2011 11-Authors Challenge

[Scheherazade]

I have decided to read something by 11 different authors whose works I have not read before this year.

If you are interested, please let us know here and report back to update your list every time you read the work(s) of a new author.

[papayahed]

Fun!!

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

OK, I'll give this a go.
I've started one already and another has been purchased.
(aside- I've suddenly developed an interest in the "short story")

.

[Dark Muse]

This sounds fun! I am in!

[kasie]

One a month - or thereabouts: I think I can manage that. I'm in.

[The Comedian]

What a great idea for a challenge. I'm in too. I'll be back to post my projected reading list.

[Tallon]

Much better than my plan to read 2011 new authors, I'm in!

[Veho]

Good idea; I'll be in too!

[Scheherazade]

Fantastic!

My first one will be Alice Munro, I think.

[Scheherazade]

My first one will be Alice Munro, I think.I lied.

I am reading The White Tiger by Aravind Agida at the moment and am enjoying very much.

[KilgoreT]

This is a great idea. My list:

1. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita

[Dark Muse]

Since my copy finally arrived in the mail the first book I will be reading for the challenge is "The City & The City"

[Mockingbird_z]

I have started Fight Club.

[Scheherazade]

I have started Fight Club.Funny, I thought Tyler Durden started it...

:smilielol5:

[Mr. Bungle]

I have my intermediate examination coming up next month (so I will have some studying to do) but if the challenge includes fiction and nonfiction, I'd love to join anyway. :wave:

@The Comedian: Thanks for your response! I will be posting my list as I go along.

1. Richard Yates: Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=997608&postcount=6804) (6/10)
2. Richard P. Feynman: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1001033&postcount=6826) (6/10)
3. Sam Harris: Letter To A Christian Nation (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1013784&postcount=6884) (7/10)
4. (next) Fred Hoyle: The Black Cloud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud)
5. (next) Robert Trumbull: The Raft (http://www.amazon.com/Raft-Courageous-Struggle-Airmen-Against/dp/1557508275)
6. (next) David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_%28novel%29)
7. ...
8. ...
9. ...
10. ...
11. ...


Happy reading everyone and good luck with the challenge! :)

[The Comedian]

Non-fiction is certainly fine to use. (And if anyone says otherwise, I'll sock 'em in the mouth!) :lol: I'm planning to use poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction, philosophy, and comics for my list. So far I have nine of the eleven needed. Once I decide on the other two, I'll post them all so that I can easily refer back to them.

[Veho]

My first will be a D.H Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover) but I can't start it for another week or so.

[TheFifthElement]

I'm up for this challenge. My first new writer of 2011 is Gabriel Josipovici; I'm reading his short story collection 'Heart's Wings'. It's pretty good.

[Patrick_Bateman]

My first will likely be Georges Perec

[The Comedian]

Okay I have my list compiled. I'm going to post my complete list here and then return to report on it as I progress. Most of these authors/books, I've pulled from my "I'll get around to reading them sometime" pile. In making this list, I've tried to get a variety of authors and genres.

The list:

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine.
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

3. Philosophy --The Sense of Beauty by George Santayana. I like reading philosophy and a colleague told me that Santayana knew his way around a sentence, so I'm all in.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. Fiction -- The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A friend told me I should read it. I said "sure". That was four years ago. Another one of those "it's about time" books.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

That's it. I'm already off to a good start on the Verlaine poetry.

[JuniperWoolf]

H'okay. Eleven works by authors who's books I have neeeever read. Here goes:

1. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

2. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

3. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (ugh...).

4. On The Road by Jack Kerouac (double ugh...).

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

7. Moby Dick by Harman Melville (I'll finally trudge through that chapter on whale breeds).

8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

10. Anthem by Ayn Rand.

11. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

I'll edit a line through the ones that I read throughout the year. Fun, fun fun!

[The Comedian]

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

3. Philosophy --The Sense of Beauty by George Santayana. I like reading philosophy and a colleague told me that Santayana knew his way around a sentence, so I'm all in.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. Fiction -- The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A friend told me I should read it. I said "sure". That was four years ago. Another one of those "it's about time" books.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

Just finished Paul Verlaine's Selected Poems. It was alright. Most of the poems were erotic, which after a while seemed thematically repetitive. And a lot, honestly, sounded to me like they could have been written by a 14-year old kid on hormone enhancers.

Maybe I need to read more about the Symbolist movement to better appreciate this guy's work.

[Tallon]

1. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brienn, been on my list a few years, saw it in my local secondhand shop yesterday :)

[Big Dante]

I'm in.
I think my first one shall be Homer.
Looking forward to that.

[papayahed]

I'm not sure about my list, My first will be the book club selection, China Mieville. Then perhaps Steig Larson, and JW reminded me I want to try Chuck Palahniuk. After that I'm not sure what I want to do.

[TheFifthElement]

I just finished reading The Odyssey by Homer, so that's officially my first one. I enjoyed it immensely. I haven't read any of the other translations, but I can recommend the Fitzgerald translation. It's very accessible.

Still working through Josipovici's Heart's Wings and other stories, which will be my second. It's a lovely read. Quirky and strange and strangely compelling.

[OfHighInterest]

This seems like a cool idea. Well I started reading Jane Austen for my first author. Pride and Prejudice.
Next up is Charles Dickens - Bleak House

[Scheherazade]

I am so glad that so many of us will be taking this challenge.

I don't think I will be making a list before hand; I will add authors as and when I read them throughout the year.

[Paulclem]

I'll have a go, but I'm already amazon delivered and committed to at least the next month or two. If I get into a new author, I'll pop them in here.

[JuniperWoolf]

Looks like I'm tackling Moby Dick first. I'm nearly done the one I'm on right now, then I'll dig in.

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville

[aliengirl]

Cool idea Scher! I'll not be posting the whole list but one or two at a time.

1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco. Enjoyed it a lot. Just four pages left. Going to finish it right now.

2. Man and Superman by Shaw. Will start it soon. I've read and liked a few plays by Shaw. Looking forward to it.

[TheFifthElement]

So far:

1. Homer The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici Heart's Wings and other stories

I'm still digesting the Josipovici book. I enjoyed it so much I went out and ordered another 3 of his books. I'm particularly interested in The Goldberg Variations which is described as 30 short stories which, if read collectively, turn into a mysterious and intriguing novel. Not a well known writer, but good.

Next on the list: Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird. Someone recommended it to me a couple of years ago, but I've never quite been in the mood for such a torturous and upsetting story. But as it's January, and I'm miserable anyway, now's as good a time as any.

[Scheherazade]

I've read and liked a few plays by Shaw. Looking forward to it.That's great, aliengirl, but the aim of the challenge is to read the works of those authors we have not read till now. So, Shaw would not count (for this challenge).

I am still working on The White Tiger.

[OfHighInterest]

Does it count if we read one of the authors work in class?

[misterreplicant]

I've already decided on something close to this...

[[These, I will definitely read, in order]]
1. The Inferno - Dante Alighieri (which I'm reading right now)
2. The Iliad & The Odyssey - Homer
3. The Aeneid - Vergil

[[The rest are maybes, not in any order]]
4. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
5. Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
6. Dracula - Bram Stoker
7. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
8. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
9. Republic - Plato
10. The Metamorphesis - Ovid
11. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

[papayahed]

Does it count if we read one of the authors work in class?

Yes, I think the only rule is that you have not read the author before.



Hey! Does it could if you started a book by an author but didn't finish it? Is that author still considered new?

[IceM]

I'll join in.

I've already finished two books of the sort, actually.

1) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
2) The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I'll make sure to finish up more of them after Academic Decathlon is over.

[Scheherazade]

Just saw the question about non-fiction books; I did not have non-fiction in mind when I first suggested this and I will not include non-fiction authors into my list. Otherwise, my list would have been complete by now :coolgleamA:

However, if anyone feels like including them into their lists, that is fine, of course. And I don't want to risk this, either:
Non-fiction is certainly fine to use. (And if anyone says otherwise, I'll sock 'em in the mouth!) :lol:
Finished The White Tiger so my list so far:

1. Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger) - 9/10 KitKats! Would have been 10 but I really wished the book was a little longer. Loved every single page of it.

[TheFifthElement]

I'm giving up on The Painted Bird; it is far too harrowing and brutal. It feels like an exercise in how to describe senseless torture, superstition and mindless violent. Too horrible for me :(

[aliengirl]

That's great, aliengirl, but the aim of the challenge is to read the works of those authors we have not read till now. So, Shaw would not count (for this challenge).

.

:eek: I was in a hurry. Must have overlooked that fact. Thanks for correcting me Scher. :)
I've no plans to read any new author in the next few weeks. :frown5: So will have to wait.

And I've finished Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco. Would rate it as 10/10.

[Rores28]

1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
3) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5

3 down 8 to go

[qimissung]

I just finished "The Virgin Suicides," by Jeffrey Eugenides. It is on a list of books that I have started but failed to finish. There are at least eleven books on this list, and I hope to make my way through most of them this year.

Excellent book, by the way. I was surprised. I mean, I knew it was good, but I didn't expect to like it, but I did.

[Residentvampire]

Alright here's my list in no particular order

1. The Terror by Dan Simmons
2. Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn
3. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
4. Candide by Voltaire
5. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
6. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
7. The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
8. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
9. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
10. The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
11. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandere Dumas

[AlfredtheGreat]

^that's alot of pages.

[Big Dante]

Alright here's my list in no particular order

1. The Terror by Dan Simmons
2. Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn
3. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
4. Candide by Voltaire
5. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
6. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
7. The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
8. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
9. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
10. The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer
11. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandere Dumas

Now that's a pretty impressive list.

My list so far is
1. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
2. The Catcher In The Rye - J.D Salinger

The next one will probably be Les Miserables but I've got a few other things from authors I have already read to get through first.

[Residentvampire]

Decided to switch The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer with Lilith by George McDonald, so when i finish a book I'll change the list.

[Seasider]

My list in no particular order

1.War & Peace by Tolstoy...made a vow to read it last year and didn't
2.Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
4. Anything by Saul Bellow...recommendations welcome
5. Madame Bovary by Flaubert
6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ( I am ashamed not to have read this)
7. Anything by Edna O' Brien...recommendations welcome
8. Anything by Jeffrey Archer ditto ditto
9. Anything by Martin Amis ditto ditto
10. Anything by Edith Wharton ditto ditto

[Scheherazade]

4. Anything by Saul Bellow...recommendations welcomeAugie March is one of the books in February books. You are welcome to vote for it!

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1000797#post1000797

If you start a group readings for White Teeth by Zadie Smith and Edna O'brien, I will be happy to join you.

[Desolation]

Hmmm...That's an interesting idea. I'd like to participate, but I'm not sure if I'll have time. My big reading goals for the year are War and Peace and Ulysses, neither of which qualify for the challenge because I read Anna Karenina and Portrait last year.

I know for sure that in between those two mountains, I would like to read the following authors this year, none of whom I have read before:
- Andre Breton (Nadja)
- Italo Svevo (Zeno's Conscience)
- Jorge Luis Borges (Labyrinths)
- Thomas Pynchon (V.)
- Kenneth Patchen (Journal of Albion Moonlight)
- Lautremont (Maldoror)
- Mikhail Bulgakov (Master and the Margarita)
- Sigmund Freud (The Psychopathology of Everyday Life)
- Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
- Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls)
- JD Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

Hey, that perfectly worked out to 11...imagine that. I read so slowly these days that I lack confidence in my ability to read all of them along with War and Peace and Ulysses, though.

[manolia]

10. Anything by Edith Wharton ditto ditto

"Age of innocence" and "Ethan Frome" are both great books. Especially the first.

[sixsmith]

My list in no particular order

4. Anything by Saul Bellow...recommendations welcome

9. Anything by Martin Amis


Bellow - Herzog
Amis - The Information

[kasie]

.....2. Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn....

Elinor Glyn? :eek6: Oh, my goodness - how did I miss this one? Do, please, let us know what you make of it. :)

[Rores28]

1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
3) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5

3 down 8 to go

4) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
5) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5

I think I will try to read 11 fiction and 11 non-fiction by new authors

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

OK, I'll give this a go.
I've started one already and another has been purchased.
(aside- I've suddenly developed an interest in the "short story")


I'm clearing my plate for the challenge by finishing a couple of reads from last year.
For the challenge I am starting off with the following three new authors:

1. Dante Alighieri - "The Inferno" (I'll at least give it the first run through, I'm sure it will require a few more passes in time)
2. Ian Fleming - "Goldfinger" (a 1964 Signet paperback from parents library)
3. Anton Chekov - "Ward No. 6" and perhaps one or two other of his short stories.

Gilliatt

[TheChilly]

Hmmm...That's an interesting idea. I'd like to participate, but I'm not sure if I'll have time. My big reading goals for the year are War and Peace and Ulysses, neither of which qualify for the challenge because I read Anna Karenina and Portrait last year.

I know for sure that in between those two mountains, I would like to read the following authors this year, none of whom I have read before:
- Andre Breton (Nadja)
- Italo Svevo (Zeno's Conscience)
- Jorge Luis Borges (Labyrinths)
- Thomas Pynchon (V.)
- Kenneth Patchen (Journal of Albion Moonlight)
- Lautremont (Maldoror)
- Mikhail Bulgakov (Master and the Margarita)
- Sigmund Freud (The Psychopathology of Everyday Life)
- Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
- Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls)
- JD Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

Hey, that perfectly worked out to 11...imagine that. I read so slowly these days that I lack confidence in my ability to read all of them along with War and Peace and Ulysses, though.

I will give you candy and cookies if you can make it through "Mason & Dixon" (Thomas Pynchon). Every time I see that book at a bookstore or a library... I cringe with fear... which results to the nightmares I have of seeing that work. The moment the world ends is the moment when teachers assign "Mason & Dixon" as part of a required reading seminar in a Literature class. -_-

(All because you mentioned "V".)

[mona amon]

Great idea, Scher! 11 new authors seems comfortably acheivable. :D

I've already read my first one -

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh - 10/10 . It took me only a few pages to get the dialect, and I really loved it! Saw the movie after I'd finished and feel it (the movie) was rather overated. It lacks the sincerity of the book.

[kasie]

Have just finished The Snowman by Jo Nesbo - I like the Crime/Detective genre and have been looking for a Nesbo book as he is highly rated as one of the top Scandinavian writers in the genre. I quite enjoyed it but don't think I will be hurrying out to look for more - not as good as Mankell, imo.

[manolia]

Count me in!

I have read my first Proust book, "Swann's way" which gets a 10/10
and i am currently reading "The red and the black" by Stendhal. I'll update as soon as i finish it.

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

[Scheherazade]

Update:

1. Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger) - 9/10 KitKats! Would have been 10 but I really wished the book was a little longer. Loved every single page of it.

2. Barbara Vine (A Dark Adapted Eye) - 8/10 A murder/mystery written superbly. What made the story even more interesting to me is the fact that the main characters involved are female and story's told by a female narrator too. Hard to put it down.

[Veho]

My update:

Finished my first of the eleven: D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked it very much, a flaw would be its repetitiveness, however it's a flaw that doesn't affect my appreciation of the book and the ideas that are narrated.

My next author will probably be Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca).

I like this thread and reading others' posts.

[Dark Muse]

I just finished my first book for the challenge.

China Miéville: The City & The City - 9/10

At first I was a bit reluctant to read this book because the main focus of the plot revolved around a detective solving a murder, and in general I do not read crime fiction and detective novels, but I love surrealism and alternative realities so I was really intrigued by the concept of these two different cities coexisisting within the same location.

Over all I really enjoyed this book, though I do have some mixed feelings about certain aspects of it. On the one hand I found the realistic approach the author took to the concept was an interesting one, and the way in which it was an examination of urban life, society, politics, and so forth. On the other hand I have to admit a part of me was hoping for a bit more "fantastic" moments and perhaps hoping that it would bend the bonds of reality even further than it did.

[The Comedian]

The list:

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check (4/5)
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. --Check! (3.8/5)
I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

3. Philosophy --The Sense of Beauty by George Santayana. I like reading philosophy and a colleague told me that Santayana knew his way around a sentence, so I'm all in.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. Fiction -- The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A friend told me I should read it. I said "sure". That was four years ago. Another one of those "it's about time" books.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

I just finished Wiedland, by the early American author Charles Brown. It was a good novel, told from the female perspective as an epistle to a generic reader about the build-up and conclusion to a religious dementia. A story that would greatly appeal to a modern audience -- religious delusions, slaughter, isolation. The language was strong. The plot development was tedious at times, but not poor overall. I'm glad that I read it.

[Rores28]

1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
3) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5

4) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
5) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5

6) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
7) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5

8) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5

[Big Dante]

Just finished my 3rd.
It was The Invisible Man by H.G Wells.
Next is The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

[TheFifthElement]

Update:
1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good

Still not sure about the Grant novel. I need to make my mind up. It was interesting, but in the end I didn't really care and technically the book was odd: shifting tenses and perspectives gave it a transient and bewildering and strangely distant feeling. Hmm.

Oh, I also read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight but as I don't know who wrote it I guess I can't class that one as a new author. It was very enjoyable in any event. I read the Simon Armitage version. I've definitely read him before :D

[IJustMadeThatUp]

I just finished "The Virgin Suicides," by Jeffrey Eugenides. It is on a list of books that I have started but failed to finish. There are at least eleven books on this list, and I hope to make my way through most of them this year.

Excellent book, by the way. I was surprised. I mean, I knew it was good, but I didn't expect to like it, but I did.

I love love love that book Qimi! I just found the language and mood of the book sadly beautiful. I haven't read it for years and am too scared to read it again in case I've outgrown it.

I really want to join this one! 11 is do-able with uni I think..

1. The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy

I'll examine my to-read pile soon for my next author.

[aliengirl]

Update:

1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco - 10/10
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 6/10
3. The Monk by Matthew Lewis - 8/10. It was a real Gothic treat, full of mystery, horror, and sprinkled with a good sense of humour. I think it is highly underrated.
Next is 'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys. I've already finished the first half.

[JuniperWoolf]

H'okay. Eleven works by authors who's books I have neeeever read. Here goes:

1. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

2. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

3. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (ugh...).

4. On The Road by Jack Kerouac (double ugh...).

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

7. Moby Dick by Harman Melville (I'll finally trudge through that chapter on whale breeds).

8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

10. Anthem by Ayn Rand.

11. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

I'll edit a line through the ones that I read throughout the year. Fun, fun fun!

I had to change a couple of mine because of what's available to me. Damn living in a secluded area, my local library doesn't even have any Poe. Anyway, I'm about half way through the Divine Comedy and Moby Dick and I just started Joyce.

[Big Dante]

Four down now, just finished The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Number five shall be Slaughterhouse 5 which I am now halfway through.

[TheFifthElement]

I had to change a couple of mine because of what's available to me. Damn living in a secluded area, my local library doesn't even have any Poe. Anyway, I'm about half way through the Divine Comedy and Moby Dick and I just started Joyce.

My goodness you're reading all of those at the same time? Yikes. How do you keep it all in your head?

Why the 'ugh' over Kerouac? I enjoyed On the Road and will pass on some advice I received from a Kerouac afficionado: read The Original Scroll it's much better than the edited version.

Anyways, if you PM me your address I've got a copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Poe which you'd be welcome to. Nowt special, but in need of a good home :)

[Dark Muse]

I just finished my first book for the challenge.

China Miéville: The City & The City - 9/10

At first I was a bit reluctant to read this book because the main focus of the plot revolved around a detective solving a murder, and in general I do not read crime fiction and detective novels, but I love surrealism and alternative realities so I was really intrigued by the concept of these two different cities coexisisting within the same location.

Over all I really enjoyed this book, though I do have some mixed feelings about certain aspects of it. On the one hand I found the realistic approach the author took to the concept was an interesting one, and the way in which it was an examination of urban life, society, politics, and so forth. On the other hand I have to admit a part of me was hoping for a bit more "fantastic" moments and perhaps hoping that it would bend the bonds of reality even further than it did.

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine - 9/10

Generally I am not really into sci-fi but I figured Wells is a classic, so I should give him a try and all in all I ended up quite enjoying this book. I did find that it was a bit slow at the start, but once he actually began to travel back into time and was telling of his adventures it really picked up. I have always liked those kind of adventure stories which involve traveling to strange new places and encounters with strange and new creatures/people.

[Yorick]

I'm in. My first is going to be City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende, I think. Or maybe The House of the Spirits. I dunno yet.

[Rores28]

1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
3) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5

4) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
5) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5

6) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
7) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5

8) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5

9) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5

[JuniperWoolf]

H'okay. Eleven works by authors who's books I have neeeever read. Here goes:

1. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

2. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

3. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (ugh...).

4. On The Road by Jack Kerouac (double ugh...).

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

7. Moby Dick by Harman Melville (I'll finally trudge through that chapter on whale breeds).

8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

10. Anthem by Ayn Rand. -scrrrratch

11. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

I'll edit a line through the ones that I read throughout the year. Fun, fun fun!

Not sure how I felt about that one, I'm not used to ideas like that. I need to let it bounce around it for a little while.


My goodness you're reading all of those at the same time? Yikes. How do you keep it all in your head?

I'm not quite sure actually, when I get tired of one style of prose I pick up something else that looks different otherwise I can't absorb any more reading at all that day. I've always read like that, a lot of people think it's a bit weird, haha.


Why the 'ugh' over Kerouac?

Well, I have a friend who always rants about how much he hates him.

*My friend in a sarcastic tone:* "Kerouac is soooo cool, man. He knows what's going on, he's just sooooo with it. You're gonna hate it Robin, the guys a total douche."

He's usually right about what I wouldn't like, so I'm kind of not looking forward to reading On The Road.


Anyways, if you PM me your address I've got a copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Poe which you'd be welcome to. Nowt special, but in need of a good home.

Oooh, will do. Never one to pass up a chance at a free book.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

So far this year, I've read something by Michael Chabon, Miguel de Cervantes (though, not finished yet), Jeff VandeMeer, and Pat Frank, all of which I had never read before.

Authors I haven't read before on my current to-read pile: Tad Williams, Connie Willis, Pearl S. Buck, R. Scott Bakker, Dante, John Gardner, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jorge Luis Borges, Mark J. Ferrari, Joe Abercrombie, Henry James, China Mieville, Toni Morrison, George Elliot, Victor Hugo, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Margaret Atwood, and Virginia Woolf.

So, that's 23, all of which I plan to have read by year's end.

As to what I think of what I've read so far:

Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.



11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.
.

Looking forward to your thoughts on this, Comedian. I haven't read it, but I loves me some superheroes.

[Desolation]

I'm changing my list a bit, as might be expected of an 11 book reading list spanning a whole year.

1. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
2. The Beast Within by Emile Zola
3. Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert (if anyone would be so gracious, I would most certainly appreciate a recommendation on whether it would be better to start reading Flaubert through this or Madame Bovary)
4. Labyrinths by Borges
5. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
6. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
7. Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo
8. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
9. Journal of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen
10. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
11. V. by Thomas Pynchon

Of course, my ability to read all of these books along with War and Peace remains doubtful. I'm such a damn slow reader these days. I should be eating books with all this free time I have, being out of work and momentarily out of school.

[The Comedian]

Just noting an edit to my list.

The list:

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check (4/5)
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. --Check! (3.8/5)
I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

EDIT: 3. Beowulf (Heaney translation) -- Anonymous . I've never read this epic before, nor have I read anything by the Beowulf poet, I'm fairly certain.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. Fiction -- The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A friend told me I should read it. I said "sure". That was four years ago. Another one of those "it's about time" books.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

[TheFifthElement]

EDIT: 3. Beowulf (Heaney translation) -- Anonymous . I've never read this epic before, nor have I read anything by the Beowulf poet, I'm fairly certain.

I'm reading that at the moment (along with a couple of other things. It's all getting very messy). It's really good. I got pretty absorbed by the introduction by Heaney, which is poetry in itself. He's a great man.

Of course as soon as I've read Beowulf I know I'm going to have to read Grendel. Poor me. My literature cup doth runneth over :D

[The Comedian]

I'm reading that at the moment (along with a couple of other things. It's all getting very messy). It's really good. I got pretty absorbed by the introduction by Heaney, which is poetry in itself. He's a great man.

Of course as soon as I've read Beowulf I know I'm going to have to read Grendel. Poor me. My literature cup doth runneth over :D

You know that your praise of Grendel is what helped me to make the edits to my list. (I haven't read anything by Gardner either, so his novel Grendel is going edit out one of the works on my list too). Anyway, I thought that to better appreciate Gardner's Grendel I might as well read Beowulf first, since I've long been meaning to read that too.

And oh yeah, Heaney's introduction to the poem is great. It totally made me want to go on a big poetry run.

[manolia]

Finished a collection of Chekhov's short stories. 10/10 (Especially the lady with the lapdog).

[Delarge]

Well, my list would look something like this.

1. Cormack McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses V

2. Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time V

3. Bram Stoker - Dracula V

4. Ben Franklin - The Autobiography V

5. Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice V

6. John Keats - Complete Works

7. Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea

8. Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities

9. Jack Kerouac - On the Road

10. Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre

11. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward

I have never really gotten into anglo saxon literature before so I have decided this years reading to be mostly dedicated to works in english.

[mal4mac]

3. Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert (if anyone would be so gracious, I would most certainly appreciate a recommendation on whether it would be better to start reading Flaubert through this or Madame Bovary)


I read both recently, Madame Bovary first, and then Sentimental Education, after a few other novels - including the (superb!) Zola. Bovary had a "tighter" plot - I'd try that after W&P - too many "baggy monsters" back-to-back may cause indigestion.

[The Comedian]

Just updating my list. . .


Just noting an edit to my list.

The list:

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check (4/5)
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. --Check! (3.8/5)
I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

EDIT: 3. Beowulf (Heaney translation) -- Anonymous . Check! 5/5 I've never read this epic before, nor have I read anything by the Beowulf poet, I'm fairly certain.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. Fiction -- The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A friend told me I should read it. I said "sure". That was four years ago. Another one of those "it's about time" books.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

[Rores28]

1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
3) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5

4) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
5) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5

6) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
7) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5

8) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5

9) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5

10) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2

11) Yes! - 4.5/5

[TheFifthElement]

1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
3) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5

4) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
5) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5

6) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
7) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5

8) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5

9) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5

10) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2

11) Yes! - 4.5/5


Wow! Congrats Rores, on reaching 11 already. And we're only 7 weeks into the year. Phew. Impressive.


You know that your praise of Grendel is what helped me to make the edits to my list. (I haven't read anything by Gardner either, so his novel Grendel is going edit out one of the works on my list too). Anyway, I thought that to better appreciate Gardner's Grendel I might as well read Beowulf first, since I've long been meaning to read that too.

And oh yeah, Heaney's introduction to the poem is great. It totally made me want to go on a big poetry run.
I hope you enjoy Grendel, Comedian. It is an excellent book. What did you make of Beowulf?

My list updated:
1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good
4. Electric Shadow - Heidi Williamson

Electric Shadow is a collection of poetry. I'm going to write a review, hopefully later in the week. First impression is that Williamson is a fantastic poet, very smooth, very accomplished and interesting to read. She combines poetry with science, mathematics and computer programming, love, loss and grief all in the same, brief, form. It's beautiful stuff. Very impressed indeed. You can read some of her poems here: http://www.heidiwilliamsonpoet.com/poems.html I especially liked Aurora and White and Mobius Strip which is a very clever use of the sestina.

[mal4mac]

Isn't 11 a bit too easy? A.S. Byatt reads one a day when she isn't writing her own...

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

I may now checkoff Chechov, as in Anton Checkhov - "Ward No. 6", "On the Road".
Still working on Cooper, Fleming and just scratching the surface of Dante.


.

[kasie]

Isn't 11 a bit too easy? A.S. Byatt reads one a day when she isn't writing her own...

Remember the challenge is to read eleven authors new to you in the year, not just eleven books - that's the equivalent of one new author a month, (you get a month off for Christmas!) leaving the rest of the month to read books by authors with whom you are already acquainted and want to know better.

[KilgoreT]

This is a great idea. My list:

1. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita

2. William Faulkner- "A Rose for Emily"- short story, I also plan on reading at least one of his novels this year.

This is going slower than I expected. Everything I've read is by an author I have read at least one work by. Last year would have been a cinch for me, I read so many new authors in 2010.

[the facade]

Great idea! I myself am guilty of sticking to author's I like and am familiar with and avoiding venturing with others.

1. Lord of the Barnyard - Tristan Egolf

His writing style is unconventional to some degree and the language is very rich and almost always original. I didn't like how it was structured though and the hero, who is delightfully engaging, gradually subsides from the story.

From now on I'll only be able to read the required reading for my courses. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Rores28]

I'm gonna go for 11 Non-fiction and 11 Fiction

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5

7)Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5


**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, and What Would Google Do?**

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

Update: Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Commedia.

[Rores28]

Update: Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Commedia.

So would you recommend the Hollanders translation... there are so many translations that I usually get discouraged and buy something else...and I want to read it right after I'm done reading the Aeneid. Thanks!

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

So would you recommend the Hollanders translation... there are so many translations that I usually get discouraged and buy something else...and I want to read it right after I'm done reading the Aeneid. Thanks!

I would. The poem itself is very good--easy to read and understand (at least, understanding in the sense of the physical action of the poem) while retaining that poetic feel. Like I said, the notes are very though--almost too thorough for my tastes. When I read something for pleasure, like I did with Inferno, I'm not looking to know everything down to the most minor political allusion, which the notes do provide. Plus, the authors reference other books a lot (i.e., "If you want to know about ______, read so-and-so) which can be annoying if you do want to know more about a particular part of the poem. Like I said, I skimmed much of them. I guess another downside to all the notes (which averaged about about five pages per canto--just as much, if not more, of the book is comprised of notes as it is poem) is that it makes the book bulkier. Inferno is about 650 pages, while Purgatorio is 800, and Paradiso over a thousand I think, so that one will be very cumbersome.

Anyways, even with what I mentioned, I would recommend it. I've bought the Hollander translations of Purgatorio and Paradiso, so it was good enough to stick with their translation.

[Scheherazade]

Update:

1. Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger) - 9/10 KitKats! Would have been 10 but I really wished the book was a little longer. Loved every single page of it.

2. Barbara Vine (A Dark Adapted Eye) - 8/10 A murder/mystery written superbly. What made the story even more interesting to me is the fact that the main characters involved are female and story's told by a female narrator too. Hard to put it down.

3. Muriel Spark (Aiding and Abetting) 7/10 Had no idea what to expect before starting this book and was not familiar with the Lord Lucan affair so it was a very engaging read..

4. John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids) - 8/10 An excellent sci-fi. Even though this is not a genre I am particularly keen on, Wyndham manages to go beyond the usual and offers more questions than answers. Reminded me of Huxley's books in some ways.

[Drkshadow03]

Update:

1. Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger) - 9/10 KitKats! Would have been 10 but I really wished the book was a little longer. Loved every single page of it.


Heh. I usually wish the opposite with half the books I read. I always feel they go on for just a tad too many pages.

[The Comedian]

Another update.


Just noting an edit to my list.

The list:

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check (4/5)
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. --Check! (3.8/5)
I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

EDIT: 3. Beowulf (Heaney translation) -- Anonymous. Check! 5/5 I've never read this epic before, nor have I read anything by the Beowulf poet, I'm fairly certain.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. [edit] Fiction -- Grendel by John Gardner. Check! 4/5. I've read Fifth's praise of this book for a while. And, since I've also wanted to read Beowulf for the longest time, I thought I'd pair these two up. To this text -- I really enjoyed Grendel especially as a book that dialogues Beowulf. It was over-written in spot, which detracted from my overall rating.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Commedia.

Update Tad Williams' War of the Flowers. 3/5. (read my super-exciting review here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1012500#post1012500)!)

[IceM]

For this challenge I've completed two different works this year.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. 8.5/10
The Great Gatsby 8/10

Also add Things Fall Apart from Chinua Achebe 7/10
And The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6.5/10

That has me for four in two months. I can't stop reading the authors I'm already used to.

[Rores28]

For this challenge I've completed two different works this year.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. 8.5/10
The Great Gatsby 8/10

Also add Things Fall Apart from Chinua Achebe 7/10
And The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6.5/10

That has me for four in two months. I can't stop reading the authors I'm already used to.

What are some books that you consider 10/10?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

What are some books that you consider 10/10?

I was wondering the same thing. The Great Gatsby a 8/10? Just curious.

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5

6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7)Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5


**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, and What Would Google Do?**

[Dark Muse]

I just finished my first book for the challenge.

1.China Miéville: The City & The City - 9/10

At first I was a bit reluctant to read this book because the main focus of the plot revolved around a detective solving a murder, and in general I do not read crime fiction and detective novels, but I love surrealism and alternative realities so I was really intrigued by the concept of these two different cities coexisisting within the same location.

Over all I really enjoyed this book, though I do have some mixed feelings about certain aspects of it. On the one hand I found the realistic approach the author took to the concept was an interesting one, and the way in which it was an examination of urban life, society, politics, and so forth. On the other hand I have to admit a part of me was hoping for a bit more "fantastic" moments and perhaps hoping that it would bend the bonds of reality even further than it did.

2. H.G. Wells: The Time Machine - 9/10

Generally I am not really into sci-fi but I figured Wells is a classic, so I should give him a try and all in all I ended up quite enjoying this book. I did find that it was a bit slow at the start, but once he actually began to travel back into time and was telling of his adventures it really picked up. I have always liked those kind of adventure stories which involve traveling to strange new places and encounters with strange and new creatures/people.


3. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie -10/10

I was a bit daunted by the size of this book but once I started reading it, it actually went by rather quickly. I found it to be quite an interesting story and I really enjoyed reading it. I really liked Dreiser's style of writing and the complexity of his characters. This really makes me want to read an American Tragedy now.

4. Nevil Shute: A Town Like Alice -9/10

Since I have posted an official review for this one I will try not to repeat myself too much again here. Only say that this book took me by surprise. I liked it a good deal more than I thought I would. I loved the narrative style and I found the story engaging to read and I loved the characters.

5. David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -8/10

It starts out really slowly, though I did enjoy the history of the book as it is about the Dutch Trading company in Japan, which was quite interesting, because of the isolation laws of Japan there was this man made island built called Dejima which is where the traders were housed because they were not allowed to enter the country. But the first half of the book was a bit tedious to read, but it did begin to really pick up once you got into and the story took off and overall I quite enjoyed it.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

1. Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

2. Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

3. Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

4. Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

5. Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Commedia.

6. Tad Williams' War of the Flowers. 3/5. (read my super-exciting review here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1012500#post1012500)!)

7. *Update* Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon: 2.5/5. I feel like I'm missing something, here. I tried reading this a couple years ago and quit halfway through. I read the whole thing this time, and it was just to slow and dreary. It is so highly praised, it seems like I failed to grasp the books purported greatness. Maybe I'll give it another read in a few years, see something I missed.

[Paulclem]

Update:


3. John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids) - 8/10 An excellent sci-fi. Even though this is not a genre I am particularly keen on, Wyndham manages to go beyond the usual and offers more questions than answers. Reminded me of Huxley's books in some ways.

I read Wyngham's The Trouble with Lichen about a lichen from which an anti-ageing drug is developed. It was a good book with the issues well thought out.

[aliengirl]

1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco - 10/10
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 6/10
3. The Monk by Matthew Lewis - 8/10.

Update

4. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - 8.5/10. It is a very poignant novel with some very exquisite passages. I have not read such a good prequel before especially as it was written by a different author.

5. Kanthapura by Raja Rao - 6/10. Rao could not match Narayan in irony.

6. Anne of the Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - 9/10. I wonder why I have not read it earlier. Great read!

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5

8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5


**Currently Reading The Aeneid and The Selfish Gene**

[The Comedian]

And Update. . .


The list:

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check (4/5)
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. --Check! (3.8/5)
I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

EDIT: 3. Beowulf (Heaney translation) -- Anonymous. Check! 5/5 I've never read this epic before, nor have I read anything by the Beowulf poet, I'm fairly certain.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. Check! 3.8/5 See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. [edit] Fiction -- Grendel by John Gardner. Check! 4/5. I've read Fifth's praise of this book for a while. And, since I've also wanted to read Beowulf for the longest time, I thought I'd pair these two up. To this text -- I really enjoyed Grendel especially as a book that dialogues Beowulf. It was over-written in spot, which detracted from my overall rating.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

[mona amon]

At last I read Portrait of a Lady. 0/10 for being such a bore! :Yawn:

[TheFifthElement]

My list updated:

1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good
4. Electric Shadow - Heidi Williamson
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark is brilliant! The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is well worth the read. It's compact, economical and incredibly funny. I enjoyed it immensely.

[Residentvampire]

Update on my list
Since I hate giving stars or numbers because they don't tell much of anything.

1. Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist - One of the greatest vampire novels I have ever read, ever. If your looking for a adult answer to Twilight, this is the novel for you.

2. The Terror by Dan Simmons: A historical novel that is based on the Franklin Expedition of 1845. This novel brings to mind Moby Dick and is similar in its start, however, when Simmons brings a foreign culture into the narrative, the story becomes absolutely fantastic. It is a little slow, at 955 pages, this is to be expected, but it is worth it if only for the second half of the novel, when Simmons lets go of the history and is given complete control over the tale.

The next book I'm reading is Lilith by George MacDonald.

[manolia]

Update

"Swann's way" by Proust 10/10
Checkov's short story collection 10/10
"The red and the black" by Stendhal 8/10

"All quiet on the western front" by E.M Remarque 10/10 (loved it)
"The member of the wedding" by Carson McCullers 6/10

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

1. Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

2. Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

3. Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

4. Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

5. Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Commedia.

6. Tad Williams' War of the Flowers. 3/5. (read my super-exciting review here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1012500#post1012500)!)

7. Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon: 2.5/5. I feel like I'm missing something, here. I tried reading this a couple years ago and quit halfway through. I read the whole thing this time, and it was just to slow and dreary. It is so highly praised, it seems like I failed to grasp the books purported greatness. Maybe I'll give it another read in a few years, see something I missed.

8. *Update* Connie Willis's Doomsday Book: 3.5/5. Not bad. The historical setting was quite well done. Unfortunately, this book suffered from a lot of repetition.

[mona amon]

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

I liked it very much, so 7/10. I'm still puzzling over the "Monty Hall Problem" mentioned in it. :D

[Residentvampire]

Just finished two more books

Lilith by George MacDonald - A excellent tale of a man struggling to find his place in life. Very insightful and surprisingly complex. This novel is like a adult Wizard Of Oz that you can read to your children. Highly recommended if you love fantasy novels.

Pan by Knut Hamsun - This one is a little harder to get into, and there doesn't seem to be as much character development as there should be. A confusing read, not recommended if you are looking for a serious understandable at face value plot.

[Scheherazade]

Update:

1. Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger) - 9/10 KitKats! Would have been 10 but I really wished the book was a little longer. Loved every single page of it.

2. Barbara Vine (A Dark Adapted Eye) - 8/10 A murder/mystery written superbly. What made the story even more interesting to me is the fact that the main characters involved are female and story's told by a female narrator too. Hard to put it down.

3. John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids) - 8/10 An excellent sci-fi. Even though this is not a genre I am particularly keen on, Wyndham manages to go beyond the usual and offers more questions than answers. Reminded me of Huxley's books in some ways.

4. Upton Sinclair (The Jungle - 8/10) Another excellent read for me. I was not sure what to find exactly but it exceeded my expectations on many levels. My only problem was the last 50 pages or so as it turned slightly preachy and dry. However, it was well worth the time and effort.


I read Wyngham's The Trouble with Lichen about a lichen from which an anti-ageing drug is developed. It was a good book with the issues well thought out.He is so different from the usual sci-fi authors. I wouldn't mind reading another book of his.

[Veho]

Update:

1) D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked it very much, a flaw would be its repetitiveness, however it's a flaw that doesn't affect my appreciation of the book and the ideas that are narrated. 4.5/5

2) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls. An interesting feminist play, slightly disjointed but worth the read .3/5

3) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Mixed feelings - the story kept me enthralled but I never really felt a connection towards the characters. 3.5/5

[Shakira]

My list:

1] The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (Currently reading with the book club)
2] Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
3] Cyrano De Bergerac byEdmond Rostand
4] The Souls Of Black Folk by William DU Bois
5] Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
6] The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

1. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

2. Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

3. Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

4. Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

5. Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Comedia.

6. Tad Williams' War of the Flowers. 3/5. (read my super-exciting review here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1012500#post1012500)!)

7. Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon: 2.5/5. I feel like I'm missing something, here. I tried reading this a couple years ago and quit halfway through. I read the whole thing this time, and it was just to slow and dreary. It is so highly praised, it seems like I failed to grasp the books purported greatness. Maybe I'll give it another read in a few years, see something I missed.

8. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book: 3.5/5. Not bad. The historical setting was quite well done. Unfortunately, this book suffered from a lot of repetition.

9. *Update* Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. My thoughts here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1016451&postcount=15).

[JuniperWoolf]

I've been neglecting this thread.

1. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

2. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Check. 9/10. I loved it, especially purgatory. I'd love to ascend mount purgatorio.

3. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (ugh...).

4. On The Road by Jack Kerouac (double ugh...).

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

7. Moby Dick by Harman Melville (I'll finally trudge through that chapter on whale breeds). Check. A bit dull up until the big chase, which was amazing and so I give it 8/10.

8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Check. I liked it best when he was a kid. 7/10.

9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

10. Anthem by Ayn Rand. Check. I don't really know how I feel about this one. I'll give it a 5/10, for now. It's like he escaped one prison and built himself a new one.

11. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.[/QUOTE]

I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov right now. I've got to track down people to lend me the rest.

[IceM]

For this challenge I've completed two different works this year.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. 8.5/10
The Great Gatsby 8/10
Also add Things Fall Apart from Chinua Achebe 7/10
And The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6.5/10

That has me for four in two months. I can't stop reading the authors I'm already used to.

Let's add Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller to the list. 7.5/10. Wasn't too fond of the weaving of flashback and present setting. It seemed too muddled and slowed the pace of the play, although I'm very much aware of the purposes they served.

[TheFifthElement]

Latest update

1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good
4. Electric Shadow - Heidi Williamson
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

I'm reading a few plays at the moment and enjoying it immensely. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was pretty good, though I found Tennessee Williams's stage directions a bit oppressive. It's quite an intense play. I'd like to see it performed.

[bouquin]

Carol Shields (1)
George Orwell (2)
Virginia Woolf
Haruki Murakami
Peter Carey (3)
Honoré de Balzac (4)
J.G. Ballard
Louis de Bernières
Jean Rhys (5)
Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Oliver Goldsmith

(1) I have read Unless.
(2) have recently read Animal Farm
(3) have just finished True History of the Kelly Gang
(4) currently reading Le Père Goriot
(5) have read Wide Sargasso Sea

[TheFifthElement]

And another update:

1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good
4. Electric Shadow - Heidi Williamson
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
7. Abigail's Party - Mike Leigh

I loved the oppressive atmosphere created in Abigail's Party, and how so much was said but yet the characters said very little. It presents a very interesting picture of middle class Britain in the 80's. I didn't see the end coming at all. Another one I'd love to see performed.

[Veho]

Update:

1) D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked it very much, a flaw would be its repetitiveness, however it's a flaw that doesn't affect my appreciation of the book and the ideas that are narrated. 4.5/5

2) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls. An interesting feminist play, slightly disjointed but worth the read .3/5

3) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Mixed feelings - the story kept me enthralled but I never really felt a connection towards the characters. 3.5/5

4) Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. Good plot, although fairy predictable; nice descriptions of Manderley; good read overall. 3.8/5

[Veho]

Update:

1) D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked it very much, a flaw would be its repetitiveness, however it's a flaw that doesn't affect my appreciation of the book and the ideas that are narrated. 4.5/5

2) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls. An interesting feminist play, slightly disjointed but worth the read .3/5

3) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Mixed feelings - the story kept me enthralled but I never really felt a connection towards the characters. 3.5/5

4) Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. Good plot, although fairy predictable; nice descriptions of Manderley; good read overall. 3.8/5

5) Seamus Heaney/Sophocles, The Burial at Thebes, Sophocles' Antigone. Excellent; first thing I've read of this type of literature and I'll be reading more. 4.5/5

[manolia]

Update

1."Swann's way" by Proust 10/10
2.Checkov's short story collection 10/10
3."The red and the black" by Stendhal 8/10

4."All quiet on the western front" by E.M Remarque 10/10 (loved it)
5."The member of the wedding" by Carson McCullers 6/10

6."The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair 7/10 (liked it but thought it was a bit repetitive)
7."Lisa of Lambeth" by W. Somerset Maugham 9/10

[The Comedian]

Updated List:

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check (4/5)
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. --Check! (3.8/5)
I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

EDIT: 3. Beowulf (Heaney translation) -- Anonymous. Check! 5/5 I've never read this epic before, nor have I read anything by the Beowulf poet, I'm fairly certain.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Check! 3/5 I was hoping for more, but it was a good bit of 19th century travel writing. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. Check! 3.8/5 See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. [edit] Fiction -- Grendel by John Gardner. Check! 4/5. I've read Fifth's praise of this book for a while. And, since I've also wanted to read Beowulf for the longest time, I thought I'd pair these two up. To this text -- I really enjoyed Grendel especially as a book that dialogues Beowulf. It was over-written in spot, which detracted from my overall rating.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

[Shakira]

My list:

1] The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (Currently reading with the book club)
2] Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
3] Cyrano De Bergerac byEdmond Rostand
4] The Souls Of Black Folk by William DU Bois
5] Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
6] The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins

FINALLY completed The Jungle. Though it is good book, I got a little tired of it by the end. So, my rating - 3.5/5.

Started Three Lives. Already through with "The Good Anna". I liked reading Stein's style. Tends to be little repetitive but she connects beautifully. Now reading "Melanctha".

A small change in my list:
1] The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - 3.5/5
2] Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
3] Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackerey
4] The Souls Of Black Folk by William DU Bois
5] Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
6] The Woman In White by Wilkie Collin

[JuniperWoolf]

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was pretty good, though I found Tennessee Williams's stage directions a bit oppressive. It's quite an intense play. I'd like to see it performed.

They were oppressive, weren't they? Right down to the color of the furnature.

[TheFifthElement]

They were oppressive, weren't they? Right down to the color of the furnature.

Yeah, I got the impression that Tennessee Williams is a bit of a control freak! Lucky for him that he could probably get away with it, but most playwrights don't. I prefer it when they leave room for the director to manouevre.

My list updated again:

1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good
4. Electric Shadow - Heidi Williamson
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
7. Abigail's Party - Mike Leigh
8. Hay Fever - Noel Coward
9. Talking Heads 2 - Alan Bennett
10. Hitting Town - Stephen Poliakoff

Still on the exploration of plays here, speaking of which I went to see a fantastic performance of The Price by Arthur Millar yesterday. I'd forgotten how intense the theatre can be. I think it also helped that I was practically sitting on the stage :)

Of the 3 new books, I thought:
Hay Fever was a really fun farce, quite clever and engaging.
Talking Heads 2 by Alan Bennett was something else. Really clever and intense. I'd love to watch the TV series that accompanied it, and I'd love to read more of Alan Bennett's monologues. He's got a real knack. I was bowled over by it.
Hitting Town Meh. Wasn't really very impressed. It was quite subtle on the one hand, and incredibly unsubtle on the other. Consequently, I don't think it really worked at all.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

1. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

2. Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

3. Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

4. Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

5. Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Comedia.

6. Tad Williams' War of the Flowers. 3/5. (read my super-exciting review here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1012500#post1012500)!)

7. Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon: 2.5/5. I feel like I'm missing something, here. I tried reading this a couple years ago and quit halfway through. I read the whole thing this time, and it was just to slow and dreary. It is so highly praised, it seems like I failed to grasp the books purported greatness. Maybe I'll give it another read in a few years, see something I missed.

8. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book: 3.5/5. Not bad. The historical setting was quite well done. Unfortunately, this book suffered from a lot of repetition.

9. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. My thoughts here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1016451&postcount=15).

10. *Update* Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. 4.5/5. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

[KilgoreT]

This is a great idea. My list:

1. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita


2. William Faulkner- "A Rose for Emily"- short story, I also plan on reading at least one of his novels this year.

This is going slower than I expected. Everything I've read is by an author I have read at least one work by. Last year would have been a cinch for me, I read so many new authors in 2010.

3. Voltaire- 'Micromegas'

4. W. Somerset Maugham- The Moon and Sixpence

[Big Dante]

1. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
2. The Catcher In The Rye - JD Salinger
3. The Invisible Man – H.G Wells
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonneign
6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
7. 1984 - George Orwell
8. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm currently reading The Idiot and Les Miserables.

[Trollzane]

cool post ill def look up a new author now!

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

I may now checkoff Chechov, as in Anton Checkhov - "Ward No. 6", "On the Road".
Still working on Cooper, Fleming and just scratching the surface of Dante.

.

Completed "Goldfinger" by Ian Fleming and Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans"

Gg

[scoobyd]

It's high time I joined! ;)

1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
2. Walden by H. D. Thoreau
3. Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
4. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
5. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 8/10
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
8. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
9. Beloved by Toni Morrison
10. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
11. On The Road by Jack Kerouac

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5

9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read yet this year)

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, The Wisdom of Crowds**

[Rores28]

1. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
2. The Catcher In The Rye - JD Salinger
3. The Invisible Man – H.G Wells
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonneign
6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
7. 1984 - George Orwell
8. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm currently reading The Idiot and Les Miserables.

Looks like you are knocking out a lot of what they require one to read in high school... any favorites emerging?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

1. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

2. Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

3. Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

4. Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

5. Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Comedia.

6. Tad Williams' War of the Flowers. 3/5. (read my super-exciting review here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1012500#post1012500)!)

7. Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon: 2.5/5. I feel like I'm missing something, here. I tried reading this a couple years ago and quit halfway through. I read the whole thing this time, and it was just to slow and dreary. It is so highly praised, it seems like I failed to grasp the books purported greatness. Maybe I'll give it another read in a few years, see something I missed.

8. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book: 3.5/5. Not bad. The historical setting was quite well done. Unfortunately, this book suffered from a lot of repetition.

9. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. My thoughts here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1016451&postcount=15).

10. Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. 4.5/5. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

11. *Update* The Darkness that Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker. 3/5. Good, dark fantasy. Pretty adult-oriented content. If you're put off by misogynism and/or weak female characters, not for you. It's what took it down from a 4 to a 5. Still good enough to make me want to read the sequels.

BOOM. Done. With eight months to spare, no less. Should I keep the list going, anyways?

[manolia]

Update

1."Swann's way" by Proust 10/10
2.Checkov's short story collection 10/10
3."The red and the black" by Stendhal 8/10

4."All quiet on the western front" by E.M Remarque 10/10 (loved it)
5."The member of the wedding" by Carson McCullers 6/10

6."The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair 7/10 (liked it but thought it was a bit repetitive)
7."Lisa of Lambeth" by W. Somerset Maugham 9/10

8."Never let me go" by Kazuo Ishiguro 9/10 (I liked it very much although i'd like it even more if the author had made a more powerful comment about the society he describes, instead of just describing it)

[Delarge]

1. Cormack McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain

2. Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time

3. Bram Stoker - Dracula

4. Ben Franklin - The Autobiography

5. Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice

6. John Keats - Complete Works

7. Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises

8. Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities

9. Victor Klemperer - Lingua Tertii Imperii

10. Martin Andersen Nexø - Ditte, Daughter of Man

One more author to go

[TheFifthElement]

8."Never let me go" by Kazuo Ishiguro 9/10 (I liked it very much although i'd like it even more if the author had made a more powerful comment about the society he describes, instead of just describing it)
I actually liked that Ishiguro left it up to the reader to decide how they felt about the society, especially how the narrator is so non-judgemental about it, accepting in fact of their lot. I very much enjoyed Never Let Me Go, and Ishiguro in general is an excellent writer.

My list updated:

1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good
4. Electric Shadow - Heidi Williamson
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
7. Abigail's Party - Mike Leigh
8. Hay Fever - Noel Coward
9. Talking Heads 2 - Alan Bennett
10. Hitting Town - Stephen Poliakoff
11. The Burial at Thebes - Sophocles (Antigone - translated by Seamus Heaney).

Really enjoyed The Burial at Thebes - don't know if the translation is good or otherwise, but always feel like I'm in safe hands with Heaney. 4/5 from me.

[manolia]

I actually liked that Ishiguro left it up to the reader to decide how they felt about the society, especially how the narrator is so non-judgemental about it, accepting in fact of their lot. I very much enjoyed Never Let Me Go, and Ishiguro in general is an excellent writer.


You are right. It's been a while since i finished a book that saddened me so much..i guess that's why i wanted a comment or a reaction from the narrator..If the ending was different perhaps the impression left on the reader wouldn't be so strong. Anyway i liked Ishiguro very much so i plan to read more by him. Any recommendations would be more than welcome : ]

[Veho]

Update:

1) D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked it very much, a flaw would be its repetitiveness, however it's a flaw that doesn't affect my appreciation of the book and the ideas that are narrated. 8.5/10

2) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls. An interesting feminist play, slightly disjointed but worth the read. 5.5/10

3) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Mixed feelings - the story kept me enthralled but I never really felt a connection towards the characters. 7/10

4) Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. Good plot, although fairy predictable; nice descriptions of Manderley; good read overall. 7/10

5) Seamus Heaney/Sophocles, The Burial at Thebes, Sophocles' Antigone. Excellent; first thing I've read of this type of literature and I'll be reading more. 8.5/10

6) Daniel Defoe, Roxana. 7/10

[IceM]

Let's add Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller to the list. 7.5/10. Wasn't too fond of the weaving of flashback and present setting. It seemed too muddled and slowed the pace of the play, although I'm very much aware of the purposes they served.

Alright. Update.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. 8.5/10
The Great Gatsby by Jay Gatsby 8/10
Things Fall Apart from Chinua Achebe 7/10
The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6.5/10
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 7.5/10

Now add:
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: 9/10. Thoroughly heart-wrenching, sad end for Gregor Samsa. Great story.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt: 7.5/10. I loved the story, was fond of the writing, not fond of the ending, became a tad bit repetitive. For a great beginning, the memoir to me became a chore to read and was no longer as enjoyable.

[The Comedian]

Updated. ..

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check (4/5)
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. --Check! (3.8/5)
I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

EDIT: 3. Beowulf (Heaney translation) -- Anonymous. Check! 5/5 I've never read this epic before, nor have I read anything by the Beowulf poet, I'm fairly certain.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. Check! 4/5 -- I greatly enjoyed his playfulness. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Check! 3/5 I was hoping for more, but it was a good bit of 19th century travel writing. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. Check! 3.8/5 See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. [edit] Fiction -- Grendel by John Gardner. Check! 4/5. I've read Fifth's praise of this book for a while. And, since I've also wanted to read Beowulf for the longest time, I thought I'd pair these two up. To this text -- I really enjoyed Grendel especially as a book that dialogues Beowulf. It was over-written in spot, which detracted from my overall rating.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting

[TheFifthElement]

You are right. It's been a while since i finished a book that saddened me so much..i guess that's why i wanted a comment or a reaction from the narrator..If the ending was different perhaps the impression left on the reader wouldn't be so strong. Anyway i liked Ishiguro very much so i plan to read more by him. Any recommendations would be more than welcome : ]

The Remains of the Day is really, really good.

[Big Dante]

1. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
2. The Catcher In The Rye - JD Salinger
3. The Invisible Man – H.G Wells
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonneign
6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
7. 1984 - George Orwell
8. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
9. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
10. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

What will be number 11? I will decide tomorrow.

[KilgoreT]

Updated

1. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita

2. William Faulkner- 'A Rose for Emily'

3. Voltaire- 'Micromegas'

4. W. Somerset Maughaum- The Moon and Sixpence

5. James Joyce- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

6. Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf

[Dark Muse]

1.China Miéville: The City & The City - 9/10

At first I was a bit reluctant to read this book because the main focus of the plot revolved around a detective solving a murder, and in general I do not read crime fiction and detective novels, but I love surrealism and alternative realities so I was really intrigued by the concept of these two different cities coexisisting within the same location.

Over all I really enjoyed this book, though I do have some mixed feelings about certain aspects of it. On the one hand I found the realistic approach the author took to the concept was an interesting one, and the way in which it was an examination of urban life, society, politics, and so forth. On the other hand I have to admit a part of me was hoping for a bit more "fantastic" moments and perhaps hoping that it would bend the bonds of reality even further than it did.

2. H.G. Wells: The Time Machine - 9/10

Generally I am not really into sci-fi but I figured Wells is a classic, so I should give him a try and all in all I ended up quite enjoying this book. I did find that it was a bit slow at the start, but once he actually began to travel back into time and was telling of his adventures it really picked up. I have always liked those kind of adventure stories which involve traveling to strange new places and encounters with strange and new creatures/people.


3. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie -10/10

I was a bit daunted by the size of this book but once I started reading it, it actually went by rather quickly. I found it to be quite an interesting story and I really enjoyed reading it. I really liked Dreiser's style of writing and the complexity of his characters. This really makes me want to read an American Tragedy now.

4. Nevil Shute: A Town Like Alice -9/10

Since I have posted an official review for this one I will try not to repeat myself too much again here. Only say that this book took me by surprise. I liked it a good deal more than I thought I would. I loved the narrative style and I found the story engaging to read and I loved the characters.

5. David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -8/10

It starts out really slowly, though I did enjoy the history of the book as it is about the Dutch Trading company in Japan, which was quite interesting, because of the isolation laws of Japan there was this man made island built called Dejima which is where the traders were housed because they were not allowed to enter the country. But the first half of the book was a bit tedious to read, but it did begin to really pick up once you got into and the story took off and overall I quite enjoyed it.

6. Marguerite Duras: The Ravishing of Lol Stein-9/10

This is a beautifully lyrical, haunting and somewhat bizarre little book which really does provide the reader with a very unique reading experince. I was spellbound by the story as it started to unweave itself.

[Big Dante]

1. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
2. The Catcher In The Rye - JD Salinger
3. The Invisible Man – H.G Wells
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonneign
6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
7. 1984 - George Orwell
8. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
9. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
10. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
11. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

Challenge complete with 7 months to spare.

[KilgoreT]

Updated

1. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita

2. William Faulkner- 'A Rose for Emily'

3. Voltaire- 'Micromegas'

4. W. Somerset Maughaum- The Moon and Sixpence

5. James Joyce- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

6. Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf

7. Kazuo Ishiguro- An Artist of the Floating World

[TheFifthElement]

I've done my 11, but I'm still going. Some extras:

1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good
4. Electric Shadow - Heidi Williamson
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
7. Abigail's Party - Mike Leigh
8. Hay Fever - Noel Coward
9. Talking Heads 2 - Alan Bennett
10. Hitting Town - Stephen Poliakoff
11. The Burial at Thebes - Sophocles (Antigone - translated by Seamus Heaney).
12. The Immoralist - Andre Gide
13. Boy Meets Girl - Ali Smith

The Immoralist I didn't really enjoy, though it hasn't put me off reading more by Andre Gide. What I didn't like about it was the approach - there was too much 'telling' involved in giving the protagonist's viewpoint and despite this they still came across as quite two dimensional and without depth. As regards the other characters they were even more two dimensional, which is probably right if taken from the perspective of this particular protagonist who lacked depth and his interest in other people was at best superficial. So I'd say it was a well written book, quite clever really, but because I didn't feel any connection to the protagonist (and that doesn't mean I have to like him because I'm not too bothered by that, but rather that there was nothing to connect to) it wasn't an enjoyable read.

Boy Meets Girl on the other hand was a really enjoyable read. I found it a little difficult to get into at first, but soon found myself carried away and my conclusion is that it's a beautiful little book. It's part of the 'Canongate Myths' series where contemporary writers take a well known myth and give it their own twist - this was a reimagining of the tale of Iphis and Ianthe from Ovid's Metamorphoses. I'd now like to read the original, so don't be surprised if I add Ovid to the list some time later this year :D

[Veho]

Update:

1) D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked it very much, a flaw would be its repetitiveness, however it's a flaw that doesn't affect my appreciation of the book and the ideas that are narrated. 8.5/10

2) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls. An interesting feminist play, slightly disjointed but worth the read. 5.5/10

3) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Mixed feelings - the story kept me enthralled but I never really felt a connection towards the characters. 7/10

4) Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. Good plot, although fairy predictable; nice descriptions of Manderley; good read overall. 7/10

5) Seamus Heaney/Sophocles, The Burial at Thebes, Sophocles' Antigone. Excellent; first thing I've read of this type of literature and I'll be reading more. 8.5/10

6) Daniel Defoe, Roxana. 7/10

7) Franz Kafka, The Trial. 6.8/10

[KilgoreT]

Updated

1. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita

2. William Faulkner- 'A Rose for Emily'

3. Voltaire- 'Micromegas'

4. W. Somerset Maughaum- The Moon and Sixpence

5. James Joyce- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

6. Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf

7. Kazuo Ishiguro- An Artist of the Floating World

8. Gordon Mathieson- Hook Island

[Veho]

Update:

1) D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked it very much, a flaw would be its repetitiveness, however it's a flaw that doesn't affect my appreciation of the book and the ideas that are narrated. 8.5/10

2) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls. An interesting feminist play, slightly disjointed but worth the read. 5.5/10

3) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Mixed feelings - the story kept me enthralled but I never really felt a connection towards the characters. 7/10

4) Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. Good plot, although fairy predictable; nice descriptions of Manderley; good read overall. 7/10

5) Seamus Heaney/Sophocles, The Burial at Thebes, Sophocles' Antigone. Excellent; first thing I've read of this type of literature and I'll be reading more. 8.5/10

6) Daniel Defoe, Roxana. 7/10

7) Franz Kafka, The Trial. 6.8/10

8) Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides. 7.5/10

[manolia]

Update

1."Swann's way" by Proust 10/10
2.Checkov's short story collection 10/10
3."The red and the black" by Stendhal 8/10

4."All quiet on the western front" by E.M Remarque 10/10 (loved it)
5."The member of the wedding" by Carson McCullers 6/10

6."The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair 7/10 (liked it but thought it was a bit repetitive)
7."Lisa of Lambeth" by W. Somerset Maugham 9/10

8."Never let me go" by Kazuo Ishiguro 9/10 (I liked it very much although i'd like it even more if the author had made a more powerful comment about the society he describes, instead of just describing it)

9."The wind-up bird chronicle" by Haruki Murakami 9/10 (Very interesting and Lynch-like book but a bit repetitive in some parts hence the 9)


The Remains of the Day is really, really good.

Thanks Fifth! Will do!

[Dark Muse]

1.China Miéville: The City & The City - 9/10

At first I was a bit reluctant to read this book because the main focus of the plot revolved around a detective solving a murder, and in general I do not read crime fiction and detective novels, but I love surrealism and alternative realities so I was really intrigued by the concept of these two different cities coexisisting within the same location.

Over all I really enjoyed this book, though I do have some mixed feelings about certain aspects of it. On the one hand I found the realistic approach the author took to the concept was an interesting one, and the way in which it was an examination of urban life, society, politics, and so forth. On the other hand I have to admit a part of me was hoping for a bit more "fantastic" moments and perhaps hoping that it would bend the bonds of reality even further than it did.

2. H.G. Wells: The Time Machine - 9/10

Generally I am not really into sci-fi but I figured Wells is a classic, so I should give him a try and all in all I ended up quite enjoying this book. I did find that it was a bit slow at the start, but once he actually began to travel back into time and was telling of his adventures it really picked up. I have always liked those kind of adventure stories which involve traveling to strange new places and encounters with strange and new creatures/people.


3. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie -10/10

I was a bit daunted by the size of this book but once I started reading it, it actually went by rather quickly. I found it to be quite an interesting story and I really enjoyed reading it. I really liked Dreiser's style of writing and the complexity of his characters. This really makes me want to read an American Tragedy now.

4. Nevil Shute: A Town Like Alice -9/10

Since I have posted an official review for this one I will try not to repeat myself too much again here. Only say that this book took me by surprise. I liked it a good deal more than I thought I would. I loved the narrative style and I found the story engaging to read and I loved the characters.

5. David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -8/10

It starts out really slowly, though I did enjoy the history of the book as it is about the Dutch Trading company in Japan, which was quite interesting, because of the isolation laws of Japan there was this man made island built called Dejima which is where the traders were housed because they were not allowed to enter the country. But the first half of the book was a bit tedious to read, but it did begin to really pick up once you got into and the story took off and overall I quite enjoyed it.

6. Marguerite Duras: The Ravishing of Lol Stein-9/10

This is a beautifully lyrical, haunting and somewhat bizarre little book which really does provide the reader with a very unique reading experince. I was spellbound by the story as it started to unweave itself.


7. Hillary Mantel: Wolf Hall-8/10

I love historical fiction, and only recently started really getting into Tudor history and this book was all the rave and very hyped up. I have to say I have rather mixed feelings about it. I was not quite as blown away by it as I would have expected from everything I heard, yet I cannot say that I found it to be a disappointment either. It did have its interesting points and I liked the perspective for the story, telling it from Cromwell's point of view which I thought was quite a unique way to approach the story. But I did not altogether agree with the way in which she went about trying to portray Cromwell as a sympathetic character, as I think there was a heavy author bias in the story. Also I did not care that much for the narration style of the book which at times was difficult to follow, confusing, and for me failed to truly explore the depths of the characters so that I never really got completely drawn into the story.

8. Michel Faber: The Crimson Petal and the White -8/10

An exploration behind the veneer of the Victorian age, and most particularly focuses upon the issue of prostitution of that time, and with the freedom of the modern age explores into the subject of the sexual oppression which bred hypocrisies and depravity and addresses the way in which in many ways both men and women were victims of the age.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Recently finished The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham.
Prior to that:
Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans"
Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"
Anton Checkhov's "Ward No 6" and "On the Road".

Still making my way through the "Inferno" and Cicero's "On Moral Duties"

.

[Venerable Bede]

For this summer I have a lot of authors lined up to read that I haven't read before. So far:

1. Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness

2. Stephen Lawhead - Hood

3. Jane Austen - Emma

4. Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

5. Mark Twain - Adventures of Tom Sawyer

6. Cormac McCarthy - The Road

Up next I will be reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose

[stlukesguild]

Now this would surely be a challenge for me. Eleven different authors by whom I have yet to have read anything before. But I think I shall give this a try. Right next to me a see what might be a first book of choice, Pierre Cornielle's The Theater of Illusion. After that...? I'll need to carefully browse my shelves in search of someone by whom I've yet to read anything... and yet someone by whom I want to read something. A challenge, indeed!:ihih:

[Drkshadow03]

Now this would surely be a challenge for me. Eleven different authors by whom I have yet to have read anything before. But I think I shall give this a try. Right next to me a see what might be a first book of choice, Pierre Cornielle's The Theater of Illusion. After that...? I'll need to carefully browse my shelves in search of someone by whom I've yet to read anything... and yet someone by whom I want to read something. A challenge, indeed!:ihih:

Have you read any Kelly Link?

[stlukesguild]

Have you read any Kelly Link?

No. Recommendations?

[Dark Muse]

1.China Miéville: The City & The City - 9/10

At first I was a bit reluctant to read this book because the main focus of the plot revolved around a detective solving a murder, and in general I do not read crime fiction and detective novels, but I love surrealism and alternative realities so I was really intrigued by the concept of these two different cities coexisisting within the same location.

Over all I really enjoyed this book, though I do have some mixed feelings about certain aspects of it. On the one hand I found the realistic approach the author took to the concept was an interesting one, and the way in which it was an examination of urban life, society, politics, and so forth. On the other hand I have to admit a part of me was hoping for a bit more "fantastic" moments and perhaps hoping that it would bend the bonds of reality even further than it did.

2. H.G. Wells: The Time Machine - 9/10

Generally I am not really into sci-fi but I figured Wells is a classic, so I should give him a try and all in all I ended up quite enjoying this book. I did find that it was a bit slow at the start, but once he actually began to travel back into time and was telling of his adventures it really picked up. I have always liked those kind of adventure stories which involve traveling to strange new places and encounters with strange and new creatures/people.


3. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie -10/10

I was a bit daunted by the size of this book but once I started reading it, it actually went by rather quickly. I found it to be quite an interesting story and I really enjoyed reading it. I really liked Dreiser's style of writing and the complexity of his characters. This really makes me want to read an American Tragedy now.

4. Nevil Shute: A Town Like Alice -9/10

Since I have posted an official review for this one I will try not to repeat myself too much again here. Only say that this book took me by surprise. I liked it a good deal more than I thought I would. I loved the narrative style and I found the story engaging to read and I loved the characters.

5. David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -8/10

It starts out really slowly, though I did enjoy the history of the book as it is about the Dutch Trading company in Japan, which was quite interesting, because of the isolation laws of Japan there was this man made island built called Dejima which is where the traders were housed because they were not allowed to enter the country. But the first half of the book was a bit tedious to read, but it did begin to really pick up once you got into and the story took off and overall I quite enjoyed it.

6. Marguerite Duras: The Ravishing of Lol Stein-9/10

This is a beautifully lyrical, haunting and somewhat bizarre little book which really does provide the reader with a very unique reading experince. I was spellbound by the story as it started to unweave itself.

7. Hillary Mantel: Wolf Hall-8/10

I love historical fiction, and only recently started really getting into Tudor history and this book was all the rave and very hyped up. I have to say I have rather mixed feelings about it. I was not quite as blown away by it as I would have expected from everything I heard, yet I cannot say that I found it to be a disappointment either. It did have its interesting points and I liked the perspective for the story, telling it from Cromwell's point of view which I thought was quite a unique way to approach the story. But I did not altogether agree with the way in which she went about trying to portray Cromwell as a sympathetic character, as I think there was a heavy author bias in the story. Also I did not care that much for the narration style of the book which at times was difficult to follow, confusing, and for me failed to truly explore the depths of the characters so that I never really got completely drawn into the story.

8. Michel Faber: The Crimson Petal and the White -8/10

An exploration behind the veneer of the Victorian age, and most particularly focuses upon the issue of prostitution of that time, and with the freedom of the modern age explores into the subject of the sexual oppression which bred hypocrisies and depravity and addresses the way in which in many ways both men and women were victims of the age.

9. Michelle Moran: Madame Tussuad: A Novel of the French Revolution-9/10

I have always been interested in the French Revolution but never had the chance to read anything about it within the realm of historical fiction so I was very interested in this novel. I really enjoyed it I thought it was a well crafted story that moved along quickly and was engaging from the start.

[Drkshadow03]

Have you read any Kelly Link?

No. Recommendations?

Start with her first short story collection, Stranger Things Happen (http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Things-Happen-Kelly-Link/dp/1931520003). Then her second collection, Magic for Beginners (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156031876/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1931520003&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0891JFKTAVCZS0HEVF2D).

[stlukesguild]

1. Pierre Corneille- Theatre of Illusion (tr. Richard Wilbur)- A baroque play of the usual "he loves her, but she loves him, and he loves somebody else..." variety complete with costumes, mistaken identities, comments of class, etc... ala Beaumarchais, Moliere, Shakespeare, Mozart, etc... But this is given a unique twist with an intriguing frame story and an unexpected ending and a great comic blowhard which altogether undermines the the rule of French classical theater which Corneille and Racine essentially established.

For the time being I've decided to stick with the French and so I'm now reading Marguerite Yourcenar's Oriental Tales.

[WyattGwyon]

?????

[stlukesguild]

?????


???

[G L Wilson]

......

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)

10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, The Wisdom of Crowds, The inferno, Hegemony or Survival**

[Kundan]

My list starts with 'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry

[Fyodor]

Actually read Borges. While his collected non-fiction is a daunting task it is ultimately valuable.

You could also try Eduardo Galeano for shorter works. I enjoyed "Upside Down - A primer for the looking glass world."

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5

7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5

11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy

Got 11 Non-fictions, just need 4 more new fiction authors.

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, The inferno, Hegemony or Survival**

[Residentvampire]

Update
6. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang (1893) - This book is a very interesting collection of fairy lore that dabbles in insane twists when Kirk describes his time in "Fairyland" Worth reading.

7. The Temptation of St. Antony by Gustave Flaubert - A novel that although is grand in scope, falls apart at several places where it is unclear where the character is. Worth reading if your into Christian philosophy, otherwise stay away

8. The Town by Chuck Hogan - A very interesting, action packed read that keeps the reader interested from beginning to end. Some of the chapters read long but it never ends up dry.

[Mr. Bungle]

Can't edit my original post, so here's an update:

1. Richard Yates: Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness (6/10)
2. Richard P. Feynman: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (6/10)
3. Sam Harris: Letter To A Christian Nation (7/10)
4. Fred Hoyle: The Black Cloud (7/10)
5. Robert Trumbull: The Raft (8/10)
6. Douwe Draaisma: Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older (6/10)
7. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (9/10)
8. Naomi Wolf: The Beauty Myth (4,5/10)
9. Chuck Palahniuk: Diary (6,5/10)
10. Mari Jose Olaziregi: An Anthology Of Basque Short Stories (5/10)
11. Ernest Becker: The Birth And Death Of Meaning (6/10)

Almost done. :) (edit: Done!)

After the challenge: David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" was a real treat and I am definitely going to pick up some of his other books. I think Trumbull never wrote anything else but I'll probably give Becker, Yates, Palahniuk and Harris another go.

[Rores28]

Can't edit my original post, so here's an update:

1. Richard Yates: Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness (6/10)
2. Richard P. Feynman: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (6/10)
3. Sam Harris: Letter To A Christian Nation (7/10)
4. Fred Hoyle: The Black Cloud (7/10)
5. Robert Trumbull: The Raft (8/10)
6. Douwe Draaisma: Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older (6/10)
7. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (9/10)
8. Naomi Wolf: The Beauty Myth (4,5/10)
9. Chuck Palahniuk: Diary (6,5/10)
10. Mari Jose Olaziregi: An Anthology Of Basque Short Stories (5/10)
11. Ernest Becker: The Birth And Death Of Meaning (reading atm...)

Almost done. :)

After the challenge: David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" was a real treat and I am definitely going to pick up some of his other books. I think Trumbull never wrote anything else but I'll probably give Becker, Yates, Palahniuk and Harris another go.

Check out Harris's "The Moral Landscape" it's excellent. This is, however, coming from a pretty hardcore utilitarian :).

[Mr. Bungle]

Check out Harris's "The Moral Landscape" it's excellent. This is, however, coming from a pretty hardcore utilitarian :).

Thank you for the tip, Rores! I will look out for this one.

(Just for the record: 'Letter To A Christian Nation' probably deserves a higher rating. It is the first book of Harris that I had the pleasure of reading but I've heard him lecture many times before and there wasn't a lot of new ground broken in the book - hence the slightly lower rating.)

[IceM]

Alright. Update.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. 8.5/10
The Great Gatsby by Jay Gatsby 8/10
Things Fall Apart from Chinua Achebe 7/10
The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6.5/10
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 7.5/10

Now add:
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: 9/10. Thoroughly heart-wrenching, sad end for Gregor Samsa. Great story.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt: 7.5/10. I loved the story, was fond of the writing, not fond of the ending, became a tad bit repetitive. For a great beginning, the memoir to me became a chore to read and was no longer as enjoyable.

Update:

Song of Solomon 8.5/10
Things Fall Apart 7/10
The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6.5/10
Death of a Salesman 7.5/10
Metamorphosis 9/10
Angela's Ashes 7.5/10
Great Gatsby 8/10

Langston Hughes's selected poems: 8.5/10. Excellent poetry, just a bit repetitive, as can be expected from selected poems. I found much to be thankful for in his powerful verse, it just fell flat on certain sections of this book.

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: 10/10. He defined American free verse. Nobody could write in that style before him, nobody will reach the beauty of his stellar work after him. So magnificently moving that, while getting away with conventions otherwise unusable today, is just brilliant. Unfortunately, this has effectually ruined my poetic voice, because I now feel myself imitating him unconsciously.

The Sonnets by Jorge Luis Borges: 9.5/10. Some of the sonnets were prosaic, most were less poetic than I expected. Yet Borges carries a delicate beauty in his words. I find myself thinking they're prosy sonnets, but I just don't know how to feel yet. Enthralling writing.

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: 7/10. The poems were good, I just found most of these poems forgettable. I agree with T.S. Eliot when he says Blake is a second-rate poet. I'll need to revisit this book later. I was pleased by Blake's work, but it didn't carry the beauty of other poets whose works I have read.

FINISHED!

[Etain]

I know I'm joining a little late, but this is a great idea! There's been a lot of works over the years that I "keep meaning to read".

My list of what I will read (and then I'll cross them off for myself once I've read them, and post ratings/reviews once I've completed the list, or made significant progress):

1. Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne
2. Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
3. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
4. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
6. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
7. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
8. The Island of Dr. Moreau - H.G. Wells
9. Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
10. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
11. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

It`s a good thing I work in a library.

[IceM]

2. Finnegans Wake - James Joyce


You'll never read Joyce again if you read Finnegan's Wake. Read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man instead. It's so much more coherent, which itself is a major plus.

[Etain]

You'll never read Joyce again if you read Finnegan's Wake. Read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man instead. It's so much more coherent, which itself is a major plus.

Thanks for the suggestion! I had chosen Finnegan's Wake because a friend was bugging me for years to read it. But I think I'll take your advice and save it for another time lol.

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan

[papayahed]

boy am I behind.

[TylerDurden]

Thanks for the suggestion! I had chosen Finnegan's Wake because a friend was bugging me for years to read it. But I think I'll take your advice and save it for another time lol.

Am reading Portrait now myself, it's excellent!

Only joined but thanks to college work I have read alot of new material so far this year.

Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Go Between by L.P Hartley
The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Portrait of the Artist as a young man by James Joyce

On the to do list:
Bram Stoker's Dracula
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Lord Of The Flies

I'll get that far and ask you guys for some direction..
Just realised I managed to avoid some prominent titles until this year!!

[hanzklein]

You'll never read Joyce again if you read Finnegan's Wake. Read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man instead. It's so much more coherent, which itself is a major plus.

A Portrait is coherent, but boring. Finnegans Wake completely incoherent but interesting. I would suggest starting Dubliners (Norton Critical ed.) and with his play Exiles.

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away

8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.


Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy

Got 11 Non-fictions, just need 4 more new fiction authors.

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, The inferno, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.**

[Dark Muse]

1.China Miéville: The City & The City - 9/10

At first I was a bit reluctant to read this book because the main focus of the plot revolved around a detective solving a murder, and in general I do not read crime fiction and detective novels, but I love surrealism and alternative realities so I was really intrigued by the concept of these two different cities coexisisting within the same location.

Over all I really enjoyed this book, though I do have some mixed feelings about certain aspects of it. On the one hand I found the realistic approach the author took to the concept was an interesting one, and the way in which it was an examination of urban life, society, politics, and so forth. On the other hand I have to admit a part of me was hoping for a bit more "fantastic" moments and perhaps hoping that it would bend the bonds of reality even further than it did.

2. H.G. Wells: The Time Machine - 9/10

Generally I am not really into sci-fi but I figured Wells is a classic, so I should give him a try and all in all I ended up quite enjoying this book. I did find that it was a bit slow at the start, but once he actually began to travel back into time and was telling of his adventures it really picked up. I have always liked those kind of adventure stories which involve traveling to strange new places and encounters with strange and new creatures/people.


3. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie -10/10

I was a bit daunted by the size of this book but once I started reading it, it actually went by rather quickly. I found it to be quite an interesting story and I really enjoyed reading it. I really liked Dreiser's style of writing and the complexity of his characters. This really makes me want to read an American Tragedy now.

4. Nevil Shute: A Town Like Alice -9/10

Since I have posted an official review for this one I will try not to repeat myself too much again here. Only say that this book took me by surprise. I liked it a good deal more than I thought I would. I loved the narrative style and I found the story engaging to read and I loved the characters.

5. David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -8/10

It starts out really slowly, though I did enjoy the history of the book as it is about the Dutch Trading company in Japan, which was quite interesting, because of the isolation laws of Japan there was this man made island built called Dejima which is where the traders were housed because they were not allowed to enter the country. But the first half of the book was a bit tedious to read, but it did begin to really pick up once you got into and the story took off and overall I quite enjoyed it.

6. Marguerite Duras: The Ravishing of Lol Stein-9/10

This is a beautifully lyrical, haunting and somewhat bizarre little book which really does provide the reader with a very unique reading experince. I was spellbound by the story as it started to unweave itself.

7. Hillary Mantel: Wolf Hall-8/10

I love historical fiction, and only recently started really getting into Tudor history and this book was all the rave and very hyped up. I have to say I have rather mixed feelings about it. I was not quite as blown away by it as I would have expected from everything I heard, yet I cannot say that I found it to be a disappointment either. It did have its interesting points and I liked the perspective for the story, telling it from Cromwell's point of view which I thought was quite a unique way to approach the story. But I did not altogether agree with the way in which she went about trying to portray Cromwell as a sympathetic character, as I think there was a heavy author bias in the story. Also I did not care that much for the narration style of the book which at times was difficult to follow, confusing, and for me failed to truly explore the depths of the characters so that I never really got completely drawn into the story.

8. Michel Faber: The Crimson Petal and the White -8/10

An exploration behind the veneer of the Victorian age, and most particularly focuses upon the issue of prostitution of that time, and with the freedom of the modern age explores into the subject of the sexual oppression which bred hypocrisies and depravity and addresses the way in which in many ways both men and women were victims of the age.

9. Michelle Moran: Madame Tussuad: A Novel of the French Revolution-9/10

I have always been interested in the French Revolution but never had the chance to read anything about it within the realm of historical fiction so I was very interested in this novel. I really enjoyed it I thought it was a well crafted story that moved along quickly and was engaging from the start.

10. Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach-9/10

This is a book which I never would have thought to read on my own. As I know they say don't judge a book by its cover, but based upon the cover of the book, the title, and the person who wrote it I would have presumed it to be some romance story, and though one could argue it is a romance, it was not some insufferable, sappy, sentimental romance. But my mom read this book and told me she thought I might like it, actually the way she put it was, this books was kind of weird so you would probably enjoy it. We have very different reading tastes but she knows what I don't like so I trusted it would not be some eye rolling love story. And I ended up enjoying the book a lot more than I would have guessed and I was surprised by the beauty of the writing itself.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Just finished Dante Alighieri – “The Inferno”.
Still working on Cicero’s “On Moral Duties” and I will now add Thor Heyerdahl’s “The RA Expeditions” to the list. The book has been in the family library for years, but I have yet to read it.

1. James Fennimore Cooper - "Last of the Mohicans"
2. Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"
3. Karel Čapek - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
4. Anton Checkhov's "Ward No 6" and "On the Road"
5. William Somerset Maugham – “The Moon and Sixpence”
6. Dante Alighieri – “The Inferno”

.

[Dark Muse]

1.China Miéville: The City & The City - 9/10

At first I was a bit reluctant to read this book because the main focus of the plot revolved around a detective solving a murder, and in general I do not read crime fiction and detective novels, but I love surrealism and alternative realities so I was really intrigued by the concept of these two different cities coexisisting within the same location.

Over all I really enjoyed this book, though I do have some mixed feelings about certain aspects of it. On the one hand I found the realistic approach the author took to the concept was an interesting one, and the way in which it was an examination of urban life, society, politics, and so forth. On the other hand I have to admit a part of me was hoping for a bit more "fantastic" moments and perhaps hoping that it would bend the bonds of reality even further than it did.

2. H.G. Wells: The Time Machine - 9/10

Generally I am not really into sci-fi but I figured Wells is a classic, so I should give him a try and all in all I ended up quite enjoying this book. I did find that it was a bit slow at the start, but once he actually began to travel back into time and was telling of his adventures it really picked up. I have always liked those kind of adventure stories which involve traveling to strange new places and encounters with strange and new creatures/people.


3. Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie -10/10

I was a bit daunted by the size of this book but once I started reading it, it actually went by rather quickly. I found it to be quite an interesting story and I really enjoyed reading it. I really liked Dreiser's style of writing and the complexity of his characters. This really makes me want to read an American Tragedy now.

4. Nevil Shute: A Town Like Alice -9/10

Since I have posted an official review for this one I will try not to repeat myself too much again here. Only say that this book took me by surprise. I liked it a good deal more than I thought I would. I loved the narrative style and I found the story engaging to read and I loved the characters.

5. David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -8/10

It starts out really slowly, though I did enjoy the history of the book as it is about the Dutch Trading company in Japan, which was quite interesting, because of the isolation laws of Japan there was this man made island built called Dejima which is where the traders were housed because they were not allowed to enter the country. But the first half of the book was a bit tedious to read, but it did begin to really pick up once you got into and the story took off and overall I quite enjoyed it.

6. Marguerite Duras: The Ravishing of Lol Stein-9/10

This is a beautifully lyrical, haunting and somewhat bizarre little book which really does provide the reader with a very unique reading experince. I was spellbound by the story as it started to unweave itself.

7. Hillary Mantel: Wolf Hall-8/10

I love historical fiction, and only recently started really getting into Tudor history and this book was all the rave and very hyped up. I have to say I have rather mixed feelings about it. I was not quite as blown away by it as I would have expected from everything I heard, yet I cannot say that I found it to be a disappointment either. It did have its interesting points and I liked the perspective for the story, telling it from Cromwell's point of view which I thought was quite a unique way to approach the story. But I did not altogether agree with the way in which she went about trying to portray Cromwell as a sympathetic character, as I think there was a heavy author bias in the story. Also I did not care that much for the narration style of the book which at times was difficult to follow, confusing, and for me failed to truly explore the depths of the characters so that I never really got completely drawn into the story.

8. Michel Faber: The Crimson Petal and the White -8/10

An exploration behind the veneer of the Victorian age, and most particularly focuses upon the issue of prostitution of that time, and with the freedom of the modern age explores into the subject of the sexual oppression which bred hypocrisies and depravity and addresses the way in which in many ways both men and women were victims of the age.

9. Michelle Moran: Madame Tussuad: A Novel of the French Revolution-9/10

I have always been interested in the French Revolution but never had the chance to read anything about it within the realm of historical fiction so I was very interested in this novel. I really enjoyed it I thought it was a well crafted story that moved along quickly and was engaging from the start.

10. Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach-9/10

This is a book which I never would have thought to read on my own. As I know they say don't judge a book by its cover, but based upon the cover of the book, the title, and the person who wrote it I would have presumed it to be some romance story, and though one could argue it is a romance, it was not some insufferable, sappy, sentimental romance. But my mom read this book and told me she thought I might like it, actually the way she put it was, this books was kind of weird so you would probably enjoy it. We have very different reading tastes but she knows what I don't like so I trusted it would not be some eye rolling love story. And I ended up enjoying the book a lot more than I would have guessed and I was surprised by the beauty of the writing itself.

And I have finished!

Last one

Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita -9/10

[aliengirl]

1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco - 10/10
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 6/10

3. The Monk by Matthew Lewis - 8/10.

4. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - 8.5/10. It is a very poignant novel with some very exquisite passages. I have not read such a good prequel before especially as it was written by a different author.

5. Kanthapura by Raja Rao - 6/10. Rao could not match Narayan in irony.

6. Anne of the Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - 9/10. I wonder why I have not read it earlier. Great fun!

It seems a long time since my last update. I have been reading authors most of whom I've read before. But I hope I'd finish my list before the year ends.

Update

7. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - 9.5/10. Absolutely loved it. Will surely read more by Atwood.

8. The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur - 1/10. After reading it I wondered who was the fool - the Americans, the Indians, or the reader. Thank God, I didn't spend my money on it. It was lent by someone. Gave it a point because the poor guy has at least worked upon the plot...to keep it uniform from beginning till end. Disgusting!

9. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - 8/10. Quite absurd and funny, full of dotty characters. Various inter textual references make it more interesting.

Just two more to go and I am working on them.

[Residentvampire]

Finished all 11

1. Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist -
2. The Terror by Dan Simmons:
3. Lilith by George MacDonald
4. Pan by Knut Hamsun
5. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
6. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang (1893)
7. The Temptation of St. Antony by Gustave Flaubert
8. The Town by Chuck Hogan
9. The Portrait of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
10. Camilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
11. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Best
1. Let The Right One In - Very dark in scope but humanistic take on vampires.
2. The Terror - Very interesting take on a folklore, epic, makes you want to read more
3. Lilith - Fantasy at its best
4. The Town - Very well written exciting novel
5. Camilla - Gothic and sometimes erotic, this short story sucks you in.
6. The Alchemist - Best novel I've ever read, due to the lessons contained in its pages

Meh
1. Les Miserables - Dont get me wrong, this is a great novel, but once Javert dies, it falls flat
2. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang (1893) -This provides interesting details on these creatures but its often hard to follow
3. The Portrait of Dorian Grey - Great novel, but the main character is just a *******. Maybe the ending was meant to be that grim. A slight Meh

The Ugly
1.Pan - Boring, enough said. This is a basic story with some sex, but oddly little emotion
2. The Temptation of St. Antony - Alot is done with this play, but its difficult (from a readers standpoint) where exactly this occurs. I missed the point entirely.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Just finished Thor Heyerdahl’s “The RA Expeditions”. Still working on Cicero and deciding on another, possibly the "The Confessions of St. Augustine" or "The Travels of Marco Polo" -???

1. James Fennimore Cooper - "Last of the Mohicans"
2. Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"
3. Karel Čapek - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
4. Anton Checkhov's "Ward No 6" and "On the Road"
5. William Somerset Maugham – “The Moon and Sixpence”
6. Dante Alighieri – “The Inferno”
7. Thor Heyerdahl’s “The RA Expeditions”


.

[Delarge]

Finished the Challenge some while ago, but haven't posted yet.

Here goes:
1. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
3. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
4. The Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
5. Dracula by Bram Stoker
6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
7. Complete Works by John Keats
8. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
9. Ditte Menneskebarn by Martin Andersen Nexø
10. Lingua Tertii Imperii by Victor Klemperer
11. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

My goal for 2011 is to get into anglo-saxon literature as I have been neglecting it in favour of Russian, German and Scandinavian literature. Hemingway really caught my attention and Jack Keroucs Original Scroll was brilliant (not listed among the eleven).

Nice challenge, I'm ready for the 2012 challenge next year :)

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy

Got 11 Non-fictions, just need 4 more new fiction authors.

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, The inferno, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy

Got 11 Non-fictions, just need 4 more new fiction authors.

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

Just finished my 11 non-fiction. Anyone out there going for more than 11? I think I'm gonna try to hit 14 fiction and 14 non-fiction if I can.

[aliengirl]

I've finished.

Here is the final list-

1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco - 10/10

2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 6/10

3. The Monk by Matthew Lewis - 8/10.

4. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - 8.5/10.

5. Kanthapura by Raja Rao - 6/10.

6. Anne of the Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - 9/10.

7. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - 9.5/10.

8. The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur - 1/10.

9. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - 8/10.

10. The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch - 6/10 It was a little boring in the beginning but when I trudged half way through it began to get interesting. The end was somewhat like a fairytale but it was unexpected.

11. Changing Places by David Lodge - 8/10
I've never read any work of fiction by Lodge before. Having read his non-fiction I hoped for a good read and was not disappointed. In fact it was a trilogy followed by two more novels - Small World (9/10) and Nice Work (8.5/10). Enjoyed a lot. Finished all the three novels in just twelve days.

FINISHED!!!

I think I can continue the challenge as a quarter of the year is still left and my TBR list is getting longer and longer with many new authors on it.

[irinmisfit92]

Dante: Inferno
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (Reading)
Jonathan Stroud: The Amulet of Samarkand (Reading)
Arnaldur Indridason: Hypothermia
William Golding: Lord of the Flies
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We
Joe Dunthorne: Submarine
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Whoa I indeed read a lot of books by new authors this year. :D One more to go!

Oh **** I forgot to rate them. Basically they are all amazing, especially Inferno, A Clockwork Orange, Lord of the Flies, and We. Submarine and Lolita are good at the beginning but it gets boring towards the end. Wuthering Heights's pretty okay but it's just a pain in the *** since it's my literature book.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Just finished Marcus Tulius Cicero – “On Moral Duties”
and St. Augustine – “The Confessions”

A couple of quotes from St. Augustine that inspired me:

“I developed a passion for stage plays, with the mirror they held up to my own miseries and the fuel they poured on my flame. How is it that a man wants to be made sad by the sight of tragic sufferings that he could not bear in his own person? Yet the spectator does want to feel sorrow, and it is actually a feeling of sorrow that he enjoys. Surely this is the most wretched lunacy”

“I have seen the lines drawn by architects, some as fine as a spider web; but the truths are different, they are not the images of such things as the eye of my body has shown me. To know them is to recognize them interiorly without any concept of any kind of body whatsoever…Let whoever does not see these truths laugh at me for talking thus; while he laughs at me I shall feel sorry for him”

1. James Fennimore Cooper - "Last of the Mohicans"
2. Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"
3. Karel Čapek - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
4. Anton Checkhov's "Ward No 6" and "On the Road"
5. William Somerset Maugham – “The Moon and Sixpence”
6. Dante Alighieri – “The Inferno”
7. Thor Heyerdhal – “The RA Expeditions”
8. Marcus Tulius Cicero – “On Moral Duties”
9. St. Augustine – “The Confessions”

Given the recent furor over FF&H, I have decided to introudce myself to all three of them concurrently and see what all the fuss is about. I thought Hemingway would make 11, so I will make him 12. Therefore I will first complete my eleven with:

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Great Gatsby”
11. William Faulkner – “Absalom, Absalom!

Hemingway...?? not sure which one to go with at this time.

.

[thelastmelon]

I noticed this thread just now, and wanna see how I've done (without even knowing about the challenge). So here we go:

1. Ali Smith (Girl Meets Boy)
2. Jandy Nelson (The Sky is Everywhere)
3. Karin Brunk Holmqvist (Rosa Elefanter)
4. Jesper Juul (Konsten att säga nej med gott samvete)
5. Per Hagman (Att komma hem ska vara en schlager)
6. Ondjaki (Good Morning, Comrades)
7. Fritiof Nilsson Piraten (Millionären och andra historier)
8. Biyi Bandele (Burma Boy)
9. Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada)
10. Toni Morrison (Sula)
11. Hjalmar Söderberg (Martin Birck's Youth)

Yay! I completed the challenge by the end of April (I keep a list of what I read every month).

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy

Got 11 Non-fictions, just need 4 more new fiction authors.

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5
14) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - 4.8/5 An excellent graphic novel, but not for the meek

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy



**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

Just finished Jimmy Corrigan, and I can say it did live up to the hype.

[Scheherazade]

An update is long overdue here:

1. Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger) - 9/10 KitKats! Would have been 10 but I really wished the book was a little longer. Loved every single page of it.

2. Barbara Vine (A Dark Adapted Eye) - 8/10 A murder/mystery written superbly. What made the story even more interesting to me is the fact that the main characters involved are female and story's told by a female narrator too. Hard to put it down.

3. Muriel Spark (Aiding and Abetting) 7/10 Had no idea what to expect before starting this book and was not familiar with the Lord Lucan affair so it was a very engaging read..

4. John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids) - 8/10 An excellent sci-fi. Even though this is not a genre I am particularly keen on, Wyndham manages to go beyond the usual and offers more questions than answers. Reminded me of Huxley's books in some ways.

5. Ira Levin - The Stepford Wives - 9/10 Loved the book and, needless to say, the movie does not even compare... Hard to believe that 40 years ago, Levin dealt with so many issues that are confusing us women (and men) today. Could not put it down.

6. Italo Calvino - The Queen's Necklace 8/10 More of a novella than a novel in length and it is such a breath of fresh air to read moden short stories as I am worried that this genre is somewhat diminishing. Enjoyed his style and story structure very much.

7. Henning Mankell - The Man from Beijing 6/10 I picked this one just because it was popular on my library's website but I am not very impressed... What started as a very intriguing mystery turned into a drag... With political and philosophical debates, all provided half-heartedly.

8. Stephen King - The Green Mile 7/10 Read this one because it was in BBC's Big Read list and I was very pleasantly surprised: King is a great story teller and this particular one manages to capture the reader from the very first page. It is a great mixture of fantasy and supernatural.

9. Cormac McCarthy - The Road 9/10

10. James Clavell - Shogun 7/10

11. Alice Munro - Love of a Good Woman 9/10

[kasie]

Don't give up on Mankell, Scher - try one of his Wallander books, they are much more tautly written. I started with The White Lioness - may seem a bit dated now in that it refers to a very specific event that's now in the past, a bit like Day of the Jackal or The Fourth Protocol, but even though you know the outcome, he manages to ratchet up the tension to the very end and it has one of the most intriguing openings I've ever read, an object lesson in the elusive 'hook' that pulls the reader into the book. I agree with you about The Man from Beijing, not one of his best, feels like an early manuscript he dusted down for later publication.

[Scheherazade]

I agree with you about The Man from Beijing, not one of his best, feels like an early manuscript he dusted down for later publication.The thing is that The Man from Beijing starts very promisingly as well. Couldn't put it down for the first 80 pages or so but then it branched out far too much, I felt.

I might read another of his books later (when I'm done with all these challenges :D)

[Brett Cottrell]

Awesome! I hadn't thought about it until I saw this post, but I guess I've introduced myself to many authors this year. I love to go in to my favorite bookstores in Washington, DC, and ask for recommendations. It's a great way to force myself to branch out.

1) Herta Muller. The Passport, The Appointment. Quite simply, her prose amazes me. I have never read another author who writes so readably and poetically at the same time. Her raw story telling about life under Nicolae Ceausecu left me in awe. Well-deserved Pulitzer in 2009.

2) Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. Fantastic until the conclusion. I thought the end betrayed the rest of the book. Still, an incredible work.

3) China Mieville. Kraken, Perdido Street Station. Kraken is a riotous romp, and Perdido Street Station is good as well. I don't know of any contemporary author with such a crazy imagination.

4) Herman Meleville. Moby Dick, The Confidence Man. I cannot believe I waited so long to read Melville. He's great.

5) Julian Barnes. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. Incredible prose!

6) John Irving. The World According to Garp. Awful. Turgid. Good prose, but pedantic and self-important. I'm not sure that's the author's intent, but that was what I thought. To be fair, some of the content may have been more enlightening when the book was written.

7) Isabel Allende. The House of Spirts. Loved it. Flowing epic with personal touch, plus a little bit of "the crazy."

8) Jane Smiley. A Thousand Acres, Private Life. Great story teller.

9) John Williams. Stoner, Butcher's Crossing, Agustus. I must like him if I read three of his novels in a year.

10) Jim Lynch. Border Songs. Nice novel that takes place on the USA/Canadian border near Vancouver. The staff at City Lights book publishers in San Francisco recommended this one.

11) Kate Chopin. The Awakening. I really enjoyed this early feminist novella.

[Scheherazade]

8) Jane Smiley. A Thousand AcresRead this one because it is a Pulitzer winner and was surprised how well it was written... Surprised because I had heard of neither Smiley nor her book until then... Considering that it was out only in 1991, I feel the book should be more popular.

[Brett Cottrell]

Read this one because it is a Pulitzer winner and was surprised how well it was written... Surprised because I had heard of neither Smiley nor her book until then... Considering that it was out only in 1991, I feel the book should be more popular.

I was surprised, too. I have another, MOO, on my shelf that I plan to read soon.

[Captain Pike]

This still happening? I wish I'd seen it earlier in the year. BTW: how do you get a plug right on the short story contest page? That IS something.

Let's see:
0) Joseph Conrad -- Victorious.
1) Pearl S. Buck -- Uncle Tom's Cabin.
2) Charles Dickens -- A Tale of Two Cities
3) Ernest Hemingway -- For Whom the Bell Tolls. [Must've read Ernie as a kid]
reading more Dickens now, I'll never make it...

[Rores28]

[QUOTE=Rores28;1073350]Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5
14) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - Chris Ware 4.8/5 An excellent graphic novel, but not for the meek
15) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi 3.9/5 - A harrowing and edifying story, propped up by mediocre writing.
16) Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome - 3.7/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy



**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5
14) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - Chris Ware 4.8/5 An excellent graphic novel, but not for the meek
15) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi 3.9/5 - A harrowing and edifying story, propped up by mediocre writing.
16) Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome - 3.7/5
17) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 3.9/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy



**Currently Reading Anna Karenina, The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

[Rores28]

I realize I'm the only person still adding to this thread, but I'm going until the full year is up damnit.

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5
14) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - Chris Ware 4.8/5 An excellent graphic novel, but not for the meek
15) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi 3.9/5 - A harrowing and edifying story, propped up by mediocre writing.
16) Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome - 3.7/5
17) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 3.9/5
18) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 4.2/5
19) Stitches - David Small 3.9/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy



**Currently Reading Anna Karenina, The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us

[aliengirl]

I've finished.

Here is the final list-

1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco - 10/10

2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 6/10

3. The Monk by Matthew Lewis - 8/10.

4. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - 8.5/10.

5. Kanthapura by Raja Rao - 6/10.

6. Anne of the Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - 9/10.

7. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - 9.5/10.

8. The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur - 1/10.

9. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - 8/10.

10. The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch - 6/10 It was a little boring in the beginning but when I trudged half way through it began to get interesting. The end was somewhat like a fairytale but it was unexpected.

11. Changing Places by David Lodge - 8/10
I've never read any work of fiction by Lodge before. Having read his non-fiction I hoped for a good read and was not disappointed. In fact it was a trilogy followed by two more novels - Small World (9/10) and Nice Work (8.5/10). Enjoyed a lot. Finished all the three novels in just twelve days.

FINISHED!!!

I think I can continue the challenge as a quarter of the year is still left and my TBR list is getting longer and longer with many new authors on it.


UPDATE!

12. The Stranger (The Outsider) by Albert Camus - 8.5/10. I need to read it again to rate it honestly but on the first go it seemed highly intriguing.

13. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - 9/10. Full of so many characters that it was difficult to keep track of all of them in the beginning. But I was drawn to it by its beautiful description of landscape and equally interesting lives of people inhabiting it. Quite strangely all the major characters suffer or die due to war but the minor ones survive, even prosper.

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5
14) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - Chris Ware 4.8/5 An excellent graphic novel, but not for the meek
15) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi 3.9/5 - A harrowing and edifying story, propped up by mediocre writing.
16) Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome - 3.7/5
17) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 3.9/5
18) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 4.2/5
19) Stitches - David Small 3.9/
20) Quitter - Harvey Pekar 2.3/5
21) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 4.7/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy



**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Just finished Marcus Tulius Cicero – “On Moral Duties”
and St. Augustine – “The Confessions”

A couple of quotes from St. Augustine that inspired me:

“I developed a passion for stage plays, with the mirror they held up to my own miseries and the fuel they poured on my flame. How is it that a man wants to be made sad by the sight of tragic sufferings that he could not bear in his own person? Yet the spectator does want to feel sorrow, and it is actually a feeling of sorrow that he enjoys. Surely this is the most wretched lunacy”

“I have seen the lines drawn by architects, some as fine as a spider web; but the truths are different, they are not the images of such things as the eye of my body has shown me. To know them is to recognize them interiorly without any concept of any kind of body whatsoever…Let whoever does not see these truths laugh at me for talking thus; while he laughs at me I shall feel sorry for him”

1. James Fennimore Cooper - "Last of the Mohicans"
2. Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"
3. Karel Čapek - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
4. Anton Checkhov's "Ward No 6" and "On the Road"
5. William Somerset Maugham – “The Moon and Sixpence”
6. Dante Alighieri – “The Inferno”
7. Thor Heyerdhal – “The RA Expeditions”
8. Marcus Tulius Cicero – “On Moral Duties”
9. St. Augustine – “The Confessions”

Given the recent furor over FF&H, I have decided to introudce myself to all three of them concurrently and see what all the fuss is about. I thought Hemingway would make 11, so I will make him 12. Therefore I will first complete my eleven with:

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Great Gatsby”
11. William Faulkner – “Absalom, Absalom!"

Hemingway...?? not sure which one to go with at this time.

.


Completed The Great Gatsby and Absalom, Absalom!. Besides introducing myself to new authors, my secondary reasoning for seelcting these two, was driven by an older thread comparing Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I have to say Fitzgerald was far easier to read and comprhend as compared to Faulkner, of course that is based on one book for each. It could be that Absalom, Absalom happens to be one of Faulkner's more difficult reads.

That takes care of my 11:
1. James Fennimore Cooper - "Last of the Mohicans"
2. Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"
3. Karel Čapek - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
4. Anton Checkhov's "Ward No 6" and "On the Road"
5. William Somerset Maugham – “The Moon and Sixpence”
6. Dante Alighieri – “The Inferno”
7. Thor Heyerdhal – “The RA Expeditions”
8. Marcus Tulius Cicero – “On Moral Duties”
9. St. Augustine – “The Confessions”
10. F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Great Gatsby”
11. William Faulkner – “Absalom, Absalom!



I'm now on to Hemingway.

.

[Rores28]

Completed The Great Gatsby and Absalom, Absalom!. Besides introducing myself to new authors, my secondary reasoning for seelcting these two, was driven by an older thread comparing Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I have to say Fitzgerald was far easier to read and comprhend as compared to Faulkner, of course that is based on one book for each. It could be that Absalom, Absalom happens to be one of Faulkner's more difficult reads.

That takes care of my 11:
1. James Fennimore Cooper - "Last of the Mohicans"
2. Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"
3. Karel Čapek - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
4. Anton Checkhov's "Ward No 6" and "On the Road"
5. William Somerset Maugham – “The Moon and Sixpence”
6. Dante Alighieri – “The Inferno”
7. Thor Heyerdhal – “The RA Expeditions”
8. Marcus Tulius Cicero – “On Moral Duties”
9. St. Augustine – “The Confessions”
10. F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Great Gatsby”
11. William Faulkner – “Absalom, Absalom!



I'm now on to Hemingway.

.
Faulkner is generally a more difficult read than Fitzgerald from what I gather. As I Lay Dying is no walk in the park either. I mean I love the book, but would not describe it as easy.

[Rores28]

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5
14) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - Chris Ware 4.8/5 An excellent graphic novel, but not for the meek
15) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi 3.9/5 - A harrowing and edifying story, propped up by mediocre writing.
16) Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome - 3.7/5
17) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 3.9/5
18) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 4.2/5
19) Stitches - David Small 3.9/
20) Quitter - Harvey Pekar 2.3/5
21) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 4.7/5
22) Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier 4.0/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Companies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5
8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5
9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy



**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan


4.) Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic - Tom Holland

Yes. I realize I have failed miserably at the Challenge. I shall never surrender, even if it takes me years...

[mona amon]

This was a really good challenge. I didn't quite make it, alas, but I did get to read authors I wouldn't have normally tried, and at least three of the books were excellent. I also had fun with some of the lighter reads.

Here's my list -

1. The Scarlet Pimpernal by Baroness Orckzy - My mom used to love these, and I can see why, but not my kind of book.

2. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James - Great book, I can see that. Beautifully written, very well drawn characters. So well written in fact that I wonder if it isn't a case of too much of a good thing. At any rate, it proves to me that good writing isn't everything. It stirred no deep emotion in me, except for annoyance at the main character.

3. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh - Loved this book! :cheers2: I was able to understand the dialect after a few pages. 10/10 if you ask me to rate it.

4. The Magician by Micheal Scott - :thumbsdown: Written for younger readers, I thought it would be an enjoyable light read, but it turned out to be every bit as bad as the Da Vinci Code.

5. Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding - :biggrin5: Ha, this was a lot of fun! Saw the movie soon afterwards and was thrilled with Colin Firth in another Darcy-ish role. Now I've forgotten which movie scenes were in the book and which were not.

6. After Dark by Haruki Murakami - I liked it, but felt it was too slight and unsatisfying. Then I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by the same author, and it was everything I could have wished for. It blew me away! Fantastic book. :hurray:

7. The Cleft by Doris Lessing - Quite the worst book I've ever read in my life. Tediously repititive, humourless, asinine, mindless drivel. It's cheating to include it here because I didn't quite make it to the end (and it was only about 250 pages long). :ack2:

8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon - A very enjoyable book about an autistic (or something) boy who does some 'detecting' and discovers something rather unexpected. :thumbs_up

9. King Rat by China Meiville - Fairly readable, quite well written, and I suspect it's not even the author's best. May give some of his others a try. :thumbs_up

10. Possession by A S Byatt - Starts off rather dry and scholarly - British Museum-y and Cambridge-y, but soon livens up. The correspondence between the two poet lovers was wonderful, but had to skip the long poems. Anyway, it's an excellent book, a mixture of all kinds of interesting stuff - poetry, history, myth, fairy tales, love story, detective story, and even a small 'foil the bad guys on our own' sort of subplot at the end, which reminded me of Enid Blyton! :thumbsup:

Well, that's it! Just one book short, what a pity!

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan
4.) Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic - Tom Holland
5.) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan
4.) Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic - Tom Holland
5.) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
6.) In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson


Never Surrender.

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan
4.) Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic - Tom Holland
5.) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
6.) In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
7.) The Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin

[qimissung]

Proud of ya, papayahed. How did you like "A Visit from the Goon Squad," by the way?

[papayahed]

Proud of ya, papayahed. How did you like "A Visit from the Goon Squad," by the way?

I liked it. It took a little to get used to the style but overall I give it a 8.75/10.




1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan
4.) Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic - Tom Holland
5.) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
6.) In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
7.) The Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin
8.) I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive - Steve Earle

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan
4.) Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic - Tom Holland
5.) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
6.) In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
7.) The Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin
8.) I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive - Steve Earle
9.) Dracula - Bram Stoker

[qimissung]

Did you like Dracula ? It's one of my favorite novels.

[Scheherazade]

7.) The Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin I want to read this one next year. I really enjoyed his Stepford Wives.

Only two more books, Papaya! :auto:

[papayahed]

Did you like Dracula ? It's one of my favorite novels.


I did like it, it may become one of myfavorites as well.


I want to read this one next year. I really enjoyed his Stepford Wives.

Only two more books, Papaya! :auto:


Right? And it's only 1 year and 10 monthes to get this far.:smilielol5:

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan
4.) Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic - Tom Holland
5.) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
6.) In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
7.) The Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin
8.) I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive - Steve Earle
9.) Dracula - Bram Stoker
10.) Unholy Night - Seth Grahame-Smith

[qimissung]

Only one more to go, Papaya! I'm currently reading "A Visit from the Goon Squad." I really like it so far.

[papayahed]

1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
2.) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
3.) a visit from the goon squad - Jennifer Egan
4.) Rubicon, The Last Years of the Roman Republic - Tom Holland
5.) We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
6.) In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
7.) The Boys from Brazil - Ira Levin
8.) I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive - Steve Earle
9.) Dracula - Bram Stoker
10.) Unholy Night - Seth Grahame-Smith
11.) Soon I will be Invincinble - Austin Grossman


TA -Da! Complete! (and it only took 2 years and 2 months)