I have decided to read something by 11 different authors whose works I have not read before this year.
If you are interested, please let us know here and report back to update your list every time you read the work(s) of a new author.
Printable View
I have decided to read something by 11 different authors whose works I have not read before this year.
If you are interested, please let us know here and report back to update your list every time you read the work(s) of a new author.
Fun!!
OK, I'll give this a go.
I've started one already and another has been purchased.
(aside- I've suddenly developed an interest in the "short story")
.
This sounds fun! I am in!
One a month - or thereabouts: I think I can manage that. I'm in.
What a great idea for a challenge. I'm in too. I'll be back to post my projected reading list.
Much better than my plan to read 2011 new authors, I'm in!
Good idea; I'll be in too!
Fantastic!
My first one will be Alice Munro, I think.
I lied.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
I am reading The White Tiger by Aravind Agida at the moment and am enjoying very much.
This is a great idea. My list:
1. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita
Since my copy finally arrived in the mail the first book I will be reading for the challenge is "The City & The City"
I have started Fight Club.
Funny, I thought Tyler Durden started it...Quote:
Originally Posted by Mockingbird_z
:smilielol5:
I have my intermediate examination coming up next month (so I will have some studying to do) but if the challenge includes fiction and nonfiction, I'd love to join anyway. :wave:
@The Comedian: Thanks for your response! I will be posting my list as I go along.
1. Richard Yates: Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness (6/10)
2. Richard P. Feynman: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (6/10)
3. Sam Harris: Letter To A Christian Nation (7/10)
4. (next) Fred Hoyle: The Black Cloud
5. (next) Robert Trumbull: The Raft
6. (next) David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas
7. ...
8. ...
9. ...
10. ...
11. ...
Happy reading everyone and good luck with the challenge! :)
Non-fiction is certainly fine to use. (And if anyone says otherwise, I'll sock 'em in the mouth!) :lol: I'm planning to use poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction, philosophy, and comics for my list. So far I have nine of the eleven needed. Once I decide on the other two, I'll post them all so that I can easily refer back to them.
My first will be a D.H Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover) but I can't start it for another week or so.
I'm up for this challenge. My first new writer of 2011 is Gabriel Josipovici; I'm reading his short story collection 'Heart's Wings'. It's pretty good.
My first will likely be Georges Perec
Okay I have my list compiled. I'm going to post my complete list here and then return to report on it as I progress. Most of these authors/books, I've pulled from my "I'll get around to reading them sometime" pile. In making this list, I've tried to get a variety of authors and genres.
The list:
1. Poetry -- Selected Poems by Paul Verlaine.
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 -- Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. I'm planning to renew/refresh my interest in early American literature
3. Philosophy --The Sense of Beauty by George Santayana. I like reading philosophy and a colleague told me that Santayana knew his way around a sentence, so I'm all in.
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. See the reason posted for the Verlaine selection.
10. Fiction -- The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. A friend told me I should read it. I said "sure". That was four years ago. Another one of those "it's about time" books.
11. Comics -- Silver Surfer: Requiem by J. Michael Straczynski. Sounds interesting.
That's it. I'm already off to a good start on the Verlaine poetry.
H'okay. Eleven works by authors who's books I have neeeever read. Here goes:
1. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.
2. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.
3. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (ugh...).
4. On The Road by Jack Kerouac (double ugh...).
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
6. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
7. Moby Dick by Harman Melville (I'll finally trudge through that chapter on whale breeds).
8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
10. Anthem by Ayn Rand.
11. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
I'll edit a line through the ones that I read throughout the year. Fun, fun fun!
Just finished Paul Verlaine's Selected Poems. It was alright. Most of the poems were erotic, which after a while seemed thematically repetitive. And a lot, honestly, sounded to me like they could have been written by a 14-year old kid on hormone enhancers.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Comedian
Maybe I need to read more about the Symbolist movement to better appreciate this guy's work.
1. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brienn, been on my list a few years, saw it in my local secondhand shop yesterday :)
I'm in.
I think my first one shall be Homer.
Looking forward to that.
I'm not sure about my list, My first will be the book club selection, China Mieville. Then perhaps Steig Larson, and JW reminded me I want to try Chuck Palahniuk. After that I'm not sure what I want to do.
I just finished reading The Odyssey by Homer, so that's officially my first one. I enjoyed it immensely. I haven't read any of the other translations, but I can recommend the Fitzgerald translation. It's very accessible.
Still working through Josipovici's Heart's Wings and other stories, which will be my second. It's a lovely read. Quirky and strange and strangely compelling.
This seems like a cool idea. Well I started reading Jane Austen for my first author. Pride and Prejudice.
Next up is Charles Dickens - Bleak House
I am so glad that so many of us will be taking this challenge.
I don't think I will be making a list before hand; I will add authors as and when I read them throughout the year.
I'll have a go, but I'm already amazon delivered and committed to at least the next month or two. If I get into a new author, I'll pop them in here.
Looks like I'm tackling Moby Dick first. I'm nearly done the one I'm on right now, then I'll dig in.
1.) The City and The City - China Miéville
Cool idea Scher! I'll not be posting the whole list but one or two at a time.
1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco. Enjoyed it a lot. Just four pages left. Going to finish it right now.
2. Man and Superman by Shaw. Will start it soon. I've read and liked a few plays by Shaw. Looking forward to it.
So far:
1. Homer The Odyssey
2. Gabriel Josipovici Heart's Wings and other stories
I'm still digesting the Josipovici book. I enjoyed it so much I went out and ordered another 3 of his books. I'm particularly interested in The Goldberg Variations which is described as 30 short stories which, if read collectively, turn into a mysterious and intriguing novel. Not a well known writer, but good.
Next on the list: Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird. Someone recommended it to me a couple of years ago, but I've never quite been in the mood for such a torturous and upsetting story. But as it's January, and I'm miserable anyway, now's as good a time as any.
That's great, aliengirl, but the aim of the challenge is to read the works of those authors we have not read till now. So, Shaw would not count (for this challenge).Quote:
Originally Posted by aliengirl
I am still working on The White Tiger.
Does it count if we read one of the authors work in class?
I've already decided on something close to this...
[[These, I will definitely read, in order]]
1. The Inferno - Dante Alighieri (which I'm reading right now)
2. The Iliad & The Odyssey - Homer
3. The Aeneid - Vergil
[[The rest are maybes, not in any order]]
4. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
5. Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
6. Dracula - Bram Stoker
7. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
8. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
9. Republic - Plato
10. The Metamorphesis - Ovid
11. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Yes, I think the only rule is that you have not read the author before.Quote:
Originally Posted by OfHighInterest
Hey! Does it could if you started a book by an author but didn't finish it? Is that author still considered new?
I'll join in.
I've already finished two books of the sort, actually.
1) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
2) The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I'll make sure to finish up more of them after Academic Decathlon is over.
Just saw the question about non-fiction books; I did not have non-fiction in mind when I first suggested this and I will not include non-fiction authors into my list. Otherwise, my list would have been complete by now :coolgleamA:
However, if anyone feels like including them into their lists, that is fine, of course. And I don't want to risk this, either:Finished The White Tiger so my list so far:Quote:
Originally Posted by The Comedian
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.
I'm giving up on The Painted Bird; it is far too harrowing and brutal. It feels like an exercise in how to describe senseless torture, superstition and mindless violent. Too horrible for me :(