My Pretty Stack

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"My Pretty Stack" page will be updated continually as I go along my journey from books to books, so show some love by checking in there once in awhile. Please feel free to comment on the books and suggest some for my future reading. Better yet, tell me about the latest book you've read and would you recommend it?

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Currently Reading 2006 Book #6 and #7
Lady Chatterley's Lover - DH Lawrence
Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--the adulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class married woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by her wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex, and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel is memorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterful and lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world of its characters.

I'm Pregnant - Weekly Pregnancy Guide - Lesley Regan



Check back for my review on this book.
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2006 Book #5
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

This is another choice in our Classics Book Club. I was quite intrigued at first but truly had a hard time going through the book, mainly because of its content. Here's a little intro on the book. When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

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2006 Book #4
The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams


Check back for my review on this book.
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Written with gentleness and elegance, like one of those old Chinese scroll paintings. Love, loss, and tragedy are the three main aspects of any excellent novel.

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2006 Book #2
Fortune's Rocks - by Anita Shreve

This magnificent novel transports us to the turn of the last century, to the social realm of a prominent Boston family summering on the New hampshire coast, and to the world of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man - with cataclysmic results.

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2006 Book #1
The Fox Snow - Susan Fromberg Schaefer

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer has painted an elegant, intricate portrait of 12th-century Japan, a world of noble lords, samurai and beautiful ladies whose faces are always hidden from view. The daughter of one of the palace women has written the love story of her mother, Lady Utsu, and Matsuhito, the samurai who can love no one else.

Comments

Mom on the Run said…
You are the book slut and I am the book whore. Unfortunately, I am lame at HTML and have yet to put my book section up. These all look wonderful, love Pearl Buck and Anita Shreve. Currently reading: Back When we Were Grownups by Anne Tyler, (fiction) Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age (my 'parent' book) and Wherever You Go, There You Are', whenver I feel the need to go ballistic, great meditation book Like your blog!
MJ Tam said…
mommy on the verge (aka bookwhore hehe) - I am definitely going to look into that book - Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age - that you suggested. It is so right up our alley as Mommies of this generation. Thanks for coming by and please dont be a stranger! - and by the way, when you finally get that book section up, the bookslut will be there for yah! lol
utenzi said…
I've got a huge pile of unread books also, but mine aren't quite as high-brow as yours. I manage to read about a book a week--but I remember the good ole days when it was 4 a week...but then came that working for a living crap.
C. H. Green said…
So many books...so little time. I just stopped by because I saw you renting on someone else's blog and wanted to see what the naughty contest was. Blush...Curiosity killed the cat, I know. Anyway I got a lot of great laughs over reading the entries. Reminds me of the time we took my six month old and my mother along on vacation. We hid in the bathroom late at night after both were snoozing and took care of business. Afterward we videotaped both of them snoring--my son in his playpen, and my mom on the rollaway. I don't think anything would have woke them up at that point. LOL
Anonymous said…
What a list!! I so want to check out these books....
Anonymous said…
WOW,I'm impressed. Now, can I borrow The Fox Snow and The Three Daughters of Madame Liang??

GK
Maritza said…
The only book I would disagree with is "Fortune's Rock". I'm not an Anita Shreve fan, though I admit this is one of her better books. The sense of time and place was well done, but I thought it was a little hokey especially the courtroom scene. Good list!
Billychic said…
What a great list of books!

I've only read two of them, and the others authors have always been in queue somewhere on my list.

I read Lolita for the first time when I was 12...I know, I know...

And since I'm an actress, Menagerie (or anything by Williams) is as important to read as air. Have you read Veaux Carre? Another play by his that is beautiful in its tragedy, yet not as well known.

From one book slut to another, I salute you! Great blog, btw. I'm going to check out Intimate Pursuits when I get home...