The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul by Dave Bruno

The title of this book is very interesting. 
I think, it may be more interesting than the book. 
In this book, Dave tells about his challenge to himself to narrow his own personal posessions down to 100 things.  He put his challenge on his blog, spent a year selling and purging stuff and then lived for a year with only 100 personal posessions.  He did not count his house and all the things that he shared with his family as part of those 100 personal possessions, and he counted all of his books as one thing - his library (which I agree with).  He has a blog that he shared this challenge on and it gained worldwide interest.  But, the challenge sounds more interesting than it was. The Oprah show was interested and contacted him, but his challenge was not lifestyle changing enough for her show.  I think the book sounds more interesting than it is as well,  unless perhaps you are really interested in reading Dave's philosophical ramblings or you care a lot about outdoor sports equipment and power tools like Dave apparantly did. Maybe men would like this book better than I did.
I did like that Dave took an entire year to get himself down to 100 things and I agree with his bloggers who said that the 100 things may be ok for a man, but would not work for a woman.
The book did motivate me to declutter some more, and just a week after having held a garage sale - which I only had a week to prepare for - I now have two large bags of junk to donate to charity, a nice bag of children's items that my children have outgrown to give to a friend with a younger child, and 19 orphan keys that I found in a junk drawer that seem to fit nothing that we currently own.
Here is Dave's blog if you are interested: http://guynameddave.com/about-the-100-thing-challenge/

I started this blog as part of the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge - which began at the beginning of 2011. 
This is my 52nd book.  It is only May 29.   So far, out of  the 52 books that I read and listed, 22 were non-fiction and 30 were fiction.
I wonder how many books I will have read by the end of the year.

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn

Ha!  this novel is a delightful play on words and also an excellent story.  It is centered on the Island of Nollop, which is named after Nelvin Nollop, who penned the phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."  Nollop has been raised to a god-like status complete with a centotaph in his honor with the infamous phrase displayed in tiles.  As the tiles fall off, it is seen as a sign from the deceased Nollop that they are no longer to use those letters in written or spoken language.  A totalitarian state insues until there are finally only 5 letters left and most of the island population has been banished or has fled.  As the letters fall, the book is written without use of those letters as well.  Ella Minnow Pea saves the day and the island and the alphabet in an intriguing and delightful book. 
I learned quite a few new words from this book and enjoyed the many new words and inventive spellings as the alphabet decreased.

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman by Nora Ephron

Written by the author of When Harry Met Sally, this book is remnicient of the many dialogues throughout that movie.  Nora tells about aging, life, purses and hair stylists and apparantly that as women, our necks age into some sort of horribleness which is why old women so often wear scarves and turtlenecks.

Before I read this book, I never worried about my neck.  I had other parts of my body that I worried about - my upper arms, the hairs on my chin, but never my neck.  So now, I have something new to worry about.  I looked in the mirror and examined my neck.  It looks ok now, but in 20 years, who knows? 

This really is a good book and I enjoyed reading it.  Nora is humerous and real and this book was a fun read.

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Another wonderful book by Shannon Hale, this book won a Newberry Award.  It follows Miri, a girl who lives on Mount Eskel where the families all mine linder, a valuable stone found in the mountain. 
Soldiers come to the mountain and tell them that their village has been named as the home of the next princess of the kingdom and all of the girls of age will have to go to a school set up by the state - a princess academy where they will all learn what they need to know to be princess since the prince will chose one of them.  I like that the girls learn economics and diplomacy and find out that their stone is much more valuable than they are being paid for it and they are able to use their new education to help their village earn more money. Miri also figures out that the villagers can use linder to communicate mentally with one another and she uses this skill to help them when they are in grave danger.  It is a good story about feeling left out and different and shows how when we are friendly towards others, we may learn that they really do need friends too.

365 Thank yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life

This book, by John Kralik, tells of how writing 365 thank you notes helped him to see how many things he had in his life to be grateful for.  He had been depressed and living in self-pity, like many people are, but when he wrote thank you notes, he found out how many good things and people there really were in his life. John sees writing the thank you notes as giving him an attitude of gratitude that turned his life around.
I found the book inspiring and have written several thank you notes already. 

Forest Born by Shannon Hale

This is the 4th of the Books of Bayern and chronicles the adventures of Rinna, little sister to Razzo. 
Rinna stuggles with her inner demons and leaves her beloved forest and winds up going with Isi, Enna and Dasha, who she calls the "fire sisters" on a mission to save the kingdom.  Rinna discovers that she has her own types of "speakings" and she plays the key role in saving the kingdom.
Another wonderful book in this series.  I hope that there will be more.

River Secrets by Shannon Hale

This is book 3 of the Books of Bayern.  I really love these books!  The main character of this book is Razo, who sees himself as a short nobody but he is friends with Enna and Finn and is part of Bayern's Own - the King's special forces type army.  He feels insignifigant because he cannot fight well with swords like the rest of the soldiers and he wonders why he is sent on a mission with the Own  and an ambassador from Bayern to Tira, a neighboring country that they suspect wants to have a war with Bayern.  Razzo wonders why he has been asked to join the group and he later finds out that he is needed because of his powers of observation - and his seeming harmlessness - he makes a good spy among other things.  Together with Enna and Finn and a lovely Tiran girl named Dasha who he meets who is special in her own way, Razzo helps to solve the problems with the Tirans.