The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter and Gravity's Rainbow byThomas Pynchon

I know that this may sound nuts but I am reading these together. How you might ask is that going to happen? Well I usually read at least three books at one time. They are stationed all over my house. However, since these two novels are set in the same time period, roughly WWII, I thought what can it hurt. I am already confused by the people in Gravity's Rainbow, why not add another book. GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon has some interesting characters and I think that I need to list them, as I said before. Here are some of those characters, just so you know I am actually trying to read this 776 page book. My family keep saying just read one book, but my mind will not allow me to do that, it simply does not like reading one thing at a time. Characters in GRAVITY"S RAINBOW: Pirate AKA Captain Geoffrey Prentice: Is introduced by the narrator while Pirate is in bed, he saves our next character by jumping out of bed and pushing the bed to the spot where Teddy Bloat falls from above. Pirate is in charge of banana breakfasts which he raises on the roof in place they are billeted in London. HE also is used for his ability to see the future? Teddy Bloat: Spies on fellow named Slothrop and is friends with Slothrop's desk partner, Lt. Oliver (Tantivy) Mucker-Maffick. Slothrop: Lover of the ladies, keeps a map of where he sees or meets them, this is what Bloat is taking pictures of for another person named, Roger Mexico. Slothrop is afraid of not hearing the bomb that could kill him. Apparently there is some history in his family of men dying young and their gravestone inscriptions. Jessica Swanlake is an ATS private who I believe is a girlfriend of Mexico. Roger Mexico receiving the microfilm from Bloat. Only 35 pages in so we are still in character development, if I read 100 pages per day I should be finished by next week. Which still gives me time I think to get MONUMENTS MEN read by the movie release date. It only has 426 pages and character descriptions in the front and the back of the book. This is a book based on a true event so it is a little easier to keep straight.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

No this is not one of the 100 nor is it one of the 16. I read this book because I gave my husband the first one to read and I wanted to finish this one before he took it from me. I like this book and the series because I relate to Flavia. I did not have a big lab at my house just the bathroom. I would sit in there mixing things together to see what happened. I am lucky I did not explode the bathroom or the house. I also had evil thoughts about my sister who was responsible for some of my misery at the age of 10. My husband how ever, who I thought would like this series, does not. He is looking at it from a father's perspective and is worried that she will truly do something horrible to her sisters. Maybe it is because it is a girl having the adventure and not the a guy. If you want a quick read when you are tired and do not have the energy to discern who is who, or read about war before you go to bed, then I think that you to will enjoy this book.

Labor Day

Last post I said that I took on an extra challenge, well I can safely say that I have read LABOR DAY by Joyce Maynard, before the movie came out. Now I have a head up on the movie and can critique it on whether it stayed true to the book or not. This movie comes out Jan 31., I will not go that night because well, it is my anniversary and I have other plans. But it would be an okay movie to see on an anniversary as it is a romance. A weird romance but one nevertheless. It is told from the viewpoint of the son of a reclusive woman. Why reclusive, because her husband left her because she was depressed about the loss of her babies. My husband always says that the male sex only thinks about, well, sex. This is true for this boy and I wonder if the movie will focus on any of this or just go to the relationship of the mother with the escapee. It is the one problem I have with movies is that sometimes you do not get to hear that inner voice. Sometime after Jan 31st I will let you know how this book/movie relationship works. As for GRAVITY'S RAINBOW it is a work in progress. I am going to have to get a notebook and write down characters and relationships as I come to them, so I have a reference. The book jumps back and forth between people but they are all interconnected. Or maybe I am just not concentrating hard enough on this War story. Hope to report back soon.

Yet another challenge

I am adding another challenge to my reading list, though I will continue with my current challenge of reading the 100. This is a much smaller list: Read the books to 16 movies before they are released in 2014. I have already read three of the books: DIVERGENT, THE GIVER and GONE GIRL. The other books on the list: LABOR DAY by Joyce Maynard movie out Jan 31. MONUMENTS MEN by Edsel and Witter, movie out Feb 7 WINTER's TALE by Mark Helprin, movie out Feb 14 (Just in time for Valentines Day) VAMPIRE ACADEMY by Richelle Mead, also Feb 14 A LONG WAY DOWN by Nick Hornby, March 7 DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth, March 21 *** FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green, June 6 THE HUNDRED FOOT JOURNEY by Richard C. Morais, Aug 8 THE GIVER by Lois Lowry, Aug 15 **** DARK PLACES by Gillian Flynn, Sept 9 THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU by Jonathan Tropper, Sept. 12 THE MAZE RUNNER by James Dashner, Sept. 19 GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn, Oct. 3 ***1/2 UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand, Dec. 25 WILD by Cheryl Strayed, release date in 2014 unknown SERENA by Ron Rash, release date in 2014 unknown Looks easy enough. Still working on Gravity's Rainbow, so I will probably be two timing with LABOR DAY.

Orchid House

ORCHID HOUSE is not on my 100 list but is a book I just finished for my book club. It is written by Lucinda Riley. If you like Downtown Abbey sort of stories then you will love this book. It starts with the Legend of the Black Orchid and then gets into the main story. The place that most of the story takes place is around a manor house in Norfolk, England called Wharton Park. The story is set in both the present and the past in the 1940's. Other places involved in the story are Thailand and Paris. Little twists and turns occur throughout the story. You will learn to hate and then possibly love Harry Crawford. Or you may waffle back and forth on this character, I am still not sure I like him, but I do pity him. I definitely feel sorry for Olivia, Harry's wife. But WWII caused all sorts of trouble for all sorts of people, even the upper class had to make sure that their estates would survive, even if it meant an arranged marriage, of sorts. Again lots of twists and turns. The other wronged person is Julia, who is a great pianist who lost her husband and child in a tragic accident, or did she? Anyway, her sister, Alicia, brings her back from France and Julia then finds solitude in a little cottage. Of course, everyone worries about her until love runs into her and she gradually stops beating herself up. Her relatives are a little convoluted so this is where we weave the stories together. I will not go into anymore detail, so that you can read the book. I like historical fiction and I like flowers, so the characters of the gardener, Bill, and his wife, Elsie, are my favorites. They are the grandparents of Julia, so she spent time going to the greenhouse at Wharton Park and falling in love with the estate. It is where she first meets Kit, when she was a child. Kit is the current owner of Wharton Park, which he is trying to sell due to heavy repairs that need to be done. If I were to use my 5 star system I would give this 4. This is a debut novel of Lucinda Riley, who was born in Ireland and lives with her husband and 4 children in rural England. The book was published by Atria Paperback a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc. Copyright 2011, published by Atria in February 2012.

Book List for Challenge

www.listchallenges.com 100s of lists · 1 login for all lists · big images · earn stars · create lists · mobile ready What I should have posted before even starting this adventure. I am going to go through this list and put stars next to the ones I have read as a sort of rating system. These include one I have read before starting this challenge. 5 star rating system and maybe some remarks. The Book List Challenge Are you well-read? Prove it! Not into this list? Try these other lists 1. 1984 George Orwell *** 2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain *** 3. The Alchemist Paulo Coelho **** 4. Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll **** 5. All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren ***(good read but would not feel like I needed to read again.) 6. All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy *** 7. The Ambassadors Henry James * (Will never pick up book because it is impossible to get through) 8. And Then There Were None Agatha Christie **(simple story that has been remade several times) 9. Anne of Green Gables L.M. Montgomery*** 10. Beloved Toni Morrison *** 11. Brave New World Aldous Huxley *** 12. Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 13. Bridget Jones’s Diary Helen Fielding ****(fun) 14. The Call of the Wild Jack London **** 15. The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 16. Catch-22 Joseph Heller 17. The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger *** 18. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl **** 19. Charlotte’s Web E.B. White **** 20. Cloud Atlas David Mitchel ***(Like the story, took some time to figure out flow of book) 21. The Color Purple Alice Walker *** 22. A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole ** (Do not agree with critics that this is hilarious) 23. Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 24. Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky 25. Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler ****( Found book intriguing) 26. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes 27. Dracula Bram Stoker 28. Dune Frank Herbert ** 29. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe 30. Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 31. A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 32. Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin *** 33. The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing 34. Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell ***** 35. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 36. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck ***** (I like the classics) 37. Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 38. Great Expectations Charles Dickens *** 39. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald **** 40. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 41. Hamlet William Shakespeare 42. The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood *** 43. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone J.K. Rowling ***** 44. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 45. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 46. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams *** 47. Howard's End E.M. Forster 48. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 49. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 50. Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë **** 51. The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini 52. Les Miserables Victor Hugo 53. Life of Pi Yann Martel *** 54. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis *** 55. The Little Prince Antoine De Saint-Exupery *** 56. Little Women Louisa M Alcott ***** 57. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 58. Lord of the Flies William Golding ***( Do not like concept) 59. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring J.R.R. Tolkien ***** 60. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 61. Main Street Sinclair Lewis *** 62. The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett 63. Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden *** 64. Middlemarch George Eliot 65. Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie 66. Moby Dick Herman Melville *** 67. Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs * (Just could not read it, made me feel jumpy) 68. Native Son Richard Wright 69. Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) Philip Pullman ** 70. The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway *** 71. On The Road Jack Kerouac 72. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez 73. A Prayer for Owen Meaney John Irving *** 74. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen **** 75. The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 76. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 77. The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett *** 78. The Secret History Donna Tartt 79. A Separate Peace John Knowles 80. The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon 81. Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 82. Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 83. Sons and Lovers D.H. Lawrence 84. The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner *** 85. Stranger in a Strange Land Robert Heinlein ** 86. Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransom 87. The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger 88. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee **** 89. To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 90. A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute **** 91. Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 92. Ulysses James Joyce 93. Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 94. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 95. Watership Down Richard Adams *** 96. The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler 97. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 98. Winnie the Pooh A.A. Milne *** 99. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte **** 100. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig I will hopefully finish the rest of this list by the end of this year. Though I do have some heavy hitters in terms of volume. Plus I am having trouble finding some of these books at the library as well as the bookstores. Have fun reading this year.

Changed my book to 'DARKNESS AT NOON' by Arthur Koestler

I was suppose to be reading "THE ELECTRIC ACID KOOL-AID TEST" but instead I read "DARKNESS AT NOON" by Arthur Koestler. It was written in 1941. It opens with quotes from Machiavelli's DISCORSI and Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. The author explains that the central character is based on a composite of people that he knew and what happened to them. The author was born in Budapest, educated in Vienna, a communist in 1930's, disillusioned with party in 1938, captured, sentenced to death, released, arrested, released, goes to England, writes, dies in 1983. This book is written to reflect what happened after the Revolution in Russia, during the 1930's. It's central character is named Rubashov, and he is arrested and put into prison, where he is urged to write a confession. The person who is in charge of the prison has been a friend and a comrade during the revolution. Why is Rubashov imprisoned, for very much the same reason our author was imprisoned, disagreeing with the Party. Rubashov was a leader in this Party, but started seeing things he disagreed with, killing of people because they had a different vision than the Party. Though he let people die to save his neck on several occasions. I remember taking my Soviet Studies class in the 1970's, we studied Russia and the revolution but I do not remember studying about the Oppositionist party. Those who felt that the Party had taken a turn from being for the people and had become a dictatorship. The people who were suppose to raise to the top still became trampled. It was a very eye opening book, similar in a way to the book "ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH" by Solzhenitsyn. When I had read that book I learned all about the Siberian labor camp, now I learned about a different type of prison. The difference is in the cell type and the circumstances of imprisonment. In fact it made me want to read Solzhenitsyn's book again. If you have not read either book I suggest that you do. There were several quotes that intrigued me in "DARKNESS AT NOON", "The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it...But who will be proved right? It will only be known later..." My husband sometimes say, "Do the deed first, then ask for forgiveness later," or something to that effect. I think of war and how war crimes are determined. The losing side always pays for the what they did wrong, but sometimes the winning side has done the same thing as the losers, but the winners do not have to pay for their wrongs. To be even more specific, we gave arms to Iraqi's but then we found out the person we supported was a monster. We thought we were doing something right, but in hindsight it became a disaster. A disaster we are still paying for with innocent lives. Okay, maybe I should not read anymore political books, my next book is GRAVITIES RAINBOW in addition to rereading ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH.