Lisa Rufle's Blog

Posted by Lisa Rufle

Looking for a way to decompress during the hectic holiday festivities? Winter is the perfect time to settle in with a good book and indulge in a little bit of literary pampering! Whether you are short on ideas for what to read, or you are looking to get your hands on some of the most popular books of the past year, this list covers all the bases to get the right book in your hand.

The Book Review has just released its yearly list of the 100 most notable books over the last year. This list covers a wide variety of genres including Fiction, Poetry and Nonfiction. Here is this years anticipated list:

Fiction and Poetry

• American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen
• Bass Cathedral by Nathaniel Mackey
• Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
• Beijing Coma by Ma Jian. (Translated to English by Flora Drew)
• A Better Angel: Stories by Chris Adrian
• Black Flies by Shannon Burke
• The Blue Star by Tony Earley
• The Boat by Nam Le
• Breath by Tim Winton
• Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser
• Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
• Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coet­zee
• Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick
• Elegy: Poems by Mary Jo Bang
• The English Major by Jim Harrison
• Fanon by John Edgar Wideman
• The Finder by Colin Harrison
• Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx
• The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
• Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera
• His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
• Home by Marliynne Robinson
• Indignation by Philip Roth
• The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
• Legend of A Suicide by David Vann
• Life Class by Pat Barker
• Lush Life by Richard Price
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison
• Modern Life: Poems by Matthea Harvey
• A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre
• My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru
• Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
• Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958-2008 by Clive James
• The Other by David Guterson
• Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff
• The Road Home by Rose Tremain
• The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin
• The School on Heart's Content Road by Carolyn Chute
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation by Simon Armitage
• Sleeping it Off in Rapid City: Poems, New and Selected by August Kleinzahler
• Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner
• 2666 by Roberto Bolano
• Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahari
• The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson
• When Will There be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
• The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
• Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright

• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
• Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman
• Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause by Tom Gjelten
• The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop
• Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designed Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene by Masha Gessen
• Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen by Philip Dray
• The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power by Jonathan Mahler
• Champlain's Dream by David Hackett Fischer
• Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World by Samantha Power
• Condoleeza Rice, An American Life: A Biography by Elisabeth Bumiller
• The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer
• Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia
• Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto
• Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright
• The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
• An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
• Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang
• The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
• Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention by Gary J. Bass
• A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books by Alex Beam
• Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life by John Adams
• The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Anette Gordon-Reed
• Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How it Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman
• The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helen Cooper
• How Fiction Works by James Wood
• Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists by Susan Neiman
• The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own by David Carr
• Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein
• Nothing to be Frightened of by Juliana Barnes
• Nureyev: The Life by Julie Kavanagh
• Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood by Mark Harris
• The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria
• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by Dan Airely
• The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse by Richard Thompson Ford
• Retribution: The Battle for Japan 1944-45 by Max Hastings
• A Secular Age by Charles Taylor
• Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer
• The Superorganisim: The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies by Bert Holldobler
• Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq by Linda Robinson
• The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America by David Hajdu
• They Knew They Were RIght: The Rise of Neocons by Jacob Heilbrunn
• This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
• The Three of Us: A Family Story by Julia Blackburn
• Thrumpton Hall: A Memoir of Life in My Father's House by Miranda Seymour
• Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt
• The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash by Charles R. Morris
• A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
• Walking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson by David S. Reynolds
• While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family by Kathryn Harrison
• White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple
• The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
• The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French

Posted by Lisa Rufle

Oprah Winfrey just unveiled her 62nd book club selection, the second for 2008. It is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and in a recent review in O Magazine, it was called a "generous, almost transcendentally lovely debut novel".

The novel centers around Edgar Sawtelle, a mute boy who raises a breed of fictional dogs who behave like "spirits in Shakespeare". A must read for those who appreciate "luxuriant" prose and animals alike.

Here is the list of suggested reading group discussion questions formulated by the author specifically for Oprah's Book Club.

Posted by Lisa Rufle

A run-down of the "greatest books ever written" according to the September 19, 2008 Esquire web article. The list contains some real must-reads that you might find suitable for your reading list or reading group, as mentioned previously in "How to Find Reading Suggestions". Here's the full run-down (for blurby synopsis of each, visit their website):

1. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
2. Collected Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
3. Deliverance by James DIckey
4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
5. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
6. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
7. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
8. The Good War by Studs Terkel
9. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
10. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
11. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
12. A Sport and A Pastime by James Salter
13. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
14. Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
15. A Sense of Where You Are by John McPhee
16. Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
17. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
18. Dubliners by James Joyce
19. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
20. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
21. Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
22. Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell
23. The Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
24. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
25. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
26. The Professional by W.C. Heinz
27. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
28. Dispatches by Michael Herr
29. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
30. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
31. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
32. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
33. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
34. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
35. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
36. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
37. A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
38. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
39. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
40. Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
41. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
42. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
43. Affliction by Russell Banks
44. This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff
45. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
46. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
47. Women by Charles Bukowski
48. Going Native by Stephen Wright
49. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
50. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John LeCarre
51. The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald
52. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
53. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
54. The Shining by Stephen King
55. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
56. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
57. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
58. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
59. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
60. The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
61. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
62. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
63. What it Takes by Richard Ben Cramer
64. The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett
65. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
66. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
67. Native Son by Richard Wright
68. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans
69. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
70. The Great Bridge by David McCullough
71. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
72. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
73. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
74. Underworld by Don DeLillo
75. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Posted by Lisa Rufle

The Man Booker Prize 2008 shortlist was recently announced, with plenty of surprise from critics. Here's a look at the books that made this year's cut:

• Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger
• Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture
• Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies
• Linda Grant's The Clothes on Their Backs
• Phillip Hensher's The Northern Clemency
• Steve Tolz's A Fraction of the Whole

So what surprised critics? Not so much who appeared on the list as who was left off. Popular novels that were expected to make the cut, but didn't, included Netherland by Joseph O'Neill, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie and The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser.

The winner will be chosen on October 14, 2008, and be formally presented with their award later that evening at Guildhall, London.

Posted by Lisa Rufle

Each year, since 1982, the ALA has kept an ongoing list of the most frequently challenged books of the previous year. Here is a brief look at the top 20 most challenged books of the 90s:

• 20. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
• 19. Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
• 18. Sex by Madonna
• 17. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• 16. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
• 15. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
• 14. Alice (series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
• 13. It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
• 12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
• 11. The Giver by Lois Lowry
• 10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• 9. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
• 8. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
• 7. Forever by Judy Blume
• 6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• 5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• 4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
• 3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• 2. Daddy's Roomate by Michael Willhoite
• 1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz

More lists and information about the ALA and challenged books, visit their website. Here is a helpful resource to learn how you can help fight literary censorship.

Posted by Lisa Rufle

Gossip Girl is releasing the first complete season on DVD August 19, 2008 (U.S.).

Will those who flock to purchase the DVD set of Gossip Girl when it is released be interested in reading the novels that inspired the TV show? Warner Home Video and Hachette Audio hope so. They have packaged the DVDs alongside an audio book of the first Gossip Girl novel written by Cecily von Ziegeser and narrated by Christina Ricci.

From a purely marketing standpoint, this is a great idea, even if it only gets a small percentage of viewers to listen to the audio book. It will introduce them to another means by which they can get their Gossip Girl dirt via traditional books and eBooks that they can listen to on their ipods.

Traditionally, the Gossip Girl novels have sold well. There are 12 Gossip Girl books in print and they have sold over 5.6 million copies. Oddly though, the eBooks have not encountered the same success. In the first five years of releasing them as eBooks, they sold only 1000 copies yearly according to Bookscan.

It's difficult to tell how Gossip Girl followers will react to the eBooks. On one hand, they can be downloaded onto ipods and listened to at the gym or beach. However, audio books have traditionally been more utilized by commuters on their way to work, a demographic that Gossip Girl's core audience falls short of.

The important thing to watch will be to see how Gossip Girl fans respond to this marketing gimmick. Reading in any form should be encouraged, even if it amounts to listening to an audio book of the latest goings on between Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf and the gang.

Posted by Lisa Rufle

Before James Frey's memoirs met with outcries of fraud and fantasy, he was on the path to becoming an author who could do no wrong. Oprah praised him, even choosing A Million Little Pieces as one of her book club selections.

However as time passed, truths began trickling out that the facts Frey presented were full of fantasy and imagination, better suited for the genre of fiction. When the truth was fully exposed, Oprah publicly confronted Frey on the issue saying that he "betrayed millions of readers" and a class action suit was brought against Frey and Random House, the book's publisher.

Frey took a hiatus from the literary spotlight and focused on penning his third book, appropriately a fiction novel, entitled Bright Shiny Morning, which was published in May 2008. The book met with the expected responses from the media, mainly rehashing his past debacle and commenting repeatedly that this time Frey wrote an intentionally fictitious novel.

For the most part, the novel was met with generally positive reviews. A well-written, though slightly longer than necessary, tale of the great city of Los Angeles and he wrote of the city the way he wrote of himself in his past books. L.A. became more than just a bright backdrop to a foreground of action, it became a character in and of itself. Frey seemed to intimately know his characters and accurately introduce them to his audience, as he had in A Million Little Pieces. There is no doubt that Frey is an author who can write about subjects that people will want to read about, and all the controversy aside, Bright Shiny Morning, is an honest attempt at a story that just might redeem this once exiled author after all.

Posted by Lisa Rufle

The release of Breaking Dawn, marks the fourth and final installment in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, which has become something of an obsession for teenagers and their parents alike. To celebrate what will surely be another best-seller for Meyer, big and small book stores have each had a Twilight-themed celebration on the night of Breaking Dawn's release. Here's a look at some of the events that took place.

Barnes & Noble celebrated the release at 600 of its stores by hosting vampire-themed parties. Fans were encouraged to dress as their favorite Twilight character and engage in a game of Twilight trivia.

Wordsmiths Books in Decatur, Georgia decorated their store in red and black balloons and black crepe to resemble a vampire prom. They even had a goth band playing live vampire-inspired music.

Borders in New York City (near Madison Square Garden) had three makeup artists on location to give fans a Twilight makeover, including red lipstick, temporary tattoos and scratch marks. The event also had a fortune teller, a Twilight fashion show, a Twilight trivia contest and even a debate about who Bella should end up with (Edward the vampire or Jacob the werewolf).

Over 900 Borders and Waldenbooks locations hosted a Twilight-themed party, "From Twilight til Dawn: A Night with a Bite," which included the "Supernatural Soiree" costume contests, "So You're in Love with a Vampire?" trivia contests and the "Love Is Perfectly Paranormal" Edward vs. Jacob debate.

I think that a series like Twilight is great for young readers because it gets them excited about reading.

Did your town or city book store have any of these Breaking Dawn release parties? Did you attend? What was it like?

Posted by Lisa Rufle

After reading The Book That Changed My Life, it is clear to me that books have a transformative power beyond anything else. Not only that, but they are accessible to anyone, which essentially puts the power of knowledge into every literate human being who has access to reading materials. Any kind of reading can have the power to shape a person's life, it doesn't necessarily have to be a book. Newspapers, magazines and even catalogues can leave a lasting impression on a reader.

I was so intrigued by the variety of books that were deemed "life-changing". Though the more I considered the selections, the more I was able to see that each reader was able to connect with the right book for them at the right moment in their lives. What an amazing feat!

After being so enthralled by all the essays included in the collection, I did some further research. I wanted to know more about books that writers felt were life altering for them. I stumbled across The National Book Foundation where they have a great list of authors, some included in the book and some not, that gives further insight into the power of reading. I particularly liked Stephen King's choice of The Lord of The Flies by William Golding, very fascinating stuff!

I am curious as to what books have made an impact on everyday, non-celebrities, like you and me. Think back to your childhood, was there a book that you have fond memories of being read? Once you were older and could read on your own, was there a particular book that left a lasting impression on you, good or bad?