what is on your 2008 reading list?

[motherhubbard]

A lot of people have posted what they read in 2007. I wish I had kept up, but I will for 2008. I wondered if anyone had a list of books they would like to read in 2008?


I plan to take three literature classes this year so I may not have a lot of time for reading for my own pleasure, but I have formed a little list of books that I would really like to read this year. I’m currently about 1/3 of the way through Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and I’m loving it. I hope to read the Buck books next.


Pearl S. Buck- Sons, A House Divided
Flannery O'Connor- selected short stories
Eugene O’Neill- Beyond the Horizon
Shakespeare- As You Like It, Anthony and Cleopatra
Miguel de Cervantes- Don Quixote (summer read, it sounds a little daunting, but virgil has me interested)

[LadyWentworth]

I have an approximate total of, I'd say, 135 books to read at the moment. I am trying to come up with a list of 24 that I want to read first (that is 2 a month). If I can catch up to them, then I will, of course, read more.

First of all, thanks to Virgil, I have it in my head to read Shakespeare again (as it has been a long time since I have done so). I read plays in a day. So, I don't put them on the same list as the books, which take longer to read. My first Shakespeare choice of the year will be "The Taming of the Shrew". I haven't decided what will come next, though.

Second, as for books, I don't have an idea yet. When I finish the list, I will have to post it in here.

[Tosca]

My goal is to read 20,000 pages every year. I made it last year, and this year I'd like to include:

More of Thomas Hardy's work
Charles Dickens' "Bleak House"
Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" and "Woman in White"
And a lot more...!

[LadyWentworth]

My goal is to read 20,000 pages every year. I made it last year
You do it by pages, huh? All I ever do is try to read a chapter a night! I am lucky if I can do that! :) I should keep track of the number of pages that I read this year just for the fun of it. That would be interesting to find out!

[Niamh]

Where do i start!
Well obviously the twelve nominations from the book club.
I have inferno by Dante that i want to read but didnt nominate that.
I'm currently reading Sense and Sensablity
Theres supposed to be a new Artemis Fowl out this year.
I'll more than likely read Persuasion about twice
and i want to reread the Merlin Trilogy and A Wicked Day by Mary Stewart
As for the rest... Have to see where the year takes me.

[scoooter5]

I maintain an excel spreadsheet with a list of book I want to read. Currently it's over 200 long, so I expect I won't run out of things to read for quite a long time. The books next on the list for me are:

Roots--Haley (reading now)
Cousin Bette--Balzac
Of Human Bondage--Maugham
Lilith--MacDonald
Snow Crash--Stephenson
Cranford--Gaskell
Love in the Time of Cholera--Marquez
Looking Backwards--Bellamy
Sophie's Choice--Styron

Who knows, I may not get past those this year, but that's the agenda anyway. Good luck in your own reading.

[Dori]

Here's what is set in stone:

School
1984 by G. Orwell
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Hamlet by W. Shakespeare
Poerty from Frost, Dickenson, and Whitman

Personal
Those Who Love by Irving Stone
The War: An Intimate History 1941-1945 (audiobook) by G.C. Ward and Ken Burns
The Possessed by F. Dostoevsky***

Book Clubs/Discussions
The Aeneid (audiobook) by Virgil
Dr.Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

***This might also be read in another book club because I nominated it.

[JBI]

I'm starting with the Norton anthologies. Already mostly done volume one of the English literature one. though I was 800 in at the end of the year. A complete re-read of Shakespeare's major plays and his sonnets is in order.

I have a bunch of poets, about 150, to cover, as well as learning to speak and read Italian, which should take a lot of my time.

I would also like to punch into post-modern and new emerging books this year; I handles mostly realism and modernism last year.

The first half of this year I have no school (I worked hard to finish highschool half a year earlier than everyone else) so I should be reading zealously. I start university in September, so I will need to adjust the second half to them, of course.

Short stories will take most of my time I think. Novels will have to be chosen more carefully, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to spend the time, and effort on a 700 page tomb to be disappointed (happens a lot when you try modern stuff).

[huihuffaker]

2008 reading list......


'The Host' -Stephenie Meyer
'Breaking Dawn' -Stephenie Meyer [Twilight Series]
'Tithe' -Holly Black
'Ironside' -Holly Black
'The Complete Short Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe'

[papayahed]

First let me say that I hope to read a good deal of the book club reads.

Secondly the books listed below are on my shelf and I am almost positive I will not be reading all of these in the next year but hope to make a dent:

The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
The long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams
Trainspotting - Irvine welsh
rabbit, run - John updike
How to be Good - Nick Hornby
Independant People - Halldor Laxness
Midnight's children - Salman Rushdie
The protable Dorthy Parker
Von Braun: Dreamer of Space Engineer of War
Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds Mexican Immigration and the future of race in America

[aabbcc]

There are a couple of gaps to fill, certainly...

Manzoni, A. - I promessi sposi
... Atypical for me, but I predominately want to read it for the sake of having read it, because everybody around me has read it school-wise before I moved here, and more than once I felt it as a gap and wished I had read it. So, this is definitely going to be one of the things I will read this year.

Shakespeare, W. - something other than what I have read so far?
... Other than his sonnets, the most known tragedies and A Midsummer Night's Dream, I have not really read the "other side" of Shakespeare's opus, so I would like to read one or two of his other known works - I was thinking of starting with King Lear, but will see.

Moliere - same thing as above, other than two known works, I have not read anything more, but wish to; besides, it is going to be a good exercise for the poor and passive state of my French ;)

Hugo, V. - another gap, and another French exercise. :D Though I have sort-of-read when I was younger A Hunchback of Notre Dame and parts of Les Miserables (and I read his poetry recently), I would really like re-read, or 'actually' read, if not both than at least one of that.

Something by Eco - I have not read his literary works other than Il Nome della Rosa, all that I have been reading by him were his works in aesthetics and philosophy, so I would like to read maybe another of his literary works.

Other than those, I will be reading just as usual, the random things I come across, without much plan, in addition to that which I ought to read for school (and, later this year, university).

[bouquin]

I think it's a neat idea to go by pages. I'll try and do that starting this year (so far, I have read 300 pages:) ). I was able to read 48 books in 2007 but I can't say how many pages they amounted to.
Here's my TBR list for 2008:
Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster










My goal is to read 20,000 pages every year. I made it last year, and this year I'd like to include:

More of Thomas Hardy's work
Charles Dickens' "Bleak House"
Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" and "Woman in White"
And a lot more...!

[thelastmelon]

My goal is to read at least one book by an author from every continent. And then I also realized I had a lot of books in the shelf that I haven't read, so I'll try to read many of them as well. Some of them are:

1984 - George Orwell
Coronado - Dennis Lehane
A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Jerusalem - Selma Lagerlöf

[ThePianoMan]

More classics, not any set in stone but a bunch I'd like to start.

Some fantasy series I started and want to finish.

[Nossa]

Okay, for college, I have six plays for my drama class:

Shakespears:
The Comedy of Errors
Twelfth Night
As You Like It
Etherege - The Man of Mode
Congreve - The Way of the World
Farquhar - The Recruiting Officer

And on my own reading list:
Northangery Abbey - Jane Austen
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
The Road - Cormac Mcarthy
Waiting For The Barbarians - JM Coetzee
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Ghosts - Henrik Ibsen
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque.

I have some more, but these are the main ones.

[THX-1138]

[QUOTE=thelastmelon;507360]


A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

good luck with that i am stuck with his other book (my friend Leonard) which is badly written

[thelastmelon]

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

good luck with that i am stuck with his other book (my friend Leonard) which is badly written

Have you read A Million Little Pieces as well? I've heard it's a good book,
but have had it at home for a long time and not read it. I think it's worth a try at least. :)

[Topekachu]

I heard that the Twilight series (or whatever it's called) by Stephenie Meyer is good...so I might read those.
Also, George Orwell's 1984 and the rest of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. And The PK Man...and I haven't read the rest of the Among the Hidden books yet! Yeah...I have a long list, but these are the ones I remember.

[Niamh]

The long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams


Hey, let me know if its any good! I've wanted to read that for a while but havent gotten around to.

Also this year i will definitely read terry pratchett, i say it every year but still havent!

[grace86]

For some reason I have been frantically trying to make a list! But I think primarily I should get to the books that are on my bookshelf (some have been crying at me for years now).

So my list:

Sons and Lovers (currently started) - D.H. Lawrence
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Rainbow - D.H. Lawrence
Lady Chatterly's Lover - D.H. Lawrence (is it obvious I am trying to catch up?)
She and Allan - H.R. Haggard (I've started but stopped)
The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas (wanted to read it last summer)

Shakespeare: maybe two or three of his comedies. Too many tragedies lately!

Walden - Thoreau
The Inferno - Dante
Paradise Lost - Milton (with this one I am being optimistic - I cannot read this by myself so I need to find a buddy)

There are a lot more on my shelves but as long as I get these done I will feel like I have accomplished a lot. I also wanted to participate in at least four book club readings (I am setting a goal at least)...still trying to see if I can do January's.

This summer I want to devote to one author and read multiple works by that one author...either Thomas Hardy or Willa Cather (I got hooked Janine!). And lastly, I am trying to locate some good forensic anthropology books to read up on, there is a lack of classes for now that I can take on the subject so I was told to pick up a book on it.

[Tosca]

Going by pages is awesome! It is fun to see the numbers get bigger and bigger with every book you read!

[Lily Adams]

I would love to get my hands on those rarer HG Wells books that I can never find. First Men in the Moon and Mind at the End of Its Tether. I have a whole shelf of books just waiting to read, though.

I'd really like to read Lolita, too. I wanna see the Kubrick movie badly. Reminds me of the Oingo Boingo song...too little too little TOO LITTLE!!!!!!!!

[*Classic*Charm*]

The Master and Margarita- Bulgakov
Crime and Punishment- Dostoyevski
The Brothers Karamazov- Dostoyevski
Anna Karenina- Tolstoy
War and Peace- Tolstoy
Lolita- Nabokov

It's the year of the Russian authors for me...can you tell?

[LadyWentworth]

The Master and Margarita- Bulgakov
Crime and Punishment- Dostoyevski
The Brothers Karamazov- Dostoyevski
Anna Karenina- Tolstoy
War and Peace- Tolstoy
Lolita- Nabokov

It's the year of the Russian authors for me...can you tell?

:lol: I was just about to ask you if you planned on making this a year of all Russian writers, and then I saw your note at the bottom!! :D

[PabloQ]

In 2007, I embarked to read American authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a lead up to reading the USA trilogy by John Dos Passos. As I got interested in the realism to modernism movement, novels keep showing up on the shelf in front of it. So here's how it looks at this moment:
Pudd'nhead Wilson -- Mark Twain
The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
Maggie: a Girl of the Streets - Stephen Crane
McTeague and The Octopus -- Frank Norris
King Coal -- Upton Sinclair
Sister Carrie -- Theodore Drieser
Main Street and Babbitt -- Sinclair Lewis
Daisy Miller and Washington Square -- Henry James
This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned -- Scott Fitzgerald
and finally Dos Passos.
Reserving the right to shuffle the deck and possibly add to the list based on whether a particular author catches my fancy and I want more before I move on (which may very well happen with Mark Twain).

[aeroport]

But I think primarily I should get to the books that are on my bookshelf (some have been crying at me for years now).
Likewise!


Paradise Lost - Milton (with this one I am being optimistic - I cannot read this by myself so I need to find a buddy)
I'll be reading this as well in Milton class.
L'Amant - Marguerite Duras (for Fr. class)
Finish The Ambassadors (within the week hopefully) - James
The Wings of the Dove - James
What Maisie Knew - James
The Rise of Silas Lapham - William Dean Howells
The House of the Seven Gables - Hawthorne
The Blithedale Romance - Hawthorne
The Marble Faun - Hawthorne
Hawthorne - James's critical study
Zuckerman Bound, The Anatomy Lesson, and The Prague Orgy - Philip Roth
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

[Chaos Theory]

I recently started a literature binge and I would like to maintain the momentum, so the following list does seem overzealous! :D Given the seasonal intersessions and summer vacation, I think I can accomplish it.


Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Les Miserables by Victory Hugo
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervates Saavadera
Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Ulysses by James Joyce
Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

Most of these books were recommended in the thread I created about long novels. And I am impressionable for any nearly all recommendations that anyone gives, so I decided why not?

[Lily Adams]

Oooh, and The Metamorphosis by Kafka and 2001: A Space Odyessey. Loved the movie, now I wanna read the book.

I checked out Lolita today.

[Tersely]

I heard that the Twilight series (or whatever it's called) by Stephenie Meyer is good...so I might read those.

That my friend is an excellent series. They are already making a movie about it and the series is only a couple of years old.
Anyways.. I have a nice little green tub full to the rim of books and to control my finances, have made an agreement with myself to not buy a -single- book until I read everything in that tub. Just to name a few...
(currently into the gothic literature) so that includes Mysteries of Udolpho, Melmoth the Wanderer, Uncle Silas, Castle of Otranto, The Monk, and The Vampyre.
Two huge novels.. Les Miserables (second reading unabridged...first was abridged) and The Tale of Genji.
For fun... a couple of Stephen Kings.

[PabloQ]

Likewise!


I'll be reading this as well in Milton class.
L'Amant - Marguerite Duras (for Fr. class)
Finish The Ambassadors (within the week hopefully) - James
The Wings of the Dove - James
What Maisie Knew - James
The Rise of Silas Lapham - William Dean Howells
The House of the Seven Gables - Hawthorne
The Blithedale Romance - Hawthorne
The Marble Faun - Hawthorne
Hawthorne - James's critical study
Zuckerman Bound, The Anatomy Lesson, and The Prague Orgy - Philip Roth
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

I just finished The Ambassadors and really enjoyed it. If you plan to walk straight into The Wings of the Dove, I'd be interested in your reaction, especially if it's the first time. I found it maddening and I've figured out why, but I'm interested in other's reaction to it.
I really enjoyed The Rise of Silas Lapham as well.

[knightss]

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
Dr. Zhivago by Pasternak
The Bible
Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
Ivanhoe by Scott
The few Vonnegut novels I haven't read yet
Don Quixote by Cervantes

just to name a few =)

[manolia]

I have decided on these so far:

"Middlesex" - J Eugenides
"Zorba" - N Kazatzakis
"The divine Comedy" - Dante
"The 120 days of Sodom" - De Sade
"Ethan Frome" - E Wharton
2-3 Dicken's novels
"Good morning, Midnight" -J Rhys

[Annamariah]

I have at least 30 books in my own bookshelf that I haven't read yet, and then of course I always find new books in library and read those first, and I also like to re-read my old favourites, so I can't be sure whether I'll read even half of those 30 books this year...

But I'm quite sure I'll read these:

Ted Dekker - Red
Ted Dekker - White
Neil Gaiman - Stardust
Torey Hayden - Somebody Else's Kids
Torey Hayden - Beautiful Child
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
Bodie & Brock Thoene - Fifth Seal

These I'm probably going to re-read this year (once again...):

Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre
L. M. Montgomery - The Blue Castle
J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Ilmari Kelo - Tulta ja tuulta

[Takeahnase]

I have an ever expanding list of books I'd like to read this year, here are some of those I'm especially keen on:

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabrial Garcia Marquez
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
Pale Fire - Vladmimir Nabokov
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervates Saavadera
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, or, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Walden - Henry David Thoreau (re-read)

I very much doubt I'll manage to even make a dent in this list, what with a mountain of college work already piling up, plus the fact that there are some biggies in there which will take some time to plod through. I'd also like to read a little more non-fiction this year too, I think. There are just so many books I'm itching to delve into... far too many to get through in ten years, even, let alone one.

[Cailin]

First post.....:blush:

Have already launched on my literary journey this year...;)

Read so far:

A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini
Dubliners James Joyce (reread)
Walk the Blue Fields Claire Keegan (beautiful short stories)


Yet to delve into (that I can think of at the moment):
Shirley Charlotte Bronte
1984 George Orwell
Catch 22 Joseph Heller
The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
The Master Colm Toibin
Amongst Women John McGahern
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
The Sea John Banville
All Quiet on the Western Front Eric Maria Remarque
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Jean-Dominique Bauby (In French)
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters Julian Barnes
Amsterdam Ian McEwan
Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson
Everyman Philip Roth
The Woman in the Fifth Douglas Adams
Brick Lane Monica Ali
The Snake's Pass Bram Stoker
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith

There's a definite European slant to my list - there are lots of others that slip my mind at the moment...

[grace86]

:D I have to say that my venture into this new year's reading has not started off on the right foot. Since the very beginning of January I have been unable to finish Chapter one of Sons and Lovers. This new year looks dim in regards to my reading habits. But then again I did not expect that my class load this quarter would be so heavy in reading.

But I could always ditch the class work for an evening or two a week and read for leisure. Hmmmm.

[*Classic*Charm*]

:lol: I was just about to ask you if you planned on making this a year of all Russian writers, and then I saw your note at the bottom!! :D

Haha yes. Last year was the year of epic poetry. It was a loooonnggg year haha. I think I'm going to have a hard time this year, because the Russian's tend to be so serious, and I have some lovely Austen and Shakespeare sitting on my shelf that has yet to be read...

[Zeruiah]

I have an ever expanding list of books I'd like to read this year, here are some of those I'm especially keen on:

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabrial Garcia Marquez
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
Pale Fire - Vladmimir Nabokov
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervates Saavadera
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, or, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Walden - Henry David Thoreau (re-read)

I very much doubt I'll manage to even make a dent in this list, what with a mountain of college work already piling up, plus the fact that there are some biggies in there which will take some time to plod through. I'd also like to read a little more non-fiction this year too, I think. There are just so many books I'm itching to delve into... far too many to get through in ten years, even, let alone one.

This list is creepily reminiscent of the list I was just about to post. :eek2:

I've already begun The Brother Karamazov and my list didn't have Jane Eyre, Chronicle, Survivor, Rebecca, The Lies of..., and a few others but it was essentially the same.

[Simao]

I have an ever expanding list of books I'd like to read this year, here are some of those I'm especially keen on:

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabrial Garcia Marquez
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
Pale Fire - Vladmimir Nabokov
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervates Saavadera
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, or, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Siddhartha - Hermann HesseA Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Walden - Henry David Thoreau (re-read)

I very much doubt I'll manage to even make a dent in this list, what with a mountain of college work already piling up, plus the fact that there are some biggies in there which will take some time to plod through. I'd also like to read a little more non-fiction this year too, I think. There are just so many books I'm itching to delve into... far too many to get through in ten years, even, let alone one.

My public library has alot of Hermann Hesse's work but I was hesitated to read some his novels because I really don't know how it is. Can anyone suggest anything by him? My library doesn't have much books translated to my native language and I have very few selections for authors so you would think that the library would contain mostly the famous novels but for some reason they three or four novels by Hesse so I was just wondering is it worth the read at all?
Thank you in advance.

[ntropyincarnate]

So far...
finish War and Peace (I started it in July)
The Woman in White
The Divine Comedy
Nicholas Nickleby
Marmion
The Wings of the Dove
The GULAG Archipelago
Crime and Punishment
Paradise Lost
Emma

[StayGolden]

I got the Complete Works of Shakespeare for Christmas, so I plan to try to get through that. I'm also going to reread the Bible this year, from cover to cover.

Aside from that, I have no idea.

[Oomoo]

My public library has alot of Hermann Hesse's work but I was hesitated to read some his novels because I really don't know how it is. Can anyone suggest anything by him? My library doesn't have much books translated to my native language and I have very few selections for authors so you would think that the library would contain mostly the famous novels but for some reason they three or four novels by Hesse so I was just wondering is it worth the read at all?
Thank you in advance.
Hesse is mostly concerned with Schopenhauerian and Nietzschean themes. His novels contain little drama and character development, and they're more like vehicles for ideas than actual novels. His works are sincere and, in my opinion, not bad, but Mann touches the same issues and he's better. Just keep in mind that you won't be moved by his characters. Oh, and if you dismiss concepts like "Will" or "The Spirit of Music" don't even bother in the first place.

[bouquin]

I think it's a neat idea to go by pages. I'll try and do that starting this year (so far, I have read 300 pages:) ). I was able to read 48 books in 2007 but I can't say how many pages they amounted to.
Here's my TBR list for 2008:
Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster





I have also lined up the following authors :
T.C. Boyle
Edgar Allan Poe
Alphonse Daudet
Marguerite Duras
Yann Martel

[novelsryou]

My stack includes:

The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich-Whoa, that's a long one.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Great Gatsby

And I need to finish Ike

[thegreenthing]

Primarily a lot, and I really mean a lot, of philosophy and beyond that I thought that I might reed

Ulysses

East of Eden

Master and Margarita

The seven pillars of wisdom

Hemingways collected short stories

And maybe I'll also get my hands on some pushkin, and maybe some French writers.

[applepie]

A few I would like to get to in the next year are:

The Divine Comedy- Dante Alighieri
The Three Musketeers- Dumas
Don Quixote- Miguel de Cervantes
Something by Tolstoy, but I've not decided what
The Fountainhead (I've read Atlas Shrugged several times, but never this)- Rand
The Bride of Lammermoor- Sir Walter Scott

I'll see if I can find the time to even get to all of these, and then maybe I'll add more:)

[rjonathon]

Just Started: Underworld by Don Delillo
After I finish (probably in a month or so...), I want to tackle:

Portrait of the Artist/Ulysses by Joyce
Moby Dick by Melville (reread, because I plowed through it in college but didn't appreciate)
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (need to buy a better translation first)
Rememberance of Things Past by Proust
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway (reread)
Foucault's Pendulum by Eco
Anything by Henry James

...that's all I can think of. I'm not in front of my bookshelf right now. Lots of heavy stuff, but I'll probably balance it with short books in between

[thelastmelon]

I have a little project to read books by authors from all the continents in the world. So far I've managed:

North America
The Dominican Republic: In the Time of the Butterflies - Julia Alvarez
Canada: JPod - Douglas Coupland

South America
Brazil: The Pilgrimage - Paulo Coelho

Asia
Japan: Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

Africa
South Africa: Slow Man - J.M. Coetzee
Cape Verde: The Testament of Sir Napumoceno da Silva Araújo - Germano Almeida

Europe
England: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Sweden: Ett Oskrivet Blad - Marie Hermanson

Oceania
None

Currently reading:
A book with short stories by Nguyen Huy Thiep from Vietnam.
A Família Trago - Germano Almeida

[JBI]

Hesse is mostly concerned with Schopenhauerian and Nietzschean themes. His novels contain little drama and character development, and they're more like vehicles for ideas than actual novels. His works are sincere and, in my opinion, not bad, but Mann touches the same issues and he's better. Just keep in mind that you won't be moved by his characters. Oh, and if you dismiss concepts like "Will" or "The Spirit of Music" don't even bother in the first place.

I disagree with you completely. You should try Steppenwolf. Hesse was an excellent writer, and blended in more Eastern philosophy to his work than Nietzschean. Mann touches different issues all together and is also worth reading.

[Ultravox]

I didn't read anywhere near as many books as I should have done in 2007, so I intend to spend 2008 rectifying that as greatly as possible.

As it stands, I have a few books for my course that require my attention before anything recreational, including:

Poetics, Aristotle
Odyssey, Homer
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
and possibly
The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche

As far as recreational reading extends, my current list looks something along the lines of:

(Finishing) Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

It's probably highly likely that this list will change substantially though as the year progresses. I'm sure it won't be long before something else takes my fancy.

[higley]

Ultravox, Fahrenheit 451 is amazing, my favorite book. :) Crime and Punishment was a close second.

I'd like to complete the 50 book challenge this year, I fell about twenty short in 2007. Recently I saw some post from a disgruntled blogger complaining about people who set reading goals, saying that they turn reading into a chore and that they couldn't possibly genuinely enjoy or appreciate a book if it was only a step towards an end. They seemed actually offended. I, along with several others, disagreed.

[ntropyincarnate]

I have added to my list The Sienkiewicz Triology - With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Fire in the Steppe

[AngelofPhantoms]

I'm going to finish Les Miserables, finish Notre-Dame de Paris, read some of Chalres Dickens books, maybe some Ray Bradbury.

[toro913]

Borges Collected Fictions
New York Trilogy - Auster
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Chabon
Big Sleep - Chandler
Cheever Collected Stories
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami
Lolita - Nabokov
Corrections - Franzen
The Brothers Karamazov
Rabbit, Run - Updike
Flannery O'Conner Collected Stories
Maltese Falcon - Hammett
American Psycho - Ellis
100 Years of Solitude - Marquez
AHBWOSG - Eggers
Everything is Illuminated - Foer
Sound and Fury - Faulkner
Satanic Verses - Rushdie
All Quiet on the Western Front - Remarque

There's more that I've bought and haven't read and I'm sure I'll take something random from the library every other week.

[JoanS]

Iam not making any lists, ufortunately all the books i want to read are simply innacesable to me, but two weeks ago i got leave of grass, finally...
This year i want to read all the greek tragedies, Ibsen´s dramas, Gide´s novels, some books of Rabelaise, Montaigne and Proust.. and many more

[JoanS]

I didn't read anywhere near as many books as I should have done in 2007, so I intend to spend 2008 rectifying that as greatly as possible.

As it stands, I have a few books for my course that require my attention before anything recreational, including:

Poetics, Aristotle
Odyssey, Homer
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
and possibly
The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche

As far as recreational reading extends, my current list looks something along the lines of:

(Finishing) Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

It's probably highly likely that this list will change substantially though as the year progresses. I'm sure it won't be long before something else takes my fancy.

I also want to read poetics of Aristotle but i recomend your read before all the literature which was written before this book to understand it better. my profesor of philosophy told me that.. :thumbs_up

[johann cruyff]

Well,off the top of my head,here are some authors I'll be paying more attention to in the next few months:

Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum,Baudolino
Marcel Proust - Remembrance of Things Past
Dostoevsky - The Idiot,The Gambler
Tolstoy - War and Peace
Daniel Kehlmann - Measuring the World
Goethe - Faust
Hugo - Les Miserables

Not the most compelling list(Hugo:sick:),but I have to do it sooner or later...

[Ryduce]

Hmm..No matter what reading list I make, as soon as I walk into a book store I am sure to deviate from it.

Ray Bradbury-Farenheit 451
H.P Lovecraft-Assorted short stories
Cormac McCarthy-The Road
Henry James-The Turn of the Screw
Joyce Carol Oates-Not sure yet.
Sam Sheridan-A fighters heart
Norman Mailer-The Naked and the Dead
Mary Shelley-The Last Man

[livelaughlove]

I have an ever expanding list of books I'd like to read this year, here are some of those I'm especially keen on:

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabrial Garcia Marquez
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
Pale Fire - Vladmimir Nabokov
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervates Saavadera
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, or, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Walden - Henry David Thoreau (re-read)

I very much doubt I'll manage to even make a dent in this list, what with a mountain of college work already piling up, plus the fact that there are some biggies in there which will take some time to plod through. I'd also like to read a little more non-fiction this year too, I think. There are just so many books I'm itching to delve into... far too many to get through in ten years, even, let alone one.

This is a little late but I just wanted to tell you that this is an amazing list!!

[latimeri]

a hundred, and one more, writers of the soviet- russian by Juri Andtejev. It's written analysis about writers such as Mihail Solohov and many else.

[Mark F.]

Sitting on my shelf right now :

Complete tragedies by Sophocles
The Castle by Kafka
First Love & Home of the Gentry by Turgenev
1000 page collection of Chekhov short stories
Dead Souls by Gogol
Green Hills of Africa by Hemingway
Hunger by Knut Hamsun

When I get through those, I want to read :

Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
Uncle Vania and Three Sisters by Chekhov

And right now I'm reading The Plague by Camus.

[snufflesrules]

Well, I thought I had a definite book list for this year, but reading this thread gave me so many more ideas...
Anyway definitely on my list are some English classics like
Thomas Hardy: The return of the native, the Major of Casterbridge
Dickens: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield
And the being German I think I should finally read some German authors,too. Any advise would be welcome.

currently reading: Siegfried Sassoon (The George Sherston Memoires)

[Mark F.]

Herman Hesse. I've only read Siddhartha but it's a great book and judging by your list it's one you'd probably like.

[Takeahnase]

This is a little late but I just wanted to tell you that this is an amazing list!!

Thank you! I only wish I had enough time to get through them all. So far I'm halfway through Love in the Time of Cholera and I've picked up The Plague as my next read, but I just don't have enough time to get through the bulk of the rest. I'll probably save The Brother's Karamazov until the summer holidays, tempting as it is to start it now! That's one I definately want to read this year.

[Kafka's Crow]

For me this is the year of reading Proust. I am reading Within the Budding Grove. On the other hand, I am listening to the audio version of Swann's Way (this one: http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/PAGES/25312.htm)
in order to make sure that I don't forget what I have already read.

Books on my shelf waiting to be read:

Proust by Edmund White (biographical)
The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time by Phyllis Rose
En Attendant Godot - Waiting for Godot (bilingual text) by Samuel Beckett
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
The Wolfe Solent by John Cowper Powys
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

[Gibran]

Herman Hesse. I've only read Siddhartha but it's a great book and judging by your list it's one you'd probably like.

Hesse is indeed a nice novelist and I've just read his UNTERM RAD and Narciß und Goldmund. Very enjoyable works.

Books waiting for me:

Always Astonished by Fernando Pessoa
Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke
Dramas by Maurice Maeterlinck
RETOUCHES À MON "RETOUR DE L'USSR" by Andre Gide

[Erichtho]

I've stopped making any lists, because most likely I will end reading something entirely different anyway. :sick: I guess I prefer my reading repertoire to be coincidental.



And the being German I think I should finally read some German authors,too. Any advise would be welcome.

I second Hesse, my favourite works by him are Narciß und Goldmund and The Glass Bead Game. I also like many of his shorter stories.
Other German authors I highly appreciate are Franz Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist and Arthur Schnitzler.
I could recommend you more suitable stuff if I knew your reading preferences. What periods and genres do you like?

[Mark F.]

It depends on how specific you were about German authors but Schnitzler (Austrian) and especially Kafka (Czech) are great authors.

I've only read the Dream Story by Schnitzler, what else would you recommend?

[Erichtho]

It depends on how specific you were about German authors but Schnitzler (Austrian) and especially Kafka (Czech) are great authors.

If someone asks for German literature I'm thinking of people who wrote in German, not of the countries they lived in - otherwise there would hardly be any "German" literature, thinking of how shortly a state like that has existed.
Kafka was most of his life an Austrian citizen, only after WW1 he became a Czech citizen for five or six years. He was fluent in Czech but still his native and "dominant" language has always been German. Schnitzler couldn't speak, as far as I know, any other langauge to an extent that would have enabled him to write literature in it. If you were consequent, you would have to call Kleist Prussian and not German. ;)


I've only read the Dream Story by Schnitzler, what else would you recommend?

Fräulein Else, Leutnant Gustl and his other stories in general (he also was of course a great dramatist, but I happen to think that dramas are best to be seen on stage and not to be read).

[snufflesrules]

Herman Hesse. I've only read Siddhartha but it's a great book and judging by your list it's one you'd probably like.

Thanks for the advise. I'll give Hesse a try. :)

I second Hesse, my favourite works by him are Narciß und Goldmund and The Glass Bead Game. I also like many of his shorter stories.
Other German authors I highly appreciate are Franz Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist and Arthur Schnitzler.
I could recommend you more suitable stuff if I knew your reading preferences. What periods and genres do you like?[/QUOTE]


Thanks for the advise. As for reading preferences, I have no idea. I like English classics, like Dickens and Jane Austen, but I really enjoy Doyle and Poe,too and then i enjoy reading Tolkien and other fantasy books. So, I guess, no real preferences.

The only German authors I read so far have been Theodor Storm and Theodor Fontane.

[superunknown]

Lots of stuff. I intend to read all the unifinished books currently on my bookshelf, plus a few others that I've yet to purchase. So far that means:

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita (currently reading, about a third of the way through)
Virginia Woolf - Selected Works
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World (read it once like 5 years ago, don't remember it too well, Point Counterpoint, Eyeless in Gaza, The Doors of Perception
Franz Kafka - The Complete Novels
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness and Other Stories
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday - Mao: The Unknown Story
R.L. Stevenson - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories
F Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night
W Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf, Siddartha
Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilimanjaro
James Joyce - Ulysses (got a few chapters into it last year, but then got too busy and had no time for it)
Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye
Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
John Fante - Ask the Dust
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Ojos de perro azul, Memoria de mis putas tristes
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Julio Cortazar - Rayuela, Ceremonias
Carlos Fuentes - La muerte de Artemio Cruz
Jean-Paul Sartre - La nausee, Le mur
Simone de Beauvoir - Les belles images#
Boris Vian - J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, Et on tuera tous les affreux
Alain-Fournier - Le grand meaulnes
Honore de Balzac - Le pere Goriot

Not sure I'll be able to get through all that in a year. Probably not actually

[superunknown]

The Master and Margarita- Bulgakov
Crime and Punishment- Dostoyevski
The Brothers Karamazov- Dostoyevski
Anna Karenina- Tolstoy
War and Peace- Tolstoy
Lolita- Nabokov

It's the year of the Russian authors for me...can you tell?
I love Russian literature. I've read every one of those except Anna Karenina (well, I'm about a third of the way through The Master and Margarita).

I read War and Peace over the summer, seems quite daunting but it's well worth the effort.

[Quinn_]

-----

[kandaurov]

Oh, The Plague, eh? I'm really looking forward to reading it! I'm having a hard time finding it though. Other than that, I'm thinking of reading some Virginia Woolf (for the first time!), Shakespeare, maybe Eco, and, if I'm brave enough, Faulkner or one of them russian heavy-weight champions like 'The Brothers Karamazov' or 'Anne Katherina'.

[superunknown]

Oh, The Plague, eh? I'm really looking forward to reading it! I'm having a hard time finding it though. Other than that, I'm thinking of reading some Virginia Woolf (for the first time!), Shakespeare, maybe Eco, and, if I'm brave enough, Faulkner or one of them russian heavy-weight champions like 'The Brothers Karamazov' or 'Anne Katherina'.
Hehe, I think you're referring to Anna Karenina?

If you only read one Russian lit book go with The Brothers Karamazov, it's an absolutely amazing book and, depending on the edition something like 700-800 pages so not quite such a mammoth read as War and Peace.

[Napoleon]

Right now I have:
Animal farm
1984
And Then There Were None
Dante's Inferno
that is probably about all i will be able to read this year.Im pretty slow:(

[kandaurov]

Hehe, I think you're referring to Anna Karenina?

Yes I do, I'm such an idiot :p I check almost all book titles before I post on this forum exactly to avoid this kind of situation, heh


If you only read one Russian lit book go with The Brothers Karamazov, it's an absolutely amazing book and, depending on the edition something like 700-800 pages so not quite such a mammoth read as War and Peace.

Thanks for the suggestion! I also have "The Idiot" waiting in line. From the two by Dostoevsky which one do you think I should read first?

[Stephanne]

Ah! Feels good to post again!
now let's see... i never end up completing reading the books which i want to so i think i shall set shorter goals this time-
I plan to read a few dramas by the University Wits( but I haven't bought any yet!)
- Volpone by Jonson
-finally, maybe, finally I might just get out of my cave and read the King Henry series by Shakespeare..
-after this, all I might want to read for sometime would be Wodehouse...
- I plan also to take a look at early Horatian satires.
so, this year's going to be ancient for me..

I like The Brothers Karamazov better than The Idiot... but it really really doesn't matter which you read first!

[betzen]

originally posted by Niamh
and i want to reread the Merlin Trilogy and A Wicked Day by Mary Stewart

I almost never hear anyone talk about Mary Stewart! I love her. Not the merlin trilogy as much--I like The Ivy Tree and some of her other travel-mystery-romances. Not "great literature" by some standards, I'm sure, but definitely great reads. I'm sure I'll reread some of hers this year.

I also read Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre almost every year.

[superunknown]

Thanks for the suggestion! I also have "The Idiot" waiting in line. From the two by Dostoevsky which one do you think I should read first?I couldn't tell you as I haven't read it, but Dostoevsky's most famous work and the one generally acknowledged to be his masterpiece is Crime and Punishment, and I found Karamazov to be a better book if that tells you anything (though Crime and Punishment is also very good). In terms of philosophy it is by far and away his best. The chapter of The Grand Inquisitor alone has been praised as a valuable philosophical work in and of itself, never mind the rest of the book. I've heard good things about The Idiot as well. You can't really go wrong with Dostoevsky in general. Make sure you get the Pevear & Volkhonsky translations though, they're unanimously acclaimed as the best Dostoevsky translators.

[Quinn_]

-----

[Joreads]

I have the complete works of Jane Austen which I want to read this year. I am a member of a book club so I will have to fit them in between those books.

[HeliX]

I really want to get around to reading The da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I absolutely LOVED Angels and Demons but for some reason I haven't found the time to read the follow up.

[Mark F.]

Skip it.

[Mark F.]

I've read The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot and I strongly advise reading TBK first. I was disappointed with The Idiot and I do not think this was one of his best. I shall never read it again. Personally, I find TBK to be his masterpiece over CAP. I've read it twice and cannot be more enthused each time.

Anna Karenina was fantastic, but such is blasphemy to compare Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky. Usually after reading the latter I feel wretched and misanthropic while from Tolstoy such emotions rarely emanate. The sheer brilliance that is Dostoyevsky, I cannot even begin to describe.

Crime and Punishment and The Idiot are both good, I thought The Demons was also a great effort. Must read The Brothers now.

[ReynardKitsune]

i thought artemis was good then there is wolf brother by michelle paver i love it

[Harold_P]

A lot of people have posted what they read in 2007. I wish I had kept up, but I will for 2008. I wondered if anyone had a list of books they would like to read in 2008?


I plan to take three literature classes this year so I may not have a lot of time for reading for my own pleasure, but I have formed a little list of books that I would really like to read this year. I’m currently about 1/3 of the way through Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and I’m loving it. I hope to read the Buck books next.


Pearl S. Buck- Sons, A House Divided
Flannery O'Connor- selected short stories
Eugene O’Neill- Beyond the Horizon
Shakespeare- As You Like It, Anthony and Cleopatra
Miguel de Cervantes- Don Quixote (summer read, it sounds a little daunting, but virgil has me interested)
I'm new to this site and have just finished "The Idiot."

What did you think? I was dubious about the "Christ-like" nature of Fyodor's hero in the novel... he is supposedly virtuous and meek and has his innocence ripped asunder by the squabbling society types... however I had doubts about his naivety in the beginning.

What do you think? Are you even around on this site anymore? I'm Harold by the way, a former English Lit student from Edinburgh. Nice to meet you (possibly).

Harold