2011 11-Authors Challenge

1. Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

2. Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

3. Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

4. Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

5. Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Commedia.

6. Tad Williams' War of the Flowers. 3/5. (read my super-exciting review here!)

7. *Update* Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon: 2.5/5. I feel like I'm missing something, here. I tried reading this a couple years ago and quit halfway through. I read the whole thing this time, and it was just to slow and dreary. It is so highly praised, it seems like I failed to grasp the books purported greatness. Maybe I'll give it another read in a few years, see something I missed.

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

Update:


3. John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids) - 8/10 An excellent sci-fi. Even though this is not a genre I am particularly keen on, Wyndham manages to go beyond the usual and offers more questions than answers. Reminded me of Huxley's books in some ways.

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I read Wyngham's The Trouble with Lichen about a lichen from which an anti-ageing drug is developed. It was a good book with the issues well thought out.

1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco - 10/10
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 6/10
3. The Monk by Matthew Lewis - 8/10.

Update

4. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - 8.5/10. It is a very poignant novel with some very exquisite passages. I have not read such a good prequel before especially as it was written by a different author.

5. Kanthapura by Raja Rao - 6/10. Rao could not match Narayan in irony.

6. Anne of the Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - 9/10. I wonder why I have not read it earlier. Great read!

Fiction
1) Frankenstein - Mary Shelley 3.7/5
2) Night - Elie Wiesel 3.9/5
3) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison - 4.2/5
4) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut - 3.8/5
5) Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett - 4.2/5
6) The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler - 2.0/5

Non-fiction
1) Yes! - 4.5/5
2) Nudge - Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler - 3.8/5
3) Borges in 90 Minutes - Paul Strathern - 2.5/5
4) Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel - 3/5
5) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman 3/5
6) The Truth about the Drugs Comapnies - Marcia Angell 4/5
7) Neuroscience and Philosophy - Maxwell Bennet 2.5/5

8) What Would Google Do? - Jeff Jarvis 3.8/5


**Currently Reading The Aeneid and The Selfish Gene**

And Update. . .

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The list:

1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine. -- Check (4/5)
I bought this book a while ago to participate in the poetry reading group on Litnet. But work and responsibilities took me away from the thread, so I never read a word of it.

2. Fiction -- [U]Wieland[/U] by Charles Brockden Brown. --Check! (3.8/5)
I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature

EDIT: 3. Beowulf (Heaney translation) -- Anonymous. Check! 5/5 I've never read this epic before, nor have I read anything by the Beowulf poet, I'm fairly certain.

4. Fiction -- The Third Man by Graham Greene. I've never read much detective fiction. It's time.

5. Non-fiction -- Beyond the Aspen Grove by Ann Zwinger. I love nature/environmental non-fiction. And Zwinger has been inexcusably absent from my reading habits. Time to amend that mistake.

6. Drama -- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Never read it or anything else by Stoppard. And this book was given to me by a friend in grad school. Eleven years ago I told him I'd read it. Better late than never.

7. Poetry -- Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins. He's a great contemporary American poet. And I've never read a thing he's written.

8. Non-fiction -- Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Bought it in a used book store for $.75. It looked interesting and the Collins book (above) borrows its title.

9. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi. Check! 3.8/5 See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.

10. [edit] Fiction -- Grendel by John Gardner. Check! 4/5. I've read Fifth's praise of this book for a while. And, since I've also wanted to read Beowulf for the longest time, I thought I'd pair these two up. To this text -- I really enjoyed Grendel especially as a book that dialogues Beowulf. It was over-written in spot, which detracted from my overall rating.

11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.

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At last I read Portrait of a Lady. 0/10 for being such a bore! :Yawn:

My list updated:

1. Homer - The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici - Heart's Wings and other stories
3. Linda Grant - We Had It So Good
4. Electric Shadow - Heidi Williamson
5. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark is brilliant! The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is well worth the read. It's compact, economical and incredibly funny. I enjoyed it immensely.

Update on my list
Since I hate giving stars or numbers because they don't tell much of anything.

1. Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist - One of the greatest vampire novels I have ever read, ever. If your looking for a adult answer to Twilight, this is the novel for you.

2. The Terror by Dan Simmons: A historical novel that is based on the Franklin Expedition of 1845. This novel brings to mind Moby Dick and is similar in its start, however, when Simmons brings a foreign culture into the narrative, the story becomes absolutely fantastic. It is a little slow, at 955 pages, this is to be expected, but it is worth it if only for the second half of the novel, when Simmons lets go of the history and is given complete control over the tale.

The next book I'm reading is Lilith by George MacDonald.

Update

"Swann's way" by Proust 10/10
Checkov's short story collection 10/10
"The red and the black" by Stendhal 8/10

"All quiet on the western front" by E.M Remarque 10/10 (loved it)
"The member of the wedding" by Carson McCullers 6/10

1. Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union: 4/5. I liked it a lot, enough that I'm going to read more by Cabon, but I think my unfamiliarity with Jewish religion and culture left me not getting a lot of the humor.

2. Cervantes' Don Quixote: 4/5, for what I've read so far of what I've read so far.

3. Jeff VanderMeer's Cities of Saints and Madmen: 4.5/5. Excellent world building and wonderfully strange and dark stories, though some of the latter material in this short story collection grew tiresome.

4. Frank's Alas, Babylon: 4.5/5. A few minor gripes kept this from getting a perfect rating.

5. Dante's Inferno: 5/5. Loved it. Can't say I understood all of it, though I didn't want to at this point. Just read it to enjoy it. I really liked the Hollanders' translation, and the notes were very good and thorough, though I skimmed a lot of them. Looking forward to the rest of Dante's Commedia.

6. Tad Williams' War of the Flowers. 3/5. (read my super-exciting review here!)

7. Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon: 2.5/5. I feel like I'm missing something, here. I tried reading this a couple years ago and quit halfway through. I read the whole thing this time, and it was just to slow and dreary. It is so highly praised, it seems like I failed to grasp the books purported greatness. Maybe I'll give it another read in a few years, see something I missed.

8. *Update* Connie Willis's Doomsday Book: 3.5/5. Not bad. The historical setting was quite well done. Unfortunately, this book suffered from a lot of repetition.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

I liked it very much, so 7/10. I'm still puzzling over the "Monty Hall Problem" mentioned in it. :D

Just finished two more books

Lilith by George MacDonald - A excellent tale of a man struggling to find his place in life. Very insightful and surprisingly complex. This novel is like a adult Wizard Of Oz that you can read to your children. Highly recommended if you love fantasy novels.

Pan by Knut Hamsun - This one is a little harder to get into, and there doesn't seem to be as much character development as there should be. A confusing read, not recommended if you are looking for a serious understandable at face value plot.

Update:

1. Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger) - 9/10 KitKats! Would have been 10 but I really wished the book was a little longer. Loved every single page of it.

2. Barbara Vine (A Dark Adapted Eye) - 8/10 A murder/mystery written superbly. What made the story even more interesting to me is the fact that the main characters involved are female and story's told by a female narrator too. Hard to put it down.

3. John Wyndham (The Day of the Triffids) - 8/10 An excellent sci-fi. Even though this is not a genre I am particularly keen on, Wyndham manages to go beyond the usual and offers more questions than answers. Reminded me of Huxley's books in some ways.

4. Upton Sinclair (The Jungle - 8/10) Another excellent read for me. I was not sure what to find exactly but it exceeded my expectations on many levels. My only problem was the last 50 pages or so as it turned slightly preachy and dry. However, it was well worth the time and effort.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I read Wyngham's The Trouble with Lichen about a lichen from which an anti-ageing drug is developed. It was a good book with the issues well thought out.

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He is so different from the usual sci-fi authors. I wouldn't mind reading another book of his.

Update:

1) D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover. I liked it very much, a flaw would be its repetitiveness, however it's a flaw that doesn't affect my appreciation of the book and the ideas that are narrated. 4.5/5

2) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls. An interesting feminist play, slightly disjointed but worth the read .3/5

3) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Mixed feelings - the story kept me enthralled but I never really felt a connection towards the characters. 3.5/5

My list:

1] The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (Currently reading with the book club)
2] Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
3] Cyrano De Bergerac byEdmond Rostand
4] The Souls Of Black Folk by William DU Bois
5] Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
6] The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins