2011 11-Authors Challenge

[Delarge]

Finished the Challenge some while ago, but haven't posted yet.

Here goes:
1. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
3. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
4. The Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
5. Dracula by Bram Stoker
6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
7. Complete Works by John Keats
8. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
9. Ditte Menneskebarn by Martin Andersen Nexø
10. Lingua Tertii Imperii by Victor Klemperer
11. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

My goal for 2011 is to get into anglo-saxon literature as I have been neglecting it in favour of Russian, German and Scandinavian literature. Hemingway really caught my attention and Jack Keroucs Original Scroll was brilliant (not listed among the eleven).

Nice challenge, I'm ready for the 2012 challenge next year

[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
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5

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 Companies - 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 this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy

Got 11 Non-fictions, just need 4 more new fiction authors.

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, The inferno, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

[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
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5

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 Companies - 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 this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy

Got 11 Non-fictions, just need 4 more new fiction authors.

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

Just finished my 11 non-fiction. Anyone out there going for more than 11? I think I'm gonna try to hit 14 fiction and 14 non-fiction if I can.

[aliengirl]

I've finished.

Here is the final list-

1. Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco - 10/10

2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - 6/10

3. The Monk by Matthew Lewis - 8/10.

4. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - 8.5/10.

5. Kanthapura by Raja Rao - 6/10.

6. Anne of the Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - 9/10.

7. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - 9.5/10.

8. The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur - 1/10.

9. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - 8/10.

10. The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch - 6/10 It was a little boring in the beginning but when I trudged half way through it began to get interesting. The end was somewhat like a fairytale but it was unexpected.

11. Changing Places by David Lodge - 8/10
I've never read any work of fiction by Lodge before. Having read his non-fiction I hoped for a good read and was not disappointed. In fact it was a trilogy followed by two more novels - Small World (9/10) and Nice Work (8.5/10). Enjoyed a lot. Finished all the three novels in just twelve days.

FINISHED!!!

I think I can continue the challenge as a quarter of the year is still left and my TBR list is getting longer and longer with many new authors on it.

[irinmisfit92]

Dante: Inferno
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange
J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (Reading)
Jonathan Stroud: The Amulet of Samarkand (Reading)
Arnaldur Indridason: Hypothermia
William Golding: Lord of the Flies
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We
Joe Dunthorne: Submarine
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita

Whoa I indeed read a lot of books by new authors this year. One more to go!

Oh **** I forgot to rate them. Basically they are all amazing, especially Inferno, A Clockwork Orange, Lord of the Flies, and We. Submarine and Lolita are good at the beginning but it gets boring towards the end. Wuthering Heights's pretty okay but it's just a pain in the *** since it's my literature book.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Just finished Marcus Tulius Cicero – “On Moral Duties”
and St. Augustine – “The Confessions”

A couple of quotes from St. Augustine that inspired me:

“I developed a passion for stage plays, with the mirror they held up to my own miseries and the fuel they poured on my flame. How is it that a man wants to be made sad by the sight of tragic sufferings that he could not bear in his own person? Yet the spectator does want to feel sorrow, and it is actually a feeling of sorrow that he enjoys. Surely this is the most wretched lunacy”

“I have seen the lines drawn by architects, some as fine as a spider web; but the truths are different, they are not the images of such things as the eye of my body has shown me. To know them is to recognize them interiorly without any concept of any kind of body whatsoever…Let whoever does not see these truths laugh at me for talking thus; while he laughs at me I shall feel sorry for him”

1. James Fennimore Cooper - "Last of the Mohicans"
2. Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"
3. Karel Čapek - R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
4. Anton Checkhov's "Ward No 6" and "On the Road"
5. William Somerset Maugham – “The Moon and Sixpence”
6. Dante Alighieri – “The Inferno”
7. Thor Heyerdhal – “The RA Expeditions”
8. Marcus Tulius Cicero – “On Moral Duties”
9. St. Augustine – “The Confessions”

Given the recent furor over FF&H, I have decided to introudce myself to all three of them concurrently and see what all the fuss is about. I thought Hemingway would make 11, so I will make him 12. Therefore I will first complete my eleven with:

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Great Gatsby”
11. William Faulkner – “Absalom, Absalom!

Hemingway...?? not sure which one to go with at this time.

.

[thelastmelon]

I noticed this thread just now, and wanna see how I've done (without even knowing about the challenge). So here we go:

1. Ali Smith (Girl Meets Boy)
2. Jandy Nelson (The Sky is Everywhere)
3. Karin Brunk Holmqvist (Rosa Elefanter)
4. Jesper Juul (Konsten att säga nej med gott samvete)
5. Per Hagman (Att komma hem ska vara en schlager)
6. Ondjaki (Good Morning, Comrades)
7. Fritiof Nilsson Piraten (Millionären och andra historier)
8. Biyi Bandele (Burma Boy)
9. Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada)
10. Toni Morrison (Sula)
11. Hjalmar Söderberg (Martin Birck's Youth)

Yay! I completed the challenge by the end of April (I keep a list of what I read every month).

[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
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5

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 Companies - 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 this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy

Got 11 Non-fictions, just need 4 more new fiction authors.

**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

[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
7) Iphigenia in Aulis - Eurpidies - 4.8/5 - just saw this performed in Chicago at an incredibly small venue.. I'm talking the size of like 2-3 living rooms and was really blown away
8) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 5/5 - Fantastic! This book totally blew my mind. Stop reading whatever it is your reading and read this instead. Do it.
9) Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan 4/5
10) Fables - Bill Willingham 3/5
11) The Inferno - Dante 3.33/5
12) Blankets - Craig Thompson 4.2/5
13) Fun Home - Alison Bechdel 4.2/5
14) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - 4.8/5 An excellent graphic novel, but not for the meek

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 Companies - 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 this year)
10) The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russel 3.8/5
11) The Wisdom of Crowds - 4.8/5 - really liked this one. Recommended for anyone interested in sociology, business, or political science/philosophy



**Currently Reading The Aeneid, The Selfish Gene, Hegemony or Survival, How Capitalism Will Save Us.

Just finished Jimmy Corrigan, and I can say it did live up to the hype.

[Scheherazade]

An update is long overdue here:

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. Muriel Spark (Aiding and Abetting) 7/10 Had no idea what to expect before starting this book and was not familiar with the Lord Lucan affair so it was a very engaging read..

4. 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.

5. Ira Levin - The Stepford Wives - 9/10 Loved the book and, needless to say, the movie does not even compare... Hard to believe that 40 years ago, Levin dealt with so many issues that are confusing us women (and men) today. Could not put it down.

6. Italo Calvino - The Queen's Necklace 8/10 More of a novella than a novel in length and it is such a breath of fresh air to read moden short stories as I am worried that this genre is somewhat diminishing. Enjoyed his style and story structure very much.

7. Henning Mankell - The Man from Beijing 6/10 I picked this one just because it was popular on my library's website but I am not very impressed... What started as a very intriguing mystery turned into a drag... With political and philosophical debates, all provided half-heartedly.

8. Stephen King - The Green Mile 7/10 Read this one because it was in BBC's Big Read list and I was very pleasantly surprised: King is a great story teller and this particular one manages to capture the reader from the very first page. It is a great mixture of fantasy and supernatural.

9. Cormac McCarthy - The Road 9/10

10. James Clavell - Shogun 7/10

11. Alice Munro - Love of a Good Woman 9/10

[kasie]

Don't give up on Mankell, Scher - try one of his Wallander books, they are much more tautly written. I started with The White Lioness - may seem a bit dated now in that it refers to a very specific event that's now in the past, a bit like Day of the Jackal or The Fourth Protocol, but even though you know the outcome, he manages to ratchet up the tension to the very end and it has one of the most intriguing openings I've ever read, an object lesson in the elusive 'hook' that pulls the reader into the book. I agree with you about The Man from Beijing, not one of his best, feels like an early manuscript he dusted down for later publication.

[Scheherazade]

I agree with you about The Man from Beijing, not one of his best, feels like an early manuscript he dusted down for later publication.

The thing is that The Man from Beijing starts very promisingly as well. Couldn't put it down for the first 80 pages or so but then it branched out far too much, I felt.

I might read another of his books later (when I'm done with all these challenges )

[Brett Cottrell]

Awesome! I hadn't thought about it until I saw this post, but I guess I've introduced myself to many authors this year. I love to go in to my favorite bookstores in Washington, DC, and ask for recommendations. It's a great way to force myself to branch out.

1) Herta Muller. The Passport, The Appointment. Quite simply, her prose amazes me. I have never read another author who writes so readably and poetically at the same time. Her raw story telling about life under Nicolae Ceausecu left me in awe. Well-deserved Pulitzer in 2009.

2) Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. Fantastic until the conclusion. I thought the end betrayed the rest of the book. Still, an incredible work.

3) China Mieville. Kraken, Perdido Street Station. Kraken is a riotous romp, and Perdido Street Station is good as well. I don't know of any contemporary author with such a crazy imagination.

4) Herman Meleville. Moby Dick, The Confidence Man. I cannot believe I waited so long to read Melville. He's great.

5) Julian Barnes. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. Incredible prose!

6) John Irving. The World According to Garp. Awful. Turgid. Good prose, but pedantic and self-important. I'm not sure that's the author's intent, but that was what I thought. To be fair, some of the content may have been more enlightening when the book was written.

7) Isabel Allende. The House of Spirts. Loved it. Flowing epic with personal touch, plus a little bit of "the crazy."

8) Jane Smiley. A Thousand Acres, Private Life. Great story teller.

9) John Williams. Stoner, Butcher's Crossing, Agustus. I must like him if I read three of his novels in a year.

10) Jim Lynch. Border Songs. Nice novel that takes place on the USA/Canadian border near Vancouver. The staff at City Lights book publishers in San Francisco recommended this one.

11) Kate Chopin. The Awakening. I really enjoyed this early feminist novella.

[Scheherazade]

8) Jane Smiley. A Thousand Acres

Read this one because it is a Pulitzer winner and was surprised how well it was written... Surprised because I had heard of neither Smiley nor her book until then... Considering that it was out only in 1991, I feel the book should be more popular.

[Brett Cottrell]

Read this one because it is a Pulitzer winner and was surprised how well it was written... Surprised because I had heard of neither Smiley nor her book until then... Considering that it was out only in 1991, I feel the book should be more popular.

I was surprised, too. I have another, MOO, on my shelf that I plan to read soon.