The Notebook

Title: The Notebook
Author: Nicholas Sparks
Finished: April 4, 2009
Pages: 214
Published: 1996

Nicholas Sparks’ first novel about two young lovers who are separated after one summer together to lead their own lives only to have fate bring them back together years later.

I found a lot of hype around this love story of a modern Romeo and Juliet, and around the movie. While I enjoyed the movie and the book, I don’t think it’s going to be my favorite Sparks novel by far. It’s only my second by him, and yet it’s my second favorite. I find many times that the first novel for some authors is not their best and their writing grows over the years, so this may be true for Sparks.

However, I did enjoy this story of Allie and Noah and look forward to more Nicholas Sparks novels in the future.

*Challenges – Book Into Movie Challenge, 999 Challenge, 50/100+ Challenge, Romance Reading Challenge, 2nds Challenge, TBR Challenge, Book vs. Movie Challenge, Spring Reading Thing, Book Binge

Other Review: Reading With Tequila

New BBC Book List

I found this on Library Thing. Sounded fun.

The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here:
How do your reading habits stack up?
Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (in progress)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (in progress)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis (in progress)
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Sex and the City: the Movie by Amy Sohn

Title: Sex and the City the Movie
Author: Amy Sohn
Finished: April 4, 2009
Pages: 176
Published: 2008

Another book, similiar to Twilight Director’s Notebook, all about Sex and the City: the Movie.

I almost enjoyed this book more than the Twilight movie making journey for a few reasons. First, it was longer. Second, it included more text with the pictures and went indepth into discussion about certain aspects of the movie making and key scenes. There was an introduction, then a recap of a every single season and the lives of each character. Furthermore, the author included the entire layout and storyline of the movie with pictures, quotes from the director and actors, plus synopsis. Also included were details on sets, filming locations, and a look at every outfit worn by the girls including all 80 wardrobe changes for Sarah Jessica Parker.

A warning: if you haven’t seen the movie, don’t read the book otherwise you will find out every single thing that happens.

Also a quick read, I had a great time reading and remembering all the good times with the girls and also the movie itself. Just reading through the book made me want to start watching all the seasons over again.

It’s a must read for any Sex and the City fan out there.

*Challenges – 50/100+ Challenge, New Authors Challenge, Book Binge