Eric Pallant's Book List Home Fiction Reviews Nonfiction Reviews Jewish Books Mystery To Read Links Type Book List into Google and 37,200,000 hits come up. So why another one? Because whenever I cross the threshold of a public library the list of books friends have recommended, or reviews of books I swore I'd read, immediately leaves my mind. I'm soon overwhelmed by hundreds of artfully designed book covers and a completely blank mind. That's why I started keeping a list of books I've read and books I'd like to read. Also, I forgot what I've read, or remember I read it, but can't remember what it's about. The following lists includes books I've read and books recommended to me, mostly by my mother, referred to under recommendations as LEP. Mom reads everything from cereal boxes to Melville and reads them faster than I can eat cookies. I think she is an excellent judge of quality. My Home Page. Recent Reads Born to Run **** (of 4) by Christopher McDougall The author immerses himself in the ultra-marathoning community and finds, and compellingly describes, the kind of people that run 100 miles, up and down mountains, in the desert, in the summer, for fun.  Then he finds  read more... Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes *** (of 4) This is such an accurate rendtion of 1960s Harlem I could smell the trash in the streets, sense the despair, hear the sirens, and feel like an invisible observer of slum-bound African Americans before civil rights. Read More... No writer captures anxiety, apprehension, fear, and hopelessness better than Roth. ...Plot Against America is a perfect vehicle, a midrash, on what might have happened in the U.S. if, read more... The Plot Against America by Philip Roth *** (of 4) Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama *** (of 4) Obama's memoir of his earliest memories through his years as an organizer strike me first as the story of someone I could easily have gone to college with: read more... Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost *** (of 4) In the style of Bill Bryson, self-effacing and laugh aloud funny, Troost describes his adventures on the Pacific isles of Vanuatu and Fiji. read more... Additional Categories Generally speaking the following categories list only books I really liked (*** and ****) in each category. There are others, but you'll have to hunt for the reviews. Travel Confederates in the Attic, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Holy Land: A suburban memoir, No Man's River, The Places in Between, Walk in the Woods, Winter, Oracle Bones, To Hate Like this is to be Happy Forever, Fire, Born to Run, Getting Stoned with Savages Islam The Attack, Guests of the Sheik, The Looming Tower, Persepolis 1, Persepolis 2, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Shia Revival, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Palace Walk, The Forever War American History The March (fiction), A People's History of the United States, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (fiction), Taking on the Trust, A Bright Shining Lie, A Mercy (fiction), Mayflower Foreign History A Peace to End all Peace, 1491,Kristallnacht Fiction by Foreign Authors Corelli's Mandolin, The Dew Breaker, A Fine Balance, Interpreter of Maladies, Map of Lost Lovers, Natasha and Other Stories, Small Island, A Journey to the End of the Millennium India/Pakistan A Fine Balance, The Hungry Tide, Interpreter of Maladies, Maps for Lost Lovers, The White Tiger World War II,Holocaust The Lost, The Book Thief, Fear, Kristallnacht, Mila 18 (Several others with two ** or fewer), Band of Brothers, Plot Against America Nobel Prize Winners East of Eden, Palace Walk, Snow Favorites The Book Thief, Corelli's Mandolin, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, A Fine Balance, Mila 18, What is the What, The Nine, People of the Book, The Lost Recommendations by past and present students Hope's Edge, And Still We Rise, Blood Brothers, The Alchemist Memoir and Biography Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Persepolis 1, Persepolis 2 , Seabiscuit, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, Dreams from my Father African American Click here. I'm building new topical web pages. Middle Ages A Journey to the End of the Millennium, Gentlemen of the Road, A World Lit Only by Fire (Read it, but before I was keeping reviews), Year of Wonders, People of the Book, The Coffee Trader Best Reads of 2009 Daddy's Girl, The Forever War, A Bright Shining Lie, Year of Wonders, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Taking on the Trust, Into the Beautiful North, A Mercy, The Lost, The Hungry Tide, Born to Run, Dreams from my Father, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Getting Stoned with Savages Best Reads of 2008 Bangkok Haunts, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, Beaufort, People of the Book, Red Sea,To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever, Fire, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Know-it-All, Beaufort, A Death in Belmont, The Billionaire's Vinegar, Outwitting History, A Journey to the End of the Millennium, The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World