Off List Picks

by Beverly Tjerngren

It's confession time. I didn't read all the books on my 2005 Reading List. I didn't even come close. I did buy most of them, if that counts for anything.

Another confession: buying books is the reason that I wasn't able to cross all the must-reads off my list. Even though I had a stack of books I had vowed to read by year's end, more and more and more books that I couldn't live without kept finding their way onto my shelves, and I read many of them--not all, not by a long shot--instead. Every time I turned around, it seemed, someone else was talking about the great book she'd just read, and I couldn't resist reading it, too. So, rather than an update about one of the books from the list, I thought I'd share with you some of the gems I uncovered while I was supposed to be reading something else.

The Secret Life of Bees is the acclaimed first novel of Sue Monk Kidd. Set in the American South in 1964, it's a well-written, heartwarming story about family and female relationships.

Boyhood is a brilliant and fascinating glimpse into growing up white in apartheid-era South Africa by by J.M. Coetzee, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman is perhaps my favorite of all the books I read this year. Hoffman is at her best in this story of love and sorrow, betrayal and revenge, loss and redemption and, ultimately, hope.

Gods in Alabama is the much-talked-about debut novel of Joshilyn Jackson. I'll admit it took me about half the book to get really invested in the plot, and I found the writing annoying at times, but the story itself is top-notch. I had goosebumps on my arms and tears in my eyes as I read the final pages.

As I write this, I'm about sixty pages into The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, a book that is on my list, and so far it looks promising. I'll let you know next time how it turned out.