I just wanted to thank everyone who recommended "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", as I've just finished reading it for the first time and loved it! That's the first book I've found from my list of "must reads" from all of you here on the Bookworms forum. Next is "The Wild Trees" by Richard Preston. Still waiting for the library to get a copy of "On Basilisk Station"...

I've also been reading books that have been assigned to my 6th grade daughter so that I can help her study them by posing her questions. Turns out they are great fun for an adult, too! "A View From Saturday" by E.L. Konigsburg was really good, as are the books by Jeanne DuPrau such as "The City of Ember", etc.

"The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck.

I was aware of this book for a good many years but never got around to purchasing and reading it.

I think the novel being selected for Oprah's Book Club may have been a turn off for me as well. I love the idea of her club... anything that gets people reading is great. However, I don't care for melodramatic "martyred women" themes over and over.

I was pleasantly surprised to find "The Good Earth" was an excellent book which well deserved its Pulitzer Prize.

I agree with the comment on Oprah's book club. Many of the books on the list are really, individually, very good books. Taken as a group, though, "martyred woman" does indeed tend to sum them up.

I didn't expect to like, much less finish, a book about some guy chiseling marble half a millenium ago, but "The Agony and the Ecstasy" by Irving Stone was terrific. I couldn't put it down and it is one of my all time favorite books.