends. So here, in no particular order, is my eighteenth annual recommended reading list. Happy reading!

• A Voyage Long and Strange, Tony Horwitz (2008)
• The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk (1951)
• The Help, Kathryn Stockett (2009)
• I, Fatty, Jerry Stahl (2004)
• My First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir (1911)
• One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson (2006) (I also recommend the followup, When Will There Be Good News.)
• About a Boy, Nick Hornby (1998)
• The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein (2008)
• The Nanny Diaries, Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus (2002)
• Columbine, Dave Cullen (2009)
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows (2008)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy (1866)
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson (2010)

For sixteen years, I have include a list of book recommendations with my holiday cards. Last year, I never quite got around to finishing the book reviews and so I never sent out the cards. Until now…

Amazing what you can accomplish when you have a little, shall we say, free time. So, here it is–my recommended reading list for 2009.

I’ve decided to go green-ish and will no longer send out printed copies of my list. Instead, I’m directing friends here to see the list and read my reviews, all of which initially appeared on this blog anyway. Here, in no particular order, is my list for 2009, with links to each of my reviews.

• The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy (1906-1922)
• Nana, Emile Zola (1880)
• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck (1937)
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson (1938)
• Peace Like a River, Lief Enger (2001)
• The Frozen Thames, Helen Humphreys (2009)
• The Women, T.C. Boyle (2009)
• Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
• Birchwood, John Banville (1973)
• Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton (1911)

Every year I include a list of book recommendations with my holiday cards. It’s become a tradition, going on 16 years. Here’s my list for this year, with links to my reviews:

• The Way We Live Now  Anthony Trollope (1875)
• The Full Cupboard of Life  Alexander McCall Smith (2003)
• Little Children  Tom Perrotta (2004)
• The Rape of Nanking  Iris Chang (1997)
• Animal, Vegetable and Miracle  Barbara Kingsolver (2007)
• The Thirty-Nine Steps  John Buchan (1915)
• Mr. Standfast  John Buchan (1919)
• The Book Thief  Markus Zusak (2006)
• A Great Deliverance  Elizabeth George (1988)
• The Writing Class  Jincy Willett (2008)
• Water for Elephants  Sara Gruen (2006)
• How the States Got Their Shapes  Mark Stein (2008)
• A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain  Robert Olen Butler (1992)

Back in 1993, I included a list of book recommendations in my holiday cards. Fifteen years later, what began as a whim is now a holiday tradition. (Incidentally, archiving past book reviews in a manner easily shared with others was the impetus for creating this blog.)

Here’s my book recommendation list for 2007. Reviews can be found on this website:

• The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid  Bill Bryson (2006)
• John Adams  David McCullough (2002)
• The Lost World  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1912)
• Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright E.J. Kaufmann, and America’s Most Extraordinary House  Franklin Toker (2003)
• Washington Square  Henry James (1880)
• Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West  Stephen Ambrose (1996)
• Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals  Michael Pollan (2006)
• Understanding Exposure  Bryan Peterson (2004)
• Last Night at the Lobster  Stewart O’Nan (2007)
• The Uncommon Reader  Alan Bennett (2007)

Happy New Year to all you book lovers out there!

My fourteenth season of book recommendations comes at the conclusion of a hectic, stressful, crazy whirlwind of a year.

Throughout the year, books and movies proved a welcome (and sometimes healing) distraction as well. What follow are those books I most enjoyed and wanted to share with you. I continue to update my website 2Things@Once with all my book notes, including reviews for books that didn’t make the list.

• The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
• The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer (2005)
• All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren (1946)
• Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy (1874)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (1962)
• Cup of Gold, John Steinbeck (1929)
• Night, Elie Wiesel (1960)
• A Death in the Family, James Agee (1957)
• Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, Tony Horwitz (2002)
• Tears of the Giraffe, Alexander McCall Smith (2000)
• The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells (1898)
• Birds in Fall, Brad Kessler (2006)
• Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1891)
• The March, E.L. Doctorow (2005)
• The End, Lemony Snicket (2006)