Captain's (Reading) Log: Stardate 2013.01-.365

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spartk
Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
In the Red Room by Paul Bowles (short story) That man can write the most disconcerting, yet fascinating stuff.
Shooting an Elephant George Orwell If this man had written the phone book I would read it. My favorites were "How the Poor Die" and "Such, Such Were the Joys," and "A Hanging," followed by "The Prevention of Literature," "Charles Dickens," "Politics v. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels," "Some Thoughts on the Common Toad," "Reflections on Gandhi." I would hope it goes without saying that of course I love "Shooting an Elephant" and "Politics and the English Language." The former is on of my very favorite essays ever.
Lost Paradise Cees Nooteboom This is a short novel, but one I keep returning to in my thoughts. I recommend it.
I Hunt Killers Barry Lyga A YA novel about a young man whose father is a notorious serial killer. Basically a fairly light read, but it nevertheless ponders what values of our parents we choose to keep and how we are shaped by them-and how sometimes we fight that when the parenting has been really, really bad.
Divergent Veronica Roth Another YA book, this one about a dystopian society set sometime in the future.
Code Orange Caroline B. Cooney Yet another YA novel. This one boasts an extremely likable protagonist, an easy-going high school kid whose suddenly faced with his own mortality and danger to his beloved New York City.
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes
Waiter, A Bock by Guy de Maupassant (short story)
On Writing by Stephen King A surprisingly tender, thoughtful memoir-cum-how-to on writing from the king of horror.
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (finished 1/2/2014)

So, 2013 wasn't all that bad reading-wise but I fell short of my 52 books target:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

1. The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin (S1) ~ 8/10

2. A Short Story of Tracktors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka (W1/N1) ~ 7/10

3. Decameron by Boccaccio (R11) ~ 8/10

4. Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris (W2/S2) ~ 7/10

5. The Cider House Rules by John Irving ~ 9/10

6. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (W3/N2) ~ 6/10

7. The Bostonians by Henry James (S3) ~ 8/10

8. Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett (N3) ~ 7/10

9. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (W4/S4) ~ 8/10

10. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (W5/S5) ~ 7/10 I was expecting this to be a rather tragic love story but Atwood has no time for romance, tragic or otherwise. And in a post-apocalyptic world, there is no time for romance either, anyhow... Only for memories.

11. The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham (N4) ~ 5/10 Felt utterly bored reading about the poor rich people. Almost like Gatsby, without its charms.

12. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (W6/S6) ~ 8/10 As good as Patchett's other book Bel Canto. A search for a missing colleague turns into a discovery of self in the middle of Amazon.

13. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories by Carson McCullers (W7/S7) ~ 10/10 Beyond doubt, she is one of my favourite authors. Touching, tragic and sad... So much so that it is funny.

14. The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene (S8) ~ 7/10

15. White Teeth by Zadie Smith (W8/S9) ~ 7/10

16. The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald (R1) ~ 9/10

17. The Sweet Thursday by Steinbeck (R2) ~ 9/10

18. Changing Places by David Lodge (N5) ~ 6/10

19. One of Ours by Willa Cather (W9/S10 ~ 4/10

20. Ann Veronica by HG Wells ~ 3/10

21. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh (S11) ~ 8/10

22. Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen (N6) ~ 8/10 Ideal summer read.

23. Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (N7) ~ 7/10

24. Paddy Clark, Ha Ha Ha! by Roddy Doyle (N8)~ 8/10

25. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (N9) ~ 9/10

26. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway ~ 6/10

27. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (S12) ~ 9/10

28. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (N10) ~ 8/10

29. Pygmalion GB Shaw (R3) ~ 9/10

30. Dolores Claibourne by Stephen King (S13) ~ 8/10

31. Tinkers by Paul Harding (N11/P) ~ 9/10

32. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy (N12) ~ 8/10

33. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (N13/P) ~ 7/10

34. The Reivers by Faulkner (P) ~ 9/10

35. Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (N14)

36. 39. Sputnik, Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami (S16)

37. A Country Doctor’s Notebook by Bulgakov (S15) ~ 8/10

38. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman 7/10

39. I Should Have Stayed Home by Horace McCoy (S14) ~ 6/10[/I]

40. Crying Lot of 49 by Thomas Pynchon (N16) ~ 7/10

41. The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler (W11/S17) ~ 8/10

42. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene ~ 9/10

43. The Time Machine by HG Wells ~ 7/10

44. The Year of the Flood by Atwood (W10) - 5/10

46. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut ~ 8/10

47. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (N15/P)~ 5/10

48. Kafka On the Shore by Murakami ~ 10/10

49. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie ~ 8/10

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[/COLOR]I think I read only about a dozen. Let's see -

Copying all my previous posts on this thread and adding the ones I left out -

1. White Teeth by Zadie Smith. 6.5/10 It was a good book, but I've forgotten what I wanted to say about it. Really should take notes.
2. Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett. 9/10 Funny, tragic, endearing. Cannot imagine why people find it boring.
3. The Bostonians - Henry James 7/10 This was a really good reading experience. James is a genius!
4. A Room With a View - E M Forster (re-read) 6/10 I love E M forster, and this was a good book, though Howard's End and Passage to India were better.
5. Intruder in the Dust - William Faulkner. 7/10 Faulkner writes a murder mystery!:hurray: And it's a good one. I felt it was a bit repetitive and could have been cut down to an even shorter novel, or I'd have given it a higher rating.
6. Major Barbara - George Bernard Shaw (re-read). 8/10 Shaw at his argumentative best.
7. Bridget Jones Edge of Reason - Helen Fielding. 6/10 Like its predecessor, an engaging, entertaining fun read. :)

Uh oh, I see I've given Forster's novel and Bridget Jones the same rating. Stupid ratings...I never seem to get them right!

8. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf. 7/10 I really liked Mrs Dalloway, but reading this was mostly a chore! :sleep: The first part was boring boring boring...middle - sudden shock and surprise and all became haunting and beautiful...then again boring boring boring till - whew...the End.
9. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. 10/10 Wow! :shocked: Absolutely mind blowing! One of the best books I've ever read.
10. N-W by Zadie Smith - 3/10 - I liked White Teeth and On Beauty but this, her latest novel, was disappointing. She's lost none of her talent for writing, but she's evidently tried to experiment with form or something here, and it ends up being pointless and lackluster. Of course, that may be because it doesn't have much substance to start with, rather than the experimenting. I feel I've wasted my time.

11. Changing Places by David Lodge 4/10
12. Ann Veronica by H G Wells 5/10
13. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) 7/10 - A really good old fashioned murder mystery.
14. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien 7/10 - Probably would have enjoyed it more when I was a lot younger, what with all the goblins and elves and dwarves and such, but on the whole I liked it.

15. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James - 6.5/10 Not up to James's usual standard, I thought. His style is really difficult, something I never realized when reading Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians because in those novels his convoluted sentences seem intricate and beautiful while here they are just tedious and annoying and the beauty is rather thin on the ground. It has a sort of conventional Faustian pact plot where the principal characters sacrifice their moral integrity for the sake of material gains and we predict correctly that it is not going to end well, but I feel James was not able to carry off the necessary moral ambiguity in any interesting way, nor did he bring out for us sufficiently the tragedy of the ultimate smash up, something he's usually so good at.

16. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis - 6/10 It was pretty good, and although it contains naiads, dryads, dwarves, fauns, satyrs, Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Orknies, Wooses, and Ettins, they mostly appear only in lists like this and do not have much to do with the action, so it was OK. :D I didn't enjoy it as much as The Magician's Nephew, my only other Narnia book and a book that I really fell in love with, but I was a kid when I read it so I guess that accounts for it.

17. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides - 10/10 - Strange, haunting, very beautiful. Flawless. This book was the big surprise of 2013.
18. The Year of the Flood by Margret Atwood - 5/10 - It was OK but not up to Atwood's usual standard.
19. The Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer - I'm not rating this because from a literary point of view it is an absolute zero, but I found it interesting for other reasons, and intend to do a review of these four books sometime.

I think that's it - oh yes,

20. The Reivers by Faulkner= 9/10 - This book was more like Intruder in the Dust rather than the 10/10 books like Sound and the Fury and Absalom, but it was still very good.