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J. Kaye of J. Kaye's Book Blog is hosting the 100+ Books Reading Challenge. Here are the rules:

1. You can join anytime as long as you don’t start reading your books prior to 2009.

2. This challenge is for 2009 only. The last day to have all your books read is December 31, 2009.

3. You can join anytime between now and December 31, 2009.

4. All books count: children’s, YA, adults, fiction, non-fiction, how-tos, etc.

No blog? No problem! Just join the Yahoo Group.

Interested? Then what are you waiting for? Sign up here!

Books I've Read

I started late in the Challenge so I'm just going to list the books I have read since the beginning of the year. I've posted links to some of the reviews I've done since I've only started blogging this April.

January, 2009
1. One for the Money by Janet Evanovich
2. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
3. The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks

February, 2009
4. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
5. High Five by Janet Evanovich
6. Lean Mean Thirteen by Jane Evanovich
7. The Secret Life of the Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
8. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

March, 2009
9. To the Nines by Janet Evanovich
10. A History Buff's Guide to World War II by Thomas R. Flagel

April, 2009
11. A Dark History: The Kings and Queens of Europe by Brenda Ralph Lewis
12. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
13. Little Bee by Chris Cleave
14. A Lion in the White House by Aida D.Donald
15. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
16. Sundays at Tiffany's by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
17.The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon
18.World War I by H. P. Willmott

May, 2009
19. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
20. Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas
21. Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
22. 36 Hour Day by Nancy L. Mace, M.A. and Peter V. Rabins, M.D., M.P.H.
23. The Help by Kathyrn Stockett
24. The Novel Writer's Toolkit by Bob Mayer
25. Writing the Short Story by Jack M. Bickham
26. Your First Novel by Ann Rittenberg and Laura Whitcomb
27. How to Write a Short Story by John Vorwald and Ethan Wolff

June, 2009
28. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (audio CD version)
29. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
30. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
31. City of Thieves by David Benioff
32. April and Oliver by Tess Callahan
33. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith
34. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

July, 2009
35. A Circle of Souls by Preetham Grandhi
36. Get into Graduate School from Kaplan Publishing
37. A Dark History: The Popes by Brenda Ralph Lewis
38. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

August, 2009
39. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
40. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
41. After Dark by Haruki Murakami

September, 2009
42. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
43. Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky
44. Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin
45 World War II by H.P. Wilmott and et al.
46. Fiction Gallery from Gotham Writer's Workshop
48. Something Blue by Emily Giffin
49. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
50.Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich

October, 2009
51. First Snow on Fuji by Yasunari Kawabata
52. Time to Write by Kelly L. Stone
53. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
54. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
55. Dracula by Bram Stoker

November, 2009
56. Fatal by Michael Palmer

December, 2009
57. Sisters by Hulton Getty

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

A Dark History: The Popes by Brenda Ralph Lewis


Publisher: Metro Books
Pub. Date: March 2009
ISBN-13: 9781435102101
Pages: 256
Ratings: 5 out of 5

Summary: The pope is considered to be the sucessor of Saint Peter and the leader of the Catholic Church. Throughout the centuries, there have been good popes...and unfortunately some bad ones too. In this book, Brenda Ralph Lewis tells us the some the pontiffs' immoral and scandalous deeds from bribery, nepotism, sexual affairs, and even mass murders.
Review: Just when I thought Ms. Lewis was through amazing me with her other book A Dark History: The Kings and Queens of Europe, here's another book that trumped it. In A Dark History: The Popes, readers are introduced to the most shocking and controversial stories of the papal history.

Just to name a few, readers are introduced to John XII (955 - 964) who ran a brothel in the Vatican. It was said that he drank toasts to the Devil when drunk. If you think that's not shocking enough, how about Alexander VI, (1492 - 1503) who had eight children with his mistresses?(Yes, you read right...mistresses as in plural.) Just as Hitler was responisble for killing six million Jews during WWII, Innocent III was responsible for killing a million Cathars whom he believed were heretics. I guess he's not so innocent after all.

Readers will also be interested in the chapter called The Galileo Affair. Galileo defied the church teachings by saying that the earth orbited around the sun and not the other way around. He was accused of heresy and therefore was found guilty during his Inquisition. He was almost 70 years old.

This book also has plenty of illustrations and pictures. Some pictures were gruesome enough to make my skin crawl. This book was also well-researched. I learned so much. I believed that Ms. Lewis outdid herself.

Recommendation: If you're in the mood to get creeeped out or just reading some weird history, you will not be disappointed if you get this book.
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