What did we read in August?

Hello September!

Had a great month of reading, here is what I got through:

Turgenev's Fathers and Sons - This was okay. I must admit I had high expectations and was a little disappointed. I mean the writing was decent and Bazarov was interesting but at the end of the day I was bored. 3/5

Zafon's The Angel's Game - Awful. Absolute tripe. Having enjoyed The Shadow of the Wind I thought I'd give this a go as a light summer read. Beyond cringe. Loaded with cheesey similies and romanticisms. The thing that really got me was: one of the characters is a writer who attempts giving writing 'guidance', throughout the novel, to his apprentice - this really did make the author look silly. 1/5

Dawkin's The God Delusion - This was interesting. I really like Richard Dawkins. He delivers with force and real concern. It really does feel you with awe at how beautiful the universe we live in is and how religion is unnecessary. I feel this is essential reading for the entire planet, especially in these times. 5/5

Achebe's Things Fall Apart - The title attracted me - from my favourite Yeat's poem. A great read. Ever since studying Howards End, Translations and The Tempest colonisation has been an interest of mine. I would like to read more on the subject. Also, after reading Dawkins it really does serve to fuel the fact that religion is, and can be, dangerously dictatorial. 4/5

Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury - My favourite of the month and now, along with his As I Lay Dying, one of my favourite books of all time. Absolutely mindblowing. How is it that Faulkner could write such powerful novels? Quentin's part alone stands as one of the best things I have ever read - such a dark solitude in his pages. I am addicted to Faulkner. :) 5/5

Nabokov's Lolita(re-read) - Prose perfection. The novel really does take a second reading to appreciate Nabokov's sly early mentions of Quilty and all his fantastic word-play and anagrams. A real masterpiece. If you haven't read it yet pick it up immediately. Nabokov's genius lies in the fact that he takes an utterly disturbing topic and depicts it with such beauty. 5/5

Remember to rate your reads!

The Slynx-- Tatyana Tolstaya
In The Skin Of A Lion-- Michael Ondaatje
Aura-- Carlos Fuentes
A Wild Sheep Chase-- Haruki Murakami
No Longer at Ease-- Chinua Achebe
The Ghost Writer-- Philip Roth
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting-- Milan Kundera
The Green House-- Mario Vargas Llossa (not quite finished)

all reviewed on blog....

Four amazing novels in that group.

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Originally Posted by Adagio

Achebe's Things Fall Apart - The title attracted me - from my favourite Yeat's poem. A great read. Ever since studying Howards End, Translations and The Tempest colonisation has been an interest of mine. I would like to read more on the subject. Also, after reading Dawkins it really does serve to fuel the fact that religion is, and can be, dangerously dictatorial. 4/5

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Really can't recommend following up TFA with Achebe's No Longer At Ease highly enough. It takes up the story of Okwonko's grandson in "modern day" Lagos...it reveals Achebe's subtle and amazing ear and with an economy of style that belies the profound complexity in Post Colonial Africa . One of the better novels I have read this year (and I have read some heavyweights)...



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Ap. J.-C, by Vasilis Alexakis (started in July)
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
Murphy, by Samuel Beckett
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu
Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly ones), by Jonathan Littell (far from finished yet)

The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder -- William Hope Hodgson
Green Lantern (Rebirth) (trade-paper back)
Under the Sea-wind -- Rachel Carson
Walden -- Thoreau (my annual "spring" read of this got postponed)

& several trades of Kurt Busiek's Astro City.

Oh this month was not very good for me,i didn't have much time to read unfortunately.But i loved every book i read,that's something very rare.Great books one after another,so unexpectedly satisfying.So i'd still consider it a Lucky Month!
In order of liking;
Oblomov by Goncharov
Killing a mockingbird by Harper Lee
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Wise Blood by Falnnery O'Connor
Froth on the Daydream by Boris Vian(To tell you the truth,i had a little higher expectations for this one.)

And i know it's not cool but i also abandoned a few.Not that i didin't like them,i was just not in the right mood.

The Girl with the Pearl Earring ~ Tracy Chevalier
Notes From Underground ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

H.P Lovercraft:

The Outsider
The Rats in the Walls
Pickman's Model
The Call of the Ctchulu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness

And I am very nearly finnished with Twenty Years After

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (link)

The Complete Poems of Catullus translated by Guy Lee (link)

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (link)

The Epicurus Reader translated by Brad Inwood and L. P. Gershwin (link)

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (link)

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (link)

Select Plays by Roman Playwright Terence: The Girl From Andros, The Eunuch, The Mother-in-Law (link)

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (link)

Links go to my blog with reactions to each work. All of them probably include spoilers, you're forewarned if you care about such things. Wow, I got about ten works in this month, not bad!

I only read two books this month, and fairly short books at that, although I have high hopes for September.

In August I read 'The Belly of Paris' by Emile Zola. I would give this book a 5/5, as with most books I have read by him.

I also read 'Tobacco Road' by Erskine Caldwell which was a very good book. I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline although I was a bit disturbed by the characters. :) I would also give this book a 5/5.

Mysteries - Knut Hamsun
Hunger - Knut Hamsun
Barabbas - Par Lagerkvist
Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig
Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev
A Confession and Other Religious Writings - Leo Tolstoy
The Reveries of the Solitary Walker - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I only managed to complete one book this month but oh, what a book.

Don Quixote~Miguel de Cervantes 5/5

I'm also reading Dante's Divine Comedy one canto a day, so that should take a couple more months to complete.

The Anxiety of Influence - Harold Bloom N/A

Inferno - Dante Alighieri (I want to read it two more times, which I will do this month, before I give a verdict.)

Various poems from various poets.

“The virgin suicides” – J Eugenides
“Brideshead revisited” – E Waugh

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Originally Posted by Adagio

Hello September!

Had a great month of reading, here is what I got through:

Turgenev's Fathers and Sons - This was okay. I must admit I had high expectations and was a little disappointed. I mean the writing was decent and Bazarov was interesting but at the end of the day I was bored. 3/5

...

Dawkin's The God Delusion - This was interesting. I really like Richard Dawkins. He delivers with force and real concern. It really does feel you with awe at how beautiful the universe we live in is and how religion is unnecessary. I feel this is essential reading for the entire planet, especially in these times. 5/5

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I agree with you about Turgenev and Dawkins. I'm reading a very interesting riposte to Dawkins at the moment - Karen Armstrong, "The Case for God". First hundred pages 5/5 - amazing summaries of the idea of God in Hebrew, Asian and Greek philosophy/theology.

She only produces her arguments against Dawkins at the end of the book. Couldn't resist looking ahead and she seems to be mostly arguing against his "religious types deserve no respect" argument. She has a point I think.

So far I'm still a 6/7 atheist of the Dawkins variety. Anyway I must finish the book and read Dawkins again!

I've been reading/re-reading some of Shakespeare's comedies. The following scale is "relative to other Shakespeare plays" IMHO:

The Tempest 5/5
The Two Gentlemen of Verona 3/5
The Merry Wives of Windsor 2/5
Measure for Measure 5/5
The Comedy of Errors 3/5
Much Ado About Nothing 4/5
Love's Labour Lost 5/5
A Midsummer Night's Dream 5/5
The Merchant of Venice 4/5
As You Like It 5/5
The Taming of the Shrew 3/5

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I agree with you about Turgenev and Dawkins. I'm reading a very interesting riposte to Dawkins at the moment - Karen Armstrong, "The Case for God". First hundred pages 5/5 - amazing summaries of the idea of God in Hebrew, Asian and Greek philosophy/theology.

She only produces her arguments against Dawkins at the end of the book. Couldn't resist looking ahead and she seems to be mostly arguing against his "religious types deserve no respect" argument. She has a point I think.

So far I'm still a 6/7 atheist of the Dawkins variety. Anyway I must finish the book and read Dawkins again!

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Glad to see someone agree about Turgenev, I thought it was just me.

Dawkins really delivers with force in his book and I can't help but agree with his "religion doesn't deserve as much respect as it receives" argument, but yeah he does come on pretty strong and I can see why that would cause a lot of controvesery. I will have to look into Armstrong's book, let me know how you get on with it!

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, 4/5
Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer, 5/5
The Trial by Franz Kafka, 4/5 (only for being unfinished)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 6/5

Didn't manage much, too many films and too much drinking. Oh well...

A History of Books - B. Blasselle
Batman : The Killing Joke - Alan Moore & Brian Bolland
The Erasers - Alain Robbe-Grillet
Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Sterne-5/5
Othello by Shakespeare-5/5
Candide by Voltaire- 3/5 (reread)
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare-3/5
Gulliver's Travels by Swift -3/5
'The Battle of the Books' by Swift-5/5
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe-5/5

and I got a hundred and twnety pages, more or less in The Years by Woolf and Bleak House by Dickens (the latter of which is hilarious, fantastic).

In the past month I fell for Murakami.

After Dark, Murakami, 4.5/5
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte, 5/5
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde, 4/5
Things Fall Apart, Achebe, 3.5/5
Treasure Island, Stevenson, 2.5/5
Norwegian Wood, Murakami, 5/5
Sputnik Sweetheart, Murakami, 4.5/5
Thousand Cranes, Kawabata, 3/5
If on a winter's night a traveler, Calvino, 5/5
The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood, 4/5
Tom Sawyer, Twain, 4/5
Cyrano de Bergerac, Rostand, 4/5
Franny and Zooey, Salinger, 3.5/5
The Stranger, Camus, 3.5/5
Our Town, Wilder, 4.5/5

Undead and Unwed – MaryJanice Davidson
The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
På grund av Leon – Jenny Leeb
De missanpassade – Belinda Olsson
Inkheart – Cornelia Funke

Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim (funny, but not as funny as Evelyn Waugh or PG Wodehouse)

Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway (better than I had expected)

Ian McEwan: Saturday (preferred it to Atonement - he should set all his novels in the contemporary world)

Martin Amis: London Fields (v. v. good)

Bertrand Russell: Portraits From Memory (short chapters on various famous people he met, like H G Wells, Joseph Conrad, D H Lawrence)

In September I want to read: Evelyn Waugh's Scoop
Ian McEwan's The Child In Time
Iris Murdoch: The Black Prince
Jeanette Winterson: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Anthony Burgess: Enderby novels

Shakespeare - Othello
Ovid - Metamorphoses
Orwell - Animal Farm (re-read - although it was about 15 years since I last read it!)
Fitzgerald - Gatsby (re-read)
Conrad - Heart of Darkness (re-read)
Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Gissing - The Nether World
Maupassant - Bel-Ami
Dante - The Inferno

The sign of Four - Arthur Conan Doyle
The ABC Murders - Agatha Christie
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen

I am always amazed how much people read in a month.

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Originally Posted by Thespian1975

I am always amazed how much people read in a month.

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I cheated 'cause I wanted to classify all of Shakespeare's comedies together to get an argument going... I started them in January... I have been reading other things in August. Apart from Shakespeare and Dickens, the most impressive was Tolstoy's Shorter Works which gets an overall 5/5 - "The Cossack" 6/5. Others:

Crime & Punishment - Dostoevsky 3/5 for readability, 5/5 for depth
Moll Flanders by Defoe 4/5
The 100 Minute Bible 5/5 for readability - 2/5 for detail
Testament - an Abridged Bible - 2/5 for readability, 5/5 for detail
Montaigne 5/5 for philosophical essays, 3/5 for military essays.
Chaucer - Canterbury Takes - Ackroyd "translation" 5/5
Karen Armstrong - the Case for God 4/5
Harold Bloom - Novelists and Novels 5/5
Chekhov - various short stories 5/5 (6/5 for "Ward 6")
Kafka - short stories (5/5) (6/5 "Metamorphosis")
Blood meridian - Cormac McCarthy 5/5
Charles Dickens Nicholas Nickleby 6/5
Joyce - Dubliners 5/5

These are at various stages of completion. I've only given up on "Testament".

Nietzsche (going back to April!) read the superb "Modern Library" hardback Collection of basic Writings translated by Kaufman:
The Birth of Tragedy 4/5
Beyond Good and Evil 5/5
On the Genealogy of Morals 5/5
(I've read most of Nietzsche by now and in my opinion, and many others, these three weeks are his best overall. They are certainly his most readable!)

The volume tails off rather with:
The Case of Wagner 3/5
Ecce Homo 2/5 (very disappointing as his own summary of his work)

And in a separate edition:
Also Sprach Zarathustra 2/5 (sorry, but this is just nuts!)

On this (revised) scale Shakespeare should get 6/5 for "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

More than half way through Ellmann's biograophy of James Joyce. Will finish it within this week:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/James-Joyce-...1898596&sr=8-1

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Originally Posted by Mark F.

A History of Books - B. Blasselle

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What was this book about? Any good?

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Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow

More than half way through Ellmann's biograophy of James Joyce. Will finish it within this week:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/James-Joyce-...1898596&sr=8-1

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I really like the essays I've read by Ellmann on Yeats and some Joyce. I'd be interesting in read such a biography. Enjoy your read!

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick (4/5)
The Princesse de Cléves - Madame de Lafayette (3.5/5)
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (5/5)
As You Like It - Shakespeare (4.5/5)
Daisy Miller - Henry James (4/5)
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (4.5/5)

The Hunger Artist - Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka (re-read)
The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman (unfinished)
101 Things We Didn't Know About Shakespeare
The Horse-dealer's Daughter - D.H Lawrence
Faith, Love, Time, and Dr. Lazaro - Gregorio Brilliantes

Gomorrah: Italy's Other Mafia - Roberto Saviano 4/5
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell 5/5
The Victorian Novel - Barbara Dennis 3/5

Divine Right's Trip 4/4
I may be biased because the setting is close to home. There is a fence building scene that rivals Levin in the wheat fields.
By Night in Chile 2/4
Disappointed that this was only a two. But I'm judging it against 2666 and Savage Detectives.
Third Policeman 2/4
Hilarious at times but ultimately 'meh'
Ripley Under Ground 1/4
No where close to the first Ripley novel.

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Originally Posted by Drkshadow03

What was this book about? Any good?

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Just a history of the book istelf from its earliest form to e-books. Pretty well done with lots of illustrations, but I doubt you'll find it in English. There's probably some kind of equivalent though. I just took up studies again after working for two years, and since it's a cursus geared towards publishing, working in a library or a book shop, I thought it was a necessary read to have some kind of idea of what I was getting myself into.

I read volumes of J Krishnamurti

Let's see...

The Lonesome Gods by Louis L'Amour. 4/5. I definitely liked the setting. This was my first L'Amour novel and I thought old California was a perfect place for the huge, sweeping plot to unfold. As for the plot itself, it was quite enjoyable, even if it was predictable at times.

The Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour. 4/5. As I thought the "about the author" section of The Lonesome Gods was more interesting than the actual story, I decided to pick up L'Amour's memoirs and read those. The man had an extremely interesting life, and he accumulated a lot of wisdom over the years. Unfortunately, the book comes across as the ramblings of an old man. I give the guy a break because he died soon after writing the first draft, but with some organization the memoirs could've been a far easier read. Still extremely valuable though.

Timeline by Michael Crichton. 2/5. Sci-fi is a pretty hard sell with me, as I'm far more engaged by strong characters than a strange new setting. Timeline's characters are, sadly, very boring. Too bad. I really liked Jurassic Park.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling. 4/5. Read in one day because I forgot a literature project was due. Whoops. Generally, I liked it as an imaginative children's book. On the other hand, I had a hard time liking Harry Potter as a character, considering that he masters just about every skill without even trying, simply because he's Harry Potter. He seems to get everything by entitlement (his powers, his athletic skills, his invisibility cloak, etc.) Can't say there was anything else about the book I didn't like though.

Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams. 4/5. Well, I love the world of Watership Down so I'm totally biased, but I thought this collection of short stories was amazing. Not quite a sequel, but definitely kept the flavor of the source material.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Crime & Punishment - Dostoevsky 3/5 for readability, 5/5 for depth

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I'm going to try reading this for September. Was it really that difficult a read?

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Originally Posted by DarkStormyNight

I'm going to try reading [C&P] for September. Was it really that difficult a read?

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It wasn't difficult in the sense that reading, say, Milton is difficult - at least in a straightforward translation like that by Coulson. That is, the words were easy. But, to quote Harold Bloom, it's "pernicious" reading. That is, "destructive", you feel as if you are suffering from progressive anaemia as you read. Bloom makes the wonderful comment that it is like "reading Macbeth written by Macbeth." I tried to read it a few decades ago and gave up about half-way, partly because I couldn't stand being dragged through the torture chamber any more. Partly because it does drag a bit after the first few chapters. Anyway, I made it through last month. Maybe it helps to read it in mid-summer when you are feeling strong & rested? I'm now reading Engleby by "Sebastian Faulks", which is kind of "C&P again" in 1970s Britain. Maybe I should try Watership Down next! You can have too much of a bad thing...

La Mujer del Maestro ~ Guillermo Martinez

Fight club ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The picture of Dorian Gray ~ Oscar Wilde