Books About Americans in Paris

Flavorwire highlighted the "25 Essential Books About Americans in Paris," According to the article:

"Americans have been traveling to Paris to be appreciated for their poetic struggle for years, and a whole Seine's worth of books have come along to share the story."

Here are three of our favorites on the list:

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough

Leave it to unparalleled dad-historian David McCullough to go into the root of the American artist’s journey to Paris, covering minds like John Singer Sargent, Isadora Duncan, and Mary Cassatt.-Flavorwire 

Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
A plus about writing for The New Yorker: they will send you to Paris. You will probably have to write about your impressions. Gopnik calls his time in Paris, with un bebe in tow, a “sentimental re-education.”-Flavorwire 

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

A crucial piece of the Hemingway mythology, this memoir takes you to 1920s expatriate Paris with Hemingway and the rest of the gang, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ford Maddox Ford, among others. Learn where Hemingway smoked, drank, and wrote, and feel some sort of inspiration in that knowledge.-Flavorwire 

If you'd like to travel to Paris without the expense before the chaos of the fall "Back to School" fever grabs hold of your life look at Flavorwire's  list and pick one to take you on a ride down the Seine.  

Happy Reading & Writing☮

The Things You Can Read!

Believe In Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Love, and the Power of Books & Writing!

Don't Forget To Be Awesome!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

I am an educator with over 25 years of teaching experience; I currently teach English in the public school system of Virginia. In my spare time I am an avid reader. writer, reviewer, blogger, writing/art journaler, beekeeper, grad student, and MOTHER. - See more: Here

100 Books Suggested by the BBC

The BBC Book List Challenge

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books on this list. How many have you read?

According to Goodreads.com, "The average Goodreads member has read 23 out of 100 books on this list..."  Once again, how many have you read?  We have marked the books we've read with an asterisk *.  Two asterisks ** means we have read the book more than once.  Our grand total thus far is twenty-seven and a half (271/2) because we have read only three of the Harry Potter series.  However, many of the books listed here are on our list of TBR (To Be Read) books on our Classics Challenge Page, which means we will be ticking them off by 2017!  Don't forget to visit our  Classics Challenge Page.  Now here is the list...

The BBC Book List Challenge

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien-currently reading
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte* 
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (read first three) 
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee** 
6 The Bible-currently reading 
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
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 
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier *
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien *
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 
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* 
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 - Aleandre 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 Alborn
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-Eupery 
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 

Again, let us know what you think of the list  Give us your grand total.  We'd love to know where you are in making it through this list.  Granted, not all the books on the list are books we might want to read, but most are.  

Happy Reading!

Things You Can Read

Believe In Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Love, and the Power of Books!

The Ultimate Guide to the Independent Princess

What a great find.  If you have a "Princess" at home, but don't want her to have a "wait around to be rescued" attitude, here is a great list of books to add to your "Little Princesses" library that sends the "Rescue Yourself" message  The list has something for everyone.  According the Mighty Girl Website, "These princesses are smart, daring, and aren't willing to wait around to be rescued - more than likely, they'll be doing the rescuing themselves!"  We here at The Things You Can Read are busy adding quite a few of these titles to our "Wish List".  What titles do you already own?  What titles would you like to add to your library?  Let us know here at The Things You Can Read.

Books for Toddlers

Check out Parents.com list of books for toddlers published in American Baby...How many have you read to your child?  What would your list look like?  Take a look at a sampling of a few of the books recommended by the experts at American Baby.

Excerpt from Parents.com:

Books for Toddlers, 3-5

Books aren't just for eating anymore. Reading is fun, and exposure to books helps kids do better in school. Here are some favorites to help you build your library.

Compiled by Stephanie Wagle from American Baby

• 
  

Summer Reading-Are You Having Fun Yet?

According to Kidzworld.com here are the Top 10 Summer Beach Reads.  Check out their list, what do you think?  How many have you read?  Try this out...If you had to make a Top 10 Summer Beach Read list, what would it look like?  The Things You Can Read would love to know what your Top 10 Summer Beach Reads list looks like.  Take a minute and post your list below or on Kidzworld.com. 

Happy Summer Readiing, from your friends here at The Things You Can Read. 

List from Kidzworld.com

No. 10: Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter

With her entire memory of her summer gone, teenage spy Cammie Morgan and the girls at Gallagher Academy must piece together the trail of clues that Cammie left behind. Check out the Gallagher Girls book 5, Out of Sight, Out of Time.

Out of Sight, Out of Time
Courtesy of Hyperion Book CH

 

No. 9: Stunning by Sara Shepard

In Pretty Little Liars book 11, A continues to spin an evil web around best friends Emily, Aria, Hannah and Spencer as they try to forget the death of their friend Alison.

Stunning
Courtesy of HarperTeen

 

No. 8: The Selection by Kiera Class

Historical fiction meets ABC’s The Bachelor in this story of love, destiny and fierce competition. Check out The Selection by Kiera Class.

The Selection
Courtesy of HarperTeen

 

No.7: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

In this dystopian retelling of Cinderella, Cinder - a cyborg mechanic - becomes entangled in the world of the handsome (not to mention human) Prince Kai.

Cinder
Courtesy of Feiwel

 

No. 6: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

In Pandemonium, sequel to the bestselling novel Delirium, Lena is torn between two lives: one where the late Alex is the center of her world, and another where a new boy steals her heart.

Pandemonium
Courtesy of HarperCollins

 

No. 5: The Rise of Nine by Pittacus Lore

Conclude your summer reading with the third installment in the teen sci-fi series The Lorien Legacies, as the members of the Garde team up to fight the evil Mogadorians.

The Rise of Nine
Courtesy of HarperCollins

 

No. 4: Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult

Bestselling author Jodi Picoult teams up with teenager Samantha van Leer to try her hand at the world of teen fiction. Between the Lines follows Delilah, a teenage loner, and Oliver, a prince trapped within the pages of a fairy tale.

Between the Lines
Courtesy of Emily Bestler Books

 

No. 3: The Kill Order by James Dashner

Haven’t had enough of The Maze Runner trilogy? Well, the most anticipated prequel of the year arrives just in time to end your summer right. Discover how the sun flares hit the earth and how mankind fell to disease.

The Kill Order
Courtesy of Delacorte Press

 

No. 2: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Check out Insurgent, the anticipated sequel to the bestselling dystopian novel Divergent, as Tris Prior finds herself in the heat of the Faction war.

Insurgent
Courtesy of HarperCollins

 

No. 1: City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

Closing out our number one spot is book 5 in the beloved Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls. But if you haven’t read the rest of the series, we recommend you start with book 1: City of Bones.

City of Lost Souls

10 Greatest YA Series of ALL TIME...What do you think?

Here is Flavorwire's recent post on the 10 Greatest YA Series of ALL TIME.  What do you think?  How many have you read?  

The Time Quintet by Madeleine L’Engle and Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol are the top two, see the article for the rest!  10 Greatest YA Series of All Time

Paint with Frida Kahlo

Me, Frida by Amy Novesky

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Me, Frida by Amy Novesky

Illustrated by David Diaz

Abrahms, 2010. 32 pgs.

Reading Level: ages 4-8

Me, Frida is a gorgeous lushous visual treat with a story that matches the quality of the illustrations. I would liken the experience of reading this book to falling into one of Frida Kahlo's paintings. However, the illustrator, David Diaz, does not simply copy Frida's style of artistic expression, but adds his own personal touches to that of the famous artist, thereby, creating something quite unique. The colors are vivid, warm, and inviting. My daughter's hands touched every page as we read this award winning book.  It is no wonder that Me, Frida won the Pura Belpre Illustrator Honor Book Award in 2011.

Me, Frida focuses on Frida's life as the new bride of Diego Rivera, the famous muralist and painter. Specifically, the setting is the newlyweds time in San Francisco in 1931 when Diego Rivera received his commission to paint his renowned murals on the government buildings of the city. During this time Frida, also an artist, begins to find her artistic voice, while her more established husband is busy creating his own art. When the couple is together Frida is often neglected and overlooked. Parties are given in her husband's honor, but no one notices the eclectic Frida.

Left to her own devices, Frida travels the streets of San Francisco gaining confidence in herself. With this new found confidence, she unlocks her own personal artistic style. Instead of copying the style of her husband, Diego Rivera, Frida paints in an intimate and folkloric style, which hearkens back to her native Mexican culture. The first painting to explore this style is Frida and Diego (Wedding Portrait) painted in 1931 during her stay in San Francisco. The painting now resides in the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, California. It's the painting she entered in her first show. Frida goes on to paint many more self-portraits when asked about this the painter stated, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best."  Me, Frida shares all this biographical information about this wonderful female painter without sounding stiff and stilted. 

Me, Frida by Amy Novesky and accompanying illustrations by David Diaz is an excellent introduction to this influential painter.

Other Recommendations for books about Frida Kahlo:

Frida Kahlo (GB): The Artist who Painted Herself by Margaret Frith
Tomie dePaola (Illustrator)
Hardcover, 32 pages

Published August 11th 2003 by Grosset & Dunlap

Frida by Jonah Winter
Ana Juan (Illustrator)

Hardcover, 32 pages

Published February 1st 2002 by Scholastic Inc. (first published 2002)

Diego by Jonah Winter 
Jeanette Winter (Illustrator)

Hardcover, 40 pages

Published January 9th 2007 by Knopf Books for Young Readers

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Goodreads Comments

What are the Most Influential Books that Shaped America?

Here is what the Library of Congress has to say on the subject...Post your comments...do you agree or disagree with the list?  What books would you add?  What books would you delete?  

Excerpt from Library of Congress site...

Books That Shaped America

The Library of Congress, the world’s largest repository of knowledge and information, began a multiyear “Celebration of the Book” with an exhibition on “Books That Shaped America.” The initial books in the exhibition are displayed below.

“This list is a starting point,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “It is not a register of the ‘best’ American books – although many of them fit that description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this initial list or not.”

We hope you will view the list, nominate other titles, and most importantly, choose to read and discuss some of the books on this list, reflecting America’s unique and extraordinary literary heritage, which the Library of Congress makes available to the world.

More information: Read the news release
Visit the online exhibition
Give your input by completing the online survey.

Title	Author	Date
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain	1884
Alcoholics Anonymous	anonymous	1939
American Cookery	Amelia Simmons	1796
The American Woman's Home	Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe	1869
And the Band Played On	Randy Shilts	1987
Atlas Shrugged	Ayn Rand	1957
The Autobiography of Malcolm X	Malcolm X and Alex Haley	1965
Beloved	Toni Morrison	1987
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee	Dee Brown	1970
The Call of the Wild	Jack London	1903
The Cat in the Hat	Dr. Seuss	1957
Catch-22	Joseph Heller	1961
The Catcher in the Rye	J.D. Salinger	1951
Charlotte's Web	E.B. White	1952
Common Sense	Thomas Paine	1776
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care	Benjamin Spock	1946
Cosmos	Carl Sagan	1980
A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible	anonymous	1788
The Double Helix	James D. Watson	1968
The Education of Henry Adams	Henry Adams	1907
Experiments and Observations on Electricity	Benjamin Franklin	1751
Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	1953
Family Limitation	Margaret Sanger	1914
The Federalist	anonymous	1787
The Feminine Mystique	Betty Friedan	1963
The Fire Next Time	James Baldwin	1963
For Whom the Bell Tolls	Ernest Hemingway	1940
Gone With the Wind	Margaret Mitchell	1936
Goodnight Moon	Margaret Wise Brown	1947
A Grammatical Institute of the English Language	Noah Webster	1783
The Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck	1939
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1925
Harriet, the Moses of Her People	Sarah H. Bradford	1901
The History of Standard Oil	Ida Tarbell	1904
History of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark	Meriwether Lewis	1814
How the Other Half Lives	Jacob Riis	1890
How to Win Friends and Influence People	Dale Carnegie	1936
Howl	Allen Ginsberg	1956
The Iceman Cometh	Eugene O'Neill	1946
Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures	Federal Writers' Project	1937
In Cold Blood	Truman Capote	1966
Invisible Man	Ralph Ellison	1952
Joy of Cooking	Irma Rombauer	1931
The Jungle	Upton Sinclair	1906
Leaves of Grass	Walt Whitman	1855
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow	Washington Irving	1820
Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy	Louisa May Alcott	1868
Mark, the Match Boy	Horatio Alger Jr.	1869
McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Primer	William Holmes McGuffey	1836
Moby-Dick; or The Whale	Herman Melville	1851
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass	Frederick Douglass	1845
Native Son	Richard Wright	1940
New England Primer	anonymous	1803
New Hampshire	Robert Frost	1923
On the Road	Jack Kerouac	1957
Our Bodies, Ourselves	Boston Women's Health Book Collective	1971
Our Town: A Play	Thornton Wilder	1938
Peter Parley's Universal History	Samuel Goodrich	1837
Poems	Emily Dickinson	1890
Poor Richard Improved and The Way to Wealth	Benjamin Franklin	1758
Pragmatism	William James	1907
The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D.	Benjamin Franklin	1793
The Red Badge of Courage	Stephen Crane	1895
Red Harvest	Dashiell Hammett	1929
Riders of the Purple Sage	Zane Grey	1912
The Scarlet Letter	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1850
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male	Alfred C. Kinsey	1948
Silent Spring	Rachel Carson	1962
The Snowy Day	Ezra Jack Keats	1962
The Souls of Black Folk	W.E.B. Du Bois	1903
The Sound and the Fury	William Faulkner	1929
Spring and All	William Carlos Williams	1923
Stranger in a Strange Land	Robert A. Heinlein	1961
A Street in Bronzeville	Gwendolyn Brooks	1945
A Streetcar Named Desire	Tennessee Williams	1947
A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America	Christopher Colles	1789
Tarzan of the Apes	Edgar Rice Burroughs	1914
Their Eyes Were Watching God	Zora Neale Hurston	1937
To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee	1960
A Treasury of American Folklore	Benjamin A. Botkin	1944
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn	Betty Smith	1943
Uncle Tom's Cabin	Harriet Beecher Stowe	1852
Unsafe at Any Speed	Ralph Nader	1965
Walden; or Life in the Woods	Henry David Thoreau	1854
The Weary Blues	Langston Hughes	1925
Where the Wild Things Are	Maurice Sendak	1963
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	L. Frank Baum	1900
The Words of Cesar Chavez	Cesar Chavez	2002

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Goodreads Poll for the Library of Congress List

LA Times Article: 88 books that shaped America, at the Library of Congress