Books!!!

With all the MANY many things I'm saving up for (including trips to the spa, and of course CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!) I'm hoping that Santa will bring me these gifts instead so I won't have to bust my budget.

1) Water for Elephants - Sarah Gruen
The story is about a man who joins the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Love the plot! Can't wait to read about all the different cast of characters in the circus.

2) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See
About friendship between two women set in 19th century China. I love books about women, especially women who lived in different eras and radically different settings from mine. Foot binding, fixed marriages, etc.

3) The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
I loved Jhumpa Lahiri's collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, so I'm hoping I'll like this one too.

4) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
A black girl wants to be a white girl, with the "bluest" eye. Race, class issues set in 1940s Ohio. I've never read anything by Toni Morrison and she is after all, Nobel Prize winner in Literature (and one of Oprah Winfrey's best friends ehehehe).

5)Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
I've never read a Murakami book in my life and everyone's harping about it, so I figured, what better way to start than by a book with a Beatles title on it?

6)The World to Come- Dara Horn
The novel begins when a character steals a Marc Chagall painting from a museum. I'm instantly hooked.

7) The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
Been wanting to read this since forever. It's about the women in Biblical times - Rachel, Rebecca, Sarah, etc. Again, women in different times and locales.

8) The Post Birthday World - Lionel Shriver
A book about the choices we make in our lives. Do I stay, do I go? What would have happened?

9) The Septembers of Shiraz
Set in post-revolution Iran. I like books that deal with post-war, post-revolution settings and reading about how characters adapt to their new lives. And also I like books with nice, funky titles, like this one. Hehe.

10) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Geeky Dominican boy struggling in New Jersey with his typical Dominican family. Sounds like my type of story.

11) What Was Lost - Catherine O Flynn
A ghost story but not quite. An image of a girl appears on the screens of a supermarket night security guard. Lovely Bones? Hmm.

12)No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July
A collection of stories about misfits, orphans, runaways. Interesting, interesting.

13) The Space Between Us - Thrity Umrigar
Again, women from a different world, this time about a wealthy Indian woman and her servant.

Dear Santa, Please please please let me get what I want. Thirteen books in all. Enough to last me the whole year plus a little something extra on the side.

Books I like:

I like books with really interesting characters (like the character in Water for Elephants, or the girl in the Bluest Eye) I like historical fiction and I'm especially drawn to stories set in "exotic" locales like India, Africa and South America. Hehe most probably because I've never been there. I'm especially drawn to "immigrant" stories, like stories of Jewish families in Africa, Bengali folks struggling in London, Cuban immigrants living in the States. I'm not much into sci-fi or detective stuff, although I've been meaning to check out stuff by Alexander McCall Smith and his No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, Isabel Dalhousie Series.