Modern Mommies discussion

With the end of 2008 drawing near to a close I'm curious as to what some of the best reads of the year were for everyone.

This year I had some phenomenol reads and some of the top for me are The Road, Blindness,The Cider House Rules and The Bell Jar.

In the serious book category my favorites were "Nineteen Minutes" and "The Dress Lodger." For fun it was the Darkness Chosen series by Christina Dodd and any Navy SEAL story by Suzanne Brockmann.

The Russian Concubine sounds good,as does the Dress Lodger and has been added to an ever expanding wishlist.Thanks Amanda and Shea!

My favourites this year: Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen), Forty Words for Sorrow (Giles Blunt), The Hero's Walk (Anita Rau Badami), A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini), The Doomsday Book (Connie Willis), and The Road (Cormac McCarthy).

Amanda, I wasn't sure whether I would like it when I heard what it was about, but I ended up really enjoying it!

I read quite a bit of YA--I just read An Abundance of Katherines (John Green) and it was a great read. I have a hard time reflecting on my favorite--I have a love/hate relationship with Jodi Picoult books-I read Change of Heart, Mercy, and Second Glance--Second Glance was my fav. Non-fiction I finally read Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson). Memoirs/essays--Annie Lamott's Grace Eventually. I also read spiritual based type books--Same Kind of Different as me (Ron Hall and Denver Moore) is thought provoking.

I really enjoyed Water for Elephants as well. Having grown up on a carnival the book had a very authentic feel to it for me. I also discovered Giles Blunt this year and found both Forty Words for Sorrow and By the Time You Read This very engrossing reads.

As for a sickness when buying books I know what you mean Amanda. I was shocked at the amount of books I've bought since joining GRs this year! I won't share the amount for fear of exposing how demented I've been when buying books but let's just say I have enough books to keep me busy fot about 2 years. It's so hard though to read what someone else is reading and not want it for myself.(I clearly have a problem with patience and discipline!)

On the plus side I have read some really great books I would not have attempted a year ago.

I'm lucky that I have a great library and I hardly ever buy books! I can get most of what I want from the library...sometimes I have to wait awhile but it's not like I have a shortage of things to read in the meantime!

Sherry, that's funny that you also found Giles Blunt this year; I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of him before. I love mystery novels but I find a lot of them aren't that well written, so it's a treat to find an author who writes such great literary thrillers. I haven't read By The Time You Read This yet, but I have worked through the others in the series. Maybe I will get to that one over the holidays!

I read the entire Boleyn series this year and really enjoyed them, "The Other Boleyn Girl" and "The Virgin's Lover" were my favorites of the five. I also really liked "The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette". I went through a historical fiction faze this last half year.

I would say my favorite book for 2008 would be "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. I read this book in August and still today I think about this book and how much I enjoyed it. I plan on reading the second book "World Without End" this year and hear it is just a good.

I loved Pillars! It was so different from anything I had read from him before that and it took me a while to get into it but when I did, I was glad I stuck with it. A marvelous story...