What did we read in july?

[My name is red]

What did you read this month and how many stars would they get?

[Adagio]

Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky (re-read)
King Lear - Shakespeare (re-read)
As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
A selection of Yeats' poems
Sophie's World - Gaarder

As I Lay Dying was definitely my favourite. :)

[March Hare]

Hunger by Hamsun -- 3 stars
Romantic Dogs by Bolano -- 4 stars
Emergency Poems by Nicanor Parra -- 3 stars
Selected Poems by Torres Bodet -- 2 stars

Started:
Borges' Selected Poems
Vallejo's Complete Poems

[amarna]

Auster: Night of the Oracle *****
Auster: My New York ***
Mairöcker: Paloma *
James: The Turn of the Screw ***
james: The Aspern Papers ****
Naipaul: Miguel Street *****
Camus: Diaries 1951-1959 *****
Celine: Journey to the End of the Night *****
Auster: Music of Chance *****

[My name is red]

Auster: Night of the Oracle
Auster: My New York
Mairöcker: Paloma
James: The Turn of the Screw
james: The Aspern Papers
Naipaul: Miguel Street
Camus: Diaries 1951-1959
Celine: Journey to the End of the Night
Auster: Music of Chance

which one of the Austers would you recommend more strongly?

[kelby_lake]

Tender Is The Night
Noises Off...
Oleanna
The Shooting Party

[amarna]

which one of the Austers would you recommend more strongly?

My New York was a compilation from his other books, I found it a little, hm, pale. Oracle Night and Music of Chance were both excellent. Oracle Night is a book on creativity and on writing (especially on finishing :)) novels, so it may be quite interesting for people who write themselves.

[thethinker]

Moby Dick- 5 stars
The Curious Case of Dr Jekyll adn Mr Hyde- 4 stars
Utopia- 3 stars
The Importance of Being Earnest- 5 stars

[thelastmelon]

Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Succubus Blues – Richelle Mead
Good In Bed – Jennifer Weiner
Stella & Sebastian – Jenny Leeb
Lies That Bind - Barbara McMahon
An Atlas of Impossible Longing – Anuradha Roy
How to be good – Nick Hornby

[Veho]

Utopia- 3 stars

I've been wanting to read this for a while, why do you give it three stars?

[Desolation]

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe
No Exit by Sartre
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Proust
Chants of Maldoror by the Comte de Lautremont
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Ask the Dust by John Fante
Castle to Castle by Céline

I'd give them all 5 stars.

[Akeldama]

Bookmark Now - Kevin Smekler (editor)
The Pythons: An Autobiography of the Pythons (a Monty Python autobiography, if that wasn't apparent)
Best American Essays 2006 - Lauren Slater (editor), Robert Atwan (series editor)
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury

I enjoyed reading all of them, except for SWTWC, which I'm still on the fence about. It was a fun story and a read that went down easily, but at no point did I feel particularly empathetic towards any of the characters, nor was I particularly concerned for the fates of the main characters, even when Bradbury tried to create an atmosphere of intense anxiety. It fell flat, because was I never under the illusion that they would come out as anything but safe and sound in the end (despite their glimpses into the true nature of the battle of good vs. evil, blah blah seen it before), I just didn't believe that Bradbury would actually cause his characters harm. Also, the similes were a bit over the top, to the point where they were silly rather than descriptive. In fact, one in particular sticks out to me, something being described as "as cold as an albino frog". Why an albino frog? How is that colder than any other frog?


So, er, yeah...looks like my post turned into "Akeldama's impromptu Bradbury review" rather than what I read in July. Suffice to say, I did get genuine enjoyment out of my reading last month, and let's leave it at that.

[Buh4Bee]

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Madame Bovary- Gustave Flaubert
The Confessions of JJ Rousseau- up to book 6

Pretty pathetic considering it's the summer.

[lupe]

Drei Frawen (Three Women) – Robert Musil (started in June)
Die Legende Vom Heilinger Trinker (The Legend of the Holy Drinker) - Joseph Roth
Brick Lane - Monica Ali
Avec mon meilleur souvenir - Françoise Sagan
Selected Poems - Pablo Neruda
The Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Ap. J.-C - Vasilis Alexakis (finished in August)

[My name is red]

Yusuf from Kuyucak-Sabahattin Ali(5 stars)
The Kreutzer Sonat-Tolstoy(4,5)
Pierre and Jean-Maupassant(4,5)
Jacob the liar-Jurek Becker(5)
The Breast-Philip Roth(2)
The Collector-John Fowles(4)
Fathers and Sons-Turgenyev(4,5)
Veronice Decides to die-Paulo Coelho(2)
Therese Raquin-Zola(5)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull-Richard Bach(3)
The call of the wild-Jack London(5)
The chess story-Stefan Zweig(5)
The Abbot C-Georges Bataille(3)
Good morning,midnight-Jean Rhys(5)

[JBI]

Tender Is The Night
Noises Off...
Oleanna
The Shooting Party

What'd you think of noises off? I acted in the play in high school (playing Selsdon) but didn't think much of it - I don't know how it reads though - I think it probably reads rather strangely as everything is in the stage directions.

[Mark F.]

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
Cities of the Plain - Cormac McCarthy
There's No Business - Charles Bukowski & illustrated by Robert Crumb
Hedda Gabler - Henrik Ibsen
Peer Gynt - Henrik Ibsen
Of Walking in Ice - Werner Herzog

McCarthy's Border Trilogy was a great read, characters chasing an inexorably past life, knowing that they cannot live in the present world. His dialogue is some of the best in modern american literature.

If you like Herzog's films, Of Walking in Ice is a beautiful narrative of his journey on foot from Munich to Paris.

I've also started reading the first volume of the Paris Review interviews. They're both entertaining and interesting. Check them out.

[tbarnes]

Siddarthta, Hesse - 3.5/5

This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald - 4/5

Goodbye, Columbus, Roth - 5/5

also been reading a story or two out of the Complete Sherlock Holmes, Doyle, here and there.

about to start As I Lay Dying.

[Manchegan]

All of you make me feel like a light weight. How can you possibly read so much in one month? I finished Don Quixote in july, after starting it in May. Sigh....I'll never catch up.

[Lynne50]

All of you make me feel like a light weight. How can you possibly read so much in one month? I finished Don Quixote in july, after starting it in May. Sigh....I'll never catch up.

I feel the same way Manchegan. It is always so mind boggling to read what others have read in just one month. I just started Tess of the D'Ubervilles. Read it a long while ago, so I thought I'd refresh my memory about it. But Don Quixote is definitely in my 'to read' pile. Was it worth the time you spent on it? Just the sheer size of it intimidating.

[Manchegan]

The size is definitely intimidating. I bought and started it a year ago before getting distracted by shorter books and school. But once i picked it up and got into it, I realized it's got to be the best book ever written, ever, in the whole wide world. There were several parts that made me laugh very loudly in my otherwise silent apartment at 1 in the morning. I think it made my neighbprs think I'm crazy. It also has some of the best monologues on virtue and reason that I've ever read.

[meh!]

History of Renaissance Art
And about 10 Jeeves and Wooster books :D

[Lynne50]

Wow, Don Quixote may have just jumped to the front of my TBR pile. Thanks for sharing.

Did you ever see the Broadway production of Man of LaMancha? I'm thinking of the 1972 production starring Richard Kiley. The soundtrack is wonderful.

[Manchegan]

no, I haven't seen it, but I heard John Clease of Monty Python fame played the same role recently. I'd like to check it out.

[papayahed]

Ohhh, I did pretty good in July:

The Studhorse Man - Robert Koetsch
More Tales from the City -Armistad Maupin
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

[Thespian1975]

War of the worlds - H G Wells 10/10
The case of the Fugitive nurse - Gardener (Perry Mason) 5/10
Dissolution - C J Sampson 8/10

I saw Julius Caeser at the RSC as well 9.5/10

[Barbarous]

Candide by Voltaire (reread)
Timon of Athens by Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare
Look at the Harlequins! by Nabokov
Light in August by Faulkner

I also read an insane amount of Eliot, Yeats, and Baudelaire (my favorite poets), and I also read more than half of Tristram Shandy by Sterne and a little less than a quarter of my Idiot reread by Dostoevsky.

[kelby_lake]

What'd you think of noises off? I acted in the play in high school (playing Selsdon) but didn't think much of it - I don't know how it reads though - I think it probably reads rather strangely as everything is in the stage directions.

Oh, and I read Julius Caeser!

It does read strangely but I've seen it before. I love it, I think it's really clever, although it is very amateur-dramatics British luvvie actor sort of thing (I saw an amateur production). For anyone working in a play, it basically is farcical the amount of chaos there is backstage and in front. The play-within-a-play part is cleverly done.

It may not be your thing but it's very well done.

[Pensive]

Siddhartha (re-read) - 10/10
A Thousand Splendid Suns - 9/10
Twilight - 6/10

[My name is red]

Siddhartha (re-read) - 10/10


i'll keep your rating in mind and read siddhartha soon.I've always been curious about it.

[Page Turner]

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak *****
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne ****
Enders Game, Orson Scott Card ****
Fathers & Sons, Ivan Turgenev *****
The Essential Tales of Chekov, Anton Chekov *****
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon ****
Thunderstruck, Erik Larson ***
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo *****
Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol *****
Collection of Short Stories Vol 3, W. Somerset Maugham ****

[Miss Juventus]

- Sisters, Danielle Steel, 3

- 5 days in Paris, Danielle Steel, 4

- The Alchemist, Poulo Coelho, 4

- Quarter Gram, Essam Youssef, 5

- Women from Mars Men from Venus, John Gray, 5

[curlyqlink]

What Was She Thinking by Zoe Heller.

Brilliant writing, and very funny in that understated "British" way. It is told from the point of view of a friend of the protagonist of the story, an interesting twist that is very effective. Zoe Heller is a masterful novelist, and she has a new book out that must go on my to-read list.

[Twhalley]

I've hardly read this month(shame on me).
Just:
A Clockwork Orange- *****
The Stand **** (So far)
The Catcher In the Rye ***
Of Mice And Men *****

[*Classic*Charm*]

Hmm...not much this month

East of Eden- Steinbeck
Persuasion- Austen (started a re-read)

[JuniperWoolf]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - 4 stars. I watched the film version after, and I know that this is a typically annoying thing to say, but the book really was MUCH better than the movie (but I liked their version of Billy Bippit better than the one that I had in my head).

The Grapes of Wrath - 5 stars. I read this book about once a year (usually in the summer), because it's my favorite.

Swamp Thing: Reunion - 4.5 stars. The last collection of Swamp Thing comics by Alan Moore, which I bought off of Amazon. I liked it a lot, especially the last issue (Edit: You know, where he was talking about why he wasn't going to save the earth? That was very, very wicked).

The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish - 3.5 stars. Couldn't hold a candle to Wolves in the Walls.

[Drkshadow03]

The Histories by Herodotus (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/booklist-2009-27-the-histories-by-herodotus-trans-aubrey-de-selincourt/))

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/booklist-2009-28-jane-eyre-by-charlotte-bronte/))

Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/booklist-2009-30-nicomachean-ethics-by-aristotle-trans-w-d-ross/))

Pot of Gold by Plautus (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/booklist-2009-30-the-pot-of-gold-by-plautus-trans-e-f-watling/))

The Prisoners by Plautus (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/booklist-2009-31-32-plays-of-plautus/))

The Brothers Menaechmus by Plautus (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/booklist-2009-31-32-plays-of-plautus/))

The Swaggering Soldier by Plautus (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/booklist-2009-31-32-plays-of-plautus/))

Pseudolus by Plautus (link (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/booklist-2009-31-32-plays-of-plautus/))

8 works, not a bad month.