I got the Complete Works of Shakespeare for Christmas, so I plan to try to get through that. I'm also going to reread the Bible this year, from cover to cover.
Aside from that, I have no idea.
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I got the Complete Works of Shakespeare for Christmas, so I plan to try to get through that. I'm also going to reread the Bible this year, from cover to cover.
Aside from that, I have no idea.
Hesse is mostly concerned with Schopenhauerian and Nietzschean themes. His novels contain little drama and character development, and they're more like vehicles for ideas than actual novels. His works are sincere and, in my opinion, not bad, but Mann touches the same issues and he's better. Just keep in mind that you won't be moved by his characters. Oh, and if you dismiss concepts like "Will" or "The Spirit of Music" don't even bother in the first place.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simao
Quote:
Originally Posted by bouquin
I have also lined up the following authors :
T.C. Boyle
Edgar Allan Poe
Alphonse Daudet
Marguerite Duras
Yann Martel
My stack includes:
The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich-Whoa, that's a long one.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Great Gatsby
And I need to finish Ike
Primarily a lot, and I really mean a lot, of philosophy and beyond that I thought that I might reed
Ulysses
East of Eden
Master and Margarita
The seven pillars of wisdom
Hemingways collected short stories
And maybe I'll also get my hands on some pushkin, and maybe some French writers.
A few I would like to get to in the next year are:
The Divine Comedy- Dante Alighieri
The Three Musketeers- Dumas
Don Quixote- Miguel de Cervantes
Something by Tolstoy, but I've not decided what
The Fountainhead (I've read Atlas Shrugged several times, but never this)- Rand
The Bride of Lammermoor- Sir Walter Scott
I'll see if I can find the time to even get to all of these, and then maybe I'll add more:)
Just Started: Underworld by Don Delillo
After I finish (probably in a month or so...), I want to tackle:
Portrait of the Artist/Ulysses by Joyce
Moby Dick by Melville (reread, because I plowed through it in college but didn't appreciate)
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (need to buy a better translation first)
Rememberance of Things Past by Proust
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway (reread)
Foucault's Pendulum by Eco
Anything by Henry James
...that's all I can think of. I'm not in front of my bookshelf right now. Lots of heavy stuff, but I'll probably balance it with short books in between
I have a little project to read books by authors from all the continents in the world. So far I've managed:
North America
The Dominican Republic: In the Time of the Butterflies - Julia Alvarez
Canada: JPod - Douglas Coupland
South America
Brazil: The Pilgrimage - Paulo Coelho
Asia
Japan: Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
Africa
South Africa: Slow Man - J.M. Coetzee
Cape Verde: The Testament of Sir Napumoceno da Silva Araújo - Germano Almeida
Europe
England: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Sweden: Ett Oskrivet Blad - Marie Hermanson
Oceania
None
Currently reading:
A book with short stories by Nguyen Huy Thiep from Vietnam.
A Família Trago - Germano Almeida
I disagree with you completely. You should try Steppenwolf. Hesse was an excellent writer, and blended in more Eastern philosophy to his work than Nietzschean. Mann touches different issues all together and is also worth reading.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oomoo
I didn't read anywhere near as many books as I should have done in 2007, so I intend to spend 2008 rectifying that as greatly as possible.
As it stands, I have a few books for my course that require my attention before anything recreational, including:
Poetics, Aristotle
Odyssey, Homer
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
and possibly
The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche
As far as recreational reading extends, my current list looks something along the lines of:
(Finishing) Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
It's probably highly likely that this list will change substantially though as the year progresses. I'm sure it won't be long before something else takes my fancy.
Ultravox, Fahrenheit 451 is amazing, my favorite book. :) Crime and Punishment was a close second.
I'd like to complete the 50 book challenge this year, I fell about twenty short in 2007. Recently I saw some post from a disgruntled blogger complaining about people who set reading goals, saying that they turn reading into a chore and that they couldn't possibly genuinely enjoy or appreciate a book if it was only a step towards an end. They seemed actually offended. I, along with several others, disagreed.
I have added to my list The Sienkiewicz Triology - With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Fire in the Steppe
I'm going to finish Les Miserables, finish Notre-Dame de Paris, read some of Chalres Dickens books, maybe some Ray Bradbury.
Borges Collected Fictions
New York Trilogy - Auster
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Chabon
Big Sleep - Chandler
Cheever Collected Stories
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami
Lolita - Nabokov
Corrections - Franzen
The Brothers Karamazov
Rabbit, Run - Updike
Flannery O'Conner Collected Stories
Maltese Falcon - Hammett
American Psycho - Ellis
100 Years of Solitude - Marquez
AHBWOSG - Eggers
Everything is Illuminated - Foer
Sound and Fury - Faulkner
Satanic Verses - Rushdie
All Quiet on the Western Front - Remarque
There's more that I've bought and haven't read and I'm sure I'll take something random from the library every other week.
Iam not making any lists, ufortunately all the books i want to read are simply innacesable to me, but two weeks ago i got leave of grass, finally...
This year i want to read all the greek tragedies, Ibsen´s dramas, Gide´s novels, some books of Rabelaise, Montaigne and Proust.. and many more
I also want to read poetics of Aristotle but i recomend your read before all the literature which was written before this book to understand it better. my profesor of philosophy told me that.. :thumbs_upQuote:
Originally Posted by Ultravox
Well,off the top of my head,here are some authors I'll be paying more attention to in the next few months:
Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum,Baudolino
Marcel Proust - Remembrance of Things Past
Dostoevsky - The Idiot,The Gambler
Tolstoy - War and Peace
Daniel Kehlmann - Measuring the World
Goethe - Faust
Hugo - Les Miserables
Not the most compelling list(Hugo:sick:),but I have to do it sooner or later...
Hmm..No matter what reading list I make, as soon as I walk into a book store I am sure to deviate from it.
Ray Bradbury-Farenheit 451
H.P Lovecraft-Assorted short stories
Cormac McCarthy-The Road
Henry James-The Turn of the Screw
Joyce Carol Oates-Not sure yet.
Sam Sheridan-A fighters heart
Norman Mailer-The Naked and the Dead
Mary Shelley-The Last Man
This is a little late but I just wanted to tell you that this is an amazing list!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeahnase
a hundred, and one more, writers of the soviet- russian by Juri Andtejev. It's written analysis about writers such as Mihail Solohov and many else.
Sitting on my shelf right now :
Complete tragedies by Sophocles
The Castle by Kafka
First Love & Home of the Gentry by Turgenev
1000 page collection of Chekhov short stories
Dead Souls by Gogol
Green Hills of Africa by Hemingway
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
When I get through those, I want to read :
Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
Uncle Vania and Three Sisters by Chekhov
And right now I'm reading The Plague by Camus.
Well, I thought I had a definite book list for this year, but reading this thread gave me so many more ideas...
Anyway definitely on my list are some English classics like
Thomas Hardy: The return of the native, the Major of Casterbridge
Dickens: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield
And the being German I think I should finally read some German authors,too. Any advise would be welcome.
currently reading: Siegfried Sassoon (The George Sherston Memoires)
Herman Hesse. I've only read Siddhartha but it's a great book and judging by your list it's one you'd probably like.
Thank you! I only wish I had enough time to get through them all. So far I'm halfway through Love in the Time of Cholera and I've picked up The Plague as my next read, but I just don't have enough time to get through the bulk of the rest. I'll probably save The Brother's Karamazov until the summer holidays, tempting as it is to start it now! That's one I definately want to read this year.Quote:
Originally Posted by livelaughlove
For me this is the year of reading Proust. I am reading Within the Budding Grove. On the other hand, I am listening to the audio version of Swann's Way (this one: http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/PAGES/25312.htm)
in order to make sure that I don't forget what I have already read.
Books on my shelf waiting to be read:
Proust by Edmund White (biographical)
The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time by Phyllis Rose
En Attendant Godot - Waiting for Godot (bilingual text) by Samuel Beckett
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
The Wolfe Solent by John Cowper Powys
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Hesse is indeed a nice novelist and I've just read his UNTERM RAD and Narciß und Goldmund. Very enjoyable works.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark F.
Books waiting for me:
Always Astonished by Fernando Pessoa
Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke
Dramas by Maurice Maeterlinck
RETOUCHES À MON "RETOUR DE L'USSR" by Andre Gide
I've stopped making any lists, because most likely I will end reading something entirely different anyway. :sick: I guess I prefer my reading repertoire to be coincidental.
I second Hesse, my favourite works by him are Narciß und Goldmund and The Glass Bead Game. I also like many of his shorter stories.Quote:
Originally Posted by snufflesrules
Other German authors I highly appreciate are Franz Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist and Arthur Schnitzler.
I could recommend you more suitable stuff if I knew your reading preferences. What periods and genres do you like?
It depends on how specific you were about German authors but Schnitzler (Austrian) and especially Kafka (Czech) are great authors.
I've only read the Dream Story by Schnitzler, what else would you recommend?
If someone asks for German literature I'm thinking of people who wrote in German, not of the countries they lived in - otherwise there would hardly be any "German" literature, thinking of how shortly a state like that has existed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark F.
Kafka was most of his life an Austrian citizen, only after WW1 he became a Czech citizen for five or six years. He was fluent in Czech but still his native and "dominant" language has always been German. Schnitzler couldn't speak, as far as I know, any other langauge to an extent that would have enabled him to write literature in it. If you were consequent, you would have to call Kleist Prussian and not German. ;)
Fräulein Else, Leutnant Gustl and his other stories in general (he also was of course a great dramatist, but I happen to think that dramas are best to be seen on stage and not to be read).Quote:
I've only read the Dream Story by Schnitzler, what else would you recommend?
Thanks for the advise. I'll give Hesse a try. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark F.
I second Hesse, my favourite works by him are Narciß und Goldmund and The Glass Bead Game. I also like many of his shorter stories.
Other German authors I highly appreciate are Franz Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist and Arthur Schnitzler.
I could recommend you more suitable stuff if I knew your reading preferences. What periods and genres do you like?[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the advise. As for reading preferences, I have no idea. I like English classics, like Dickens and Jane Austen, but I really enjoy Doyle and Poe,too and then i enjoy reading Tolkien and other fantasy books. So, I guess, no real preferences.
The only German authors I read so far have been Theodor Storm and Theodor Fontane.
Lots of stuff. I intend to read all the unifinished books currently on my bookshelf, plus a few others that I've yet to purchase. So far that means:
Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita (currently reading, about a third of the way through)
Virginia Woolf - Selected Works
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World (read it once like 5 years ago, don't remember it too well, Point Counterpoint, Eyeless in Gaza, The Doors of Perception
Franz Kafka - The Complete Novels
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness and Other Stories
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday - Mao: The Unknown Story
R.L. Stevenson - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories
F Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night
W Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf, Siddartha
Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilimanjaro
James Joyce - Ulysses (got a few chapters into it last year, but then got too busy and had no time for it)
Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye
Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
John Fante - Ask the Dust
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Ojos de perro azul, Memoria de mis putas tristes
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Julio Cortazar - Rayuela, Ceremonias
Carlos Fuentes - La muerte de Artemio Cruz
Jean-Paul Sartre - La nausee, Le mur
Simone de Beauvoir - Les belles images#
Boris Vian - J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, Et on tuera tous les affreux
Alain-Fournier - Le grand meaulnes
Honore de Balzac - Le pere Goriot
Not sure I'll be able to get through all that in a year. Probably not actually
I love Russian literature. I've read every one of those except Anna Karenina (well, I'm about a third of the way through The Master and Margarita).Quote:
Originally Posted by *Classic*Charm*
I read War and Peace over the summer, seems quite daunting but it's well worth the effort.
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Oh, The Plague, eh? I'm really looking forward to reading it! I'm having a hard time finding it though. Other than that, I'm thinking of reading some Virginia Woolf (for the first time!), Shakespeare, maybe Eco, and, if I'm brave enough, Faulkner or one of them russian heavy-weight champions like 'The Brothers Karamazov' or 'Anne Katherina'.
Hehe, I think you're referring to Anna Karenina?Quote:
Originally Posted by kandaurov
If you only read one Russian lit book go with The Brothers Karamazov, it's an absolutely amazing book and, depending on the edition something like 700-800 pages so not quite such a mammoth read as War and Peace.
Right now I have:
Animal farm
1984
And Then There Were None
Dante's Inferno
that is probably about all i will be able to read this year.Im pretty slow:(
Yes I do, I'm such an idiot :p I check almost all book titles before I post on this forum exactly to avoid this kind of situation, hehQuote:
Originally Posted by superunknown
Thanks for the suggestion! I also have "The Idiot" waiting in line. From the two by Dostoevsky which one do you think I should read first?Quote:
Originally Posted by superunknown
Ah! Feels good to post again!
now let's see... i never end up completing reading the books which i want to so i think i shall set shorter goals this time-
I plan to read a few dramas by the University Wits( but I haven't bought any yet!)
- Volpone by Jonson
-finally, maybe, finally I might just get out of my cave and read the King Henry series by Shakespeare..
-after this, all I might want to read for sometime would be Wodehouse...
- I plan also to take a look at early Horatian satires.
so, this year's going to be ancient for me..
I like The Brothers Karamazov better than The Idiot... but it really really doesn't matter which you read first!
I almost never hear anyone talk about Mary Stewart! I love her. Not the merlin trilogy as much--I like The Ivy Tree and some of her other travel-mystery-romances. Not "great literature" by some standards, I'm sure, but definitely great reads. I'm sure I'll reread some of hers this year.Quote:
originally posted by Niamh
and i want to reread the Merlin Trilogy and A Wicked Day by Mary Stewart
I also read Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre almost every year.
I couldn't tell you as I haven't read it, but Dostoevsky's most famous work and the one generally acknowledged to be his masterpiece is Crime and Punishment, and I found Karamazov to be a better book if that tells you anything (though Crime and Punishment is also very good). In terms of philosophy it is by far and away his best. The chapter of The Grand Inquisitor alone has been praised as a valuable philosophical work in and of itself, never mind the rest of the book. I've heard good things about The Idiot as well. You can't really go wrong with Dostoevsky in general. Make sure you get the Pevear & Volkhonsky translations though, they're unanimously acclaimed as the best Dostoevsky translators.Quote:
Originally Posted by kandaurov