Books on My Nightstand

Welcome to the Book Page! These books are either currently on my nightstand or have been there in the past! All great reads, depending on what you are looking for! Let me know if you read any of them and what you think!

Updated on January 27, 2010    **Please let me say that I have NO IDEA what has happened to the formatting on this page!  It's a mess!  I will have to re-do it one of these days.  So please bear with me for now!  The books are still fantastic--even if the formatting on their review is not!

  

MOTHERHOOD

• discipline THAT LASTS A LIFETIME    by Dr. Ray Guarendi
• This is a great book that was recommended to me by a mother of 8 kids!  What's so different about it is that Dr. Ray really tells us to trust our guts, and not always the experts, when parenting.  That was a nice wake-up call for this lover of all things "expert!"

• Mojo Mom: Nurturing Yourself While Raising a Family  by Amy Tiemann
• The subtitle says it all.  This is really a great book to have!  A great quote from the book:  "The most important thing she'd learned over the years was that there was no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one." ~Jill Churchill, Grime and Punishment

  

FICTION

• Revolutionary Road  by Richard Yates
• Absolutely HATED this book!   Well, that's not completely true, but this was a disturbing tale to me.  I like the happy endings!  However, it was very well-written and thought-provoking.  I definitely was not interested in seeing the movie after reading the book.

 

• Henry's Sisters by Cathy Lamb
• If I didn't know better, I would swear that this is Wally Lamb in disguise!  This book was pretty depressing!  As I made my way through the first 25 chapters, I cringed quite often.  Lots of intense family dynamics and plenty of degradation of women.  The last 100 pages, though, found me on the couch, bawling my eyes out.  I would not recommend reading this book in public!  The story is about three sisters, one brother and their parents.  Family members return to their home to help run a family bakery in a time of need.  (Food themes always get me!)  I passed it on to an aunt, so we'll see what she thinks of it.  For me, it was another one of those books that I wanted to see end but I had to know the ending.

  

• Bel Canto  by Ann Patchett
• This book was a very slow read for me.  Some books one can just whiz through, but this one required time.  It is the story of a group of people who are taken hostage in a foreign country while a well-known opera star is performing.  The relationships between the hostages and the terrorists becomes fascinating.  The ending will hit you right between the eyes!  A good read when you you're wanting something slow and detailed.

NONFICTION

  

  This is the funniest book that I have read in a long time!  It's part memoir and part encyclopedia.  The story is of A.J. Jacobs deciding the read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica and how it affected his life, but it is written in the style of an encyclopedia.  I have not laughed out loud while reading in quite some time!  If you like to read and consider yourself smart, you should read this!  Witty!  Funny!  Highly recommended by me!

• The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs
• The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal

   

  • Annapurna: A Woman's Place by Arlene Blum
  •  This was a fabulous book!  The true story of the first expedition of women to climb Annapurna I in the Nepal Himalaya in 1978.  Another book club book.  I loved the stories surrounding the preparation that these women went through to get the climb organized.  Then the stories of the actual climb are amazing.  The climb and book were done in the late 1970's, so the edition I read was the 20th anniversary edition.  Reading the follow-up on what the women were doing then was a nice way to end the book.  I would love to know what more of them ar doing now.  Arlene Blum is an amazing woman who currently designs and presents informative and inspiring keynote lectures, leadership workshops, and cross-cultural seminars.  She holds a doctorate in biophysical chemistry, and has taught at Stanford University, Wellesley College, and U. C. Berkeley, where her research was instrumental in banning tris and Fyrol, two cancer-causing chemical that were used as a flame retardant on children's sleepwear as well as the pesticide DBCP. Blum plans to continue this research to facilitate the regulation of similar chemicals and help protect our health and environment.  She also hiked the length of the European Alps with her baby on her back. Truly amazing!
  
  
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle  by Barbara Kingsolver
  • This is another truly inspirational book!  If you've ever read anything by Barbara Kingsolver, this is totally different!  While her fiction stories are wonderful, (and I highly recommend them), this non-fiction story of her and her family eating only things grown or raised within 100 miles of their home is truly inspirational.  In these days and times, with more and more people growing their own food for economic and safety/health reasons, this is a must-read!  While I do have a garden this year, Kingsolver takes it over the top for me as she raises (and kills!) her own meat and makes her own cheese, besides all the preserving of the fruits and vegetables that they have grown.  The stories that she tells are wonderful, and she includes recipes as well.  I really cannot say enough about this book--except READ IT! As the back book cover describes it:  Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.
  
  
  • Our Stories, Our Visions by Zoe Sallis
  • This is an easy read but very thought-provoking.  The author asks 10 questions of 40 of the world's most influential women and winds their answers in each chapter.  I found myself not only pondering my own answers, but also pondering the answers of the women as well.  Life is certainly not so cut and dried!  The questions:
  1. Did your upbringing or early experiences influence the direction that your life took?
  2. What inspires you in life?
  3. What most provokes you to anger, and do you believe in forgiveness?
  4. Do you think there will ever be equality in humankind, and end to poverty and injustice?
  5. What is your greatest fear?
  6. Which woman or women, past of present, do you most admire?
  7. Do you think women can make a difference in the world and be instrumental in stopping war?
  8. What spiritual or religious beliefs do you hold?
  9. Do you have any advice for the younger generation?
  10. Do you have a favorite work of art, book, poem or piece of music that has a special personal significance for you?
  Some of the women interviewed are Isabelle Allende, Maya Angelou, Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, Bianca Jagger, Soledad O'Brien, Yoko Ono, Marianne Pearl, Paloma Picasso and Sister Helen Prejean.  The other women you probably wouldn't know by name,  but you may have heard of some of them, others perhaps not.  But all are women with incredible stories to tell.

   

  • Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
  • I raved about this book in my post on July 26, 2009.  Check out the post for more details.  This is a fabulous book!  The website www.threecupsoftea.com is interesting too.  Hard to believe but this book is not in many libraries in the US.  Everyone should read this book!
  • Julie and Julia  by Julie Powell
  • I'm sure that by now, everyone knows what this book is about!  True story.  Julie Powell blogs about making all 524 recipes in Julia Child's first French cookbook, and she does it all in 365 days.  Fun to read!  Makes you want to cook!  Makes you hungry!  A fast and easy read!
  • The Geography of Bliss   by Eric Weiner
  • A foreign correspondent for NPR (and also a self-declared mope) sets out to explore the research about the happiest places on Earth.  Ten easy chapters on nine of the happiest places in the world as well as the supposed saddest place on Earth.  Part travelogue, part memoir, part tales from other lands, this is a great book!  I sent it to my cousin because we had traveled together in Amsterdam and Switzerland together when we were in our 20's.  He hasn't read it yet but has assured me that he is going to start it now that he has some "free time" on his hands!

  
  

  
  

   

• I read this book for an on-line book club that I am in.  It's a very nice read about an old diary that a reporter from the New York Times found in a dumpster and her journey to track down the original writer. Super quick and light read!

 

• This Boy's Life
  by Tobias Wolff Another book for the book club.  Another one that I really didn't enjoy.  Am glad I read it, but the genre known as "Dirty Realism" doesn't really work for me.  WAY too real story about Tobias Wolff's early life.  He is now a professor at Stanford.