Booking Through Thursday: Favorites

1. Do you have a favorite author?

2. Have you read everything he or she has written?

3. Did you LIKE everything?

4. How about a least favorite author?

5. An author you wanted to like, but didn’t?

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I have a lot of favorites, but my MOST favorite (today) would have to be Khaled Hosseini. I read The Kite Runner for my book club in July 2007 and I declared it to be my favorite book ever, or at least in my top 3 (it’s so hard to decide on these things). I waited a long while to read his 2nd novel but finally picked it up, and today I finished it.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is my NEW favorite book ever! Without a doubt, it’s my favorite book I’ve read this year. I’m still processing it, but will write my review soon. If you’ve read it, what did you think? I cried like a baby in the last 5 pages, ugh. Thankfully, I was alone with tears streaming down my face. It was so, soooooo good. I would happily and greedily read anything this man has written. He can’t write fast enough for me.

I also just love Lisa See, Amy Tan, Frank McCourt, Jodi Picoult (I know, I know). Also Sue Grafton, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King when I was a young adult, and so many others. I can’t think of an author I wanted to like, but didn’t.

A least favorite author? That’s a tough one. I can think of a few books I didn’t care for, but I wouldn’t be ready to write the author off after one bad book. Then again, I probably wouldn’t pick up another by the same author if I didn’t like the first one I read.

Incidentally, A Thousand Splendid Suns came out in paperback last week. I’ve had it in hardcover since last Christmas but wasn’t ready to read it then. I didn’t want to be making too many comparisons between it and The Kite Runner.

What about you? Who are your favorites?

The Sunday Salon

Wow, it’s been hot here in Southern California.  Our normal June Gloom is nowhere to be found.  

My daughter is going to summer camp tomorrow for 9 days.  Her bags are packed and she’s ready to go. It’s a Girl Scout camp 100 miles away from home, and she will be in the horse unit this year; grooming, feeding, and riding horses, and mucking out stalls (blech!), but she loves it all.  She’s most excited about trail riding, which she hasn’t done too much of in the past.  The camp had an Open House yesterday, so we all went up there to see it, even though the girls went to camp last year.  They wanted to show us what cabins they were in and tell us different things they did.  Plus this is my daughter’s first year in the horse area, so we wanted to see that.  I stuck this book into her duffle bag just in case she has any time to read.  It’s about a brave 10 year old girl, and I want her to be brave at camp!  I think she’ll like it.

I had lots of reading time on the way to the Open House and back.  I just finished Karen Harrington’s Janeology Friday (the review will be written soon!), and literally minutes after turning the last page, a package from Hyperion arrived on my doorstep with two new ARCs, House and Home by Kathleen McCleary and Sweetsmoke by David Fuller.  Even though I have a huge TBR pile, on our way out the door to the camp I grabbed House and Home.  There was some grumbling from The Red Tent and A Thousand Splendid Suns, who have been in the TBR stack for months, but House and Home had an appealing cover (the ARC has a completely different cover than the one shown here-blue with a box of wooden matches- and a picture of a house on the box) and the blurb on the back sounded really interesting.  And it was!  I read it straight through in one day.  It was terrific.  The author is a reporter and writer for HGTV, Good Housekeeping, and The New York Times. This is her first novel, and I was floored not only by the excellent writing, but how many parallels there were to my own life.  House and Home is set to be released July 1st, and I’ll write that review soon, too.  This is one I’ll be telling my friends about.

I started another book today while my kids swam in my mom’s pool.  For once it’s not an ARC or a book for review, but one that I’ve had sitting around awhile (since Christmas, actually).  Has anyone read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott?  It is subtitled “Some instructions on writing and life”.  Well, who doesn’t need that??  I’ve only made it through the introduction and the first two chapters, but I’m hooked.  Funny, smart, and unpredictable is the way I’d describe it so far.  It’s one I don’t want to fly through, but rather savor and think about.  The TBR stack (“pick me!  pick me!”) will just have to hush for awhile.

With one daughter at camp and the other one a little lonely and clingy, it will be an interesting week.  My younger one will miss her sister, even though she insists that she won’t, so I plan to keep her busy.  She’ll be attending Vacation Bible School in the mornings and swim lessons at the high school with her “friend who’s a boy” in the afternoons.  The less time she has to complain about boredom, the better!

Oh, just a reminder about my June giveaway:  Leave a comment HERE by June 30th to win a copy of Mrs. Lieutenant.

What are you reading this week?