A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Next up: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I actually read this one before...I just didn't realize it before when I was reading the description.
Review:
Another enjoyable book! There is something about reading books about those that are poor. I enjoyed seeing the evolution of this girl...poor and hungry up to a young woman embarking on a journey to college. I liked her thoughts, her words.
Would I read it again? Well, I already have...so probably.
19/118

And now I'm all caught up with the past two weeks.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The next book I read was The Kite Runner. Have heard so much about the book, and even watched the movie. I remember getting the book from the library once, but never read it.
Review:
Wonderful book! I enjoyed the interaction between the characters, the rich vs the servants, friends vs help and the conflicts seen. I enjoyed learning more of the Afgan culture, how it was and how it has changed to those that experienced it.
Would I read again? Absolutely!
18/118

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

I decided to start with The Jungle. I was in possession of this book because it was assigned to me in the 11th grade (gasp! Over 10 years ago). I had a hard time getting interested in the book so I read enough for the assignments.
Review:
Overall, thank god for the Food and Drug Act! Wow, it is amazing what used to happen at slaughterhouses! Other than that, the book was depressing, but gritty and real. I felt really bad for the main character--he went through so much for the "American Dream" and the harsh reality knocked him out. It was a good read...could have dealt without the extreme push for Socialism at the end. I just wasn't expecting a discussion on politics. The book moved along well until the last 75-100 pages, which just happened to move very slow for me.
Would I read again? Maybe...
17/118

The list....

Start of the experiment

16/118 read (noted in red) 8/17/09

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos by Julia De Burgos
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Night by Elie Wiesel
The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Sybil by Flora Schreiber
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Cousin Bette by Honore De Balzac
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
1984 by George Orwell
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Emma by Jane Austen
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Small Island by Andrea Levy
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
My Life in Orange by Tim Guest
Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Nervous System by Jan Lars Jensen
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
How the Light Gets In by M. J. Hyland
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Quattrocento by James McKean
The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan
Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Old School by Tobias Wolff
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
The Bielski Brothers by Peter Duff
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Property by Valerie Martin
Rescuing Patty Hearst by Virginia Holman
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Fat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
Unless by Carol Shields
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Songbook by Nick Hornby
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

New blog!

Well, I decided to start blogging.
A few years ago, a friend sent me the Rory Gilmore's book list (from The Gilmore Girls on WB). I stumbled across the document on my computer recently and was shocked to see that I have only read a small number of the 118 books.
Some I think I have read but don't remember well. Some I read "enough" for the assignment. Some I have wanted to read but no time. Some I have never heard of.
I hope to blog through my reading journey. Most will be from this list, but I'll include my fun reads too. I really like chick lit and fantasy too, so those will be included as well.