2011 11-Authors Challenge

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

1. Michael 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 Comedia.

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. 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.

9. *Update* Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. My thoughts here.

[JuniperWoolf]

I've been neglecting this thread.

1. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

2. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Check. 9/10. I loved it, especially purgatory. I'd love to ascend mount purgatorio.

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). Check. A bit dull up until the big chase, which was amazing and so I give it 8/10.

8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Check. I liked it best when he was a kid. 7/10.

9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

10. Anthem by Ayn Rand. Check. I don't really know how I feel about this one. I'll give it a 5/10, for now. It's like he escaped one prison and built himself a new one.

11. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.[/QUOTE]

I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov right now. I've got to track down people to lend me the rest.

[IceM]

For this challenge I've completed two different works this year.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. 8.5/10
The Great Gatsby 8/10
Also add Things Fall Apart from Chinua Achebe 7/10
And The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6.5/10

That has me for four in two months. I can't stop reading the authors I'm already used to.

Let's add Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller to the list. 7.5/10. Wasn't too fond of the weaving of flashback and present setting. It seemed too muddled and slowed the pace of the play, although I'm very much aware of the purposes they served.

[TheFifthElement]

Latest update

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
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

I'm reading a few plays at the moment and enjoying it immensely. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was pretty good, though I found Tennessee Williams's stage directions a bit oppressive. It's quite an intense play. I'd like to see it performed.

[bouquin]

Carol Shields (1)
George Orwell (2)
Virginia Woolf
Haruki Murakami
Peter Carey (3)
Honoré de Balzac (4)
J.G. Ballard
Louis de Bernières
Jean Rhys (5)
Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Oliver Goldsmith

(1) I have read Unless.
(2) have recently read Animal Farm
(3) have just finished True History of the Kelly Gang
(4) currently reading Le Père Goriot
(5) have read Wide Sargasso Sea

[TheFifthElement]

And another update:

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
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
7. Abigail's Party - Mike Leigh

I loved the oppressive atmosphere created in Abigail's Party, and how so much was said but yet the characters said very little. It presents a very interesting picture of middle class Britain in the 80's. I didn't see the end coming at all. Another one I'd love to see performed.

[Veho]

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

4) Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. Good plot, although fairy predictable; nice descriptions of Manderley; good read overall. 3.8/5

[Veho]

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

4) Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. Good plot, although fairy predictable; nice descriptions of Manderley; good read overall. 3.8/5

5) Seamus Heaney/Sophocles, The Burial at Thebes, Sophocles' Antigone. Excellent; first thing I've read of this type of literature and I'll be reading more. 4.5/5

[manolia]

Update

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

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

6."The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair 7/10 (liked it but thought it was a bit repetitive)
7."Lisa of Lambeth" by W. Somerset Maugham 9/10

[The Comedian]

Updated 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. Check! 3/5 I was hoping for more, but it was a good bit of 19th century travel writing. 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.

[Shakira]

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

FINALLY completed The Jungle. Though it is good book, I got a little tired of it by the end. So, my rating - 3.5/5.

Started Three Lives. Already through with "The Good Anna". I liked reading Stein's style. Tends to be little repetitive but she connects beautifully. Now reading "Melanctha".

A small change in my list:
1] The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - 3.5/5
2] Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
3] Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackerey
4] The Souls Of Black Folk by William DU Bois
5] Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
6] The Woman In White by Wilkie Collin

[JuniperWoolf]

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was pretty good, though I found Tennessee Williams's stage directions a bit oppressive. It's quite an intense play. I'd like to see it performed.

They were oppressive, weren't they? Right down to the color of the furnature.

[TheFifthElement]

They were oppressive, weren't they? Right down to the color of the furnature.

Yeah, I got the impression that Tennessee Williams is a bit of a control freak! Lucky for him that he could probably get away with it, but most playwrights don't. I prefer it when they leave room for the director to manouevre.

My list updated again:

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
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
7. Abigail's Party - Mike Leigh
8. Hay Fever - Noel Coward
9. Talking Heads 2 - Alan Bennett
10. Hitting Town - Stephen Poliakoff

Still on the exploration of plays here, speaking of which I went to see a fantastic performance of The Price by Arthur Millar yesterday. I'd forgotten how intense the theatre can be. I think it also helped that I was practically sitting on the stage

Of the 3 new books, I thought:
Hay Fever was a really fun farce, quite clever and engaging.
Talking Heads 2 by Alan Bennett was something else. Really clever and intense. I'd love to watch the TV series that accompanied it, and I'd love to read more of Alan Bennett's monologues. He's got a real knack. I was bowled over by it.
Hitting Town Meh. Wasn't really very impressed. It was quite subtle on the one hand, and incredibly unsubtle on the other. Consequently, I don't think it really worked at all.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

1. Michael 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 Comedia.

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. 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.

9. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. My thoughts here.

10. *Update* Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. 4.5/5. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

[KilgoreT]

This is a great idea. My list:

1. Vladimir Nabokov- Lolita

2. William Faulkner- "A Rose for Emily"- short story, I also plan on reading at least one of his novels this year.

This is going slower than I expected. Everything I've read is by an author I have read at least one work by. Last year would have been a cinch for me, I read so many new authors in 2010.

3. Voltaire- 'Micromegas'

4. W. Somerset Maugham- The Moon and Sixpence