Books you read in '08

[Melville]

There's no way I'm going to finish another book this year, so I say the time for this thread has arrived. Here's my list, with attendant ratings:

The Conference of the Birds by Farid Ud-Din Attar - 8.5
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - 6.5
In a Budding Grove by Proust - 8
Buddhist Wisdom (Diamond & Heart Sutras w/commentaries by Edward Conze) - 9.5
Poetics by Aristotle - 6.5
The Dhammapada - 7.5
Buddhist Scriptures (edited by Conze) - 9
Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha (edited by E. A. Burtt) - 9.5
The Awakening of Faith by Asvaghosa - 7.5
Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way by Nagarjuna w/commentary by Garfield - 9
Narcissus and Goldmund by Hesse - 4
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick - 6
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Tutuola - 7.5
Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche - 8.5
Critique of Pure Reason by Kant - 10
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes - 7
Six Records of a Floating Life by Shen Fu - 4
Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown - 7.5
Confessions of a Justified Sinner by Hogg - 9
Analects by Confucius - 5.5
Danton's Death by Buchner - 9
Woyzeck by Buchner - 7
The Gossamer Years (translated by Seidensticker) - 6
Confessions by St. Augustine - 7
Chimera by Barth - 6.5
The Goblin Market by Rossetti - 7
Sculpting in Time by Tarkovsky - 6.5


Books I read a significant portion of but haven't finished:

Wings of the Dove by Henry James
Ideas by Husserl
The Book of Chuang Tzu

Book I had previously read a significant portion of, and which I read another significant portion of this year, but that I still haven't finished:

Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel

[Malickfan]

Ledfeather by Stephen Graham Jones
The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti by Stephen Graham Jones
Blood Meridian by McCarthy
Serpent Box by Vincent Carrella
Twilight by William Gay
Zeroville by Steve Erickson

[EvilShoe]

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The World According to Garp - John Irving
Factotum - Charles Bukowski
Planet of the Apes - Pierre Boulle
The Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West
Post Office: a Novel - Charles Bukowski
Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky

[Winston*]

I am Legend (Matheson)
Post Office (Bukowski)
As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (H. Murakami)
A Game of Thrones (Martin)
The Stars My Destination (Bester)
A Clash of Kings (Martin)
A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole)
Sharp Teeth (Barlow)
The Trial (Kafka)
Enduring Love (McEwan)
Breakfast of Champions (Vonnegut)
Orlando (Woolf)
Half the Blood of Brooklyn (Huston
A Storm of Swords (Martin)
Cloud Atlas (Mitchell)
A Canticle for Leibowitz (Miller, Jr.)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Chabon)
The Demolished Man (Bester)
Vernon God Little (Pierre)
After Dark (Murakami)
The Cosmic Puppets (Dick)
The Master and Margarita (Bulgagov)
Rabbit, Run (Updike)
Flow my Tears, The Policeman said (Dick)
Lamb, the Gospel according to Biff, Christs Childhood pal (Moore)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
American Gods (Gaiman)
Chronicles Vol 1(Bob Dylan)
Freakonomics
In the Miso Soup (R. Murakami)
Every Last Drop (Huston)
The Cement Garden (McEwan)
The Black Dahlia (Ellroy)

[EvilShoe]

Fuck you Winston*.
This isn't a contest.

[Melville]

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Thoughts? Best book ever or second best book ever?

[Winston*]

Fuck you Winston*.
This isn't a contest.

If it was KF would be beating me and I can't allow that. Also, D_Davis would probably be ruling us all.

[Melville]

If it was KF would be beating me and I can't allow that. Also, D_Davis would probably be ruling us all.
And if SpaceOddity or lovejuice (what ever happened to him?) post their lists, even Davis will look like an amateur.

[Winston*]

And if SpaceOddity or lovejuice (what ever happened to him?) post their lists, even Davis will look like an amateur.
And if Reado the novel reading dog signs up and posts his list, then God save us all.

[Melville]

And if Reado the novel reading dog signs up and posts his list, then God save us all.
Now you're just talking crazy.

[Benny Profane]

The Supreme:

1. Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
2. The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer
3. Rabbit at Rest - John Updike

The Great:

4. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
5. Ask the Dust - John Fante

The Very Good:

6. Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer - James Swanson
7. The Trial - Franz Kafka
8. Native Son - Richard Wright
9. In the Heart of the Sea - Nathaniel Philbrick
10. The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
11. Little Green Men - Christopher Buckley
12. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

The Good:

13. On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
14. Over the Edge of the World - Laurence Bergreen
15. Disgrace - JM Coetzee
16. Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
17. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dicl
18. Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje
19. American Lightning - Howard Blum

The Just OK:

20. The Waves - Virginia Woolf
21. Ted Williams Biography - Leigh Montville
22. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
23. A Happy Death - Albert Camus
24. Times Arrow - Martin Amis
25. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth

The Bad:

26. The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall
27. Torture Garden - Octave Mirbeau
28. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami


I think that's everything.

[EvilShoe]

I thought all Davis did was buy books? Hm.

As for Karamazov: it became an instant favorite. I had already read (and loved) Crime and Punishment, but Karamazov is in a league of its own. I did take a break however after the first 100 pages. Wasn't too fond of those (although they do work, in hindsight). Came back to the book after a month, and read the rest in an equal amount of time.

[Mysterious Dude]

A Clockwork Orange (Burgess) ***½
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) **½
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky) ***½
The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner) ***½
Bartleby the Scrivener (Melville) ***½
Dead Souls (Gogol) ****
Slan (Vogt) **½
Blood Meridian (McCarthy) **
Dream of the Red Chamber (abridged) (Xueqin) ***
Memoirs of a Justified Sinner (Hogg) ****
Frankenstein (Shelley) ****
A Voyage to the Moon (Bergerac) ***
Jude the Obscure (Hardy) ***
Kokoro (Soseki) ***½
Kim (Kipling) ***
Tom Brown's Schooldays (Hughes) **½
A World Out of Time (Niven) **½

Interesting side note: A World Out of Time is the first novel I've ever read from the 1970's.

[ledfloyd]

i really need to keep track of these things. i think the best book i read was Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

[Raiders]

The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann [9.5]
Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks [8.5]
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury [8.0]
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Angela Carter [8.0]
Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann [7.5]
Billy Budd, Sailor, Herman Melville [7.5]
The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan [7.0]
Pincher Martin, William Golding [7.0]
The Great American Novel, Philip Roth [6.0]
Across the River and Into the Trees, Ernest Hemingway [5.5]
Pagan Babies, Elmore Leonard [4.0]

I also read a couple short story compilations. Notably David Sedaris' Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim which, as all Sedaris, was uneven but entertaining.

Without a doubt, the slimmest year in a long, long time.

[Melville]

As for Karamazov: it became an instant favorite. I had already read (and loved) Crime and Punishment, but Karamazov is in a league of its own. I did take a break however after the first 100 pages. Wasn't too fond of those (although they do work, in hindsight). Came back to the book after a month, and read the rest in an equal amount of time.
Yeah, I actually took a year-long break after the first 70 or so pages. The whole book is very oddly structured. It's like a bunch of different episodes that comment on one another. The first part doesn't really work that well until you see how the depiction of the monastery relates to the rest of the book.

[Ezee E]

The Road
Suttree
David Copperfield
Various books on travelling in Rome/Italy
Haunted
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
Playing with the Enemy
Dark Harvest
The Zero
Watchmen
Rant Casey: An Oral Biography
Ebert on Scorsese
Blood Meridian
Shutter Island

Not bad for myself. No particular ratings or anything.

[Boner M]

Epic-failed at reading this year. I probably purchased more than I read.

Robert Bresson – Notes on Cinematography
Manny Farber – Negative Space
Jim Thompson – A Hell of a Woman
Albert Camus – The Outsider
Jonathan Rosenbaum & Adrian Martin – Movie Mutations
Kobo Abe – Beyond the Curve
Don DeLillo – White Noise
Kent Jones – Physical Evidence

[Melville]

I probably purchased more than I read.
I do that every year. Almost every wall in my apartment has a bookshelf against it.

[Stay Puft]

Epic-failed at reading this year.

Ditto. I didn't get much reading done, and with going back to school full time I tended to not finish most of what I started or I just read specific chunks of books and then had to put them aside. I took a couple drama classes at the beginning of the year, though, so I was also studying a few plays.

Books I read:
Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer (James Swanson)
The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
Identity Crisis (Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales, and Michael Bair)
On the Genealogy of Morals (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Kant's Critical Philosophy (Gilles Deleuze)
The History of Sexuality: Vol. 1 (Michel Foucault) [read this last year, too]
Being and Time (Martin Heidegger) [that occupied me for a couple months]
The Politics of Aesthetics (Jacques Ranciere)
Noli Me Tangere: On the Raising of the Body (Jean-Luc Nancy)

Plays I studied:
Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
Othello (William Shakespeare)
King Lear (William Shakespeare)
The Spanish Tragedy (Thomas Kyd)
The Revenger's Tragedy (Cyril Tourneur or Thomas Middleton[?])
The White Devil (John Webster)
The Changeling (Thomas Middleton and William Rowley)
Major Barbara (Bernard Shaw)
The Playboy of the Western World (J. M. Synge)
Riders to Sea (J. M. Synge)
A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)
Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller)
Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett)
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee)

And I won't bother listing the stuff I only read parts of and put aside.


Slan (Vogt) **½

Ha! When I got to the part wherein the girl suddenly confesses love and throws herself at the hero and then goes to the kitchen and gets shot by the bad guy, I knew I was in for... well, an awesomely awful book.

[Melville]

The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
Being and Time (Martin Heidegger)

Nice. Two of my favorites. Genealogy of Morals is good too.



Kant's Critical Philosophy (Gilles Deleuze)

How is this?

[thefourthwall]

The Bad:

26. The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall


Uh-oh. Why? My book club is going to be reading this soon.

[Benny Profane]

Uh-oh. Why? My book club is going to be reading this soon.


I found it utterly preposterous. The ending was very anti-climactic and predictable. It felt like I was reading a movie script.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The Zero– Jess Walter



Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson



Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen



Brighton Rock – Graham Greene



A Death in the Family – James Agee



The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon



The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America – Joe Posnanski



Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer – James L. Swanson



The Big Over Easy – Jasper Fforde



The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery



Puckoon – Spike Milligan



A Happy Death – Albert Camus



God Save the Fan – Will Leitch



Cannery Row – John Steinbeck



Beloved – Toni Morrison



The End of the Affair – Graham Greene



The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz



The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell



A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – David Eggers



When You Are Engulfed in Flames – David Sedaris



The Black Echo – Michael Connelly



The Devil in the White City – Eric Larson



The Film Club – David Gilmour



The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster



Rabbit, Run – John Updike



Charity Girl – Michael Lowenthal



The Quiet American – Graham Greene



The Time-Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger



Take the Cannoli – Sarah Vowell



Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor



It – Stephen King



The Thirteen Clocks – James Thurber



The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy



The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon



The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum



Daisy Miller – Henry James



Our Town – Thornton Wilder



Good-bye – Yoshihiro Tatsumi



The Lord of the Flies – William Golding



Copy and pasted from Word. Red are those that I loved. I would rank them, but I'm far too lazy. I wanted to hit 40, but unless I read something really short in the next two days, I'll end at 39. Bummer.

[bac0n]

I read more this year than I usually do. Which speaks more to how bad the other years were than how good this year was...

* What to Drink with What You Eat (Dornenburg/Page)
* The Road (McCarthy)
* No Country For Old Men (McCarthy)
* At The Mountains of Madness (Lovecraft)
* Watchmen (Moore/Gibbons)
* Lots of Totally Awesome Green Lantern Comic Books (Johns, et al)
* Lots of Totally Awesome Avengers Comic Books (Bendis, et al)

[Ezee E]

Forgot about Manhunt.

Hmm... What to read next after this Scorsese book.

[monolith94]

books read in 2008

I Am The Cheese — Robert Cormier
Uncertainty — David Lindley
The Knight — Gene Wolfe
The Wizard — Gene Wolfe
The Maimed — Hermann Ungar
Mostly Harmless — Douglas Adams (reread)
The Plot: The Secret Story Of The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion — Will Eisner
Literacy With An Attitude — Patrick J. Finn
Fables: Legends In Exile — Bill Willingham
Eats, Shoots, And Leaves — Lynn Truss
Fables — Vol. 2, 3, 4
Y The Last Man — Vol. 8, 9
Fables — Vol. 5, 7 , 8
Classroom Assessment — Peter Airasian, Michael Russell
Shortcomings — Adrian Tomine
The Woman In White — Wilkie Collins
Fables — Sons of Empire
Fables — 1001 Nights of Snowfall
Powers — Vol. 1, 3-11
The Urth of the New Sun — Gene Wolfe
Making Money — Terry Pratchett
Thud! — Terry Pratchett
The Shambhala Guide To Sufism — Carl Ernst
The Mentalist's Handbook — Clint Marsh
Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe
The Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell — Aldous Huxley
Arkham Asylum — Grant Morrison / Dave McKean
Groucho, Harpo, Chico and sometimes Zeppo — Joe Adamson
The Pixar Touch — David Price
Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
The Neverending Story — Michael Ende
Black Hole — Charles Burns
Swam Thing, Vols. 1-3 — Alan Moore
An Evil Guest — Gene Wolfe

I'll probably have finished Gene Wolfe's Pirate Freedom by tomorrow. So far it's much better than An Evil Guest.

[Dead & Messed Up]

All first-time reads, quality ranked from top to bottom:

The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Inhuman Condition - Clive Barker
The Crack in Space - Phillip K. Dick
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
The Ruins - Scott Smith
Thinner - Stephen King
The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

I'm still working on Cabal and Teatro Grottesco.

I heard The Power of Myth on audio CD, and it was one of the more profound things I've "read" in my life. Campbell's simultaneous contempt of religious dogma and reverence for mythic archetypes really spoke to me.

The only one I disliked was The Catcher in the Rye. I found Holden to be insufferable.

[Raiders]

The only one I disliked was The Catcher in the Rye. I found Holden to be insufferable.

Well, OK. But why did you dislike the book?

[Mysterious Dude]

I like Holden.

[SpaceOddity]

I didn't read as much this year. My list...

Patrick Hamilton - The Midnight Bell
Patrick Hamilton - The Siege of Pleasure
Patrick Hamilton - The Plains of Cement
Jessica Mitford - Hons and Rebels
Robertson Davies - The Lyre of Orpheus
Charlotte Bronte - Villette
Margaret Kennedy - The Constant Nymph
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities
Hawthorne - The Blithedale Romance
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms
Timothy Findley - Famous Last Words
Dickens - David Copperfield
John Updike - The Witches of Eastwick
Alice Walker - The Color Purple
Marguerite Duras - The Vice Consul
Thackeray - Vanity Fair
Robert Graves - I, Claudius
Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge
Tove Jansson - The Summer Book
Edith Wharton - The Custom of the Country
Ibsen - A Doll's House
Susan Glaspell - Trifles
Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion
Euripides - Medea
H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
Dambudzo Marechera - The House of Hunger
Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
Louisa May Alcott - Behind a Mask
Ellen Raskin - The Westing Game
Shakespeare - Henry V
Aphra Behn - Oroonoko
John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos
Flaubert - Salammbo
Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor
R.D. Blackmore - Lorna Doone
Anais Nin - Henry and June
Aphra Behn - The Rover
Daphne du Maurier - My Cousin Rachel
Shakespeare - Othello
Turgenev - Spring Torrents
Rebecca Miller - The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
Shakespeare - As You Like It
Sheridan Le Fanu - In a Glass Darkly
Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker
Haruki Murakami - After Dark
Madame de Stael - Corinne
Manuel Puig - Kiss of the Spider Woman
Austen - Northanger Abbey
Pat Barker - The Ghost Road
Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Stendhal - Scarlet and Black
Daphne du Maurier - The King's General
Mary Shelley - The Last Man
Virginia Woolf - Flush
Apuleius - The Golden Ass
Frances Burney - Cecilia
Lady Morgan - The Wild Irish Girl
Jean Rhys - Good Morning, Midnight
Salman Rushdie - The Enchantress of Florence
Abbe Prevost - Manon Lescaut
Byron - The Corsair
Virgil - The Aeneid
Casanova - The Story of my Life
Frances Burney - Camilla
Eloise Jarvis McGraw - The Moorchild
Dumas (fils) - La Dame aux Camelias
Chekhov - The Cherry Orchard
Helen Fry - Music and Men The Loves of Harriet Cohen
Charlotte Smith - Celestina
Dodie Smith - The Hundred and One Dalmations
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre (re-read)
Katherine Mansfield - Selected Stories
Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song
Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales from Burns to Buchan
Dickens - Dombey and Son
James Thurber - The Thirteen Clocks
Angela Carter - The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
Charlotte Bronte - Shirley
Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book
Ursula K. Le Guin - Lavinia
Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native
Sarah Waters - Affinity

[Malickfan]

You son of a bitch.

[Melville]

I didn't read as much this year.
And you still put us all to shame...except Davis.


Euripides - Medea
Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Virgil - The Aeneid

Awesome. Which translation of The Aeneid did you read?

[Dead & Messed Up]

Well, OK. But why did you dislike the book?

Because his insufferable presence completely dominates the book.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Because his insufferable presence completely dominates the book.

I will never understand this opinion. He's a young kid who's aware of his audience and is putting on airs. I find him to be one of the most fascinating, likable characters I've ever read about. He's not likable in the typical sense, but more his position is tragic and, for me at least, totally relatable. I love that book. One of my all time favorites, and one of the only books I've read multiple times.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I will never understand this opinion. He's a young kid who's aware of his audience and is putting on airs. I find him to be one of the most fascinating, likable characters I've ever read about. He's not likable in the typical sense, but more his position is tragic and, for me at least, totally relatable. I love that book. One of my all time favorites, and one of the only books I've read multiple times.

I found it all well-drawn and precise in its craft, but I just couldn't get behind Holden. I understand that there's some tragedy, but the irritation I got from his character - mostly due to his repetitive, unthinking mind - quickly overtook whatever pity or sympathy I could muster.

Clearly, I'm in a minority, since it seems like most who read the story connect with it. It's just my honest reaction.

[Amnesiac]

Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown - 7.5

I enjoyed this one. It was a strange, and fairly devastating, story.

[SpaceOddity]

And you still put us all to shame...except Davis.


Awesome. Which translation of The Aeneid did you read?

What was on his list?
This is the version I read.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aeneid-Penguin-Classics-Virgil/dp/0140449329/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230797611&sr=8-1

[Saya]

I've read a lot of fantasy book this year. I really loved the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I cannot wait for the next installment in this series. I wish Martin would hurry up and finish the damn thing. :P

Here's what I have read this year (no rankings):

A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin
A Storm of Swords - George R.R. Martin
A Feast for Crows - George R.R. Martin
Gardens of the Moon - Steven Erikson
Deadhouse Gates - Steven Erikson
Assassin's Apprentice - Robin Hobb
Royal Assassin - Robin Hobb
Assassin's Quest - Robin Hobb
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
JPod - Douglas Coupland
Salem's Lot - Stephen King
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

[Melville]

What was on his list?
Lots of horror and sci-fi books:
http://match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=120048&postcount=1886


This is the version I read.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aeneid-Penguin-Classics-Virgil/dp/0140449329/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230797611&sr=8-1
Dryden's translation strikes me as being much better than any of the others; everything about it seems so propulsive and momentous. Though he probably took a lot of liberties with the original text.

[Thirdy]

Pretty good year for me. Copied and pasted from my Goodreads list:

books read in 2008

1. The World of Yesterday - Zweig, Stefan
2. Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d'une femme - Zweig, Stefan
3. La Embriaguez de La Metamorfosis - Zweig, Stefan
4. Candelabro Enterrado, El - Zweig, Stefan
5. Night - Wiesel, Elie
6. The Age of Innocence - Wharton, Edith
7. Brideshead Revisited - Waugh, Evelyn
8. El Viaje Vertical - Vila-Matas, Enrique
9. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - Twain, Mark
10. First Love - Turgenev, Ivan S.
11. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Smith, Betty
12. Two Lives: A Memoir - Seth, Vikram
13. Austerlitz - Sebald, W.G.
14. Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas - Schnitzler, Arthur
15. The Human Comedy - Saroyan, William
16. The Laughing Matter - Saroyan, William
17. Bonjour Tristesse - Sagan, Françoise
18. Philosophical Essays - Russell, Bertrand
19. The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance - Roberts, Russell
20. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - Rilke, Rainer Maria
21. Art: A Play - Reza, Yasmina
22. The Fountainhead - Rand, Ayn
23. Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 - Proust, Marcel
24. Pensees - Pascal, Blaise
25. Cosmetique De L'ennemi - Nothomb, Amélie
26. Journal d'Hirondelle - Nothomb, Amélie
27. Stupeur Et Tremblements - Nothomb, Amélie
28. Le Sabotage Amoureux - Nothomb, Amélie
29. David Golder - Nemirovsky, Irene
30. Pnin - Nabokov, Vladimir
31. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Murakami, Haruki
32. El Sur y Bene - Morales, Adelaida GarcÃ*a
33. Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue - Modiano, Patrick
34. Death of a Salesman: Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and A Requiem - Miller, Arthur
35. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - McCullers, Carson
36. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Márquez, Gabriel GarcÃ*a
37. So Long, See You Tomorrow - Maxwell, William
38. Tiempo De Silencio - Martin-Santos, Luis
39. The Screwtape Letters - Lewis, C.S.
40. A Grief Observed - Lewis, C.S.
41. Night Patrol and Other Stories - Kuraev, Mikhail
42. Darkness at Noon: A Novel - Koestler, Arthur
43. Fear and Trembling - Kierkegaard, Søren
44. No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories - July, Miranda
45. The Bald Soprano and Other Plays: Bald Soprano/the Lesson/Jack or the Submission/the Chairs - Ionesco, Eugène
46. Island - Huxley, Aldous
47. High Fidelity - Hornby, Nick
48. Jude the Obscure - Hardy, Thomas
49. Life and Fate - Grossman, Vasily
50. The Revolt of the Masses - Gasset, José Ortega y
51. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover) Friedman, Thomas L.
52. The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner, William
53. Middlemarch - Eliot, George
54. What Is the What - Eggers, Dave
55. Chronicles: Volume One - Dylan, Bob
56. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky, Fyodor
57. White Noise - DeLillo, Don
58. Fifth Business - Davies, Robertson
59. Heart of Darkness - Conrad, Joseph
60. Orthodoxy - Chesterton, G.K.
61. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare - Chesterton, G.K.
62. On Lying in Bed and Other Essays by G.K. Chesterton - Chesterton, G.K.
63. Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox - Chesterton, G.K.
64. Saint Francis of Assisi - Chesterton, G.K.
65. The Invention of Morel - Casares, Adolfo Bioy
66. Cathedral - Carver, Raymond
67. Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose - Carver, Raymond
68. The Stranger - Camus, Albert
69. Brodie's Report - Borges, Jorge Luis
70. The Aleph and Other Stories - Borges, Jorge Luis
71. The Diary of a Country Priest: A Novel - Bernanos, Georges
72. Silk - Baricco, Alessandro
73. The New York Trilogy - Auster, Paul
74. Winesburg, Ohio - Anderson, Sherwood

[Thirdy]

Haruki Murakami - After Dark


Out of curiosity, how is this one?

[Melville]

9. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - Twain, Mark
23. Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 - Proust, Marcel
42. Darkness at Noon: A Novel - Koestler, Arthur
43. Fear and Trembling - Kierkegaard, Søren
52. The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner, William
56. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky, Fyodor
59. Heart of Darkness - Conrad, Joseph
68. The Stranger - Camus, Albert
70. The Aleph and Other Stories - Borges, Jorge Luis
Jesus. That's a lot of amazing books.


6. The Age of Innocence - Wharton, Edith
7. Brideshead Revisited - Waugh, Evelyn
10. First Love - Turgenev, Ivan S.
35. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - McCullers, Carson
48. Jude the Obscure - Hardy, Thomas
How are these?

[Thirdy]

How are these?

I read The Age of Innocence last summer in New York, which I felt was appropriate. It's lush and tragic; for some reason, the ending nearly brought me to tears. I was already a fan of Waugh's work, but I hadn't read Brideshead Revisited 'til this year; it's become my favourite of his. It's not as satirical and biting as his other writings from the 20s and 30s (the ones I was accustomed to), but it is undoubtedly his most humane and profound. Very melancholy, too. First Love was good, thought a bit on the short side. I prefer Fathers and Sons.
As for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter I read it for a second time, as upon my initial reading it became an instant favourite. It's one of the best depictions of rural life in America that I know of, amongst many other things. The characters really come alive and the writing is simple and lyrical. Lots of memorable scenes.
And Jude the Obscure... it was the first book I read in 2008, so I don't remember that much, but I did like it, although I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed. I still have more Hardy to read, however.

[Melville]

I was already a fan of Waugh's work, but I hadn't read Brideshead Revisited 'til this year; it's become my favourite of his. It's not as satirical and biting as his other writings from the 20s and 30s (the ones I was accustomed to), but it is undoubtedly his most humane and profound. Very melancholy, too.
I haven't read anything by Waugh. I should get on that. Nothing speaks to me like profundity and melancholy.

[jesse]

Just got an email from SpaceOddity urging me to post my list... as one of the reasons I quit posting here (and spend less time online in general) was to focus more time on reading, well, mission accomplished. Read nearly three times as many titles as last year, even without counting the abandoned books, short stories and essays not listed here.

Collections of poetry are marked with a *.

The Trojan Women - Euripides
Homosexuality and Civilization - Louis Crompton
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Three Sisters - Anton Chekhov
The Celluloid Closet - Vito Russo
Beowulf
Ecclesiastes
Movie Wars - Jonathan Rosenbaum
Autobiography of Red* - Anne Carson
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho* - Anne Carson
As You Like It - William Shakespeare
Moving Places: A Life at the Movies - Jonathan Rosenbaum
The Beauty of the Husband* - Anne Carson
A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
Uncensored: Views and (Re)Views - Joyce Carol Oates
The Wasteland and Other Poems - T.S. Eliot
Kora and Ka (with Mira-Mare) - h.d.
Les enfants terribles - Jean Cocteau
Sexual Personae - Camille Paglia
Sex, Art and American Culture - Camille Paglia
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The White Paper - Jean Cocteau
Say Uncle: Poems* - Kay Ryan
The Bell - Iris Murdoch
Vamps and Tramps - Camille Paglia
The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973 - 1982 - Joyce Carol Oates
The Profane Art: Essays and Reviews - Joyce Carol Oates
Catcher in the Rye (re-read)- J.D. Salinger
With Love and Squalor: 14 Writers Respond to J.D. Salinger - K. Kotzen and T. Beller, eds.
Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall - Richard Barrios
Dancing Ledge - Derek Jarman
Something Bright, Then Holes* - Maggie Nelson
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Seven Notebooks: Poems* - Campbell Mcgrath
The Art of Memoir: Then, Again - Sven Birkerts
The Holy Innocents: A Romance - Gilbert Adair
Sea Change* - Jorie Graham
Stroke: Poems* - Sidney Wade
A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930 - 1960 - Jeanine Basinger
Rock Harbor* - Carl Phillips
Art and Sex in Greenwich Village: A Memoir of Gay Literary Life after Stonewall - Felice Picano
Watching the Spring Festival: Poems* - Frank Bidart
The Lost Saranac Interviews: Forgotten Conversations with Famous Writers - Joe David Bellamy, ed.
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Against Interpretation - Susan Sontag
Arkansas: Three Novellas - David Leavitt
The Tether* - Carl Phillips
The Witches - Roald Dahl
Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles - Katie Roiphe
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Franweiler - E.L. Konigsburg
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
An Acceptable Time - Madeleine L'Engle
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

___

The books immediately ushered onto my "most-loved" list: Autobiography of Red, Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, Brideshead Revisited, Against Interpretation, Little Woman

Honorable Mentions: As You Like It, Sexual Personae, Les enfants terribles, Name of the Rose, Say Uncle: Poems

A happy new year to everyone!

-jesse

[jesse]

Pretty good year for me. Copied and pasted from my Goodreads list: I've been meaning to ask you over at GR, but this will work just as well: how much of your reading is for school, and how much for pleasure? A daunting list, one way or the other!

[Thirdy]

The books immediately ushered onto my "most-loved" list: (...) Brideshead Revisited

Very nice!


The Wasteland and Other Poems - T.S. Eliot

How did you like it?

[Thirdy]

I've been meaning to ask you over at GR, but this will work just as well: how much of your reading is for school, and how much for pleasure? A daunting list, one way or the other!

I only read for pleasure. I study Law, so all I read regarding my degree is codes and cases.

[Thirdy]

By the way, I would like to pimp three European authors that I'm sure aren't very well-known in the US: George Bernanos, Amélie Nothomb and Stefan Zweig.

In particular the last one -- he was truly one of the best writers of the 20th century. His oeuvre is also pretty big (he wrote novels, essays and biographies, like Marie Antoinette's). I don't know to what extent his books have been transtlated into English, or if they can be found with relative ease, but I feel pretty lucky since this publishing company here in Spain has translated pretty much his entire body of work into Spanish. Whenever I don't know what to read, I read whichever of his books, and I've yet to be disappointed.

[SpaceOddity]

I haven't read anything by Waugh. I should get on that. Nothing speaks to me like profundity and melancholy.

Brideshead is nostalgia as a life style choice. I'm unsure if you'll appreciate its theorising that love is a forerunner for religion, but tis essential reading just to meet tragic 'n' magnetic Sebastian. *adores*

[Thirdy]

but tis essential reading just to meet tragic 'n' magnetic Sebastian. *adores*

Definitely. I fell in love with his character.

[jesse]

Very nice! It was actually an odd reading experience--I'd love it while reading it, but as soon as I'd set it down I had a hard time picking it back up again. It took much longer than it should have to complete it.


How did you like it? Impressed, of course, and one of those texts that slaps you back down and reminds you how very little you know (or "get"). I wish one of my profs had dared take it on in a class, as it begs to be carefully unpacked, something I find extremely difficult to do on my own. My heart is still with "Prufrock" though. :)


I only read for pleasure. I study Law, so all I read regarding my degree is codes and cases. Goodness. Which makes this list all the more impressive, as I'm sure you're reading quite a bit for your studies as well...

[jesse]

Brideshead is nostalgia as a life style choice. Which makes it oh so British. :)


I'm unsure if you'll appreciate its theorising that love is a forerunner for religion, but tis essential reading just to meet tragic 'n' magnetic Sebastian. *adores* Actually, it is a testament to how good the book is that it remains compelling after he (and Lady Marchmain) essentially exit the novel.

[jesse]

Louisa May Alcott - Behind a Mask I didn't know you had read this. What is it?

[jesse]

In particular the last one -- he was truly one of the best writers of the 20th century. His oeuvre is also pretty big (he wrote novels, essays and biographies, like Marie Antoinette's). I don't know to what extent his books have been transtlated into English, or if they can be found with relative ease, but I feel pretty lucky since this publishing company here in Spain has translated pretty much his entire body of work into Spanish. Whenever I don't know what to read, I read whichever of his books, and I've yet to be disappointed. Hmmm, never even heard of him. Looking at Amazon, this is what's available in English:

The Post-Office Girl
Decisive Moments in History: Twelve Historical Miniatures
Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman
The World Of Yesterday
Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman and the Royal Game
Amok & Other Stories
Twilight & Moonbeam Alley
Fantastic Night and Other Stories
Chess: A Novel

...and that's just page one. I'll have to see what's at my local library. I'm intrigued.

[jesse]

The Just OK:

20. The Waves - Virginia Woolf *gasps*


22. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri *gasps again*

Two of my favorites. :confused:

[jesse]

Manny Farber – Negative Space This just missed my list--I have about another third to go. Will definitely be on the list of favorites for 2009.


Jonathan Rosenbaum & Adrian Martin – Movie Mutations Trying to get my hands on this. Went on a Rosenbaum binge earlier in the year, and Martin is a particular favorite. But it is a series of essays and they are the editors, correct?


I will never understand this opinion. He's a young kid who's aware of his audience and is putting on airs. I find him to be one of the most fascinating, likable characters I've ever read about. He's not likable in the typical sense, but more his position is tragic and, for me at least, totally relatable. I love that book. One of my all time favorites, and one of the only books I've read multiple times. I had avoided re-reading Catcher, afraid I would now find Holden insufferable. Luckily, when I gave him another shot earlier this year that proved not to be the case at all. While I no longer identify with him as I did in high school, I share your fascination with him as a character. I like how Salinger forces the reader to sift through all of Holden's exclamations and speeches and stammers to try and discover the "real," as-of-yet-unformed Holden lurking beneath the ridiculous posturings. As with real teenagers, you can't take anything at face value. For instance, I read an interesting essay on Holden's supposed hatred of movies--the author claims that in fact Holden probably loves the movies given how much he talks about them (at least a dozen times) and how much knowledge he has of them!

A comment I read by Kent Jones (I think, or was it Gavin Smith?) about Wes Anderson I think also applies perfectly to Salinger: they are both artists that if you don't like you can't stand at all, but if you are attuned to their register you love them unconditionally and can't exactly understand what others don't get.

[Thirdy]

Hmmm, never even heard of him. Looking at Amazon, this is what's available in English:

The Post-Office Girl
Decisive Moments in History: Twelve Historical Miniatures
Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman
The World Of Yesterday
Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman and the Royal Game
Amok & Other Stories
Twilight & Moonbeam Alley
Fantastic Night and Other Stories
Chess: A Novel

...and that's just page one. I'll have to see what's at my local library. I'm intrigued.

Ah, The World Of Yesterday is brilliant. It's an autobriography of sorts which perfectly reflects the state of Europe before and after WWI. Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman is heartbreaking... Every one of his short stories is amazing, I assure you.

I think you'd really like Beware of Pity, which I see is also available in English.

[Boner M]

Trying to get my hands on this. Went on a Rosenbaum binge earlier in the year, and Martin is a particular favorite. But it is a series of essays and they are the editors, correct?
They're the editors, but they contribute a lot of writing as well. It begins with the series of emails/letters from one cinephile to another, and then that's the jumping point for a bunch of essays... if my memory serves me well. It's a bit of a scattershot book, but in a good way, and also a necessary way given the topic. Nicole Brenez's letters alone are worth the price of admission, I think you'll probably get a lot out of her.

[Duncan]

I've been keeping a list at home. I'll post it when I return there. I think there's ~45 books on it, including a few short stories.

[Melville]

I enjoyed this one. It was a strange, and fairly devastating, story.
The atmosphere of dread and politico-existential uncertainty was terrific. I might have underrated it a bit.


I had avoided re-reading Catcher, afraid I would now find Holden insufferable. Luckily, when I gave him another shot earlier this year that proved not to be the case at all. While I no longer identify with him as I did in high school, I share your fascination with him as a character.
Yeah, I agree with you and KF. I never understood why people's reaction to this book is so frequently based on whether or not they relate to Holden. The book is great because of how well it develops and communicates Holden's character through his narration, and how well that characterization captures a certain teenage archetype. Even in high school, I never identified with Holden, but I still loved the book.

[lovejuice]

2008 is mostly detective novels for me. a lot of which i don't even care to remember or write the title down.

L. Carrington's "The Hearing Trumpet"
M. Kammen's "Visual Shock"
J. Kristeva's "Desire in Language"
C. Bukowski's "Ham on Rye"
J. E. Stiglitz's "Globalization and its Discontent"
F. de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics"
J. Mitchell's "Psychoanalysis and Feminism"
J. Rose's "Sexuality in the Field of Vision"
S. Jackson's "The Melancholy of Anatomy"
I. Murdoch's "The Red and the Green"
A. Breton's "Nadja"
S. R. Fischer's "A History of Reading"
V. Havel's "The Garden Party and Other Plays"
J. Fforde's "The Big over Easy"
I. Murdoch's "The Unicorn"
J. P. Sartre's "What is Literature?"
R. Sorensen's "Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the mind"
D. Lessing's "The Grandmothers"
A. Carter's "Love"
I. Murdoch's "A Word Child"
M. Foucault's "The Use of Pleasure"
D. Tammet's "Born on a Blue Day"
C.G. Jung's "Modern Man in Search of a Soul"
J. Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman"
M. Heidegger's "Poetry, Language, Thought"
J. Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea"
D. Lodge's "The Art of Fiction"
I. Murdoch's "The Sovereignty of Good"
E. Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited"
I. Calvino's "Numbers in the Dark"
W. Faulkner's "As I lay Dying"
P. Coelho's "The Witch of Portobello"
G. Greene's "The Tenth Man"
I. Murdoch's "An Accidental Man"
E. Fromm's "The Art of Loving"
A. Christie's "The Mystery of the Blue Train"
A. Camus's "A Happy Death"
E. Queen's "And on the Eigth Day"
A. Christie's "Sad Cypress"
I. Calvino's "t zero"
A. Christie's "The Secret Adversary"
I. Murdoch's "The Bell"
A. Christie's "Hercule Poirot's Chirstmas"
M. Innes's "Hamlet, Revenge!"
R. Williams's "Culture and Materialism"
C. Dickson's "The Plague Court Murders"
J. D. Carr's "The Problem of the Green Capsule"
A. Garve's "Home to Roost"
G. Simenon's "The Bar on the Seine"
M. Innes's "Honeybath's Haven"
F. W. Crofts's "The 12:30 from Croydon"
J. L. Swanson's "Manhunt"
G. Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle"
W. Gombrowitz's "Ferdydurke"
I. Murdoch's "Bruno's Dream"
J. Walter's "The Zero"
G.K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday"
T. Coletti's "Naming the Rose"
J. Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
I. Murdoch's "The Message to the Planet"
R. O. Paxton's "The Anatomy of Fascism"
E. Le Grand's "Kundera or The Memory of Desire"
H. De Balzac's "Old Goriot"
M. Kundera "The Curtain"
E. L. Doctorow's "Ragtime"
L. Hutcheon's "A Theory of Parody"
H. Boll's "18 Stories"
V. Woolfe's "To the Lighthouse"
S. Weil's "The Need for Roots"
F. Vertosick's "When the Air Hits Your Brain"
J. Agee's "A Death in the Family"
J. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness and Other Stories"
M. Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology"
G. Deleuze's "Spinoza: Practial Philosophy"
E. A. Abbott's "Flatland"
L. Althusser's "For Marx"
R. Carver's "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?"
U. Eco's "Misreadings"
K. Marx & F. Engels's "The German Ideology"
E. Wilson's "To the Finland Station"
N. Bobbio's "Liberalism and Democracy"
J.L. Borges's "Fictions"
L. Krasznahorkai's "The Melancholy of Resistance"
E. Fromm's "Escape from Freedom"
I. Murdoch's "Henry and Cato"

[lovejuice]

Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
Hawthorne - The Blithedale Romance
Robert Graves - I, Claudius
Manuel Puig - Kiss of the Spider Woman


KotSW, IC and tBR are among my favorite novels. how do you find "midnight's children"?

[thefourthwall]

I. Murdoch's "The Red and the Green"
I. Murdoch's "The Unicorn"
I. Murdoch's "A Word Child"
I. Murdoch's "The Sovereignty of Good"
I. Murdoch's "An Accidental Man"
I. Murdoch's "The Bell"
I. Murdoch's "Bruno's Dream"
I. Murdoch's "The Message to the Planet"
I. Murdoch's "Henry and Cato"

Love what you read, methinks we are in the same academic field :pritch:

...in which I'm shamefully lacking never having read any of Murdoch's works (The Sovereignty of Good has been sitting next to my bed for months)--what did you like best? or what do you think is the best place to start?

[lovejuice]

Love what you read, methinks we are in the same academic field :pritch:

sorry to burst your bubble, but like melville, my field is actually science. :P

i am planning on finishing all 23 murdoch's novels before this april. i have been her big fans since when i read the sea, the sea six years ago as recommended by none other than ebert himself. the novel remains my favorite, although it requires patient to get through some of the more low-keyed parts. (in a way, most murdoch's novels are like this. they can get pretty slow at the beginning and sometimes at the end.) a fairly honorable defeat is another good title, and quite amusing through out. the first half of the good apprentice is glorious, although it drops during the second half. any of these mentioned three titles, i think, is a good place to start.

[Melville]

You defended your PhD thesis and still had time to read more than 80 books? It's nice to see that you can still make me feel like I'm wasting my life.



A. Breton's "Nadja"
J. P. Sartre's "What is Literature?"
J. Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman"
How are these? I just bought Nadja a few weeks ago.


J. Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea"
W. Faulkner's "As I lay Dying"
J. Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
J. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness and Other Stories"
J.L. Borges's "Fictions"

Nice.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Someone grab lovejuice while he's here and don't let him leave again!

[lovejuice]

How are these? I just bought Nadja a few weeks ago.


to be honest, i'm not a believer of nadja. even hard for me to praise it as a groundwork for all surrealist novels that follow since in many ways it's too different from angela carter's or leona carrington's. (calling carter a surrealist is a bit of a stretch here, i do admit.) in fact, i don't even have that same feeling as when i see the picture of dali or magritte. still i'm mighty curious what you would think about it.

sartre's what is literature? is glorious. i had this one argument with a fool about the difference/sameness between prose and poetry, and how much i would like to shove the book down his stupid throat! the french lieutenant's woman much exceeds my expectation considered i'm not a big fan of 19th century novel. it works very well as both a parody and an homage. you probably get even more out of it than i do if you are familiar wit the genre.

and thank you, kf. ;)

[Kurosawa Fan]

and thank you, kf. ;)

I know you were looking for Greene recs earlier this year, and I read The Quiet American a couple months ago and it shot to the top of my list from Greene. Amazing book, one of the best I've read. If you haven't read it yet, give it a go when you get some time.

[lovejuice]

I know you were looking for Greene recs earlier this year, and I read The Quiet American a couple months ago and it shot to the top of my list from Greene. Amazing book, one of the best I've read. If you haven't read it yet, give it a go when you get some time.

it's actually my favorite film from the year it's released (2003?). what do you think of the movie adaptation?

[Kurosawa Fan]

it's actually my favorite film from the year it's released (2003?). what do you think of the movie adaptation?

Decent. I rewatched it immediately after reading the novel, and was disappointed that I didn't like it as much. But that novel is so hard to live up to. It's incredible.

[jesse]

I. Murdoch's "Henry and Cato" How was this? Joyce Carol Oates rate this extremely highly in her journals and essay on Murdoch, and I'm highly intrigued. I read The Bell this year and it would have been one of the honorable mentions of the honorable mentions. :)

[lovejuice]

How was this? Joyce Carol Oates rate this extremely highly in her journals and essay on Murdoch, and I'm highly intrigued. I read The Bell this year and it would have been one of the honorable mentions of the honorable mentions. :)
henry and cato is quite good. it won't make my top five, but definitely within the ten. (i like the bell more.) slightly different from her other work; the book features motives unfamiliar within her oeuvre. only problem is the coda which, i find, drags on for too long.

if you are familiar with her work, i strongly recommend it. the book is best read with a "comparing" mind.

i'm interested. where do you read that essay by JCO?

[jesse]

henry and cato is quite good. it won't make my top five, but definitely within the ten. (i like the bell more.) slightly different from her other work; the book features motives unfamiliar within her oeuvre. only problem is the coda which, i find, drags on for too long.

if you are familiar with her work, i strongly recommend it. the book is best read with a "comparing" mind.

i'm interested. where do you read that essay by JCO? That makes sense--if I'm remembering correctly, JCO wishes some of the things she liked from Henry and Cato showed up more in Murdoch's work.

The essay was collected in The Profane Art. I believe it's currently out of print (I had to use the local library).

[Duncan]

2008 is mostly detective novels for me. a lot of which i don't even care to remember or write the title down. So does this mean you read all those plus a bunch more that you're just not listing? Because...damn.

[lovejuice]

So does this mean you read all those plus a bunch more that you're just not listing? Because...damn.

in fact yes, although detective novels are very easy to consume. i can read a christie's in a few sittings, and finish it within a day.

[Duncan]

in fact yes, although detective novels are very easy to consume. i can read a christie's in a few sittings, and finish it within a day.

Well, like I said...damn. Also, welcome back.

[thefourthwall]

sorry to burst your bubble, but like melville, my field is actually science. :P


Hmm. A double edged sword...

1. I feel extra ashamed about my list, which is nowhere near yours, and will not be posted--if someone not in my field reads more of it than me :eek:

BUT 2. I am rather excited that you are not in this field because that means next year when I'm on the contemporary British fiction market, I will not be competing with you! :)

[SirNewt]

Atmospheric Disturbances (Galchen)
Unaccustomed Earth (Lahiri)
White Nights (Dostoevsky)
At the Mountains of Madness (Lovecraft)
The Aleph (Borges)
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Diaz)
Brave New World (Huxley)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig)
The Way of the World (Suskind)
Moby Dick (Melleville)
Tao Te Ching (Lao Tse)
Out of the Silent Planet (Lewis)
The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
Les Miserables (Hugo)

Books I spent considerable time with

I Ching(Willem/Baynes)
The Gulag Archipelago Volume II(Solzhenitsyn)

planned reading for 09

The Golden Compass
The Illyad
The Road
2666
The Divine Comedy (ok at least inferno, Mandlebaum translation for sure his metamorphoses of ovid translation was brilliant)
The Death of Ivan Illyach
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
The Divinity Student
Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamozov

poetry in 09

I don't know: my obsession with Four Quartets continues. Maybe I'll finish memorizing it in 09. Then I can move on.

[thefourthwall]

Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamozov


I like Crime and Punishment better.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I like Crime and Punishment better.

That's two of us, though really, you can't go wrong with either.

[Melville]

I like Crime and Punishment better.
Karamazov>Notes from Underground>Crime and Punishment>pretty much everything else. As far as narrative structure goes, Crime and Punishment is much better, but the breadth and depth of the themes and characters explored in Karamazov can't be beat.

[lovejuice]

i actually like the idiot more than c&p. haven't read brother k., but will do eventually. the possessed is d.'s only novel that i find underwhelming.

[thefourthwall]

That's two of us, though really, you can't go wrong with either.

True true. The Brothers Karamazov is certainly excellent.

[SirNewt]

Karamazov>Notes from Underground>Crime and Punishment>pretty much everything else. As far as narrative structure goes, Crime and Punishment is much better, but the breadth and depth of the themes and characters explored in Karamazov can't be beat.

I've a copy of that I'll be getting to this year as well actually.

EDIT: And of course I'll be rereading some Borges. How could I not?