Books you've read in the past year?

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Originally Posted by NickAdams

Joyce's regret, as you said or as Gardner said, is interesting. I haven't read any of Joyce, but he regret that he moved away from mannered writing or that he applied it? I want to be familiar with old and middle english, before I read Joyce.

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According to Gardner - and I think I sort of agree with him - the "mannered" stuff comes later. Definitely in Finnegans Wake, and in Ulysses as well. You don't really need to know much about Old and Middle English to read Dubliners or Portrait of the Artist. And of course, if you're reading the other works...it won't help you anyway.
No one reads the Wake comfortably without being familiar with English, Russian, French, Swahili, Norwegian, German, probably Icelandic, and about fifty other languages - not an exaggeration.

No one reads the Wake comfortably without being familiar with English, Russian, French, Swahili, Norwegian, German, probably Icelandic, and about fifty other languages - not an exaggeration.



Yet another book I'll have to fight my way through.

Books I've read this year so far, minus the odd few which may have slipped my mind...

Lolita
Crime & Punishment
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Notes From the Underground
The Bell Jar
Steppenwolf
The Red and the Black
Wuthering Heights
A Wild Sheep Chase
Three Men in a Boat
Northanger Abbey
Animal Farm
The Double
A Brief History of Time
Letters to Lily
Perfume
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Lovely Bones
The Selfish Gene
1984
Me Talk Pretty One Day
On the Road
The Hobbit
Fight Club
And I'm reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' at the moment, along with Vladimir Nabokov's 'Glory'.

Too many books, so little time!

I've read more but I don't have enough time to type! :blush:

Harry Potter 7
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The Golden Compass
Dickens: I hate pip!
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell- Susanna Clarke
John Irving: The Cider House
Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet
Interview With a Vampire - Anne Rice
The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice
The Tale of the Body Thief - Anne Rice
The Devil Memnoch - Anne Rice
Angels and Demons - Brown
Twilight - Meyers
New Moon-Meyers
Eclipse - Meyers
Romeo and Juliet
Tithe-Holly Brown
Eldest-Christopher Paolini
Howls Moving castle- Wynne Jones
Sabriel-Garth Nix
Artemis Fowl-
A.F. And the Arctic Incident-
A.F and the Eternity Code- Eoin Colfer
A.F. And the Opal Deception-
A.F. and the lost Colony-

H.P. and the Philosophers stone-
H.P. and the chamber of Secrets-
H.P. and the prisoner of azkaban-
H.P. and the goblet of fire- J.K.Rowling
H.P. and the order of the phoenix-
H.P. and the half Blood Prince-

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Originally Posted by bibliophile190

Yet another book I'll have to fight my way through.

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Don't fight it! You'll hate it if you do. You have to sort of let go while you read it and let the meaning present itself (or sort of roughly sketch itself, anyway). I found it helpful, given a particular stretch of text, simply to go through it once without stopping and see how it works out, then - if you must - go back and look over the passages you're (more than reasonably) uncertain about. It doesn't help that much to review like that, though, from what I can see. It only intensifies that feeling that some critic or writer (maybe Beckett) described of diving into a stream only to find yourself a moment later completely dry back on the ground where you started...

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Originally Posted by Jamesian

Don't fight it! You'll hate it if you do. You have to sort of let go while you read it and let the meaning present itself (or sort of roughly sketch itself, anyway). I found it helpful, given a particular stretch of text, simply to go through it once without stopping and see how it works out, then - if you must - go back and look over the passages you're (more than reasonably) uncertain about. It doesn't help that much to review like that, though, from what I can see. It only intensifies that feeling that some critic or writer (maybe Beckett) described of diving into a stream only to find yourself a moment later completely dry back on the ground where you started...

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Well, I tried this with Faulkner and it didn't work too well, but I'll try it again. If it's worked for others I don't see why I can't make it work for myself. Thanks for the advice.

I've read a whole bunch...I probably average about 5 books a week...So I'll just list give my favorite three at the moment.
~Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Rowling) (Omg...best book EVER)
~Eclipse (Meyer)
~Loving Will Shakespeare ( Carolyn Meyer, a different one)

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Originally Posted by Anastasija

According to my reading journals, in the past year (2006) I have read:

Literature
Gogol', N.V. - Dead Souls (which I was reading at the end of 2005, according to the journal, but formally finished in 2006)
Shakespeare, W. - Othello
Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet
Shakespeare, W. - A midsummer night's dream
Brodsky, J. - Less than one
Selimović, M. - The Death and the Dervish (which I, as my favourite work, re-read every year :D)
Yourcenar, M. - Le coup de grace
Tahar Ben Jelloun - The Sand Child
Calderón de la Barca, P. - Life is a dream
Kertész, I. - Fateless
Baudelaire, Ch. - Les Fleurs du Mal (re-read, in original this time :D)
Andrić, I. - The Bridge Over Drina
Krleža, M. - The Return of Filip Latinovicz
Anthology of Serbian poetry
Anthology of Czech poetry
Mácha, K. H. - Poetry (May)
Kertész, I. - Kadish for a child unborn
Correspondances of the famous people (excerpts)
Dickens, Ch. - A Tale of Two Cities
Lucian of Samosata (?, attributed to) - Loukios ê Onos
Anthology of Bulgarian poetry
Hamvas, B. - Hungarian huperion
Canetti, E. - Die gerettete Zunge. Geschichte einer Jugend (translated in Italian as La lingua salvata)
Dostoevsky, F.M. - Brothers Karamazov
Šantić, A. - collected works by
Kostova, E. - Historian
Dostoevsky, F.M. - Notes from the Underground
Crnković, Z. & Kušan, I. - correspondance, collected letters
Nafisi, A. - Lolita in Teheran
Sládkovič, A. - Marina
Gogol', N. V. - The Overcoat
Dostoevsky, F.M. - Podrostok (which I, for reasons which elude me, failed to finish, as the note in the journal says)
Pamuk, O. - The White Castle
Schiller, F. - The Robbers
Gundulić, I. - Suze sina razmetnoga
Selimović, M. - Memoirs
Andrić, I. - Ex ponto
Balzac, H. de - Father Goriot
Bettiza, E. - Exile
Maraini, D. - Bagheria
Pontiggia, G. - Il giocatore invisibile
Baricco, A. - Castelli di rabbia
Тјutchev, F. I. - Lirika
Aeschyles - Prometheus Bound
Njegoš, P.P. - Gorski vijenac
Cesarić, D. - selected poetry
Calvino, I. - Invisible cities
Pushkin, A. S. - Evgeny Onegin (re-read)
Byron, G. G. - Childe Harold (re-read)
Malerba, L. - Le maschere
Mori, A. M. - Nata in Istria
Kranjčević, S. S. - Iza spuštenijeh trepavica - izbor iz djela
Lermontov, M. Ju. - The Hero of Our Time
Slovo o polku Igoreve
Pushkin, A. S. - Selected poems, fairy tales, dramas
Longfellow, H. W. - The Complete Poetical works by
Svevo, I. - Senilita'
D'Alessandro, G. - La puttana del tedesco
Tugovanje za Srbijom - antologija drugih srpskih romantičara
Druzhnikov, J. - Viza v pozavchera
Maupassant, G. de - short stories
Goethe, J. W. - Faust (re-read)
Gaarder, J. - Vita brevis
Ahmatova, A. A. - poetry
Pasternak, B. L. - poetry
Makine, A. - The French testament
Leopardi, G. - poetry
Alighieri, D. - Purgatorio
Sto rokiv junosti - 20th century Ukrainian poetry anthology
Gazdanov, G. - An Evening with Claire
Pamuk, O. - Istanbul
Eco, U. - Il nome della rosa
Zamyatin, E. I. - We (which I did not finish)
Robinson, E. A. - Children of the Night
Ilić, V. - poetry
Dostoevsky, F. M. - Poor Folk (re-read)
de Quincey, Th. - Confessions of an English opium eater
Goldoni, C. - La locandiera
Zola, E. - Therese Raquin
Gogol', N. V. - Revizor

Other
Maalouf, A. - In the name of identity
Zeldin, Th. - Intimate history of humanity
Daun, A. & Janson, S. - Europeans - culture and identity
Weinrich, H. - Linguistics of lies - can language hide thoughts
Haag, E. van de - The Jewish Mystique
Winner, E. - Gifted Children - myths and reality
Bon, G. de - Psyhology of the masses
Chesterton, G. K. - The Everlasting Man
Vrkić, J . - I u Sibiru žive ljudi - putovanje Čehovljevim putopisima
Pavičić, J. - Beneath the language - comments on the language and Croats
Zaid, G. - So many books
le Goff, J. - Medieval Civilisation
Fernández-Armesto, F. - So you think you're human
Mead, G. H. - Mind, person and society
Ware, T. - Orthodox Church
Camus, A. - The Myth of Sisyphus

I do not have all of my reading journals from that period next to me right now so the list is bound to be incomplete, but it should give the basic idea of what a mess my reading repertoire in the last year was. :D
I tend to read a lot and keep reading journals, so it is generally easy to remember what I read when by going through those notes (*hint, hint... do some of you also keep reading journals?) ;)

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Wow! You read all that in a year Ana? That is some accomplishment. :thumbs_up

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Wow! You read all that in a year Ana? That is some accomplishment. :thumbs_up

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Yes, indeed. And many of these are pretty long too! :)

oh, I keep a reading journal, a spreadsheet actually. After too many times of buying a book and getting halfway through then realizing I've already read it I decided I needed to keep track. I keep a spreadsheet of title, author, year and month read, my rating, my review, and who recommended it. I also keep track of how many I've read each year and the average rating based on author and year.


ya know it didn't seem overly anal when I started......

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Originally Posted by papayahed

oh, I keep a reading journal, a spreadsheet actually. After too many times of buying a book and getting halfway through then realizing I've already read it I decided I needed to keep track. I keep a spreadsheet of title, author, year and month read, my rating, my review, and who recommended it. I also keep track of how many I've read each year and the average rating based on author and year.


ya know it didn't seem overly anal when I started......

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That does seem like a good idea, Id like to keep track of what Ive read.....:idea: :D

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Originally Posted by papayahed

oh, I keep a reading journal, a spreadsheet actually. After too many times of buying a book and getting halfway through then realizing I've already read it I decided I needed to keep track. I keep a spreadsheet of title, author, year and month read, my rating, my review, and who recommended it. I also keep track of how many I've read each year and the average rating based on author and year.


ya know it didn't seem overly anal when I started......

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A spreadsheet? You must be an engineer. :p

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Originally Posted by papayahed

oh, I keep a reading journal, a spreadsheet actually. After too many times of buying a book and getting halfway through then realizing I've already read it I decided I needed to keep track. I keep a spreadsheet of title, author, year and month read, my rating, my review, and who recommended it. I also keep track of how many I've read each year and the average rating based on author and year.

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You must be an accountant :D

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Originally Posted by papaya

oh, I keep a reading journal, a spreadsheet actually. After too many times of buying a book and getting halfway through then realizing I've already read it I decided I needed to keep track. I keep a spreadsheet of title, author, year and month read, my rating, my review, and who recommended it. I also keep track of how many I've read each year and the average rating based on author and year.

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I can hardly keep exact count! Too lazy to write down the reviews especially usually whenever I complete any book. Actually I read too many magazines as well and there are quite a number of stories which I like from there and I feel like reviewing but it just takes a lot of time........to review. *lazy*

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Originally Posted by Virgil

A spreadsheet? You must be an engineer.

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Originally Posted by Lote-Tree

You must be an accountant :D

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This made me smile. :D

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Originally Posted by Pensive

This made me smile. :D

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So i can make people smile :D

This is my list since January, I haven't listed any of the books I'm still reading through (which is like a dozen more. :P) or am reading for class.

Devil in the White City- Erik Larson
Thunderstruck- Larson
Isaac's Storm- Larson
The Good Guy- Dean Koontz
Tick Tock- Koontz
Seize the Night- Koontz
Geronimo! American Paratroopers in World War II- William B Breuer
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell- Susanna Clarke
The Ladies of Grace Adieu- Clarke
The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammett
Red Harvest- Hammett
~The complete Sherlock Holmes series by A.C. Doyle, consisting of four novels and several story collections, numbering fifty short stories):
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Valley of Fear
A Study in Scarlet/The Sign of Four
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
The Return of Sherlock Holmes
His Last Bow
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

I think I've forgotten a couple but that's the main of it. Not as many as I'd like--why must life interfere!

There was a similar topic in this forum few months ago and after I've read some of it I decided to start a list with the books I have read this year. I started it in March and since than I have read almost 80 books. For the newfound favorite authors I think I could say: Proust, Camus, Marquez and John Irving (the last one I found through the book club:) ).

This is my first post. I am not sure why I am doing this except I like to
be challenged mentally. I watched the Jane Eyre story on TV tonight and I saw
a post that I wanted to respond to but I am not sure how to get back to
that web page. Why did Jane leave Mr. Rochester? My diagnosis that that
of a Fugue state or temporary amnesia. She was so emotional overwrought that
she momentarily lost contact with her environment. Does anyone agree or
is this my attempt to relate to those who read fiction.?:

cbostic