Our reviewers’ Top 100 books of 2011. What’s yours?

Off the top of my head, Nonfiction: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Understanding Global Slavery, by Kevin Bales
Fiction: The Hunger Games Trilogy.
I don't know much about literature, but I know what I enjoy.

Surely a top book of food-minded Villagers is the cookbook.

Road Kill Cook Book.  .   .  and the arma geddin edition makes a hagis version of stray....no WAIT!!   .  that is even too sad for me and my boo ja lay....how about the   hundred ways to make a hot dog ediblebugs cookbook?....how about the forthcoming  bugs can be good food?  the future looks grim on debate night...no matter how much wine (whine)

Bore da i pawb. OK, I'll have another go at getting through a whole day  to Nos da time.
Books wot I have red this year ..... Most of my books were in storage while the cottage was being refurbed, so I felt no need for new books as I welcomed crates of rather musty, woebegone volumes of old friends back into my home. A few of them, I must admit, I re-read and consigned to the Charity Shop heap, but many I could not bear to part with, despite my firm resolve to thin out my library. Book reviews? One man's meat is another man's (or woman's) poison. A rave review written by some pretentious poof in London has little relevance to me.
Ho hum, since the topic of the other day, I'm really worried about my apostrophes, among other nit-picky things to do with getting it write.
Have a great day, my dear people. x.

Definitely the Hunger Games books, The Help, andything John Sandford writes, Lee Child books, Stephen King books and on and on and on -- the rest are swirling through my head; "so many books, so little time".

Okay, I'll admit it. The most fun reading I had this year was the Steig Larsson trilogy you know, the Girl with The Dragon Tattoo etc--now coming out in a movie I will never see--don't mess with my books!
I also loved The Troubled Man, the last of the Wallender series by Henning Mankel. Don't be put off by the tv version, the books are soooo good.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon was really good, and a great introduction to the city of Barcelona. The Help, New York:The Novel by Edward Rutherford.

I don't think there is one of us here that doesn't revel in a good book or barring that, a good read. Back in my less discriminating days I would literally read anything "Love's Throbbing Dwarf" or the like but now what with other diversions including you guys! it has to be pretty good to suck me in. Many of the hours I spent reading I spend playing Scrabble or doing Crossword puzzles but I will say it again. If only we journalled what we had read. Imagine a little book containing a list of all the books you'd read that you culd leave behind. It would be kind of an autobiography. I t would also be very helpful in this day and age of authors like Jonathan Kellerman (whom I like) who decided to switch over to one word titles like "Rage" making it extremely possible to buy a book one has read before.

Oh, not this year, but can I please say "I Know This Much Is True" by Wally Lamb. Disappointed in Pat Conroy's last outing. GO HAVE BREAKFAST DEB.ok

Any book that is multi-generational such as The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn (yes, Huckleberry Finn) and so on.  My children, grandchildren and I all so enjoy reading the same thing, discussing them, getting excited when a new one comes out (and Grandma sends it to them) and oh yes, when the movie is made -- though that doesn't get me as much.  We then share this link, this interest.  I may not know the rappers, except for some, and I may miss some of their game since they live far away, but this, this brings us so close and makes their grandma more than the "go to" person; more human.

Chef Deb ~ Me too and, what's more, those books got me on to Jo Nesbo books.

Jo Nesbo? A new treat for me? Thank you ANDY! Also I agree with you many times over about you and your grandchildren and reading. My own isn't even 2 yet but I have been buying her books since before she was born. Although Harry Potter was never my own ticket, what a FANTASTIC thing to make reading "cool" again. I was sorry that my own kids have never gotten the same satisfaction and thrill from reading as I have, but I am hoping it will skip a generation and my little Shelby will catch it. We read a lot together now.

I got one new cookbook this year: The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook by Nancy Harmon Jenkins.  There are some excellent recipes in it.  I much enjoyed the "Fava Beans or Peas Roman Style," with the peas cooked with some diced prosciutto ham, diced onions, fresh parsley and thyme, etc. 

ChefDeb ~
Neil Conan had Will Shortz and the Times science editor on the radio talking about puzzles and a fellow with no evident sense of irony and a man of his (but not my) generation called to say that he worked sudokus at the office and had found that by leaving one for a ten minute break, otherwise known as doing his job, that it often helped with the solution.
He did not say where he worked.

Books that I love are kept to be read again. Really nice ones are passed along and some, and I have no qualms about it, are pitched on the premise that nobody should be asked to suffer them anymore.

It is a peculiar experience to be given a book by its author who is interested in your opinion.

I love adventure and I like my authors to be lusty men and women like their characters. London, Twain, and Hemingway "esque" so I vote for Clive Cussler who personifies Dirk Pitt and since I am reading I shall say the paperback version of Crescent Dawn. He has a new book about his car collection that is phenomenal-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOFEeweG0i0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I have spent the year off and on working with Kinky Friedman as he touts his beautiful piece-Heroes of a Texas Childhood- I am a big fan of Davy Crockett- but hearing Kinky read the chapter about his Dad, an aviator in WWII is so genuine and from this cowboy writer with attitude makes it moreso. When you check out his. Website and you see him sitting at the old desk at his ranch ya think there are some real ones still around- http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/ebooks.html

Cooking Books ~ years, years back when I had a small business as a side-line, I rendered unto Caesar my tax  return and got a charming letter back from a Tax Inspector congratulating me on my creative accountancy and commenting that the amounts involved were so trivial that it would cost more to pursue the issue than would justify any investigation. I quote "With a nod and a wink, we will say no more." How very English and civilized.

Lynn~ Your comment about being given a "What do you think?"  book - or even worse, manuscript. What is the polite way to say "I was the wrong person to ask."?

Re-read books are always new. How sweet it is to cuddle up with small children and read aloud your childhood favourites, only to discover that they have an adult content which is a bit sinister.

GOOD  ON  YOU  TOMMY !!!

As much as I loved the Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus tales when I was small, it is sad that they are out of print and considered to be "politically incorrect" these days....Fortunately, I have the 1950's Disney book to read to my granddaughter. Otherwise, how would she know of Brer Fox, Brer Bear, and Brer Rabbit's Laughin' Place! I am so sick of "politically correct" that I could just spit! If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then by d*@n call it a duck.

Like Hazel has explained, I usually do not depend upon the critiques of the "poofy" or "highbrow" critics for whether or not to read/see a literary work. I'd rather make up my own mind. I did read the "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" series, and will see the movie, if for nothing else but a comparison. In the case of "The Help, " I was pleasantly gratified that the film met the book.

(My page does not respond to Ctrl+ U, I, B for correct punctuation for titles...sorry.)

Ahhh, I thought we were only listing books from this year. Since the majority of my possesions have been in storage for 16 months while my home went through some 'This Old House' work to make sure it would stand another 160 years and then through staging for market I've only have a few antique, classic, or otherwise beautiful of my beloved books out in my lovely but frustrating-to-live in house.

Of the many, many boxes I miss, such as those labeled "Winter Clothes" that I'm now in my 2nd Winter without (Thank goodness for Goodwill and Salvation Army), by far the hardest are not the daily utensils or flotsam and jetsam that make home, Home, it's my books. Forty-eight boxes to be exact. That's after I had a local bookseller come buy almost all the valuable onesand liberal donations to the annual Library fundraiser.

I'm an inveterate re-reader. I promised myself as a child that every bok I loved would b purchased in hardcover when I grew up. Added to my adult favorites that's a lot of books. I have series (I love them too CD) that I reread to suit/cure moods. Immersing in Lucy Maud Montgomery's 8 Anne of Green Gables can cure the worst case of cynical "I-hate-the-world".

My bookshop friend laughs over my strange collection. I told him after 'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn"I started every new school or public library at A or Z and read as far as I could before we moved again so I have a strange assortment.

Upon hearing what I do people invariably recommend I read some tragic book that shocked them. I understand why, but the older I get the more I've retreated into Juvenile or Young Adult fiction. I see enough of the world's harsher edges in reality, I don't want to read about it in my retreat time. Similar to why I don't "do" horror films. What's the point?

I went through the erotic trash phase (Good grief, did we all?) when I joined the military but it was over by the time I turned 19 and discovered that unlike my regular reading, it didn't leave me with anything to keep. All it did was distort my concept of what romance and sex were purported to be. What a shock that was. That was enough to drive me back to Saki and Ray Bradbury.

I do love to pass a book that is a favorite to someone who responds. It's satisfying and gratifying because I live my initial enjoyment again. Then we can discuss it and my ideas and love are spoken not just thought.

What a run-on! Sorry Dear Ones. Just the sort of thing your eye runs rapidly past to get to the next post! I've got to get up or the cat will eat me. She's standing over me slavering and rumbling. It'll be a reenactment of 'The Veldt' with no one to find the scraps of clothing. London would have loved describing her musculature and visceral response to the word "chicken?"

Oooops! That wasn't Lynn, it was ChefDeb.

Not a cookbook but "Blood Bones & Butter" by Gabrielle Hamilton was great as a book on cooking (among other things).

HAZEL I think it was LYNN!

Back in the corporate days we would pass books around the office like a Book Club and it was a lot of fun. Now I have a friend who faithfully saves all her books for me but they tend to be "AARP's Throbbing Dwarf" and I have trouble not just getting through them, but picking them up to begin with.+

HAZEL--you don't have to worry about your apostrophes or anything else because you speak British English and we just assume its another set of rules!!

Ha ha Ha!!!! It was Stoney! ~ on the tail end of a message to ChefDeb. Silly me!

Moose ~ My childhood favorites would include those that are now politically incorrect and therefore out of print

JaxZ ~
Next year is going to be lucky for you… Amen.

Moose ~
Try finding a copy of Little Black Sambo apparently banned by fanatic sizists.
I do love The Velveteen Rabbit to wit:

http://www.petermanseye.com/photos/566301

The Holy Bible Unbroken~ Hildebrand Miracle on Luckie Street~Bob Williamss S is for Silence~Grafton THe Girl with the Dragon Tatoo~Larsson The Girl ho Played with Fire~Larsson The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest`Larsson and several others.

The Help, and all the Steig Larsen books, though technically, these were probably published prior to 2011.  Also, anything written by Kate Morton (The Forgotten Garden, etc.).

Someday I write good!

I have Little Black Sambo, Uncle Tom's Cabin and a book about Topsy, who just growed.
George Hall~ You write good already.

Oh...there are so many. Rules of Civility (Amor Towles), Domestic Violets (Matthew Norman, Next to Love (Ellen Feldman), Left Neglected (Lisa Genova), The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb (Melanie Benjamin), Say Her Name (Francisco Goldman), It Happened on the Way to War (Rye Barcott), The Thrill of the Chase (Forrest Fenn), Rin Tin Tin (Susan Orlean), A Train in Winter (Caroline Moorehead), Salvage the Bones (Jesmyn Ward), Day of Honey (Anna Ciezadlo), Indigo (Catherine McKinley), A Covert Affair (Jennet Conant), Iron House (John Hart), In the Fabled East (Adam Lewis Schroeder), The Tiger's Wife (Tea Obrecht), When the Killing's Done (T.C. Boyle), The Paris Wife (Paula McLain), Townie (Andre Dubus III), Turn of Mind (Alice LaPlante), This Burns My Heart (Samuel Park), Once Upon a River (Bonnie Jo Campbell), Cleaning Nabokov's House (Leslie Daniels), A Thousand Cuts (Simon Lelic), The Angel Esmeralda (Don DeLillo), White Truffles in Winter (N.M. Kelby), Ed King (David Guterson), The Prague Cemetery (Umberto Eco), The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides), The Boy in the Suitcase (Kaaberbol and Friis), Why Read Moby-Dick? (Nathaniel Philbrick). I think I have to stop here. My brain just froze. 
 And now for the full disclosure. I interview book authors on the Clear Channel stations in the Rocky Mountain area so I read 3-4 books a week for work and another 2-3 for fun. I'll admit it. I'm crazy, but in a good way. 

For better or worse, reading made me what I am. I do read to be entertained...deep, dark , sad, goyr, violent ain't none of me, man!

IRENER What a fabulous job!

 Hazel, In RoadYacht's words "I love you long time!"

Reading can take you worlds away...to coin Emily Dickinson.....and give us vicarious experiences we'd never do in real life...I cannot stick to just this year, as I am always catching up with the last 5-10 years best books....

IR- Your timing on hoppin this train is impeccable. Great post. Stay on board.

Lemony Snickit?

Stoney, bless you! I reread my post and realize I sounded whiny. It's been a good year! I went to India, received a 5th grandchild, connected with many fascinating people, made more family HERE, saw the fulfilment of one of my mother's dying wishes..... so many good things.

I'd love to show you something as an example. A 2011 video book of sorts! 2 weeks ago the people with whom we went to India asked if we'd take my photos and video and make an appeal for them to use. Please ignore the appeal, it's not why I'm posting this, it's the GIRLS! I shouldn't have posted photos before on PE that I did, but I thought it safe here. Now I have permission to show them, and this! I can't express what that means to me. We worked on this day and night, and finished Friday. {{laughing}} You should have seen my husband sitting next to me in bed for a week, both of us with our laptops, bickering, editing, starting over. I'm grateful he's on a trip so he can rest! I'm sorry, I'm rambling again! Here it is: http://gallery.me.com/petez#100944 It can't be posted in 'public' for another day or two while the final copyrigt release comes in for the music, but I wanted you to see them. All of them are freed slaves.

ChefDeb, I know the feeling of the children not wantin  to read. My three were all that way--until about thirty of even fourty or son but now they love to read and they buy me books for fathers day ,birthday etc. and we now even exchange books, so don't give up hope. the grandkids all love to read and are disappointed of we don't give them a gift card for a bookstore on special ocassions. No other gifts, just a gift card.Like Haze, I enjoy old books and reread often, but still enjoy new books. The books by Steig Larrson for examlpe.Espically this time of year,sitting in front of the fireplace with a glass of Kentuckys finest. A nice way to spend the afternoon.

"I have learned and unlearned all my life; it''s helped me survive.  There are no constants, nothing is immutable, only random circumstances from which our experience builds a coherent arc of life.  And from that arc you have to be turly done with one thing before moving on to another.  There's an art in lettling go..." Beloved Exile by P. Godwin 
 
I'm almost an "oct-janeeyerian, and please don't get me started on Pride and Perjudice.

 it's  sorry all

RWH1 Thank you for the encouragement! I think the gift card idea is a good one because I also found that giving an actual book almost guaranteed it remaining in mint condition--never touched. Verrrrry frustrating for voraciously reading parents!

Unless, sob--gasp---wait, let me sit down to tell this---its a cookbook given to my daughter by her mother-in-law by---dare I even say it? I may get the vapors.....a cookbook by ...wait for it....Rachael Ray. Okay --there you have it. A mother's heartbreak.

CD, On. The. Floor.

I will never get my feet dug out from that area of writing that's solidly American literature, and most typically that written in the post 1920 eras.  I just enjoy it so much, it's as much about understanding American and Americans as it is reading a good story, I wander too far from that genre if it is one, and I"m soon back.  I began last year to read short stories, American, and last year it was all about John Cheever.  This year I began with Thomas Wolfe, I love his impossible lyricism, I understand what he's saying, I really get it -- too much so.  I've got to be feeling really together, feet planted firmly, eyes straight ahead and centered within myself when I read Thomas Wolfe, or I can get way too inward for my own good.  And that's what happened at the beginning of this year, there I was with Wolfe, and Geraldine was very sick, and then she died.  Wolfe wasn't what I needed at that time.  So, I went to John O'Hara, and began with his novel, Butterfield 8, liked it, and now I'm deep into Gibbsville, Pennsylvania:  The Classic Stories.   I could deal with O'Hara, and I'm enjoying his "omnibus" anthology a whole lot.   It was edited by the late Matthew Bruccoli (keeper and chronicler of all things Fitzgerald at the University of South Carolina), so like all books he put his pencil to, it's a pleasure to read.   Heavy to carry around, but a pure pleasure to read.  I really like John O'Hara, if you want details, down to the button size on an Arrow shirt, O'Hara will most likely have wound it into one of these classic Gibbsville stories.  Two thumbs up for "Gibbsville PA."

You know PARK I have not given John O'Hara a thought in years. My father thought highly enough of him to purchase hardcover (maybe he didn't have an alternative, but he purchased rather than library). I was allowed to read my father's library as long as I stayed in alphabetical order, as the books were, but something made me snitch out an O'Hara and I was hooked. In fact, in may be that everything I know in life, I owe to John O'Hara. I never got busted either. Thanks for an excellent set of memories.

I have a list of books I wish I had never read and could read for the first time again and I am surprised to say that "Burr" by Gore Vidal remains in the top5. You know for sheer I cannot possibly talk to you and if company comes I will probably be in the upstairs bathroom reading one more chapter. James Michener books were like that once I learned to skip the first "and then the sea was formed and the sand came to the beaches" 100 pages. Or what about James Clavell and those Sho-gun books. Or The Once and Future King! Stop me stop me my minds in a whirl, but bringing it fulll circle back around to the Larrsen trilogy this year thats why they were so good! Just as RWH1 described, watch that afternoon flash by!

I have a friend who lives in Ibiza with whom Ihave a daily E-correspondence. When I was reading Dragon Tattoo trilogy I got so immersed that not only did I not write to him, I did not notice that he wasn't writing to me either. At the end of 5 days I got an E saying "I'm so sorry not to have written but I have been reading the Swedish Larsson trilogy..." somehow I forgave him.

You skipped the first few hundred Mitchner pages too ChefDeb?  I didn't care how the islands were created, I just wanted to read the story that took place in Hawaii.  That was about 300 pages of volcanos and stuff that I just didn't care about.  I remember someone getting very angry with me because they felt, as I guess Michener did, that those "in the beginning" pages were integral to the story blah blah, but I continued to skip.  And enjoyed the stories.  And I'm glad I rattled your thinking about O'Hara.  He's pretty darned good.  Give him another shot, why don't you?  OH- and you dad organized alphabetically?  Do you?  I am curious; my shelves are completely without organization.

PARK--alphabetical records & CDs; cookbooks by topic, books of the same author mostly together, but thats it. My Dad did fiction & nonfiction and they were strictly alphabetical by author. In later years his books on New York City and fishing were numerous enough to have their own bookcases. The most awful thing about downsizing is limiting bookspace. I have always passed paperback fiction on.

Chef Deb, I discovered Jo Nesbro this year too.  His books are a treat indeed.

Some of the more enjoyable books I read this year include The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern, 11/23/63 by Stephen King, Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, The Interpretation of Murder by Jeb Runbenfeld, In the Garden of the Beast by Erik Larson and Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olson.

I have already added some of you good folks' reading suggestions to my list.

An old friend of mine who teaches lit has as part of her imbedded email signature "quit whining and read". Good advice I think.

Park & Soney.....hope you got to enjoy the great weather in our neck of the world.

"Little Black Sambo!"  My learning to read book! Living in the country I often ran to the store for my mother, about 1/2 mile. After reading that book I was so glad I didn't have to go through the jungle to get there. Still, I looked out for tigers on the way and was glad to be home when I arrived. I thought that little boy was so brave. Didn't occur to me, then or now, that it was racist.   Favorite book of all time:   ATLAS SHRUGGED

Friends of mine were invited to lunch by friends of theirs. After the meal, coffee was served with the pot left by a blazing log fire and the company helped themselves to a good book from the shelves and settled down in old leather armchairs for a long afternoon of convivial silence, just reading. I'm a terrible person to read with as I get so involved in the story and am either laughing out loud or reaching for the Kleenex.
My Dad would re-arrange his alphabetically arranged books on special days to read by author, Happy Christmas, Happy Birthday and once when he knew I was miserable, I love you. I think it was our private joke  as nobody else in the family bothered with books.
 

Made It!
Nos da, dear people, it's midnight in Wales. x

ojaie22----------loved your Little Black Sambo!!  I can totally relate!

ojai220- Atlas Shruggged keeps intriguing me about the power of one, the magic of the individual. I had a cool edition of The Gingerbread Boy that I used as an image for my first novel. Amazing how we transitioned from picture books to books with chapters. My wife and I have the grandest times talking about her third graders. I dressed as an elf last night for a Christmas party and everyone wants to hang out with the quirky character who sings on demand and hoists a pint equally as fast. Growing and Growing up are not necessarily the same. The truth is not always about the facts.

ojai22- I multiplied the numbers in your moniker times 10 - nevermind my big paw's miskey tendency.  

To heck!  with professional 'reviews'......we know what we like...............Little Black Sambo reminded me of another lost treasure of a Golden Book childhood....don't know the exact title, but I believe it was something like..."A Day at the Circus"  I remember the illustrations..balloons, cotton candy and the little girl asleep on her father's back going home after a day at the circus.  I probably wouldn't recall it, except reading it (or having it read to me) coincided with my first (and probably only) visit to the circus.  And not with my daddy, but with family friends.    It's an extremely poignant memory and forever linked with that Golden Book, but after all these years I've been unable to find it.  (Golden Books doesn't even have anything remotely resembling it.)                I guess it didn't change my life, but it certainly had a very lasting impression!!!

Does it count that I can tell you what the book Jackets of almost all the titles listed look like from memory?

I will say this list is very surprising to me, I am shocked that no one has listed Jon Nesbo's "The Snowman" I certainly expected to see it in one of the lsits.

The major problem of working in a Bookstore is actually Keeping up, you see so many Wonderful & Interesting books Daily, that it causes your reading list to get longer, than you talk with the customers & even MORE are added. On average I would say I add about 20 books to my reading list per week. I shall Never catch up.

I am about to start "The Paris Wife" tho & I did just finish "The Rules of Civility" & "The Wilder Life" So I guess I am slowly but surely crossing titles off of my list.

Ok guys...Jo Nesbo, Jo Nesbro, Jon Nesbo...which is it--don't make me do it the easy way because I can't afford to go on Amazon.com today--that one click deally is IMPOSSIBLE to resist......

its sooo wonderful to never be able to catch up and always to be able to go back...I cannot even imagine if we had a topic like this about music......

1st on my list today is Nesbo/Nesbro (4 reccomendations) and 2nd is go back to John O'Hara. sigh. Then I suppose the logical next step would be Updike, Cheever. And no one has even mentioned "A Prayer for Owen Meanie."

Thanks Villagers...my kids would have put a pillow over my head by now if I rhapsodized to them like this (again).

Ok....... How about old' what's his name, ..... The author of The Snowman.

ChefDeb- It's Jo Nesbo. Sorry typo on my part.    

Rings- I am holding to the theory that one can not die with a full "in" box so fill it up. I may be wrong but what the heck? You never get bored...

  I have a "t" shirt that my mother gave me that states, "SHE HAS READ TOO MANY BOOKS AND IT HAS ADDLED HER BRAIN". That's me. Give me a book, any kind, and I'm off to another world. Seldom have I had the misfortune to pick up a tome that I could not force myself to get through. Clive Cussler, Hemingway, Thoreau, Stephen King, historical novels, "muck rakers", medical books of all types. You name it; I've probably read it. Hence the "addled" brain. I'm sure when my turn comes to shufffle off these mortal coils, it will be with a book in my hand.

Here's one I hope a few of you get to read this year:

http://www.petermanseye.com/photos/566351

...well, make that NEXT year.

JaxZ ~
Couldn't go to bed without thanking you… so many beautiful smiles.
You do great things.

Stoney, you're so very, very kind. I was afraid I'd broken some rule and irretrievably offended everyone. I need to stay away when I'm isolated and feel that emotional "empty my purse on the table" need to share something meaningful. I forget that it might not be appropriate.
Hugs to you and TMBWITW

When I opened the Times book review last night I just expected that "The Rules of Civility" would be listed and I was crushed to not find it. It is just an amazing story.
 
CHEFD.......................the Gabrielle Hamilton book has been on my list for awhile. I will read it this next year.
 
MOOSE.....................the Brer rabbit author, Joel Chandler, maybe............there is a foundation under his name I believe & you just may be able to buy the books on that site. If I come across it I will PM you. Yeah, political correctness, over. The political correctness people really screwed up their cause because people are now openly rebelling against anything that smacks of it. Laughing at it if you will...................... it has done much damage in this country.......................
 
The snowman book, definitely want to read it. Dragon Tatoo books rock..............still haven't read the last one. Anything Lawrence Sanders...............ANDY....................I do love the John Sandford Prey books........................and I have to say that I adore Jacqueline Susann.........go ahead & laugh.....................her books are rip roaring good reads............................
 
When I saw Rules didn't make the list I felt the same way when Robert Duvall lost the best actor Oscar when he directed & starred in the movie about the preacher w/ Farrah Fawcet as his wife. I thought it was so obviously the best..................................I love reading everyone's picks.......................I'm making a list....................

My book of 2011 would have to be The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.

My favorite fiction is the "Philosophy" and "Absolute Satisfaction. Anything less and you get your money back. Period." This appears on page 1 of the catalogs.

Before the company declared bankruptcy in 1999, I ordered a $400 dress for my wife.
It was the wrong size and I was told to return it for a smaller one, which I did right after Christmas. Instead of returning the dress or my money, the company reneged on its "Philosophy." Since its renaissance, I have personally spoken twice with Mrs. Peterman, and she has refused to honor the ethics J. Peterman trumpets--even now that the company is successful.