1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2. Breathers by SG Browne
3. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
4. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
5. Descent into Dust by Jaqueline Lepore
6. 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
7. An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender

I qualify best as a book I finish, and immediately start reading again. Therefore, this list is recent relative to the past two years. I try to read 100 unique books per year, so I'm pretty happy with this list.

Hi Yankees, I am italian and proud reader :). I'd like to know the best AMERICAN (US) authors in your opinion.
So far, I've read Steinback, Salinger, Pynchon, Delillo. Appreciated just the former two ones. Any advice? :)
If you want advice on European literature, I could give you that.
BYE!

My personal favorite authors would have to be Louis L'Amour, Clive Cussler, and Mark Twain. My favorite books by those authors are most likely (although it is very hard to choose!) Son of a Wanted Man by L.L., The Navigator by C.C., and Roughing It by M.T. I also really like books by Zane Grey.

I highly, HIGHLY recommend all of these books and authors. I'm soon going to be reading Cussler's book Polar Shift for the Spring Reading Challenge here on Bookmooch. If it is anything like his other books, then I know it will be great.

Does anybody else here like any of these authors? What are your favorite books by them?

I added Audio magazines on CD, weekly, monthly and quarterly of various publishers and interests (history, science, travel, Israel, Palestine, holocaust, archeology and much more) to my inventory:

Tel Aviv University, Zakman Shazar Center Zmanim, History Quarterly, זמנים רבעון להסטוריה

יד יצחק בן צבי, ארץ וטבע - המגזין הגיאוגרפי הישראלי, מסע אחר מסע אחר, ארץ וטבע, עת מול

The Jerusalem Report, Time Magazine (ENGLISH)

לקט עיתונות שבועי, מגזין כלכלי, ספורט, מגזין תרבות, חייים אחרים גיליון 206, 10.1.2014

I send worldwide, no limitations.

My inventory:
Michal

Excellent, brilliant, does not disappoint. Highly recommended.

hi guys,

I've got Ghost Soliders to give away and its an amazing account of the greatest rescue in world war 2 in the Pacific theatre.

such a good well written book, The Author Hampton sides books are tremendous and I really just want to advocate the hell out of it to get some to mooch, cause i feel guilty its not been read right now.

hope someone gets in touch from UK, as thats all i will send it to, unless you can get an angel.

enjoy and check out my inventory

Andy

hi, my favourite book is " Pay it forward" it was amazing...
and "the green mile" these are some book`s that i suggest you to read ?:)

If you'd like to read a series that combines science fiction with mystery and thriller elements, try Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Retrieval Artist series, starting with The Disappeared. It's about a man who starts out as a police officer on the Luna Colony, whose duties are about to force him to hunt down humans who have inadvertently committed crimes against alien cultures and who have been sentenced to various horrible fates. He doesn't like doing this, and all sorts of startling developments ensue. There are seven in the series so far, and they're all consistently good.

Someone was looking for Canadian authors the other day. I remembered that when I received this from my Powells Review A Day. thought it might be useful...

The Sentimentalists
by Johanna Skibsrud

"The Sentimentalists" by Johanna Skibsrud
A Review by Rayyan Al-Shawaf

Post a comment about this review on the Powells.com blog

"Johanna who? "

Many Canadians scratched their heads on receiving word that The Sentimentalists, by Johanna Skibsrud, had won their country's prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2010. It wasn't only because Canadians found her name difficult to pronounce -- prior to The Sentimentalists, Skibsrud's debut novel, she was a virtual unknown, with a single collection of poetry to her name.

Yet there it was. The tiny Nova Scotia press that had put out Skibsrud's book of poetry had so few copies of the novel in circulation -- 800, to be exact -- that most people could not get their hands on it. That issue was quickly resolved -- the book has since become a bestseller in Canada -- and now The Sentimentalists is being published in the US courtesy of W.W. Norton.

Emotionally satisfying as it may be to see an underdog win a major literary award, much of the hoopla surrounding this book seems unwarranted. It's not that The Sentimentalists is a subpar novel -- one could do a lot worse. But Skibsrud's insight into the effects war has on one's psyche is only occasionally original. And her agonizingly-slow-to-surface theme that feelings can alter or bury memory is not especially fresh or profound.

The unnamed narrator of The Sentimentalists intimates from the beginning that her father is a troubled man. But even after the reader learns that Napoleon Haskell served in Vietnam, it remains difficult to trace his problems and idiosyncrasies specifically to the conflict. Napoleon hardly fits the stereotype of a traumatized veteran. Excitable, voluble, and affectionate -- especially toward his two daughters -- he displays no overt signs of emotional distress. He likes Humphrey Bogart -- especially in the classic film Casablanca -- and quotes poetry. (The book's title comes from an arch comment made by the narrator about the author of a poem quoted by her father. When Napoleon recites "Remember me when I am dead and simplify me when I am dead," the narrator jokes that these are "the words of a rank sentimentalist.") Gradually, though, the narrator reveals her father's behavioral problems, including his abandonment of the family for several years, a lengthy period of alcoholism he eventually overcomes, and his inability to finish building a dream boat he wants to give his wife. The author drops hints that these issues bear some relation to experiences in Vietnam.

Turns out to be true, as we learn when transported to Vietnam in 1967 by an omniscient third-person narrator. Until this moment, the tale includes precious little action or drama. Indeed, Skibsrud's prolix prose, coupled with the narrator's drawn-out, intense naval-gazing (much of her contemplation has nothing at all to do with her father), nearly sinks the story. The narration plods along like a trooper with a 60-pound backpack, and only the suspicion that Napoleon's demons owe their birth to the long-ago war, and the hope that he will eventually open up, sustain reader interest. Even so, for the most part Napoleon refuses to talk about what happened. The narrator presses her father on the subject, to no avail. "Once my father said, women think that they can make sad things go away by knowing the reason that they happened. This was in dismissal of a question that I asked him once about his experiences in the war."

We learn that whatever happened to Napoleon likely had something to do with the death of his friend Owen. The narrator puts it in a deliberately flat manner early on: "Owen had been a friend of my father's and then he was killed in the war." The Sentimentalists begins with the narrator and her sister moving their elderly and weakened father from his trailer home in Fargo, North Dakota, to his friend Henry Carey's house in the (fictitious) town of Casablanca in Ontario. Henry? He's Owen's father.

Casablanca turns out to be the second incarnation of a town flooded in 1959 by the nearby lake. The original Casablanca lies forever submerged, a metaphor for the suppression of memory. The narrator, who lives in New York, leaves for Canada and moves in with her father and Henry after she catches her boyfriend cheating on her. Dying of cancer, and with a heightened sense of his mortality, Napoleon finally breaks his silence about the war. Even then, he doesn't really tell his daughter much about Owen. He mostly talks about his brother Clark, who also served in Vietnam and who, unlike Owen, is still alive and well.

Fortunately for the reader, Skibsrud changes tack, suddenly introducing an omniscient narrator who describes Napoleon's wartime experiences. We learn of Clark and his unit, but, more significantly, of Napoleon's unit and its involvement in a reconnaissance operation gone awry in a Vietnamese village. (Here, Skibsrud's story is based on a real-life incident at which her father Olaf, who died in 2008, was present.) During the operation, Owen may have been killed, and one or more of Napoleon's comrades may have killed at least one Vietnamese civilian, possibly as revenge. Nothing is completely clear.

Even the transcript of Napoleon's examination by a military investigative committee -- itself based on the actual transcript of Skibsrud's father's testimony -- fails to resolve the matter. Was Owen Carey killed in this operation? In his testimony, Napoleon says that a man named Adamsen died, and that Carey and another man were injured and evacuated. The narrator is left to wonder if Owen Carey died in the hospital and if one or more members of Napoleon's unit exacted vengeance for their buddies.

Again, nothing is clear, partly because "the actions of war are capable of establishing an event even at the moment of its occurrence as though it was already deeply in the past." Indeed, for the narrator, the entire episode illustrates how memory can be manipulated -- consciously and subconsciously -- by people wishing to absolve themselves of responsibility, or, conversely, to shoulder it, regardless of the facts of the case. The power of this observation mitigates at least a little the disappointment the reader will feel at not being able to determine what happened.

Why did this interesting but lackluster novel win the Scotiabank Giller Prize? The Vietnam War continues to hold a fascination for many people. In 2007, the National Book Award for fiction went to Denis Johnson's sprawling Vietnam War tale, Tree of Smoke. Clearly, in Canada too, Vietnam haunts the literary imagination. In 2005, the Scotiabank Giller went to another Vietnam novel, David Bergen's The Time In Between , which deals with a former soldier's grief over killing a Vietnamese civilian in the conflict. (Interestingly, even though thousands of Canadians fought alongside US troops as volunteers during the Vietnam War, both Skibsrud and Bergen's protagonists are Americans who end up living in Canada.) These and other works of fiction probing the Vietnam experience and its long shadow help us better understand the disturbing realities and far-reaching implications of that conflict. Johanna Skibsrud's debut novel makes its modest contribution; The Sentimentalists is an intermittently engrossing tale that explores the unreliable nature of memory in general, and that of people scarred by conflict in particular.

1. The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. 2. Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian. 3. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. 4. All Souls' Rising, by Madison Smartt Bell.

Hello All!

I've had a book in my inventory for awhile that surprises me since I thought the novel to be beautifully written. My version in an advanced reader copy and I was sure that once it was released my copy would be snatched up. To my dismay Daniel Kalla's book ever became a bestseller and seems to have been forgotten so soon.

Here is a description from Macmillan:

"A hundred years ago, Dr. Evan McGrath realized his dream of establishing a hospital in the Pacific Northwest, a hospital that would never turn away a patient in need. But the personal cost was steep: Evan lost the love of his life while making a powerful enemy of the hospital’s financier, Marshall Alfredson.

Today, the Alfredson Medical Center is internationally renowned for its care. The two founding families remain faithful to Evan’s vision, but their history is clouded by forbidden love, conflict, and betrayal. Crisis is besieging the Alfredson. A decision by Dr. Tyler McGrath, a child cancer specialist, leaves a young patient’s family shattered. Dr. Jill Laidlaw, Tyler’s wife, is a researcher poised to offer fresh hope to multiple sclerosis victims—including a former presidential frontrunner—until rumors of research fraud endanger her career. And in the face of temptation and career demands, Tyler and Jill are drifting apart.

Devastating family secrets, doomed relationships, and present-day medical disasters threaten not only the Alfredsons and McGraths but the legendary hospital itself."

hi! im lisa, only new to this book mooch! a friend recommened i join. i love true stories and real life! i am a HUGE fan of cathy glass and martha long books, well worth a read!! if any one has similar intersets and can recommened a good book please let me know! thanks

duma key by stephen king. this is really great book.not really horror but does cover some supernatural.

Top 10 ever. Our hero Daniel Sempere in 1937 Barcelona, embarks on an innocent inquiry that leads him through great discovery, love, betrayal, friendship, tragedy and redemption. All told with a style as easy on your soul as perhaps, Sarah Gruen, only a tad more cerebral.

Reading this virtually guarantees I'll pick up The Angels Game. I first discovered the novel when I found The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Stupidly, I bought Kavalier and left Shadow of the Wind for later. A pleasing discovery on the book was an endorsement by Stephen King who very seldom lends his voice to another novels cover. King had this to say of Shadow of the Wind, "One gorgeous read". King was dead on.

One word, if you read this, pay attention. There are two stories in one and they intertwine, as do some of the characters in each. Pay attention.

Many people seem to put the exactly the same edition on their wishlist, neglecting others that are available faster. Just so you know i have Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary(IN ENGLISH) in my inventory, please check it out :)

1. Restoration by Rose Tremain
2. Angel Cake by Helen Harris (A hidden gem)
3. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

What are your top three this year so far?

I find reading other people's suggestions on this site really helpful, so I thought I would do my bit and try to balance the favours somewhat. I've made a list below of some of the most enjoyable books I've come across in my life. These aren't "My Top" books,... because many of my absolute favourites are so well known that virtually everyone will have read them, (such as Gerald Durrell's "My Family and Other Animals").

Rather, here I've only added ones that I think a good number of people might not have come across yet. The order I put them in is completely random :

(1) City of Lingering Splendour, John Blofeld

(2) Crow Lake Mary Lawson

!3) Seal Morning Rowena Farre

(4) Swimming With my Father Tim Jeal

(5) The Deptford Trilogy Robertson Davies

(6) Extra Virgin Annie Hawes

(7) City of Djinns William Dalrymple

(8) The Purple Barrier: The Story of the Great Wall of China Peter Lum

.

This is a beautiful book and i loved it. Some of the passages in this book are almost poetic and stayed with me even after i finished reading it. I could actually feel the characters speaking to me through their words. That's a mark of a good book. I recommend this book to everyone even if it falls under the teen genre.

Lame Deer Seeker of Visions by Lame Deer

Ishi Last of the Yahi by Kroeber
Ishi in two worlds by Kroeber

Immense Journey By Loren Eiseley

The Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon

The Phenomenon of Man Paperback
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat
People of the Deer by Farley Mowat

It seldom I read a book and think wow everyone should read this but lately I have read a bunch.

1. The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors: A Novel
by Michele Young-Stone. It has a funny title but it is an endearing story.

2. Greyhound by Steffan Piper. A coming of age tale about a boy traveling across country on a Greyhound bus. It sounds so simple but the characters really come alive in the book. It covers alot of topics from race to abortion.

3. Broken Glass Park Author Alina Bronsky Translator Tim Mohr. Recommended by Barnes and Noble staff this month.