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Reflections on the puddle of life

2008 read-a-thon!

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by
TheFifthElement
, 12-31-2008 at 02:45 PM (1558 Views)
Hey!

Not usually one to follow a trend I thought I'd end the year out of character and list the books I read in 2008. So here they are:

Travels in the Scriptorium – Paul Auster
The Brooklyn Follies – Paul Auster
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster (I read this twice, and I’m more than willing to read it again)
Timbuktu – Paul Auster
Oracle Night – Paul Auster
Mr. Vertigo - Paul Auster
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller (this is a 1961 Grove Press First Edition and boy is it ugly. But it’s old. I also have the 1961 Grove Press First Edition of Tropic of Capricorn which I’ve not started yet. Hehehehe).
Henry and June – Anais Nin
The Fifth Child – Doris Lessing
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Haunted – Chuck Palahniuk
Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan
The Abortion: an historical romance – Richard Brautigan
In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
The Magic Toyshop – Angela Carter
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Outer Dark – Cormac McCarthy
Nausea – Jean Paul Sartre
if nobody speaks of remarkable things – jon mcgregor
so many ways to begin – jon mcgregor
After Dark – Haruki Murakami
Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood
Bear V Shark – Chris Bacheldor
A Quiet Belief in Angels – R J Ellory
Rashomon and other short stories – Akutagawa
The Kangaroo Notebook – Kobo Abe
The Collector – John Fowles
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
Affliction – Fay Weldon
Atomised – Michel Houellebceq
Silk – Alessandro Baricco
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Book Thief – Markus Zuzak

That's quite frightening. And I might have forgotten some.

As well as those I’ve read a stack-load of poetry and some short stories too. You may notice that I read a lot of the same authors; that's because when I discover an author I like I want to consume them whole. Mwahahahaha.

Oh, and these books with my son:

The Magicians Nephew – C S Lewis
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C S Lewis
The Horse and His Boy – C S Lewis
The Spiderwick Chronicles, book 1 – Tony Deterlizzi

and various Captain Underpants stories, and some Roald Dahl too, and we’re part way through Prince Caspian which is excellent. As you might have guessed, we’re reading the entire Chronicles of Narnia, but I don’t mind, I’m enjoying it. After that we’re going to read The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Who says kids don’t read good stuff these days? Captain Underpants is brilliant! (you think I’m joking )

These books I started but didn’t finish:

White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
Moon Palace – Paul Auster (shock! horror! an Auster book I didn’t like)
Out – Natsuo Kirino
Don Quixote – Cervantes
The Plague – Camus

with the last two, it wasn’t a case of not enjoying them but rather that I wasn’t in a readery kind of mood, so I wasn’t really following them and I think they both deserve my full attention. I was especially pleasantly surprised with Don Quixote which is just plain funny (and it cost me £1 from the charity bookshop though the pages are thin as tissue paper.). I plan to fully read and finish both in 2009 as they were both really good books.

So for 2009, I’d like to read some more and I’m going to try and make better use of my library. Now I visit the library a lot but mainly I borrow poetry and/or non-fiction. This year I aim to cut my book buying habit (ouch, how that burns) and rely on the library a bit more. And the library is really good; my starters for the New Year (already borrowed) are:

The Atom Station – Halldor Laxness
As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
Man in the Dark – Paul Auster
The Heart of a Dog – Mikhail Bulgakov

and I’ve got a load of other books on my ‘still to read’ list to keep me going. A bit of Hawthorne, Hemingway, Auster (of course), Kafka, Marquez, DeLillo, Lessing to name but a few. So I guess that’s quite a lot really. I must read more than I thought. Maybe when my son said ’you’d rather read a book than watch TV wouldn’t you Mum?’ he was on to something…


*****EDIT*******

You know after writing this it occurred to me that maybe I didn't manage Don Quixote or The Plague because I was all burned out!!!

Updated 12-31-2008 at 02:52 PM by TheFifthElement

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Comments

  1. motherhubbard's Avatar
    Wow! What a list. What did you enjoy the most?
  2. TheFifthElement's Avatar
    You know motherhubbard, that's a really difficult question. The Magic Toyshop is probably my favourite book of all time, though I'm not really good at picking favourites in general. Of the one's above I particularly enjoyed: The New York Trilogy, Catch 22, The Collector, The Road, Nausea, if nobody speaks of remarkable things, Oryx and Crake, The Trial, Rashomon and Oracle Night. The Brautigan books are good too, mainly because they're written in such a beautifully innocent way.
    I didn't particularly enjoy: Silk, Atomised and The Great Gatsby. Otherwise, to be fair, I've found them all enjoyable to a degree. And The Great Gatsby was not a bad book but it just didn't do it for me. I don't necessarily have to connect with a character, but I do have to at least be interested in what's going on and The Great Gatsby just missed that for me.
    But I think we're lucky; there's so many good writers out there. So many interesting stories.
  3. Virgil's Avatar
    Goodness gracious how do you find the time to read that much? You work and have children. You and many of the others inpress the heck out of me with your ability to read so much. Now I am a slow reader, and I do love to watch the writer write, the sentences, their structure, the paragraphs, their structure, and how he moves the dialogue and all the little nuiances. I don't run through a book but repeat, make notes in the margins, highlight passages, look back to what connects with what I'm reading. I enjoy that. But still I do wish I could read more. But when I come home from work, I am brain dead and have no desire to read or stress my poor dim wit brain out any further. Kudos.
  4. TheFifthElement's Avatar
    Well, I read on the train and I'm on the train between 1hr 20mins to 1hr 40 mins Monday to Friday (in total, there and back. Actual time depends on if it runs on time, it often doesn't!) so I read then, and when the kids are in bed I quite often read then for a little while. It's a good way to relax. And I don't go out or have a social life either...I've got kids Last night I fell asleep on the sofa with a book in my hand but I was extremely tired. It was a Sherlock Holmes story, have you read them? Something not to fall asleep to!
    My husband reads like you, except for the note making. I don't like notemaking in books, it feels wrong! I read very fast, kind of like skimming - I probably don't read every word but that's just the way I read. Sometimes I can if I concentrate very hard. My husband thinks it's weird, but I think it's genetic 'cos my son reads the exact same way as I do, which is funny when he has to read to us 'cos my husband gets frustrated when he 'fills in the blanks' with words that fit (but aren't the words on the page) and I just nod knowingly Aren't people strange?
  5. Virgil's Avatar
    Oh I read Sherlock when I was young. Very enjoyable. I write notes in the books I own. I don't intend to sell or give them away. Once I own a book, I own it for life. But that train ride helps. I used to commute to college by subway, about an hour each way, and I used to get reading done then.
  6. TheFifthElement's Avatar
    Yeah, I think getting the train makes a big difference. My boss used to get the train and now has to drive to work because he has a company car, and he hardly finds time to read at all. Maybe you should start getting the train
  7. Virgil's Avatar
    I wish I could. I don't work in the city. There is no train to where I work. Nearest train station or bus station is a good four or five miles from where I work, if not longer. America is a lot more spread out. I do car pool but it's hard to read in a car, especially when the radio is on and people are having all sorts of coversation. If it's not my driving day i have my ipod with one of my audio college lectures.
  8. TheFifthElement's Avatar
    Aw, that's a shame. I can't read in cars either because it makes me feel
    I quite enjoy my train journey, in a weird kind of way. You get kind of familar with other people's body parts, and yes it is hard to read sometimes because other people are talking. But then I put my iPod on really low 'cos background music doesn't bother me, but people yabbing does.
    You know, UK is pretty spread out too, though I guess not on quite such a grand scale! It's 3.5 miles to the train station from my house, and 30 miles to where I work but I do work in a city so once you've made your way to the station it's plain sailing from there. But there are lots of places without train stations, and there's a place not so far away from me which has a train line but it's steam!
  9. Joreads's Avatar
    That is a great list and so many books. Fifth I can not read on train or in cars actually on anything that is moving really it makes me really ill as well.