Rate and discuss all the books I've read this year 2003.

[Robert E Lee]

Please NOTE: this is Robert E Lee's brother.


List begins in January 2003.


Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Idiot by Fyodor Dosteovsky
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Herzog by Saul Bellow
The Oresteia by Aeschylus
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Demons/(The Possessed) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Wild ***'s Skin by Honore de Balzac
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Story of Jazz by Marshall Stearns
On the Road (reread) by Jack Kerouac
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Currently reading: The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Feel free to post your own 2003 lists too.

[AbdoRinbo]

That's a long list, Bob.

[Jay]

If it's all true, WOW.

[den]

So brother, what did you to with Robert? :P :D


Books read in 2003 so far:

Deidre Barrett: The Pregnant Man
Willaim S. Burroughs: Junky

George Clare: Last Waltz in Vienna
Nick Cave: And the *** saw the Angel
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and other poems
Albert Camus: The Plague

Omer Englebert: The Lives of the Saints

John Fowles: The Ebony Tower
Antonia Fraser: Mary Queen of Scots

Peter Gentry: Rafe
Graham Greene: Under the Garden
Nikolai Gogol: The Overcoat and The Nose

Aldous Huxley: Those Barren Leaves
Ben Hamper: Rivethead

Carl Jung: Man in Search of a Soul
Henry James: Daisy Miller

Lance Kinseth: River Eternal

D.H. Lawrence: Love Among the Haystacks

William Somerset Maugham: The Moon and Sixpence, Cakes and Ale and The Narrow Corner
Patrick Mann: Dog Day Afternoon
James Michener: Alaska
Hugh MacLennan: The Watch that Ends the Night

Ovid: Orpheus in the Underworld
P.J. O'Rourke: Parliament of Whores

Jean Rhyes: Leaving Mr. MacKenzie
Nino Ricci: Lives of the Saints and In a Glass House
Rainer Maria Rilke: Sonnets to Orpheus
Jean Jacques Rousseau: The Confessions and The Essential Rousseau

Gregory Scofield: Memories of a Metis childhood
Andrew Solomon: The Noonday Demon
Colin Simpson: The Lusitania
Peter Straub: Blue Rose
Wilbur Smith: When the Lion Feeds and Golden Fox
Ken Stange: Bushed

John Wyndham: Wanderers of Time
Edith Wharton: Madame de Treymes

Voices: Canadian Writers of African Descent
Personal Dispatches: Writers confront AIDS
Ontario History Journal
OGS Quarterly
Collins Gem: Castles of Scotland
Story of O
Tibetan Book of the Dead

Currently: Richard Adams: The Plague Dogs


There's probably more but I give a lot of my books away, the dispensible paperbacks, through www.bookcrossing.com

[ihrocks]

Putting an old woman's memory to the test, but I think 2003 looks like this:

The Lord of the Rings --J.R.R. Tolkien
Under Milk Wood -- Dylan Thomas
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead -- Tom Stoppard
Tropic of Cancer -- Henry Miller
Henry And June -- Anais Nin
Quiet Days in Clichy -- Henry Miller
Wuthering Heights -- Emily Bronte
Lady Chatterley's Love -- D.H. Lawrence
Sons & Lovers -- D.H. Lawrence
Women in Love -- What can I say? I got on a roll!
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling (Previewing it before reading it to my daughter, and glad I did! This one can wait until she is much older!)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog -- Dylan Thomas
A Season in Hell/Drunken Boat -- Arthur Rimbaud
Cannery Row -- John Steinbeck

And one or two I'm sure I've overlooked. Not bad for full-time working mom!

Presently still working on Nin's "Fire" diary and next up is "Gravity's Rainbow."

I remember very much enjoying Conrad's "The Secret Agent." I always appreciate writers who play around with structure. I love "The Sound and The Fury," and if you enjoyed it, I would recommend "As I Lay Dying." Faulkner's writing has an almost hypnotic quality to it. I've lost count of the times I've read "The Great Gatsby." I would say it's the quintessential novel of 20th Century America, but then someone would disagree with me, I'm sure. And the only good Hemingway is Bad Hemmingway. I used to always enjoy reading the winning entries from Harry's Bar's Bad Hemmingway contest. 8)

ihrocks

[Sindhu]

Here's my 2003 list - I'm leaving out rereads.
Anthills of the Savannah - Achebe
Lucky Jim - Amis
To the Hermitage- Bradbury
Thinks- David Lodge
Orlando- Virginia Woolf
Bend in the River- Naipaul
Collected essays- Virginia Woolf
A Better Class of Person- Osborne
Daughter of Time- Josephine Tey
The Newcomes- Thackeray
Liber Amoris- Hazlitt
The Idiot - Dosteovesky
The Bear- Chekhov
Margaret Oglivy- Barrie
Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Collected Plays- Noel Coward
Shakespeare- HenryVIpart1,2,&3, Cymbeline
Surgeon's Daughter- Walter Scott
Villette - Charlotte Bronte
Ooronko- Aphra Behn
Arrow of God- Achebe
The Naulakha-Kipling

Currently reading Finnegan's Wake.

[crisaor]

I've yet to read anything by Conrad. That confession aside, I like best the metamorphosis of all the books you've listed. Naturally, Isabel Allende's La casa de los espíritus is (very) deep at the bottom. Just out of curiosity, what made you read it? Of course it's a diversified list, but it's the one book that strikes me as out of place.


My own list (what I can remember)

Happiness(TM), by Will Ferguson
Catcher in the Rye, by Salinger (again)
Bush y los Años del Miedo, by Noam Chomsky
Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore
La Mort d'Arthur, by Thomas Mallory
The Complete Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton
El Club Dumas, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Paradise Lost, by John Milton (again)
On Television, by Pierre Bourdieu
El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, by Cervantes

[AbdoRinbo]

I've heard of, but never read, Chomsky's Bush y los Años del Miedo, what did you think of it?

[crisaor]

It's one of those "optional" books that you can buy next to a magazine (in this case, Le Monde Diplomatique). It's actually a transcription of interviews to Chomsky by Jorge Halperin (sociologist), rather than an essay book.

On topic, I loved it. Chomsky's views on the world's current events and specially his analysis on Bush's politics, both regional and foreign is probably the most accurate I've ever read. Among other things, he basically speaks about the way the US inspires fear over its citizens to justify its insane politics (i.e. Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the sandinists, and Santa Claus are just a couple of days of throwing nukes over our heads, we have to bomb them/overthrow their governments and install a dictatorship/melt down the north pole to prevent it), and how the whole culture revolves on fear. If you've seen Bowling for Columbine, you know the way it goes. Plus, I think I liked Halperin's questions better than Barsamian's.

I still get surprised everytime Chomsky says that nobody hears him in the US. I wonder if that's really true...

[AbdoRinbo]

It's not entirely false, but I know a lot of people who are really adamant supporters of Chomsky. He's my favorite political author. ;)

(Bowling For Columbine was killer, I saw it three times in the same day when it first came out.)

[Koa]

Oooh i will do some brainstorming and post my list...it will be very short, I don't read so much lately... Or maybe I read more than I realise, just a lot of stuff is for studies... I used to read a lot more when I was younger, now I have less time and more interests...will think of my list anyway.

[Munro]

Wow, I'm impressed (and a little intimidated) by your lists so far, particularly den and Robert E. Lee. I want to read Chomsky very much, but I think I'll leave him, along with Tariq Ali, Pilger and Gore Vidal until I'm in university, along with a lot of other great thinkers/political commentators.
I take note of what books I've read through out the year, kinda as a part of the journal that I keep, so here's what I've read so far this year.

Dead Famous – Ben Elton
Soul Music – Terry Pratchett
Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
The Love Parade – Matthew Branton
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead – Tom Stoppard
Stupid White Men – Michael Moore
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Point Counter Point – Aldous Huxley
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Plague – Albert Camus
The Communist Manifesto – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Virtual Light – William Gibson
Neuromancer – William Gibson
A Happy Death – Albert Camus
The Outsider – Albert Camus
Metamorphosis and other stories – Franz Kafka
Exile and the Kingdom – Albert Camus
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I have so many more to read.

[AbdoRinbo]

If Munro is going to make a list then, goddamnit, so am I.

Das Kapital, Volume 1 -- Karl Marx
Dune -- Frank Herbert
Under the Jaguar Sun -- Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities -- Italo Calvino
t-zero --Italo Calvino
Cosmicomics -- Italo Calvino
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler -- Italo Calvino
Une Saison en Enfer -- Arthur Rimbaud
Illumination -- Arthur Rimbaud
Poesies -- Arthur Rimbaud
Exiles -- James Joyce
Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea -- Charles Seife
A Matter of Degrees -- Gino Segre
Discourse on Thinking -- Martin Heidegger
Anti-Oedipus -- Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (as yet unfinished)
Chomsky on Miseducation -- Noam Chomsky
How to Build a Time Machine -- Paul Davies
Welcome to the Monkey House -- Kurt Vonnegut

Jeepers, it isn't even that long. What have I been doing with my life?! Oh God . . . what a waste.

[Sindhu]

Oh Good- someone else's reading Calvino! I especially liked If on a Winters Night- I reread it thrice. And talk about spooky coincidences, i'm also as yet "unfinished" with Anti-Oedipus. Mainlybecause I'mon Holiday and forgot to bring the book along! :rolleyes:

[AbdoRinbo]

Sindhu, we should discuss Deleuze sometime . . . the guy is a semantic nazi. But I do think his theories are interesting, in those brief moments when I understand what he's saying.

[Demona]

all the above seems like a major show-off.
is it really necessary?

[AbdoRinbo]

Sounds like someone isn't having a good time.

[Koa]

Ever had a show-off moment Demona? If not, maybe you're lucky. I can't stand people who show off all the time but even I have moments when I need to show-off.


To all those discussing Chomsky... is he the linguist? Is he a political author too? Is he famous in the USA? I never heard this name before I had Linguistics at university, and I thought only people who are into Linguistics knew him... :oops:

[IWilKikU]

dont worry Demona, Here's someone with the balls to admit what a slacker I am.

The Shining - Stephen King
Macbeth - Shakespeare
Richard III - Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew - Shakespeare
Choke - Chuck Palaniuk
The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
A Room With a View - E.M. Forster

I just rediscovered how much I love reading when I returned to school after a semester sebatical. So this is mostly since around July.

[AbdoRinbo]

Koa, Noam Chomsky is both a linguist and a political dissident. He's probably the most influential American figure in recent times. I've read a little bit about his work in Linguistics, but, personally, I am more fond of his political commentary.

[AbdoRinbo]

Did they teach you about Generative Grammar in your Linguistics class? That's one of Chomsky's most fascinating contributions, in my opinion.

[Demona]

Ever had a show-off moment Demona? If not, maybe you're lucky. I can't stand people who show off all the time but even I have moments when I need to show-off.


Koa, I really do belive that there are other ways to get rid of one`s complexes and also other variants of improving one`s self-esteem.

IWilKikU

did i say i was worried about anything?

[Sindhu]

all the above seems like a major show-off.
is it really necessary?
You know, this just goes to show how differently people lookat things. As far as I was concerned, the whole point of putting up my list and seeing other people's lists was to get a list of things 'd like to put on my "to be read sometime list" I thought that was the whole point and I was waiting for everyone's lists to be up when we could have comments on the books also- the thread title does say RATE and DISCUSS. Maybe everyone including me were consciously/unconsciously showing off- but could my alternative interpretation also be taken into consideration?

[AbdoRinbo]

Pay no mind, Sindhu, Demona is a conscientous objector. ;)

[ihrocks]

I think what people read says a lot about who they are. I thought this was more getting to know each other than showing off, a way to find common ground. And as Sindhu said, a way to add to one's reading list (as if I'm not far enough behind already!), by seeing new authors or works on the lists of people you find interesting or who have similar reading interests.

However, if I ever get around at adding, "Finegan's Wake" to my list, you bet I'll be showing off! I'm determined to conquer that book one day. 8)

ihrocks

[Koa]

Did they teach you about Generative Grammar in your Linguistics class? That's one of Chomsky's most fascinating contributions, in my opinion.

It was only mentioned in its main ideas, both in the lessons and in the book I studied, because the course was General Linguistics and therefore touched the main points of Linguistics without going to deep into any of it, so I don't know much about generative grammar, but at least I have a clue of it and can know more about whenever I fell like it.

As I said I'm finding out just now about his political activity and its fame, and I'm quite surprised.
That explains this tho... :D :D :D
http://www.thismodernworld.com/media/arc/1994%20archive/94-chomsky.gif

[Zooey]

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I'd be curious to see how you liked this one. I know your brother is less than enthusiastic.

[crisaor]

Brave New World; Aldous Huxley
Metamorphosis and other stories; Franz Kafka


What did you think of these?



Das Kapital, Volume 1 -- Karl Marx


The WHOLE volume??? Is it still in your head? Does it make sense?

[AbdoRinbo]

It makes perfect sense. Karl Marx did a good job of referring back to points he made earlier in the text and tying the whole thing together. Because it could have been half as long and not made any sense at all, but he took the time to logically piece his arguments together (even if it meant reiterating points he made 600 pages earlier, for example).

[Isagel]

Oh! Glad that people here are reading Chomsky.
I studied his language theory, but I prefer his political works. Just ordered Necessary Illusions - Thought control in democratic societies. I hope I´ll be able to read it in English. I´m reading Rouge states, translated into Swedish. It is a very scary book.

[crisaor]

Isagel, are you swedish? If so, how is it, living there?


It makes perfect sense. Karl Marx did a good job of referring back to points he made earlier in the text and tying the whole thing together. Because it could have been half as long and not made any sense at all, but he took the time to logically piece his arguments together (even if it meant reiterating points he made 600 pages earlier, for example).

Are you planning on reading the other volumes then?

[AbdoRinbo]

Planning? Yes. Procrastinating? Fo sho.

[Eowyn]

Crisaor, what did you think of Don Quixote? I loved it - laugh out loud stuff while huddled in the tearoom at work trying to escape reality. I was very cross if someone spoke to me while I read. Is Sancho the forerunner of Pickwick's Sam and Samwise Gamgee, do you think?

[Isagel]

[quote="crisaor"]Isagel, are you swedish? If so, how is it, living there?
Yes, I´m swedish.
I like living here- but you know what they say "No place like home".
Right now when the winter comes I would like to be somewhere else for awhile. It´s so dark, and it will stay that way for awhile. Well, even if I´m complaining I like the changes in the different seasons here. If you have any questions about living in Sweden you are most welcome to send me a pm. I´ll try to answer :)

[imthefoolonthehill]

Lee's Brother: I have The Sun Also Rises sitting a few feet away from my computer... I couldn't get into it....

All the Kings Men is great though.

[crisaor]

Crisaor, what did you think of Don Quixote? I loved it - laugh out loud stuff while huddled in the tearoom at work trying to escape reality. I was very cross if someone spoke to me while I read. Is Sancho the forerunner of Pickwick's Sam and Samwise Gamgee, do you think?

I liked it, but after a while, it became sort of annoying. I had to struggle to reach the end of it, but it was worth it. Fun and entertaining. It's a great read.
About Sancho, well, I don't know how I feel about that. Maybe in terms of balancing the protagonist, in the role they perform, I would say yes. But they're not similar characters in their behaviour. Samwise Gamgee is more or less Frodo's equal (ignoring the fact that he's his gardener), while Sancho is Quixote's perfect opposite: he's not concerned with honor, duty, or even morals, he's dumb (and proud of it), and he'd rather eat than save a damsel in distress. Furthermore, his funny responses are the counterpart of Quixote's serious remarks about life. Personally, I liked Sancho better :)

[Munro]

Brave New World; Aldous Huxley
Metamorphosis and other stories; Franz Kafka


What did you think of these?


Brave New World was very clever, and the world that Huxley thought up was brilliant as well as scarily realistic when you think about the potential science has to regulate our society, except I hated all of the main characters except for John Savage. Bernard Marx was just a whingeing weasel, not a hero, and not even an anti-hero. But, eheh, I still like Ninteen Eighty-Four better, as far as dystopian novels go.

Now, Metamorphosis was amazing. I thought it was an exremely imaginative and poignant tale of the human condition, a world that lacks family values, and the life of a man who feels like an insect...before he wakes up, even. While Metamorphosis is the classic short story (and duly so), the 'others' were brilliant as well, and I felt immensely satisfied after reading each of them. I think you would enjoy Investigations of a Dog, In the Penal Settlement and The Burrow, the latter two were extremely vivid in their surroundings, both stories reflecting the cruelty of humanity, and the paranoia of a homemaker respectively. I'll be re-reading them some time, that's for sure.

[crisaor]

Brave New World was very clever, and the world that Huxley thought up was brilliant as well as scarily realistic when you think about the potential science has to regulate our society, except I hated all of the main characters except for John Savage. Bernard Marx was just a whingeing weasel, not a hero, and not even an anti-hero. But, eheh, I still like Ninteen Eighty-Four better, as far as dystopian novels go.
That's interesting. I liked Bernard at first, but he becomes someone totally different later in the story. I agree that Mr. Savage is the most likeable character (it's very possible that Huxley planned it that way). After all, he's the only one who still upholds the "old" ideals.



Now, Metamorphosis was amazing. I thought it was an exremely imaginative and poignant tale of the human condition, a world that lacks family values, and the life of a man who feels like an insect...before he wakes up, even. While Metamorphosis is the classic short story (and duly so), the 'others' were brilliant as well, and I felt immensely satisfied after reading each of them. I think you would enjoy Investigations of a Dog, In the Penal Settlement and The Burrow, the latter two were extremely vivid in their surroundings, both stories reflecting the cruelty of humanity, and the paranoia of a homemaker respectively. I'll be re-reading them some time, that's for sure.
My thoughts exactly, although I had to read the Metamorphosis (the tale, not the book) several times before I understood it. I first read it when I was 15. Didn't make much sense to me back then, I mean, how come apples could harm him? ;)

[Demona]

You know, this just goes to show how differently people lookat things. As far as I was concerned, the whole point of putting up my list and seeing other people's lists was to get a list of things 'd like to put on my "to be read sometime list" I thought that was the whole point and I was waiting for everyone's lists to be up when we could have comments on the books also- the thread title does say RATE and DISCUSS. Maybe everyone including me were consciously/unconsciously showing off- but could my alternative interpretation also be taken into consideration?

for sure. but i never thought that one should read a book just because someone else has already read it... :o weird.

as for rating and discussing....i do agree that later on people started actually discussing books. untill that, everyone was ust posting their lists heh.

[apstudent]

I have read only two of the original books you wanted to rate and discuss. The first one is Metamorphosis, and I give it a big fat whopping 2 out of ten. I could not keep my eyes open the entire time. The only reason I gave it at least a two was the picture on the front of the book I recall was pretty cool.
The second one is Their Eyes Were Watching God. That I would give closer to an eight. That book was pretty interesting. I liked the story line, I did not like the ending, but for the tone of the book, it was fitting. In fact, I think the book would have been complete if she had been convicted of killing her husband. That would have been a more fitting ending.