Quote:
Originally Posted by mona amon
I know, I know, It put me off VW for years.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mona amon
I know, I know, It put me off VW for years.
Hi prendrelemick! Did you read anything by VW after that? I'm thinking of giving her a nice long break!
1. Marco Polo & Rustichello da Pisa The Travels of Marco PoloQuote:
Originally Posted by Gilliatt Gurgle
2. John Keats - a few selected poems including first pass of To Autumn -will take a few more passes to fully absorb.
3. Emil Miller - A Tangled Web
I gave her a long break too, about 15 years. Then I read Orlando - and Liked it a lot. So I read The Voyage Out, which was OKQuote:
Originally Posted by mona amon
I'm not going to rate books, but if I feel compelled to make comments on them I will do so.
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I thought the sentimental melodrama of the third part was a chore to read, but found everything before that to be exceptional.
2. How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Unintelligent analyses from someone with a very juvenile sense of the world. Generalisations heaped upon generalisations. No suprise as dumb books sell big. She is arrogant enough to cast aspersions on feminist academics in the introduction, before commencing four hundred pages of crass ranting. A large part of her analytic strategy is to judge the value of all female activity on whether men do them too, underlined at the end of the book when she declares, 'I just want to be one of the guys, but with really good hair'. As for the comedy, her main technique was to use hyperbolic similes that had the sophistication of a child. I might have found some passages funny had I read the book, but listening to it in audio format made it seem like a bad stand-up routine.
3. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
My impression is that Dickens had a lot he wanted to say in this novel and, at only 288 pages, he had a very short amount of time in which to say it. The result was that the characters were placed efficiently into appropriate archetpyes, but they were not given the time to be fleshed out. David Copperfield shows how well he could write characters. Logic is telling me I should stick to reading his longer books if I want a really engaging plot and cast of characters.
I'm not going to rate books, but if I feel compelled to make comments on them I will do so.
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I thought the sentimental melodrama of the third part was a chore to read, but found everything before that to be exceptional.
2. How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Unintelligent analyses from someone with a very juvenile sense of the world. Generalisations heaped upon generalisations. No suprise as dumb books sell big. She is arrogant enough to cast aspersions on feminist academics in the introduction, before commencing four hundred pages of crass ranting. A large part of her analytic strategy is to judge the value of all female activity on whether men do them too, underlined at the end of the book when she declares, 'I just want to be one of the guys, but with really good hair'. As for the comedy, her main technique was to use hyperbolic similes that had the sophistication of a child. I might have found some passages funny had I read the book, but listening to it in audio format made it seem like a bad stand-up routine.
3. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
My impression is that Dickens had a lot he wanted to say in this novel and, at only 288 pages, he had a very short amount of time in which to say it. The result was that the characters were placed efficiently into appropriate archetpyes, but they were not given the time to be fleshed out. David Copperfield shows how well he could write characters. Logic is telling me I should stick to reading his longer books if I want a really engaging plot and cast of characters.
4. Delusions of Gender: the Real Science Behind Sex Difference by Cordelia Fine
In some passages, this book blew my mind and challenged my perceptions in the extreme, and I'm a feminist. Logically, everyone should read this book; even the best of us has a level of subconscious sexism within, and this book makes the reader confront theirs head-on. Scientific thoroughness may be interpreted as repetitiveness by some readers, as she painstakingly tests her arguments from all possible angles, often guiding us to the same conclusions multiple times within a chapter. For me, an unwanted effect of this book is to disempower the individual. For instance, she exposes the futility of gender-neutral parenting, and it's very disheartening to read. Yet she concludes happily that, unbelievably (scarcasm), genes are not defining, and hormones are not gospel! I blame the whole mess on capitalism.
9. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. 10/10 Wow! :shocked: Absolutely mind blowing! One of the best books I've ever read.Quote:
Originally Posted by mona amon
I'm not going to rate books, but if I feel compelled to make comments on them I will do so.
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I thought the sentimental melodrama of the third part was a chore to read, but found everything before that to be exceptional.
2. How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Unintelligent analyses from someone with a very juvenile sense of the world. Generalisations heaped upon generalisations. No suprise as dumb books sell big. She is arrogant enough to cast aspersions on feminist academics in the introduction, before commencing four hundred pages of crass ranting. A large part of her analytic strategy is to judge the value of all female activity on whether men do them too, underlined at the end of the book when she declares, 'I just want to be one of the guys, but with really good hair'. As for the comedy, her main technique was to use hyperbolic similes that had the sophistication of a child. I might have found some passages funny had I read the book, but listening to it in audio format made it seem like a bad stand-up routine.
3. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
My impression is that Dickens had a lot he wanted to say in this novel and, at only 288 pages, he had a very short amount of time in which to say it. The result was that the characters were placed efficiently into appropriate archetpyes, but they were not given the time to be fleshed out. David Copperfield shows how well he could write characters. Logic is telling me I should stick to reading his longer books if I want a really engaging plot and cast of characters.
4. Delusions of Gender: the Real Science Behind Sex Difference by Cordelia Fine
In some passages, this book blew my mind and challenged my perceptions in the extreme, and I'm a feminist. Logically, everyone should read this book; even the best of us has a level of subconscious sexism within, and this book makes the reader confront theirs head-on. Scientific thoroughness may be interpreted as repetitiveness by some readers, as she painstakingly tests her arguments from all possible angles, often guiding us to the same conclusions multiple times within a chapter. For me, an unwanted effect of this book is to disempower the individual. For instance, she exposes the futility of gender-neutral parenting, and it's very disheartening to read. Yet she concludes happily that, unbelievably (scarcasm), genes are not defining, and hormones are not gospel! I blame the whole mess on capitalism.
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I liked the first part more than the long middle section. The conflicts with his family, the struggle for indentity in school, the clash of faiths, and colonialism are all very current themes. The middle section was, to me, an overwritten, tiresome slog. We know Pi survives because he wrote the account; there is no tension or suspense. Instead, Yann asks us to finish his book under the assumption that we, as readers, are unenlightened atheists who need to reach the end of his book to find hope and faith in our cold, rational lives. Yann Martel is one of those religious people who cannot tolerate or understand people who have no faith. It's a childrens's book. One good thing it would do is flush out all the anthropomorphic mush filling kids' heads as a result of too much children's television.
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.
Dana Gioia, Pity the Beautiful. 7/10 These are metrical poems by someone who writes this sort of thing well. I'm still trying to make sense out of the title.
Stephen Mitchell, Gilgamesh, 8/10 Of all the characters, I liked the portrayal of Ishtar the best.
Sharon Olds, Stag's Leap, 8/10 These are poems about her divorce.
Gerald Stern, In Beauty Bright, 7/10 These rambling poems seemed to cast a spell on me. The title, however, makes no sense in terms of what is inside the book.
Leon Lederman, Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe, 8/10 Lederman presents a view of the conservation laws of physics using symmetry.
The Damned United by David Peace - A football novel based upon real people and events in the football league in 1970s England written in a stream of consciousness style with intercut flashbacks.
Snuff Terry Pratchett - Commander Vimes brings Goblin equality to the country.
Pure - An engineer from Normandy is commissioned by a French Minister to dig out and remove the bones and bodies that have built up and begun affecting the air in the cemetery of Les Innocents in 18th century Paris. (The site of modern day Les Halles).
Life and Fate by Vassily Grossmann. Grossman's epic, banned after it was written, has been compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace. I would agree that the novel, which spans the months during and after the fight for Stalingrad in WW2, is a brilliant depiction the life of soldiers, commisars, civilians, old Bolsheviks, Nazi commanders, prisoners and scientists. It details the lives, loves, characters, thoughts, flaws and pressures of living under Stalin's regime.
No Country For Old Men by Cormac Mcarthy. A bleak, violent but philosophical novel that challenges the effectiveness of the cowboy/ American icon of the self sufficient, capable and honourable man. The psychopath Chigurh survives the course of the novel with his bleak, nihilistic belief in predestination.
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac Mcarthy. Not as bleak as No Country, or Blood Meridian, but full of brilliant landscape evocations of Mexico with a ripping story. I've never ridden a horse, and I am unlikely to, (though you might be fooled into thinking I had with my bandy legs), but I enjoyed this almost mystical celebration of horses and their relation to people.
3. Of Human Bondage is one of those books that improves after you've read it, when you start reflecting on how it moved you. Even though his prose style wasn't especially beautiful, the characters were sincerely drawn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lykren
4. A Passage to India was a very interesting book, and slightly better written than Of Human Bondage. I enjoyed hearing about Mrs. Moore's perspective on the events. I think the mystical overtones he gives in his presentation of her are somehow the key to this novel. If there is such a thing as a key to a novel.
5. Ivanhoe felt like a typical adventure book, which doesn't really interest me, and I didn't care for the writing. At all.
6. Henry VI, I, II, and III were much more exciting than Ivanhoe!
7. King John is not one of my favorite history plays, and neither is
8. Henry V. Too bad Falstaff had to die!
9. Cymbeline was an interesting play with some beautiful passages, but I found myself slightly irritated by the wandering plot. Not my favorite of the Romances.
Coming up next: Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet. Then the Greek playwrights! Looking forward to those.
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.
I'm not going to rate books, but if I feel compelled to make comments on them I will do so.
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I thought the sentimental melodrama of the third part was a chore to read, but found everything before that to be exceptional.
2. How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Unintelligent analyses from someone with a very juvenile sense of the world. Generalisations heaped upon generalisations. No suprise as dumb books sell big. She is arrogant enough to cast aspersions on feminist academics in the introduction, before commencing four hundred pages of crass ranting. A large part of her analytic strategy is to judge the value of all female activity on whether men do them too, underlined at the end of the book when she declares, 'I just want to be one of the guys, but with really good hair'. As for the comedy, her main technique was to use hyperbolic similes that had the sophistication of a child. I might have found some passages funny had I read the book, but listening to it in audio format made it seem like a bad stand-up routine.
3. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
My impression is that Dickens had a lot he wanted to say in this novel and, at only 288 pages, he had a very short amount of time in which to say it. The result was that the characters were placed efficiently into appropriate archetpyes, but they were not given the time to be fleshed out. David Copperfield shows how well he could write characters. Logic is telling me I should stick to reading his longer books if I want a really engaging plot and cast of characters.
4. Delusions of Gender: the Real Science Behind Sex Difference by Cordelia Fine
In some passages, this book blew my mind and challenged my perceptions in the extreme, and I'm a feminist. Logically, everyone should read this book; even the best of us has a level of subconscious sexism within, and this book makes the reader confront theirs head-on. Scientific thoroughness may be interpreted as repetitiveness by some readers, as she painstakingly tests her arguments from all possible angles, often guiding us to the same conclusions multiple times within a chapter. For me, an unwanted effect of this book is to disempower the individual. For instance, she exposes the futility of gender-neutral parenting, and it's very disheartening to read. Yet she concludes happily that, unbelievably (scarcasm), genes are not defining, and hormones are not gospel! I blame the whole mess on capitalism.
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I liked the first part more than the long middle section. The conflicts with his family, the struggle for indentity in school, the clash of faiths, and colonialism are all very current themes. The middle section was, to me, an overwritten, tiresome slog. We know Pi survives because he wrote the account; there is no tension or suspense. Instead, Yann asks us to finish his book under the assumption that we, as readers, are unenlightened atheists who need to reach the end of his book to find hope and faith in our cold, rational lives. Yann Martel is one of those religious people who cannot tolerate or understand people who have no faith. It's a childrens's book. One good thing it would do is flush out all the anthropomorphic mush filling kids' heads as a result of too much children's television.
6. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
I'm not going to rate books, but if I feel compelled to make comments on them I will do so.
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
I thought the sentimental melodrama of the third part was a chore to read, but found everything before that to be exceptional.
2. How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Unintelligent analyses from someone with a very juvenile sense of the world. Generalisations heaped upon generalisations. No suprise as dumb books sell big. She is arrogant enough to cast aspersions on feminist academics in the introduction, before commencing four hundred pages of crass ranting. A large part of her analytic strategy is to judge the value of all female activity on whether men do them too, underlined at the end of the book when she declares, 'I just want to be one of the guys, but with really good hair'. As for the comedy, her main technique was to use hyperbolic similes that had the sophistication of a child. I might have found some passages funny had I read the book, but listening to it in audio format made it seem like a bad stand-up routine.
3. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
My impression is that Dickens had a lot he wanted to say in this novel and, at only 288 pages, he had a very short amount of time in which to say it. The result was that the characters were placed efficiently into appropriate archetpyes, but they were not given the time to be fleshed out. David Copperfield shows how well he could write characters. Logic is telling me I should stick to reading his longer books if I want a really engaging plot and cast of characters.
4. Delusions of Gender: the Real Science Behind Sex Difference by Cordelia Fine
In some passages, this book blew my mind and challenged my perceptions in the extreme, and I'm a feminist. Logically, everyone should read this book; even the best of us has a level of subconscious sexism within, and this book makes the reader confront theirs head-on. Scientific thoroughness may be interpreted as repetitiveness by some readers, as she painstakingly tests her arguments from all possible angles, often guiding us to the same conclusions multiple times within a chapter. For me, an unwanted effect of this book is to disempower the individual. For instance, she exposes the futility of gender-neutral parenting, and it's very disheartening to read. Yet she concludes happily that, unbelievably (scarcasm), genes are not defining, and hormones are not gospel! I blame the whole mess on capitalism.
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I liked the first part more than the long middle section. The conflicts with his family, the struggle for indentity in school, the clash of faiths, and colonialism are all very current themes. The middle section was, to me, an overwritten, tiresome slog. We know Pi survives because he wrote the account; there is no tension or suspense. Instead, Yann asks us to finish his book under the assumption that we, as readers, are unenlightened atheists who need to reach the end of his book to find hope and faith in our cold, rational lives. Yann Martel is one of those religious people who cannot tolerate or understand people who have no faith. It's a childrens's book. One good thing it would do is flush out all the anthropomorphic mush filling kids' heads as a result of too much children's television.
6. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
7. And Justice for Some by Wendy Murphy