Just bought The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Even though I know Coelho is very acclaimed, I've never read anything from him.
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Just bought The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Even though I know Coelho is very acclaimed, I've never read anything from him.
Keep it that way, I'd say! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by FROADS
This makes me want to know why :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
It was a great read from start to finishQuote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
what?
my father's tears john updike
freedom jonathan franzen
rum diary hunter thompson
why?
grand total: $15 (what a bargain)
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, because Infinite Jest has made me want more, and it was used.
What Maisie Knew (Henry James)
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Saturday (Ian McEwan)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John Le Carré)
Life & Times of Michael K (J. M. Coetzee)
Waiting for the Barbarians (J. M. Coetzee)
Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh)
The Castle (Franz Kafka)
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Currently reading: Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy L. Sayers)
Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray
Was in Dublin this weekend and I wanted something local but I wasn't up for Ulysses.
So far, so good.
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
...Because I haven't read enough Pynchon.
Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas...Because I'm addicted to gigantic books.
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges...Because Borges.
how's the pale king?
Parallel Stories was incredible... And if you end up liking it as much as I did, Nadás' earlier work Book of Memories is equally good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Desolation
Love the choices there. Pynchon is my favourite English language writer by far. Against the Day might be my favourite work of his in terms of pure enjoyment, though I prefer GR to it for several other reasons.
Might I recommend László Krasznahorkai's novels to you if you haven't read them yet. Not so long, but so perfectly labyrinthine and desolate. As a character says in War and War, "reality examined to the point of madness..." Brilliant. I think I reviewed that one in the book review section here and The Melancholy of Resistance is even better.
The last book I bought was this summer.
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. I wanted to read more of her books.
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. Because I was feeling sorrowful and I've been meaning to read the book for years.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Because I just fancied it. It'll be my first Defoe too.
Moby Dick. A must read to any Classics lover!
For a philosophy course, Hobbe's Leviathan.
Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. About 25 pages in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
Great! It's one of my all-time favorites. And if you want to read about an interesting life-story for a novel (such as it's composition, publication, and reception), then check it out. When Werther was published, it rocked Germany.
In a Free State (V. S. Naipaul)
The Third Policeman (Flann O'Brien)
At Swim-Two-Birds (Flann O'Brien)
Inside Mr Enderby (Anthony Burgess)
So Long, See You Tomorrow (William Maxwell)
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Currently reading: THE THIRD MAN and THE FALLEN IDOL (Graham Greene)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, because I found the premise intriguing.
Yeah I heard many young men committed suicide in emulation of the book's main character.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ser Nevarc
It also influenced the fashion style! Felt hat and brown jackboots were all the rage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
Richard III. I was ifluenced by this latin quote "ars longa, vita brevis".
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl. I bought it for my niece.
Nana (Emile Zola)
La Pianiste (Elfriede Jelinek)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
I bought it because I'd read all the other appealing classics on the shelf of my local book store already.
Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchell.
When I walked up to the checkout counter at my local bookstore with an armload of books, somehow this one made it into the pile. It's a pretty nice 75th anniversary edition.
I'd always avoided this book, thinking it was racist, but it turns out it's mostly just a romance novel. Also it takes place right around where I live. The Flint River runs near my house, and so does Tara Boulevard, which was named for the plantation in the book not vice versa. Mitchell's descriptions of the landscape around here are fabulous.
As for her depiction of plantation life in the South in the 19th century, uh, I donno, man. It's written from the perspective of the Southern Landed Gentry and I suppose they may have had a romantic view of their lifestyle. But I'm continually finding myself trying to figure out how much of it is what those people thought of themselves and how much of it is what Mitchell, writing in the 1930s, imagined them to be.
Anyway, back to the checkout counter at the bookstore: a sweet young black girl was ringing up my books and we were laughing and chit-chatting with each other right up until she got to that book. She took one look at it and gave me a malignant stink look.
I said, "Sorry about that one. I guess I really just wanted to know what's in it."
She said, "Alright then."
I suppose I should've bought Michelle Obama's book as a counterbalance.
That's funny Sancho. It reminds me of when I ordered in a textbook on psychopathy. The look that clerk had as I spelled out the title was pretty funny. "Yeah it's called Without Conscience: The disturbing world of psychopaths around us." I wanted to say "It's not a self help book!"
Got the following at a used book sale today:
Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford
Winterwood - Patrick McCabe
an Irish Literature Anthology
The book sale was to raise money for scholarships as the university I work at. At $1/pound, I couldn't resist.
Haha!Quote:
Originally Posted by Grit
Always a good idea to have an excuse ready when you're purchasing something embarrassing: "Uh, those right there are my art magazines."
"I Have Manners" its a little picture book published by Scholastic part of the Best I can be series. Why? Because my class is drives me round the bend sometimes with their 'bad manners' (shouting over each other, talking with food in their mouths (licking my face but there is sadly no reference to that in the book) so I thought why not have some extra reinforcement?
The last book I bought was 'Sweet Tooth' by Ian McEwan. I'm plodding stoically through it, but not enjoying it that much. I wish I'd spent the money on A.S. Byatt's 'Ragnorak' instead...
I just went to a book market, for the second time since it opened, I bought 14 books the first time but only 4 yesterday. I was very happy to find an old copy of Praxis by Fay Weldon, I have wanted it for years. I also got a history book and a book on literature here on the ice around 1500 and one by Susan Sontag. I'm gonna try and get Praxis into my reading schedule now but it will take me awhile to finish I think.
There's no earthly reason for apologising to anyone for buying or reading Gone with the Wind. It's one of the great American novels, up there with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick--all of which contain racial prejudice. The fact that they were all written in the 19th century merely illustrates the racial prejudice of that time. Along comes the 20th century, and the invention of films. One of the best color films (1939) won an Academy Award for a black actress; and as for greatness--Gone With the Wind still is being read by white students, but black students are taught to fear or to disdain it. The same with ...Huckleberry Finn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
Naked Lunch (William Burroughs)
Kim (Rudyard Kipling)
The Old Devils (Kingsley Amis)
Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry)
The Living and the Dead (Patrick White)
The Godfather (Mario Puzo)
Joseph Andrews Henry Fielding
Scarlet and Black (Stendhal)
Bel-Ami (Guy de Maupassant)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov)
Hangover Square (Patrick Hamilton)
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Currently reading: Exercices de Style (Raymond Queneau)
Hideous Kinky (Esther Freud)
La Faim (Knut Hamsun)
Le Royaume de ce Monde (Alejo Carpentier)
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Currently reading: La Pianiste (Elfriede Jelinek)
The Collected Works of William Butler Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays, because it contains two essays on Blake and I'm currently assembling a collection of books on him.
The Theodore Roosevelt Treasury, leatherbound, published by Easton Press. On a trip across country I stopped off at the beautiful National Park in his name. He seems like someone I would like to know more about. I also am interested in reading his own thoughts and opinions on things. The book, being a collection of his correspondence, seems like an ideal way to do that.
Infinite Jest - a friend recommended it.
Vegan slow cooker recipes - I just bought a slow cooker and needed something to make in it