So what did we read in August, then?

[Kafka's Crow]

A very fruitful month indeed. I was on holiday from work, my best friend was on holiday and out of the country, I had read literally nothing in July therefore had no choice but to roar back into reading. A month without reading is a month wasted and I haven't got an unlimited supply of these months, do I? So I read:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn
The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Moab is My Washpot by Stephen Fry
The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry
Candide by Voltaire
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Of Love and other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Ivan Denisovich was good, not excellent. Very, very realistic and dispassionate. 7/10

Stephen Fry is the quintessential modern English gentleman: refined, erudite, witty, versatile, eloquent and with all the moral and sexual perversions that come with this title. I found him incredibly honest about his own moral flaws in Moab and very frank about his sexuality. Must be the most honest autobiography I have ever read. 10/10!

The Ode Less Traveled is excellent. A very good book, not very technical but good enough to save you from writing without being conscious of the artistic constraints that involve poetry-writing. Fry has brought poetry back in my life. The book is incredibly funny. It got me laughing out loud in the middle of the night, so much so that my wife had to come downstairs to check if I was OK. Another 10/10 (wish I could give more!)

The Club Dumas was disappointing. Oh how I hate omniscient narrators. What is the point of having two plots when one is there clearly just to throw the protagonist as well as the reader off his tracks and fill half of the pages? 4/10

What can I say about Candide? Absolutely hilarious stuff. A must-read, a very, very funny book indeed. 10/10!

Labyrinths: I found it good, very good and very very serious business. It must have been considered a very complex book when it was first published back in 1962. 9/10.

Of Love and other Demons is absolutely fantastic. It literally swept me off my feet. Extremely exotic, extremely sad and extremely magical. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude many years ago but this book is far superior. I will be very reluctant to give it anything less than 10/10.

Both Ivan Denisovich and Labyrinths are very serious books. Fry and Voltaire are funny whereas The Club Dumas is "pure wank" (to quote Stephen Fry). It got 4/10 as it is a fast-paced page-turner, otherwise I would have given it less. I still believe that The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason is better than both Dan Brown and Pérez-Reverte's books (if 'erudite thriller' is your cup of tea).

I also made regular incursions in James Joyce's works and read quite a few poems. I am happy with my progress this month.

So what did the forummers read in August, then?

[JBI]

I'll just put down a few, as many of the others aren't very well known or really "literary" per say, and are more context-relevant -

Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey, decent, but not as good as her other novels. I still am trying to decide whether Austen wanted us to accept the ending, or just interpret it as pure irony.

Cervantes tr. Grossman - Don Quixote - I don't think much explanation is needed. All I will say is that I enjoyed the translation immensely.

Canti Orfici - Dino Campana - I read it in the original, so I can't give much commentary beyond that it was beautiful in Italian.

Cita Invisibili - Italo Calvino - Read this too in the original, but I had read it in translation before. All I have to say is, that his prose in Italian is a lot more fun, and more enjoyable, though it takes my focus away from the irony, and towards the dictionary.

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf - I loved this book, and recommend it to everyone. Absolutely spectacular prose, and depth. I think it is perhaps more important now than when it was written, as its themes seem more applicable to our time than hers.

Milton - Collected poems - Another reread for me (perhaps my 5th or 6th). These poems lose nothing in the reread, and are only enhanced.

George Elliott Clarke - Whylah Falls - A great verse novel by a very important poet and academic. I love his fusion of prose, verse, photography, and letters, in addition to his musical style, and song-like narrative. I really recommend this to lovers of poetry and prose alike, as it was a very engaging read.

Anne Carson - Autobiography of Red - Another great verse novel, though completely different than Clarke's. Extremely neoclassical, but very effective, and filled with ironic tragic elements, and poetic verve. I'll wait 'til others have read it before going more in depth on these boards.

The Loom of Time - Kalidasa - Beautiful verse, but I am afraid I have not yet read enough into the culture of India at the time period to particularly enjoy it (as he makes many references I do not understand, and names many places I do not know).

The rest was all poetry, mostly from Asia and Italy.

[thelastmelon]

Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist
The Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Joy Fowler
The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis
The Last Battle - C.S. Lewis
The Problem of the Wire Cage - John Dickson Carr
Assassin's Apprentice - Robin Hobb

[Dark Muse]

Rock Crystal ~ Adalbert Stifter
Mona Lisa ~ Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Dreams ~ Chekhov
The Christening ~ D.H. Lawrence

H.P Lovecraft

The Tree
The Other Gods
The Quest of Iranon
Herbert West-Reanimator

[mickitaz]

Norwegien Wood Haruki Murakami : Very good book, excellent reading and story content. Since this was my introduction to Japanese literature, I really have nothing to compare it to.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: I thought this was a very good book. While generally the book was "uneventful", it gives good psychological insight to the "Old Russia" and those that lived during this time period.

Gale Force Rachel Caine book 7 in a series. Really quite excellent. The story was fast paced and kept you wanting more. I seriously cannot wait till the next installment is released.

The Idiot Fyodor Dosteyevsky: Still reading. Overall, I am finding this book very good. Sections of the book read very fast. The story line is interesting, the narrative keeps you intrigued. Haven't finished this book yet. But since I stareted it in August, and a bulk of it is finished.. I added this to my list.

[LitNetIsGreat]

A mixture of books for pleasure and University:

Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy – (love this novel favourite Hardy, reread).

Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf (dense reading, lot to think about and a lot happening, though not a book to enjoy as such for me).

The Waste Land – T.S. Eliot (a very easy uncomplicated piece, yes I am lying).

Alcestis/The Children of Heracles/Hippolytus – Euripides (great stuff, especially Alcestis).

Elektra – Sophocles (neglected works that I should have read before along with Eupipides, bloodthirsty tragedy).

The Country Wife – William Wycherley (very, very funny, light comic restoration farce).

Paradise Lost – John Milton (currently reading, “dipped into” in the past, but now giving it a proper reading).

[Niamh]

Not quite sure what i read this month!think was the following anyway!
Faerie Wars, The Purple Emperor, Ruler of the Realm and The Faerie Lord by Herbie Brennan
Norweigian Wood by Huruki Murukami
A manuscript
Lady Susan, The Watsons and Santition By Jane Austen
think thats it....

[Hank Stamper]

didnt get through as much this month because the football (soccer) has started again. bah!

The Iliad (read the Odyssey last summer so thought I better read this too.. preferred the Odyssey tho)
Captain Corelli's Mandolin (I'm not sure what people think of this never seen anybody else mention it on here but I loved it, couldn't put it down)
Brighton Rock
North and South (great book - trumps Hard Times by some distance)

am about 100 pages into Crime and Punishment at the moment. Uni starts again this month so not going to have much time for my own reading now. boo!

[Niamh]

North and South is a great but. couldnt agree with you more!

[Mark F.]

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Solzhenitsyn
The Captain has Sailed Out to Sea and the Sailors have Taken Over the Ship by Bukowski
Death in the Afternoon by Hemingway
Petrolio by Pasolini
Three Sisters by Chekov
Trout Fishing in America by Brautigan
Revenge of the Lawn by Brautigan

[wilbur lim]

1.Sherlock Holmes by Author Conan Doyle(A stimulating novel.)
2.Mencius by Mencius.(This is originally written by Mencius who is a Chinese philosophy teacher.)
3.Lun Yu by Confucius.(This is generally about country and attitude matters,Confucius is eminent.)

[Dori]

I didn't finish anything. I probably didn't even read more than 100 pages in the whole month. Oh well.

[stlukesguild]

August was a slow month for me. The first three weeks are the final three weeks of my summer vacation as a teacher and I am making as much use of them as possible... spending 8+ hours a day in my studio painting... and often researching and looking at art in the off hours. Nevertheless, I read a good deal on line and in articles upon Asian art and literature... especially Japanese and Chinese. Along with this I've read The Selected Poems of Tu Fu tr. David Hinton, Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching tr. Stephen Mitchell, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese and One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese tr. Kenneth Rexroth (a second reading of most of these), River of Stars: the Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko tr. Sam Hamill and Keiko Matsui Gibson, The Gospel of Thomas (again) tr. Marvin Meyer, as well as a broad array of poems by various poets: Wang Wei, Ou-Yang Hsiu, Solomon Ibn Gabriol, Shmuel HaNagid, Paul Valery, Anne Carson, Cesar Vallejo, etc... I'm also currently working my way through three larger works: Ferdowsi's Sha Nameh, the Qur'an, and The Book: A History of the Bible by Christopher de Hamel. I would almost recommend any of these works without reservation. I particularly enjoyed Rexroth's translations from the Japanese... including, in the best post-modern manner... his invented translations of the poetess, Marichiko and her lovely erotic poems... that are among Rexroth's finest inventions. I'm probably even more drawn to the Japanese poetry than the Chinese due to the intense visual nature similar to Imagism. The Gospel of Thomas and the Tao Te Ching perfectly compliment each other as marvelous works of "wisdom writing" and spiritual literature. They are both deceptively simple... like the shorter poems of William Blake... or some works by Thomas Traherne... but challenge many of the commonly-held notions of religion.

[Drkshadow03]

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/booklist-2008-25-the-scarlet-letter-by-nathaniel-hawthorne-re-read/)): American classic that I had been wanting to re-read for awhile because my memory about the book was fuzzy. I really enjoyed Hawthorne's writing style, much better than his subpar "The Marble Faun," although I can respect that other novel for its experimentation with travel narrative and Romance--I mention it because that was the last Hawthorne I read before re-reading this.

Beowulf trans. Seamus Heany (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/booklist-2008-26-beowulf-trans-seamus-heaney-re-read/)): Beowulf smash Grendel. Don't make Beowulf mad, you wouldn't like him when he gets angry. This gem of an epic offers a portal into the violent world of the Germanic tribes, Christian, yet totally un-Christian, mysterious, deadly, where death awaits around every corner.

The Epic of Gilgamesh trans. Herbert Mason (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/booklist-2008-27-the-epic-of-gilgamesh/)): Popularly known as the first true piece of Epic literature about friendship, loss, and one man's arrogant belief that he can conquer death, chalk full of Biblical parallels. Probably not the best translation around, I am pretty much too cheap to buy another one. This one seems to concentrate rendering the Epic into a very poetic, but readable, emotionally-driven style at the expense of literal accuracy (if my comparisons by glancing through other translations serve as an indication). I suspect the best translations are the ones that find a middle ground.

Innanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/booklist-2008-28-inanna-queen-of-heaven-and-earth-by-diane-wolkstein-and-samuel-noah-kramer/)): I wanted to get a larger context of Mesopotamian myth. One feature of Sumerian literature is its tendency towards repetition, which can be tedious and boring for a modern reader, but useful for scholars in piecing together broken cueniform tablets. Diane Wolkstein uses her ability as a folklorist to transform these myths about the goddess Inanna into readable pieces that appeal to modern audiences; she takes old myths and gives them a new face. Almost all of these myths have been collected elsewhere, but never presented in such a readable style. Comes with Kramer's genuine academic commentary. Plus she offers her own interpretations of the symbolism in the myths. I have slightly different interpretations on my own blog.

* For more in-depth thoughts that include spoilers click on the links. They each lead to longer commentaries and interpretations of the works.

[mickitaz]

Faerie Wars, The Purple Emperor, Ruler of the Realm and The Faerie Lord by Herbie Brennan


I read Faerie Wars and The Purple Emperor a while ago.. very good books IMO.

Is Ruler of the Realm and The Faerie Lord continuations of the first two? If so, you just added two more books to my "to read" list. :p

[book_jones]

I spent the whole month reading An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. I'm still reading it actually. It finally got good after about 300 pages.

I also took a little time off and read Mrs. Lonelyhearts by Nathaniel West and a couple Jack London short stories.

[DapperDrake]

Ok, this month I finished off the volumes of short stories I've been reading by Sartre and Dostoevsky, very good. Also read (re-read) some Austen:

Intimacy - Sartre
The childhood of a leader - Sartre
A Gentle Creature - Dostoevsky
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man - Dostoevsky
Northanger Abbey - Austen
Mansfield Park - Austen
Lovers Vows - Inchbald (Mansfield park is a much better read if you read this first!)

In Septenber on to The Idiot!