Book list for 2012!

Here it is!  I love my book lists.  Even if this past year wasn't very impressive in terms of reading, it was enjoyable.  I read through the entire Wallander series with the exception of one collection of stories, but that's because they haven't been translated to English.  I read The Hunger Games trilogy, and all but one of the Game of Thrones books.

Yes, I know the fifth book is out now.  No, I don't know if I'm up for it yet.

I'm not sure if I'll go through the Lemony Snicket series, but maybe I will.

I can't believe I only read one volume of Adrienne Rich's poetry this year.  I haven't read through all of her poetry in the library, but I think I'm getting close.  She died this year (I think it was on Cody's birthday), and I re-read Diving Into the Wreck because it's the only collection of hers that I own.  I bought it on sale at Hastings or Books-A-Million when I was 16 or so, and the whole thing was so 1970s Feminist Lesbian Poet Talking About Age and Science and Society.  I loved it.  I'm not the biggest poetry person, but I liked her and I still do.  I thought about writing a post about her, but I didn't know what else to say other than what I just typed there.

Orlando is still my favorite Virginia Woolf book.

Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience didn't give me as much to think about as I thought it would, and One Thousand Gifts gave me more to think about than I thought it would.

Craft Activism inspired me.

Everything else was like junk food for my soul and I stayed up way too late on way too many nights tearing through it.  It was great.


Adams, Douglas. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
--. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
--. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire.
--. The Hunger Games.
--. Mockingjay.
Fortas, Abe. Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience.
Mankell, Henning. Before the Frost.*
--. Dogs of Riga.*
--. Faceless Killers.*
--. The Fifth Woman.*
--. Firewall.*
--. The Man Who Smiled.*
--. The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases.*
--. Sidetracked.*
--. The Troubled Man.*
--. The White Lioness.
Martin, George R. R. A Clash of Kings.
--. A Feast for Crows.
--. A Game of Thrones.
--. A Storm of Swords.
Rich, Adrienne. Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972.
Snicket, Lemony. The Reptile Room: A Series of Unfortunate Events Book #2.*
--. A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning.*
Stewart, Trenton Lee. The Mysterious Benedict Society.*
Tapper, Joan and Gale Zucker. Craft Activism: People, Ideas, and Projects from the New Community of Handmade and How You Can Join In.
Voskamp, Anne. One Thousand Gifts.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando.

Part of me wants to vow to read more 'serious' books.  Books about the subtext and contextual clues about societal ills in our modern adaptations of folklore, or about early childhood brain development.  Maybe something about purposeful living and overly earnest DIY lifehacks.  But there is that fifth Game of Thrones book out, and I had so much fun last year.  I'd like to re-read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova yet again, and maybe Possession by A.S. Byatt (I think it's the only book of hers I've read that has a happy ending) because I enjoy them so  much.  So I'll try to read a few more books with a focus on learning this year, but overall, I just want to enjoy the reading.

I can't wait.

January Book List

Drabble, Margaret. The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.*

Grisham, John. The Firm. New York: Doubleday, 1991.*

Nichols, Sharon Eliza. I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar: A Collection of Egregious Errors, Disconcerting Bloopers, and Other Linguistic Slip-Ups. New York: St. Martha's Press, 2009.

Reed, Stanley. Oriental Rugs and Carpets. London: Octopus Books, 1972.

Shell, Ellen Ruppel. Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. New York: Penguin, 2009.*

The Book List for 2009

Jennifer, 1985.

I like reading.

This is what I read this year:

Applehof, Mary. Worms Eat My Garbage. Kalamazoo: Flower Press, 2nd ed. 1997*

Beaujon, Andew. Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock. Cambridge: Da Capo, 2006.*

Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. 1790. New York: Dover, 1994.

Buckley, Christopher. Boomsday. New York: Twelve, 2007.*

Byatt, A.S. A Whistling Woman. New York: Knopf, 2002.*

Capote, Truman. Breakfast at Tiffany's. 1958. New York: Modern Library, 1994.*

Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. 1939. New York: Vintage Crime, 1992.*

Chanin, Natalie, with Stacie Stukin. Alabama Stitch Book: Projects and Stories Celebrating Hand-Sewing, Quilting, & Embroidery for Contemporary Sustainable Style. New York: Stewart, Tabori, & Channing, 2008.*

Chappell, Fred. Family Gathering. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.*

---. Wind Mountain. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 1979.*

Church, Francis Pharcellus. Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus. 1897. New York: Delacorte Press, 1992.

Crawford, Christine. Mommie Dearest. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1978.

DeLillo, Don. The Body Artist. New York: Scribner, 2001.*

The Tyral of Rebecca Nurse: Transcripts from the Salem Withcraft Trials of 1692. Compiled by Donald Daly. Salem: New England & Virginia Company/Nova Anglia Press.

Dietz, Laura. In the Tenth House. New York: Crown, 2007.*

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.

Eastoe, Jane and Sarah Gristwood. Fabulous Frocks. New York: Pavalion, 2008.*

Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.*

Fitzhugh, Louise. Harriet the Spy. 1969. New York: Dell.

Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant's Woman. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969.

Forster, E.M. Maurice. 1914. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1974.*

Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. 1923. New York: Knopf, 1972.

Goldsmith, Sheherazade, ed. A Slice of Organic Life. New York: DK Publishing, 2007*

Hamilton, John Maxwell. Cassanova Was a Book Lover: And Other Naked Truths and
Provocative Curiosities about the Writing, Selling, and Reading of Books. New York: Penguin.

Howe, Katherine. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. New York: Voice, 2009.

Joyce, Katherine. Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. New York: Beacon Press, 2009.*

King, Samantha. Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.*

King, Stephen. The Stand. New York: Signet, 1990.

Kipinis, Laura. Against Love: A Polemic. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.*

L'Engle, Madeleine. Dragons in the Waters. New York: Fararr, Straus and Giroux, 1976.

---. The Love Letters. 1966. New York: Ballantine Books, 1983.

Lessing, Doris. Alfred and Emily. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.*

---. Briefing For a Descent Into Hell. New York: Bantam, 1973.

---. The Cleft. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.*

---. A Proper Marriage. 1966. London: Grafton, 1985.

Levine, Abby and Sarah Levine. Sometimes I Wish I Were Mindy. Middletown: Weekly Reader Books, 1986.

McCullers, Carson. The Member of the Wedding. 1946. Boston: Houghlin Mifflin Company. *

Moore, Alan. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics. 1987.

Nicholson, Joan. Creative Embroidery. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1960.*

Reich, Charles. The Greening of America. New York: Bantam, 1970.

Rice, Anne. Lasher. New York: Ballentine Books, 1995.

---. Pandora. New York: Ballantine, 1998.

---. The Queen of the Damned. New York: Ballentine Books, 1988.

Savage, Dan. Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America. New York: Dutton, 2002.*

Spade, Kate. Style. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.*

Stone, Brian, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 1959. Middlesex: Penguin, 1972.

Tanenhaus, Sam. The Death of Conservatism. New York: Random House, 2009.*

Thomas, Scarlett. Going Out. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.*

Thomis, Malcolm. The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England. New York: Schocken Books, 1970.

Traig, Jennifer. Well Enough Alone: A Cultural History of My Hypochondria. New York: Riverheard Books, 2008.*

Truss, Lynn. Eats, Shoots & Leaves. New York: Gotham, 2003.*

Vowell, Sarah. The Wordy Shipmates. New York: Riverhead, 2008.*

Weir, Alison. Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England. New York: Ballentine Books, 2005.

Woolf, Virginia. The Voyage Out. San Diego: HBJ. 1920.*

November book list

So. We're in December now.

I put up my tree last night. I'd planned to wait until Cody was out of the house because he hates holidays and happiness (not really), but I needed him to pull down the boxes for me.

So my tree is up, my "Merry Christmas" sign is up, my Rudolph card holder is out (fine, he stays out year-round), and tonight I'll bust out my elf figurines.

And today, I'll post my book list for November.

For the past couple of months, I've been trying to cram in short novels in an effort to boost the number of books I read each month. I haven't done the math yet, but I don't think I'll reach my New Year's resolution of reading 70 books this year.

Especially when I made the unwise-on-so-many-levels decision to read The Stand: The Million Page Edition during the height of H1N1 hysteria.

Chappell, Fred. Wind Mountain. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 1979.*
Oh, Fred Chappell. I'm so glad I found your poetry in the library last weekend. There are only so many times I can say "I don't like poetry, but I like Fred Chappell/John Donne/George Herbert/Shakespeare's sonnets/blahblahblah." I think I like poetry. I know I like this guy's.

Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.*
Well, I can cross that off the list.

King, Samantha. Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.*
This takes a very good look at the tangled mess of charity, corporations, and politics, and the harm and good done by breast cancer awareness projects.

King, Stephen. The Stand. New York: Signet, 1990.
I don't usually post the number of pages anymore, but I have to here: 1,141 pages. Gracious, that was a superlong book. I liked it.

July Book List

Forster, E.M. Maurice. 1914. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1974.*
I checked this out at the library around the time Amazon pulled it from its ranking system. So yeah, it's a book with a gay character who's unhappy and finds happiness and there's some other stuff in there as well about the shifts in life in England, business vs. landed gentry class, blah blah blah. That part is pretty familiar territory, but I'd never read any Forster before, so that was nice. I enjoyed this, because it's a pretty good book.

Kipinis, Laura. Against Love: A Polemic. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.*
This would have been funnier as an article instead of a full-length book. I remember enjoying it, but I really don't remember much about it.

Lessing, Doris. A Proper Marriage. 1966. London: Grafton, 1985.
I like Doris Lessing a lot and bought this, kind of as a joke, on my second wedding anniversary. It says right on the cover that it's a powerful novel about the disintegration of a marriage and a society. And it is. I was depressed enough to die (not kill myself, just ..... stop living.) after reading this, but I like how she challenges assumptions and types and then challenges and smashes and critiques some more. Since I know you'll never read this, I'll go ahead and spoil the ending for you: the protagonist leaves her husband and daughter for Communism.

Levine, Abby and Sarah Levine. Sometimes I Wish I Were Mindy. Middletown: Weekly Reader Books, 1986.
So what if this is only 32 pages long? I've loved this book since I got it in the first grade, and when I found it in a box last week, I just had to read it out loud to Cody. Yes, I even held it up so that he could see the illustrations (by Blanche Sims, in case you were wondering). Our unnamed narrator wishes she were like Mindy, with a mansion and call waiting and exotic vacations, but she learns to appreciate the things that she does have and realizes that their families are equal in love.

Stone, Brain, trans. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 1959. Middlesex: Penguin, 1972.
I didn't get it. I usually don't comprehend anything in verse form. Blegh. Maybe I'll try again later. It's a nice little ...... thing.

Book List for 2008

Okay. It's that time again.

Here is what I read in 2008, in MLA format (as best as I can remember and manage, anyway). As always, library books are designated by asterisk.

Anderegg, David. Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them. New York: Penguin, 2008.
Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. New York: Anchor, 2003.*
--. The Robber Bride. New York: Doubleday, 1993.*
Barry, Dave. Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far). New York: Penguin, 2007.*
Bombeck, Erma. Family: The Ties That Bind…And Gag!. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1987.
Boyett, Jason. Pocket Guide to Adulthood: 29 Things to Know Before You Hit 30. Orlando: Relevant Books, 2005.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Mists of Avalon. 1982. New York: Del Ray, 2008.*
Brockmeier, Kevin. The View From the Seventh Layer. New York: Pantheon, 2008.
Browne, Jill Connor. The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999.
Burroughs, Augsten. Running With Scissors. New York: Picador, 2002.
Byatt, A. S. The Biographer's Tale. New York: Knopf: 2001.*
--. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories. New York: Random House, 1997.*
--. The Game. New York: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1967.*
--. Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. New York: Random House, 1998.*
--. Little Black Book of Stories. New York: Knopf, 2004.*
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkely: University of California Press, 1984*
Cain, James. The Postman Always Rings Twice. 1934. New York: Vintage, 1981.
Claiborne, Shane. The Irresistible Revolution. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.*
Clarke, Susanna. Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell. New York: Bloomsbury, 2004.
Cobb, Linda. Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean. New York: Pocket Books, 1998.
Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
Cutler, Katharine Noble. Flower Arranging for All Occasions. 1967. New York: Doubleday, 1981.
Editors of Consumer Reports Books with Edward Kippel. How to Clean Practically Anything. 4th Ed. Yonkers: Consumers Union of the United States, Inc., 1996.
Fforde, Jasper. Thursday Next in First Among Sequels. New York: Viking, 2007.*
--. Thursday Next in Something Rotten. New York: Viking, 2004.*
--. Thursday Next in the Well of Lost Plots. New York: Vicking, 2003.*
Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: Nan A. Telese, 2003.
Gates, Stefan. Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave. Orlando: Harcourt, 2006.
Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and The Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. *
Guterson, David. Snow Falling on Cedars. New York: Vintage, 1995.
Haggard, Ted and Gayle Haggard. From This Day Forward: Making Your Vows Last a Lifetime. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 2006.
Herbert, Frank. Chapterhouse: Dune. New York: Ace, 1987.
--. Dune. 1965. New York: Putnam, 1998.*
--. Children of Dune. 1976. New York: Ace, 1987.
--. Dune Messiah. 1969. New York: Berkley, 1981.
--. God Emperor of Dune. New York: Berkley, 1981.
--. Heretics of Dune. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984. 480 pages*
Hesse, Herman. Siddhartha. Trans. Hilda Rosner. 1922. New York: MJF Books, 1992.
Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. New York: Scribner, 2003.*
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Herm. 1984. New York: HaperCollins, 1999.
Laskas, Gretchen Moran. The Midwife's Tale. New York: Dial Press, 2003.
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook. 1962. New York: Bantam, 1981.
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 1950. New York: Scholastic, 1987.
--. Prince Caspian [The Return to Narnia]. 1951. New York: Scholastic, 1987.
--. The Silver Chair. 1953. New York: Scholastic, 1987.
--. The Voyage of The Dawn Treader. 1952. New York: Scholastic, 1987.
McGuire, Maria. To Take Arms: My Year With the IRA Provisionals. New York: Viking, 1973.*
Palahniuk, Chuck. Choke. New York: Anchor, 2001.*
Parker, Suzi. Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt. Boston: Justin, Charles & Co., 2003.*
Radosh, Daniel. Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture. New York: Scribner, 2008.
Rigg, Jo. Tabletops. Boston: Bullfinch Press, 2003.*
Sedaris, Amy. I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. New York: Warner, 2006.*
Seo, Danny. Simply Green: Parties. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.*
Setterfield, Diane. The Thirteenth Tale. New York: Washington, 2007.
Shute, Nevil. On the Beach. 1957. New York: Perennial, 1966.
Simon, Leslie and Trevor Kelly. Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture. New York: Harper Entertainment, 2007.
Summers, Montague. The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. 1928. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1991.
Wodicka, Tod. All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

And because I wanted to do something new this year, I made up some categories for some of these titles.

I Realized I Hate You After the Fact and I Hate Myself for Letting You Waste My Time
All of the Thursday Next books
Sex in the South
To Take Arms
Every Dune book but Dune
How to Clean Practically Anything
Oryx and Crake
Choke
The Midwife's Tale

You Did Not Let Me Down and I Deeply Appreciate That
Family
Dave Barry's History of Millennium
Tabletops
I Like You
The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love
Dune
Rapture Ready!
The View from the Seventh Layer
The Thirteenth Tale
Gastronaut
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

I Had No Idea You Were Going to Be This Amazing and I Want to Be Best Friends With You Forever and Ever!
Madwoman in the Attic
Everybody Hurts
Flower Arranging for All Occasions
Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean
The Golden Notebook
The Hours
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye
The Game
Snow Falling on Cedars
Jonathon Strange & Mr Norrell

November's book list

This has been quite the smarty-pants reading month.

I'm prone to undeserved book snobbery, but I realized I'd hit my zenith (at least, I hope I don't get any worse than this) earlier this morning when I was reading a blog I discovered. This woman was discussing her infertility problems, and having just checked out her profile and seen her favorite authors, I thought perhaps God was trying to prevent this woman from bearing and raising yet another stupid person like herself.

Yes, I really did.

I'm very sorry.

I'm sure that's not why she's having problems having a baby (it's actually because she's approaching middle age--she said so herself).

I sincerely hope she eventually becomes a mother.

And I hope that when she does, that kid is going to have some intelligent mentors around to recommend reading selections beyond Goodnight Moon.

I'm sorry!!!!

It really was the first thing that came to mind.

Ahem, um, anyways....here's the book list for November. I have lengthier, non-helpful reactions to each book because I got very enthralled this month. It was a welcome change.

Bradley, Marion Zimmer. The Mists of Avalon. 1982. New York: Del Ray, 2008.
Did you know this was originally published by Knopf? That's a big deal! Anyway, this is (yet another) reconfiguration of the Arthur mythos. What's not to love? Well, the incest factor. I didn't love that. But then, I never do and it's always in the Arthur mythos anyway. Royals are crazy. But apart from that, the story had magic, 1980s New Age-y goddess mysticism, a thoughtful examination of the mixing of the pagan and the Christian (I always get excited about that), treachery, romantic entanglements, visions (I also get excited about psychic business), and murder. Seriously, murder out that wazoo. Fun, exciting stuff. I really didn't mind it being over 800 pages.

Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
This is about a single day in the life of three women. This is the same premise of Mrs Dalloway. And one of the women is Virginia Woolf. And The Hours was her working title for Mrs Dalloway. And this is a spectacularly awesome book. I watched the movie a few years back, and now that I've read the book, I'm so glad to know that the movie did a wonderful, faithful adaptation. The book is still better because the narrator tells us what the characters are thinking. I ♥ postmodernism. I bought this book at the Lutheran High Used Book Sale and started reading it that afternoon. And then I finished the following evening. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite authors. Her suicide note to her husband is one of the sweetest love letters I've ever read.

I think God just disqualified me from having children.

Cutler, Katharine Noble. Flower Arranging for All Occasions. 1967. New York: Doubleday, 1981.
Oh. My. Goodness. This book was previously published under the title How to Arrange Flowers for All Occasions, and was apparently so wildly popular that Doubleday released a new edition in 1981. Sadly, it is now out of print so you'll just have to scrounge in garage sales and library sales. And believe me, you want it. You want it so badly, you don't even understand yet. But you will. This is actually a pretty helpful guide to arranging flowers for people who don't know how to do it (like me), and even though it's a little dated she makes some great points about using found items. Another indication that it's dated: She keeps talking about bouquets looking "fresh" and "gay." "Gay" is probably featured in the book no fewer than 50 times. Seriously. And she is not writing about homosexuals at all. Which brings me to the other thing I love about this book: it is laugh-out-loud unintentionally hilarious.

I know I included a quote from the book in a different post, but I have to do it again.
143: One woman had a most original idea for her bathroom decoration. Knowing that African violets grow well in a humid atmosphere, she turned the top of the toilet tank (which was under a window with good light) upside down and filled it with pebbles. On these she has pots of African violets. They thrive in the light and humidity and are usually a mass of blossoms.

And another, just in time for the holidays.
161: Is there anything more fun to do at Christmastime than to go foraging for greens and other plant material to make your own decorations? Whether you are crunching through the snow in a New England pine forest, cutting blazing poinsettias in Florida, gathering myriads of beautiful pinecones in California, or picking luxuriant holly in the Pacific Northwest, there is something about assembling your own decorations that is smugly satisfying. [Emphasis added because I wanted to point out the craziness.]

I asked Cody if he could think of "anything more fun to do at Christmastime than to go foraging for greens and other plant material" and he assured me he could.

Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2003.
Oh man. Remember when James Frey was a big, fat deal? And then remember when he was deemed a big, fat liar and Oprah nearly had him drawn and quartered on national television? Crazy times. I had still heard this was a good book, regardless of where the library chooses to shelve it. So I bought it at the basement sale and began reading it. And I finished it. And I thought it was a pretty good read.

But I really don't understand how anyone could ever be taken in by this. At first I thought I was just walking into this with all of the stuff I already knew. But no. This angry, angry young man who's destroyed his body and mind with every chemical he can find for the past decade and a half enters rehab and reads one book on Zen and becomes the tender boyfriend figure and this great listener and bucks the AA system and stays clean and Proves Them All Wrong without a single grammatically correct sentence? No. Just no.

It's painfully, embarrassingly, and heartbreakingly obvious that he is writing about events and people (and most of all himself) not as they really were, but as he wishes they had been. And that's the saddest part of the whole book. His stories remind me too much of stories I've heard from friends, acquaintances, and the kinds of people who think they have amazing stories to tell (FYI: if you have an amazing story to tell, chances are it's not going to be about yourself. Yes, I am aware that I tell a lot of stories about myself. I am also aware that they are not amazing or even remotely interesting). Not all of those people had problems with drugs or alcohol. But they all had problems with lying. And they all lied to me.

I would actually recommend all of this month's books to you.

Unless you have problems with paganism, violence, drugs, profanity, suicide, homosexuality, alcohol, sexuality in general, or flower arranging.

Then maybe you should just pick up the new Stephen King collection of short stories and let me know what you think.