Palace Walk, by Naguib Mahfouz

Here are a few interesting tidbits on our January novel.

• Palace Walk is the first book in the Cairo Trilogy. The next books are Palace of Desire and Sugar Street.
• Even though Palace Walk was written in 1956, it wasn't translated into English until 1990.
  
• Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988
• Mahfouz died in 2006 at the age of 94
• He was attacked by Islamic extremists in 1994, who stabbed him in the neck.
• For an interesting review of the novel, check out this blog written by an English professor: http://maitzenreads.blogspot.com/2009/02/naguib-mahfouz-palace-walk.html (sorry, haven't figured out how to put links into this blog yet, so you'll have to do the ol' copy and paste, or go to her website and search Palace Walk . . . an extra step, but worthwhile, I think)
  

My Favourite Books of 2009

2009 was another great year of reading. Here are my top 10 favs (in reading order, January-December):

1. Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West
2. Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh
3. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, Jeff Goldsworthy
4. Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
5. the Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
6. the Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim
7. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
8. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
9. Green Grass, Running Water, Thomas King
10. Kiss of the Fur Queen, Tomson Highway

If you click on the book title, you can see the book's home page on LibraryThing.