2012 reading challenge

[Tallulah]

Whew! I finally finished Les Miserables! Yay!

It was really good. When I started it, I thought it was slow but once I got past the Bishop of Digne stuff it started to pick up. There were some other parts that I thought bogged down the story a little bit (did I really need that much info on the sewer system?) but overall it was a great book.

I have a few more "big" books I want to read but I need to take a break and read some easy stuff.

Oh, and someone mentioned Middlemarch. I just read that last year and thought it was great. Good luck!

I finished Buddenbrooks a few weeks ago. It was really great. Loved the characters. Now I just have Don Quixote and Tom Jones to finish...

[wreade1872]

Read the 'Faerie Queen Vol1' as part of my 'stuff referenced in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics' reading list. Technically a poem rather than novel and not sure how long it was but it was LONG. Good too, surprising amount of violence, filth and action especially for a christian allegory.

Just finishing Scoop and Doctor Sax which are not very long but another monster on the horizon 'Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor' will be my next read, 972 pages.

[TheFifthElement]

Tallulah - congrats on finishing Buddenbrooks. I tried reading The Magic Mountain by Mann a couple of months ago and struggled. I'll return to it at some point.

wreade1872 I think the Faerie Queen counts as a long read. It's certainly a long poem anyway

So rootinghog I'm in! Finished Lolita this pm and starting on Kristen Lavransdatter in the morning. How are you getting along with it?

[rootinghog]

Glad to hear it! It should be interesting to transition from a book as male-centric and modern as Lolita to the medieval female perspective of Kristin. I'm about 1/3 of the way through-- I'll post some (non-specific) thoughts on my progress on your K.L. thread.

[TheFifthElement]

June update

1. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu- 1169 pages
2. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie- 647 pages
3. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami - 614 pages
4. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - 616 pages
5. The Sea of Fertility Tetralogy (Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, The Decay of the Angel) by Yukio Mishima - 1376 pages.
6. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset - 1125 pages

At this stage in proceedings, I think I might need to take a little break. I don't think I have the time to manage a full mammoth novel in July. I've also noticed, not that it comes as a great surprise, that there are significant differences in quality in these longer books, and this affects reading time. Battle Royale, for example, took a fairly short period of time to read whereas Kristin Lavransdatter has taken me some time to get through. It's been very enjoyable though, and I'm looking forward to picking up the challenge again in August.

[TheFifthElement]

So I've had a much longer break than planned, largely down to the twin distractions of writing a novel ansd starting my degree. It's been a busy year. October update...

1. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu- 1169 pages
2. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie- 647 pages
3. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami - 614 pages
4. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - 616 pages
5. The Sea of Fertility Tetralogy (Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, The Decay of the Angel) by Yukio Mishima - 1376 pages.
6. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset - 1125 pages
7. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - 1088 pages

I feel like I've cheated a little reading a kids' book as my latest offering, but it was excellent and very long, so perhaps only a little cheat.

Now, maybe I ought to get on and finish Middlemarch

[TheFifthElement]

1. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu- 1169 pages
2. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie- 647 pages
3. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami - 614 pages
4. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - 616 pages
5. The Sea of Fertility Tetralogy (Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, The Decay of the Angel) by Yukio Mishima - 1376 pages.
6. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset - 1125 pages
7. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - 1088 pages
8. Middlemarch by George Eliot - 864 pages

So I finished 3/4 of the challenge. Not a bad result, overall