My 20 Books in 2009



TITLE:
Cool To Be Kind (Random Acts and How to Commit Them)

AUTHORS: Val Litwin, Brad Stokes, Erik Hanson, Chris Bratseth



DESCRIPTION: In August of 2002, four twenty-something friends in Canada packed a motor home and embarked upon a three-month nonprofit marathon known coast to coast as The Extreme Kindness Tour. Their mission: to commit as many random acts of kindness in as many communities as possible. This record documents their heartwarming stories of friendship and kindness and provides readers with ways to start their own kindness movements and get involved in their own communities. From mile zero to St. John's, The Extreme Kindness Tour staffed soup kitchens, broke horses, roofed houses, delivered flowers, sang songs, visited hospitals, raised funds, and staged rallies determined to make someone's day and encourage them to "pay it forward," connecting the world through kindness.

DATE FINISHED: Jan. 31, 2009





TITLE: The Cat Who Came to Breakfast

AUTHOR: Lilian Jackson Braun




DESCRIPTION: This is the 16th installment in Braun's popular "The Cat Who..." series. Jim Qwilleran and and his Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum, journey to a peaceful island paradise that is rapidly being developed into a luxurious resort, where a series of mysterious ""accidents"" has been occurring.

DATE FINISHED: Feb. 7, 2009




TITLE: Deadly Decisions


AUTHOR: Kathy Reichs



DESCRIPTION: Violence is escalating, and spilling onto the streets of Montreal. A nine-year-old girl is killed in crossfire on her way to ballet class. The body of a teenager killed in North Carolina is found hundreds of miles away. Forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan has to pick up the pieces: she knows she shouldn't let emotion get in the way, but when nin-year-old Emily's body is wheeled into the morgue she cannot help but react. An exhumation uncovers the bones of another inocent in a clandestine grave close to a biker gang headquarters. With her boss in hospital and sparring partner Detective Andrew Ryan mysteriously unavailable, Tempe alone begins a perilous investigation into the lawless underworld of organised crime...


DATE FINISHED: March 29, 2009




TITLE: The Stone Diaries


AUTHOR: Carol Shields




DESCRIPTION: This fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, captured in Daisy's vivacious yet reflective voice, has been winning over readers since its publication in 1995, when it won the Pulitzer Prize. After a youth marked by sudden death and loss, Daisy escapes into conventionality as a middle-class wife and mother. Years later she becomes a successful garden columnist and experiences the kind of awakening that thousands of her contemporaries in mid-century yearned for but missed in alcoholism, marital infidelity and bridge clubs. The events of Daisy's life, however, are less compelling than her rich, vividly described inner life--from her memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death. Shields' sensuous prose and her deft characterizations make this, her sixth novel, her most successful yet.


DATE FINISHED: April 7, 2009




TITLE: Death du Jour

AUTHOR: Kathy Reichs



DESCRIPTION: Death du Jour is the second novel by Kathy Reichs in the Temperance Brennan series. This novel finds Tempe trying to link a series of seemingly unrelated deaths in both Quebec and the southern United States. Katy, Tempe's daughter, appears more extensively in this book, as does Detective Andrew Ryan.

DATE FINISHED: April 2009




TITLE: Your Boy: Raising A Godly Son In An Ungodly World

AUTHOR: Vicki Courtney



DESCRIPTION: When popular speaker Vicki Courtney released the best-selling Your Girl in 2004, and Beth Moore declared it "A must read for every daughter’s mother," it wasn’t long before a fast-growing audience was naturally requesting Your Boy. After all, parents are seeking help to grow godly sons as well. And as the mother of two boys herself, Vicki rises to the occasion with this inspiring, tell-it-like-it-is new favorite.

DATE FINISHED: April 2009




TITLE: Where The Heart Is

AUTHOR: Billie Letts



DESCRIPTION: Oprah Book Club® Selection, December 1998: A funny thing happens to Novalee Nation on her way to Bakersfield, California. Her ne'er-do-well boyfriend, Willie Jack Pickens, abandons her in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart and takes off on his own, leaving her with just 10 dollars and the clothes on her back. Not that hard luck is anything new to Novalee, who is "seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight--and superstitious about sevens.... For most people, sevens were lucky. But not for her," Billie Letts writes. "She'd had a bad history with them, starting with her seventh birthday, the day Momma Nell ran away with a baseball umpire named Fred..."

Still, finding herself alone and penniless in Sequoyah, Oklahoma is enough to make even someone as inured to ill fortune as Novalee want to give up and die. Fortunately, the Wal-Mart parking lot is the Sequoyah equivalent of a town square, and within hours Novalee has met three people who will change her life: Sister Thelma Husband, a kindly eccentric; Benny Goodluck, a young Native American boy; and Moses Whitecotton, an elderly African American photographer. For the next two months, Novalee surreptitiously makes her home in the Wal-Mart, sleeping there at night, exploring the town by day. When she goes into labor and delivers her baby there, however, Novalee learns that sometimes it's not so bad to depend on the kindness of strangers--especially if one of them happens to be Sam Walton, the superchain's founder.

DATE FINISHED: April 2009




TITLE: Called: Hello, My Name Is Mrs. Jefferson. I Understand Your Plane Is Being Hijacked. 9:45 Am, Flight 93, September 11, 2001

AUTHOR: Lisa D. Jefferson & Felicia Middlebrooks



DESCRIPTION: With one ring of the phone, Lisa Jefferson went from GTE Airfone supervisor, suburban wife, and mother to the listening ear of a nation shattered by tragedy. Called tells the gripping account of 9/11 from her vantage point...the moment she took the call from Todd Beamer on United Airlines Flight 93...hearing the immortal words, "Let's Roll"...seeing her life transformed, simply by responding to the call. Jefferson sends a stirring challenge to all of us--whether it comes during quiet obscurity or international adversity, we must be prepared to answer God's call.


DATE FINISHED: August 2009




TITLE: The Reading Bug

AUTHOR: Paul Jennings



DESCRIPTION: The one person who will do more than anyone else to help your child learn to read ... is you.

Parents are the best reading teachers in the world.

An easy-to-read, practical guide packed with simple strategies to help your child learn to love books. Paul Jennings cuts through the jargon and controversy to show how every parent can infect their child with the reading bug.

* Brilliant booklists for parents and children
* The whole reading experience explained
* Great cartoons and anecdotes
* Practical advice from bestselling writer and teacher Paul Jennings

Paul Jennings is Australia's bestselling children's author. He worked as a special-education teacher and lecturer before becoming a full-time writer.


DATE FINISHED: August 2009

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