2011 11-Authors Challenge

[Big Dante]

1. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
2. The Catcher In The Rye - JD Salinger
3. The Invisible Man – H.G Wells
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonneign
6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
7. 1984 - George Orwell
8. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm currently reading The Idiot and Les Miserables.

[Trollzane]

cool post ill def look up a new author now!

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

I may now checkoff Chechov, as in Anton Checkhov - "Ward No. 6", "On the Road".
Still working on Cooper, Fleming and just scratching the surface of Dante.

.

Completed "Goldfinger" by Ian Fleming and Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans"

Gg

[scoobyd]

It's high time I joined!

1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
2. Walden by H. D. Thoreau
3. Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
4. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
5. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 8/10
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
8. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
9. Beloved by Toni Morrison
10. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
11. On The Road by Jack Kerouac

[Rores28]

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

9) Practical Ethics - Peter Singer 4.8/5 (The best book I've read yet this year)

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, The Wisdom of Crowds**

[Rores28]

1. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
2. The Catcher In The Rye - JD Salinger
3. The Invisible Man – H.G Wells
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
5. Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonneign
6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
7. 1984 - George Orwell
8. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

I'm currently reading The Idiot and Les Miserables.

Looks like you are knocking out a lot of what they require one to read in high school... any favorites emerging?

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

11. *Update* The Darkness that Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker. 3/5. Good, dark fantasy. Pretty adult-oriented content. If you're put off by misogynism and/or weak female characters, not for you. It's what took it down from a 4 to a 5. Still good enough to make me want to read the sequels.

BOOM. Done. With eight months to spare, no less. Should I keep the list going, anyways?

[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

8."Never let me go" by Kazuo Ishiguro 9/10 (I liked it very much although i'd like it even more if the author had made a more powerful comment about the society he describes, instead of just describing it)

[Delarge]

1. Cormack McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain

2. Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time

3. Bram Stoker - Dracula

4. Ben Franklin - The Autobiography

5. Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice

6. John Keats - Complete Works

7. Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises

8. Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities

9. Victor Klemperer - Lingua Tertii Imperii

10. Martin Andersen Nexø - Ditte, Daughter of Man

One more author to go

[TheFifthElement]

8."Never let me go" by Kazuo Ishiguro 9/10 (I liked it very much although i'd like it even more if the author had made a more powerful comment about the society he describes, instead of just describing it)

I actually liked that Ishiguro left it up to the reader to decide how they felt about the society, especially how the narrator is so non-judgemental about it, accepting in fact of their lot. I very much enjoyed Never Let Me Go, and Ishiguro in general is an excellent writer.

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
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
11. The Burial at Thebes - Sophocles (Antigone - translated by Seamus Heaney).

Really enjoyed The Burial at Thebes - don't know if the translation is good or otherwise, but always feel like I'm in safe hands with Heaney. 4/5 from me.

[manolia]

I actually liked that Ishiguro left it up to the reader to decide how they felt about the society, especially how the narrator is so non-judgemental about it, accepting in fact of their lot. I very much enjoyed Never Let Me Go, and Ishiguro in general is an excellent writer.

You are right. It's been a while since i finished a book that saddened me so much..i guess that's why i wanted a comment or a reaction from the narrator..If the ending was different perhaps the impression left on the reader wouldn't be so strong. Anyway i liked Ishiguro very much so i plan to read more by him. Any recommendations would be more than welcome : ]

[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. 8.5/10

2) Caryl Churchill, Top Girls. An interesting feminist play, slightly disjointed but worth the read. 5.5/10

3) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Mixed feelings - the story kept me enthralled but I never really felt a connection towards the characters. 7/10

4) Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. Good plot, although fairy predictable; nice descriptions of Manderley; good read overall. 7/10

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. 8.5/10

6) Daniel Defoe, Roxana. 7/10

[IceM]

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.

Alright. Update.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. 8.5/10
The Great Gatsby by Jay Gatsby 8/10
Things Fall Apart from Chinua Achebe 7/10
The Road by Cormac McCarthy 6.5/10
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 7.5/10

Now add:
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: 9/10. Thoroughly heart-wrenching, sad end for Gregor Samsa. Great story.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt: 7.5/10. I loved the story, was fond of the writing, not fond of the ending, became a tad bit repetitive. For a great beginning, the memoir to me became a chore to read and was no longer as enjoyable.

[The Comedian]

Updated. ..

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. Check! 4/5 -- I greatly enjoyed his playfulness. 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

[TheFifthElement]

You are right. It's been a while since i finished a book that saddened me so much..i guess that's why i wanted a comment or a reaction from the narrator..If the ending was different perhaps the impression left on the reader wouldn't be so strong. Anyway i liked Ishiguro very much so i plan to read more by him. Any recommendations would be more than welcome : ]

The Remains of the Day is really, really good.