What did we read in July?

[Dori]

I had an average month, reading only 4 books (and about 1/2 of another, and 1/4 of yet another):

Lolita by V. Nabokov (FINISHED)

The Audacity of Hope by B. Obama (FINISHED)

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (FINISHED)

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (FINISHED)

Procession: Dominant Personalities of Four Decades by John Gunther (Read "Hitler", "Stalin", "Mussolini", "Trotsky", and part of "Ghandi")

The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang (1/2 finished or so)

[Loike]

Oh, I did incredibly and surprisingly badly - considering I'm doing very little with my time - this month. I read Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady and Nabokov's Lolita. I also started George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, which I'm still reading now.

What did you think of Lolita?

xx

[Dori]

What did you think of Lolita?

xx

I loved it! It's by far one of the most well-written books I've read in a long time (I understand that was Nabokov's purpose). While reading it, the author had me convinced that the Humbert wasn't doing anything wrong...

[johann cruyff]

What I read in July:

El Aleph - Borges
Candide - Voltaire (reread)
Narcissus and Goldmund - Hesse
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - Rilke

It's been a good month, absolutely breathtaking literature :)

[MorpheusSandman]

The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (Allan Lee Illustrated editions)

-First read through since I was 14. The Hobbit was every bit as fun as I remembered, but I sludged through much of LotR. I don't know if it was my maturing tastes or just a general annoyance with Tolkien's style, but he seemed to lose all the wit, charm, and whimsy that made The Hobbit so good.

War & Peace - Tolstoy (translation by Pevear and Volkhonsky)

-I'm through 1/3 of it at the start of August and I'm loving it. Going from Tolkien to Tolstoy is like going from an Impala to a Corvette.

[John Goodman]

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Le comte de Monte-Cristo par Alexandre Dumas
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

[sharpie]

Ulysses - James Joyce......finally finished over a one year period. actually i just stopped reading when i got to sirens chapter, but picked it up again this month. so glad i did.

Seven Mysteries of Life - Guy Murchie.....great book

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez..... finishing it today

[Dark Muse]

Death in Venice ~ Thomas Mann
Youth, Beautiful Youth ~ Hermann Hesse
The Metamorhosis ~ Kafka

Poe:

Morella
Loss of Breath
Shadow-a Parable

H.P Lovecraft:

Dagon
Polaris
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
The Doom that came to Sarnath
The White Ship
The Cats of Ulthar
Celephais
From Beyond
The Temple

The Stranger ~ Albert Camus
Dr. Jekyell and Mr. Hyde ~ Stephonson

[Pensive]

As I have been pretty busy this month (and not very book-reading-oriented), very little leaving aside course books and threads/posts/blogs/other stuff on internet, but came across this one novel that I would put under my favourites:

To Kill A Mockingbird (it is indeed that novel)
A Poirot's Investigation Story
A Miss Marple's Investigation Story
Foreign Studies
Sons and Lovers (re-read)

[Hank Stamper]

this month I have mostly been reading,

The Island of Doctor Moreau
Moby Dick
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Road to Wigan Pier
and The Last Oil Shock, a depressing reminder about how much we rely on oil and the unavoidable fate that awaits us when the last oil fields run dry

[thelastmelon]

I had a good reading month and managed following books:

Oracle Night - Paul Auster
Gunnar - Bob Hansson
Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
Flickan under gatan - Roslund & Hellström
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Ladies Coupé - Anita Nair
Prince Caspian - C.S. Lewis
Fourplay - Jane Moore
P.S. I Love You - Cecilia Ahern
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C.S. Lewis

[mickitaz]

This was a fairly slow month for me. I finished The Count of Monte Cristo about July 20th. Then I read Firestorm and Thin Air by Rachel Caine.

[Mark F.]

Hollywood by Bukowski
Across the River and into the Trees by Hemingway
Wait Until Spring Bandini by Fante
The Modification by Butor
Uncle Vanya by Chekhov
Sophocles' complete tragedies

[papayahed]

One sad little book:

Size twelve is not fat by Meg Cabot

[byquist]

A PhD professor was kind enough to loan me his only copy of his dissertation: about Faulkner and specifically the character Gavin Stevens. Couldn't believe someone could write so effectively and with authority while in their 20's.

[Simao]

Since I started working I didn't really spend much time reading. I tried reading this book called "Animal" it is about an Indian kid who apparently turned into an animal/human kid. I stopped at the 50th page because of of the suckiness of the novel. I don't know why I even bought the damn thing but well.. Life goes on :)

[Leo The Lion]

It was a lighter month for myself, but this month should be better:

The Metamorphisis (Franz Kafka)
Franny And Zooey (J.D Salinger)
Notes From Underground (Fyodor Dostoevski)
Tropic Of Cancer (Henry Miller)
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)

[Loike]

Whille reading it, the author had me convinced that Humbert wasn't doing anything wrong...

Yes, I totally agree. I thought it was going to be embarrassingly obscene, but it was actually really poetic at points and I did wind up sympathising with Humbert.
After I read it I did some research about it on the Internet, and there was so much about it that I actually missed or didn't fully appreciate, so I really want to read it again.

xx

[hhc]

In July I followed a Mississippi Writers course, which means I read The Sound and The Fury once more, Black Boy by Richard Wright, some stories by Eudora Welty, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams.

Plus, I had started reading Paula by Isabel Allende, BUT somebody borrowed it and never returned it! :flare:
ARGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

So my book is in Mississippi and I'm on the other side of the ocean trying to think of a way to get it back.

Fortunately, The Sound and The Fury discussions somewhat compensate me for my loss.

[clumsy angelle]

Homeport by Nora Roberts

[eyemaker]

I only finished reading four books this July for I am very busy doing researches about my report, anyway this are the books I had finished:

The Kite Runner~ hosseini( reread)
Crime And Punishment~ Dostoevsky
The Great Gatsby~ Fitzgerald
The Turn Of The Screw~ James


-eye


Homeport by Nora Roberts

Hi the clumsy angelle! I'm very happy to see some Filipino bibliophiles here! welcome aboard!...and enjoy the forums!


--eyemaker

[TheFifthElement]

The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Atomised - Michel Houellebecque
After Dark - Haruki Murakami
A Quiet Belief in Angels - R J Ellory
Various shorts from: Little Birds - Anais Nin, The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami and First Love, Last Rites - Ian MacEwan

[aeroport]

The Golden Bowl - James
I think that was about it.

[Scheherazade]

Thanks to Papaya's excellent program, now I can actually remember all the books I have read.

So, after consulting my list :p, the books I read in July:

- The Boy in Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

- The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

- Chocolat by Joanne Harris

- The Secret Garden by F. Hodgson Burnett

[lugdunum]

The Road by Cormac Mc. Carthy (liked it a lot :thumbs_up :thumbs_up )
Daisy Miller by Henry James (Liked it a lot:thumbs_up :thumbs_up )
The Europeans also by Henry James (Liked it:thumbs_up )
Ms. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (dropped it after 30 pages, couldn't get myself to read more :yawnb::yawnb: )
Sputnik Sweetheart by H. Murakami (Liked it, although not as much as other Murakami's books:thumbs_up )
Lovers for a day by Ivan Klima (Dropped it looked boring. But might pick it up again soon and give it another try:yawnb: )

[DapperDrake]

My memory is terrible so this is what I've read to the best of it :-/

The Road by McCarthy
The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
The Wall & The Bedroom & Herostratus by Sartre

Not a great deal but I've been very preoccupied with other things.
I also had an abortive stab at A Winters Tale, I'll pick it up again some point when I have the patience for Shakespeare.

This month (August) I'm finishing off the volumes of Sartre and Dostoevsky short stories I have, I've just finished Northanger Abbey and plan to read some more Austen.

[book_jones]

Hmm, I did pretty good in July. Better than I remembered really.

A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (still not finished!)

[Janine]

I read another D.H.Lawrence biography (I think this makes my 4th or 5th):

Body of Truth - D.H.Lawrence - The Nomatic 1919 - 1930 by Phillp Callow

I also read two short novels:

Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

I also read a very interesting collection of short stories:

Great Short Stories by American Women

*one of the most notable and interesting was 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I thought of starting a discussion group thread on here of these fine short stories or just 'The Yellow Wallpaper', which is fascinating. It is a thought for the future.

Even though I did not physically read this, I did see the RSC production of the play DVD twice and listened to the audiobook twice, so now I know the text fairly well:

A Winter's Tale ~ William Shakespeare

[toni]

The Republic -- Plato
Politics -- Aristotle
The Sandman vol. 1 -- Neil Gaiman
Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Brontë (still on chapter 5!! :p)

haven't much time to read leisurely because of school work :sick:

[Janine]

Thanks to Papaya's excellent program, now I can actually remember all the books I have read.

So, after consulting my list :p, the books I read in July:

- The Boy in Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

- The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher

- Chocolat by Joanne Harris

- The Secret Garden by F. Hodgson Burnett

Scher, I love "Black Beauty" - I always cry concerning Ginger's fate. I have seen "Chocolat" and "The Secret Garden" in film adaptions but have not yet read the books. Were they good? I have SG here on my bookshelf, intending to read it someday. I love the films from all three of these. There again the first is a tear-jerker for me everytime.

[Scheherazade]

Scher, I love "Black Beauty" - I always cry concerning Ginger's fate. I have seen "Chocolat" and "The Secret Garden" in film adaptions but have not yet read the books. Were they good? I have SG here on my bookshelf, intending to read it someday. I love the films from all three of these. There again the first is a tear-jerker for me everytime.When I read the books, I hadn't seen any of the movies. Now I watched The Secret Garden.

The Secret Garden and Black Beauty were rather childish and too dramatic as expected, I guess but they were good.

As a child I used love Burnett's other books (Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy).

Now Chocolat... It was a lot of fun, cleverly written and a page turner for me. I finished in two days. Even though I am dying to watch the movie, I am not sure whether I will... Don't want to ruin the beauty of the book.

[Janine]

When I read the books, I hadn't seen any of the movies. Now I watched The Secret Garden.

The Secret Garden and Black Beauty were rather childish and too dramatic as expected, I guess but they were good.

As a child I used love Burnett's other books (Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy).

Now Chocolat... It was a lot of fun, cleverly written and a page turner for me. I finished in two days. Even though I am dying to watch the movie, I am not sure whether I will... Don't want to ruin the beauty of the book.

Yeah, the first two are juvenile books, but still I liked "Black Beauty"; I love horse stories. I loved the film "Chocolat"; in fact, my sister kept telling me about seeing it years back and so I invested in the DVD one Christmas. We all love that film here and have seen it countless times. It is witty and very funny at times as well. Great cast and a really fun film. You should watch it.