Summer book Lineup

[phalium]

Hey all.
I was just thinking about all the books I am wanting to read this summer break and was curious what people think of my choices.

Also, what books do you all have lined up for the summer?

My list:
- Atlas Shrugged (Loved the FOuntainhead)
- The Zohar Vol. 1 (Jewish Mystic text that I have been studying in class, but want to read through for pleasure)
- Harry Potter Series (read the first 4 a few years ago. Need to finish)
- Old Man and the Sea (have not read a Hemmingway yet. Want to see what all the fuss is about)
- John A (Bio of first Canadian Prime minister John A. Macdonald)
- Till we Have faces (one of C.S. Lewis' lesser known works. Mythic Parody)

[Charles Darnay]

Seems like a good mix of books.

Personally, I would not start with Old Man and the Sea if you want to get into Hemingway - it is not his most exciting - but that's just my opinion.

[dysfunctional-h]

I'm not quite sure I agree about how well mixed it is. I can understand you liking the Fountainhead, but Atlas Shrugged ehhhhh.... it just seems morally decrepit and overlong. These all sound a little too straightforward (or darn short, like with the Old Man and the Sea). I think you should mix it up a bit.

I'm planning on reading Faulkner's Light in August and As I Lay Dying, cause The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! were AWESOME~

After that, I'm gonna tackle Thomas Mann's mammoth book Joseph and his Brothers, to prepare myself for The Magic Mountain and Buddenbrooks, and to further connect with my inner Christian. I loved John E. Woods's translation of Doctor Faustus, so I figured I'd check out his MM and compare it to my copy of HT Porter's MM. I'll compare Joseph to the bible itself since I am currently taking my Christian confirmation class, and recently received a great edition of it by the people at Oxford called The Access Bible. Lastly, I'll probably read Mrs. Dalloway. For non-fiction, maybe I'll finally get to reading my copy of Simon Morrison's Prokofiev biography and Taruskin's writing on Stravinsky. I've heard things about Toni Morrison's Beloved, too.

If I finish all those, I'll add on Ulysses, Billy Budd, Great Expectations, Civil Disobedience, and Dubliners. On top of that there's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, because I hated 1Q84 but want to give Murakami a chance. But I doubt I'll get this far...

[Desolation]

Great list!

My Spring/Summer List is:
The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
The Castle by Franz Kafka
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
At Swim - Two Birds by Flann O'Brien
Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Dubliners by James Joyce
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Exiles by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce

[Charles Darnay]

Four Joyce in a row - as much as I love Joyce I don't think I could handle that.

I haven't fully formulated my summer list - like all lists, my reading habits are too sporadic to commit to.

I know I want to read:

Charles Dickens: A Life
Absalom, Absalom!
Emma
The Cornish Trilogy
Something by Murakami (probably Wind-up bird Chronicle)

But who knows what will happen between now and the time when I have more time to devote to reading.

[Dark Muse]

I highly approve of Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead is one of my favorite books, and though I do think that it was a little better than Atlas Shrugged, still I loved Atlas Shrugged.

Also Old Man and the Sea is a great summer book. I read it last year on my summer vacation.

I am not familiar with the other books

I do not have any particular books in mind to read this summer. Though when I do go on my yearly vacation I always choose one particular book to take with me, with the intent of reading the whole thing while I am on vacation, but I do not know yet what I am going to take this year.

[Veho]

Looks like a decent enough selection to me. The important thing is whether they're the books you want to read - nothing else matters.

I have nothing in particular planned apart from Les Misérables at some point this spring or summer.

I have a random question that I don't want to make a thread for if anyone can answer. I'm interested in reading something by Flannery O'Connor but her books sound like they place much emphasis on religion. I don't want to read anything didactic or preaching, does O'Connor's work do this?

[Pierre Menard]

After I finish Suttree I'll choose one of the 35 books on my shelf I've not yet started.

The frontrunners are:

Pale Fire by Nabokov
The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake
Dubliners by James Joyce
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

With assorted poetry from: Whitman, Akhmatova, Tennyson, Keats, Baudelaire and Borges.

Should be a swell few months. Still haven't decided which novel I'll read next though, out of the frontrunners.

[ChicagoReader]

I'll likely plan to read many more books than I'll actually get to, but here's a list of books that have piqued my curiosity:

Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
Glass-Bead Game - Herman Hesse
What it is like to go to War - Carl Marlantes
Some collection of DFW's essays
Arguably - Christopher Hitchens
either The Savage Detectives or 2666 - Roberto Bolano

and many, many more--It'll be too hard to decide!

[JBI]

I am done with English as a prepare for a long stint overseas, so all Chinese classics from here on in, or books about Chinese works.

[Bastable]

I'll participate, even though it'll be my winter reading list living in the southern hemisphere and all.

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Divine Comedy (Hollander translation)
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
A season in Hell - Arthur Rimbaud
I'm also lining up a number of books about greece and rome, mainly philosophy and political thought, to assist in a later intensive reading of their classic works.

[Prince Smiles]

Looks like a decent enough selection to me. The important thing is whether they're the books you want to read - nothing else matters.

I have nothing in particular planned apart from Les Misérables at some point this spring or summer.

I have a random question that I don't want to make a thread for if anyone can answer. I'm interested in reading something by Flannery O'Connor but her books sound like they place much emphasis on religion. I don't want to read anything didactic or preaching, does O'Connor's work do this?

Veho, her short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" would start you off nicely.

[Veho]

Veho, her short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" would start you off nicely.

Thank you, Prince. You recommendation has been duly noted.

[RicMisc]

I am done with English as a prepare for a long stint overseas, so all Chinese classics from here on in, or books about Chinese works.

I would really like to read some Chinese works as well, do you have any suggestions as to what I should start with?

[JBI]

I would really like to read some Chinese works as well, do you have any suggestions as to what I should start with?
Do you have a library available to you that stocks these things? Likewise, do you have familiarity with any Chinese works?

I am reading mostly poetry, poetry theory, and essays, as that is the topic I will be doing research in. But if I was to recommend a starting ground, I would say begin with Walley's translation of the Book of Songs, which is excellent, and really seems to capture the zest of the poems.

If fiction is your desire though, try reading something like Monkey also written/translated by Walley (however unfaithfully), which is a fun nice quick read, and will perhaps get you interested in these things.

Reading Chinese literature is in a sense a reprogramming of sensibilities toward artwork, so if you wish to undertake it, be forewarned it is perhaps not as inviting as English literature to the western reader.

[RicMisc]

Do you have a library available to you that stocks these things? Likewise, do you have familiarity with any Chinese works?

I am reading mostly poetry, poetry theory, and essays, as that is the topic I will be doing research in. But if I was to recommend a starting ground, I would say begin with Walley's translation of the Book of Songs, which is excellent, and really seems to capture the zest of the poems.

If fiction is your desire though, try reading something like Monkey also written/translated by Walley (however unfaithfully), which is a fun nice quick read, and will perhaps get you interested in these things.

Reading Chinese literature is in a sense a reprogramming of sensibilities toward artwork, so if you wish to undertake it, be forewarned it is perhaps not as inviting as English literature to the western reader.

So far I have no experience with Chinese/Asian works whatsoever but I'd like to change that. The problem I keep running in to is that I can't seem to find ebook versions of Chinese novels or poetry and none of the three libraries in my hometown offer any, English nor Dutch. As to it not being inviting to the western reader I am willing to take the risk because I believe that Far Eastern literature is underrated and hardly known in the West (or at least in The Netherlands) and I'd like to see if that's just.

The only book I've found so far is The Art Of War by Sun Tzu, but I'm not sure if that woulde be a good one to start with.

[metal134]

After I finish Suttree I'll choose one of the 35 books on my shelf I've not yet started.
Only 35 unread books? Come on, you need to step up your game.:p

[Pierre Menard]

Only 35 unread books? Come on, you need to step up your game.:p

Aha, true that.

[RicMisc]

Last week I put together a list of books that I want to read. Right now it counts about 45 books and it's still growing. The list features everyone from Fitzgerald, to Shakespeare, to Eco, to Camus, to the Russians. Now I don't see myself reading all of that in one summer of course, but I usually use the summer to read as much as I can so I'm just going to see how far I can get.

[Tallulah]

After perusing my shelves, here are the books that I own but have not yet read:

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

But, I've also been trying to read up on Russian history. Recently read The Rasputin File and The Last Tsar, both by Edvard Radzinsky. Both excellent by the way.

Also, there is a lot of time between now and the end of summer. I usually have a plan of books I want to read but then I get distracted by another book in the library or I love a book so much that I read others by the same author. So...no telling what I'll actually end up reading this summer!