Hemlokgang's 100 Books in 2009 Challenge

Just setting up so I am ready at the New Year!

Here we go.............................Big Smile!!!!

Yay 2009! I've got 3 books going (already) and have no idea which will be first this year. How about you?

#1 - A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro - *****

Good choice for your first book of the year, hemlok!

>5 hemlokgang:: Oh! Oh! Oh! I want to read that one. I love Ishiguro

#2 - The Casualty by Heinrich Boll - *****

#3 - Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott - ***

#4 - Therese Raquin by Emile Zola - *****

#5 - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski - ****1/2

#6 - Drop City by T.C. Boyle - **

#7 - Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath by Michael Paul Mason - ***

#8 - Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - *****

#9 - Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling - *****

#10 - A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger - ****

#11 - The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa - *****

#12 - The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama - ****

#13 - The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood by Elspeth Huxley - *****

#14 - Divine Justice by David Baldacci - ****

#15 - The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - *****

Wow, you've had some very satisfying reads so far! 4s and 5s mostly. I'm hoping to finish The Leopard tonight. Then I'll go read your thoughts in the Group Reads thread.

#16 - O, Pioneers! by Willa Cather - ****

#17 - Dracula by Bram Stoker - ****

#18 - Tribal Scars by Ousmane Sembene - *****

#19 - Eight Cousins by Louisa may Alcott - *****

>22 hemlokgang:: glad to see that O Pioneers! is 4*, hemlok. Knowing Cather only by name previously, so many people have been raving about her books recently that I've started picking them up, and grabbed a copy of this in the library sale yesterday. Also have My Antonia out on loan, and requested Death Comes for the Archbishop from BookMooch, so I'm set for a bit of a Cather-fest...

Flossie, enjoy!

#20 - The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham - ****

#21 - Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky - ****

#22 - The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - *****

I love Henry James. I'm happy to see you liked The Turn of the Screw!

#23 - Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama - ****

#24 - King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard - ****

#25 - Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov - *****

#26 - Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe - ***

#27 - The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga - *****

#28 - A Universal History of Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges - ***

#29 - Jim the Boy by Tony Earley - ****

#30 - Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell - ****

#31 - Netochka Nezvanova by Fyodor Dostoevsky - ****

Wow, hemlok! It looks like you'll be getting to 120 this year too. We're neck and neck!

#32 - Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne - ***

#33 - Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town by Warren St. John - *****

#34 - Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff - ***

#35 - A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert - ****

#36 - Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier - ******

An interesting list of books you have been reading. you seem to read a lot of older works. I often really struggle with them.

#37 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald - ****

#38 - The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy - *****

#39 - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding - ***

#40 - Wild Nights: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway by Joyce Carol Oates - *****

I just hear about #40 the other day. It sounded so interesting, and I'm glad to see you liked it!

Great reading so far this year, hemlok.

It has been a very good reading year so far. I agree!

#41 - Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson - *****

#42 - The Associate by John Grisham - ***

#43 - Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott - ***

#44 - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - *****

We have read several of the same books this year, with similar rankings. I loved The Book Thief, too! Happy reading.

#45 - The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - ****
#46 - All Over Creation by Ruth L. Ozeki - ****
#47 - Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott - ***

#48 - Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe -***

I read both of Ruth L.Ozeki's books- and I liked My Year of Meats better. I like the author's themes- all very timely.

>57 hemlokgang: & >59 torontoc: I really liked My Year of Meat (another rare book that I have actually re-read) and didn't know she had another one. I'll look out for it - thanks.

#49 - The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery - *****

#50 - Everyman by Philip Roth - ****

#51 - The Boat by Nam Le - ****

Hey, we're just about neck and neck. I'll be finishing #51 today, and maybe 52 and 53 (short ones) if I stick with reading and get off this dang computer!

#52 - The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffrey Deaver - ***
#53 - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke - ***

#54 - Adam Bede by George Eliot - ****

#55 - Shantytown Kid by Azouz Begag - ***

#56 - People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks - *****

#57 - Bones by Jonathan Kellerman - ****

#58 - Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea - ****

#59 - The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - ****

#60- First Family by David Baldacci - ****

#61 - Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult - ***

#62 - Hard Times by Charles Dickens - ****

#63 - The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway - *****

#64 - The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb - *****

#65 - So Brave, So Young and Handsome by Leif Enger - *****

#66 - The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer - ****

#67- The Insulted and Humiliated by Fyodor Dostoevsky - *****

#68 - Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch by Dai Sijie - *****

#69 - Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford - ****

#70 - The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster - *****

#71 - The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson - ***

#72 - Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee - *****

#73 - Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle - *****
#74 - Beowulf by Anonymous - ***
#75 - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout - ****

#76 - Mercy by Jodi Picoult - ***

#77 - A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin - ***

#78 - Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson - *****

#79 - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami - ***

#80 - South of Broad by Pat Conroy - ****

>84 hemlokgang: belated congratulations on your 75!

#81 - Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow - *****
#82 - The House of Doctor Dee by Peter Ackroyd - **

#83 - Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson - *****

#84 - Eve's Ransom by George Gissing - ****

#85 - The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca - *****

#86 - Useless Beauty by Guy de Maupassant - ****
#87 - Peony in Love by Lisa See - ****

#88 - A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy soldier by Ishmael Beah - *****
#89 - Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels - *****
#90 - The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker - ***

Love that you gave the Anne Michaels 5 stars. Myself, I'd have to knock a star off for the last section - I know she warned us, but I found the loss of Jakob too much to take, and Ben seemed a very poor substitute. Still a fantastic book.

#91 - Go With Me by Castle Freeman - *****

#92 - To Siberia by Per Petterson - *****

#93 - The Means of Escape by Penelope Fitzgerald - *****

#94 - So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell - ****

#95 - The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan - ****

#96 - Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman - *****

#97 - Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut - *****

#98 - From Doon With Death by Ruth Rendell - ***

#99 - Secrets by Nuruddin Farah - ****

#100 - Saving Faith by David Baldacci - ***

Congratulations on reaching 100 books read this year!

#101 - Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear - ****
#102 - The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout - *****

#103 - Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann - ****