books that I own and might read
Explore my curated reading list of books I own and might read, featuring fiction, biographies, and literary gems like The Da Vinci Code, Jitterbug Perfume, and Expecting Adam.
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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by Dai Sijie
New York Times Bestseller Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is an enchanting tale that captures the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening. An immediate international bestseller, it tells the story of two hapless city boys exiled to a remote mountain village for re-education during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There the two friends meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, the two friends find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.
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Expecting Adam
by Martha Nibley Beck
Beck was focused on her career in academia until she discovered her second child would have Down syndrome. This is her account of her pregnancy.
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Journal of a Novel
by John Steinbeck
Each working day from January 29 to November 1, 1951, John Steinbeck warmed up to the work of writing East of Eden with a letter to the late Pascal Covici, his friend and editor at The Viking Press. It was his way, he said, of "getting my mental arm in shape to pitch a good game." Steinbeck's letters were written on the left-hand pages of a notebook in which the facing pages would be filled with the test of East of Eden. They touched on many subjects—story arguments, trial flights of workmanship, concern for his sons. Part autobiography, part writer's workshop, these letters offer an illuminating perspective on Steinbeck's creative process, and a fascinating glimpse of Steinbeck, the private man.
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The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu work to solve the murder of an elderly curator of the Louvre, a case which leads to clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci and a centuries-old secret society.
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Jitterbug Perfume
by Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight (Paris time). It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.
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Sugar
by Bernice L. McFadden
Set in a small Arkansas town in the 1950s, this tale of loyalty and friendship between two African-American women finds Jude turning to the church after the death of her daughter, and to a young woman who turns out to be a prostitute. A first novel. Reprint.
