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Melville
12-27-2007, 05:31 PM
Following Thirdy's suggestion in another thread, here are all the books I finished this year, with ratings out of 10:

1. Mysteries (Knut Hamsun) - 9
2. Being & Time (Heidegger) - 10
3. The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus) - 7.5
4. Story of the Eye (Bataille) - 8
5. Aurelia (Nerval) - 7
6. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History (Foucault) - 7.5
7. Dead Souls (Gogol) - 8 for the first half, 3 for the second half
8. The Aeneid (Virgil) - 10
9. The Robbers (Schiller) - 6.5
10. Knowledge of Meaning (Larson and Segal) - 2.5
11. The Heart of the Matter (Graham Greene) - 8
12. The Idiot (Dostoevsky) - 9
13. Fathers & Sons (Turgenev) - 6
14. The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov) - 6.5
15. Language, Truth, and Logic (Ayer) - 5
16. Hymns to the Night (Novalis) - 6
17. The Love Suicides at Amijima (Chikamatsu Monzaemon) - 8.5
18. Account of My Hut (Kamo Chomei) - 10
19. Beowulf (Anonymous) - 7
20. The Children of Hurin (Tolkien) - 9
21. Historia Calamitatum and Personal Letters (Abelard and Heloise) - 6
22. Temple of the Gold Pavillion (Mishima) - 9.5
23. As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams (Anonymous) - 6.5
24. Critique of Practical Reason (Kant) - 7.5
25. Of Grammatology (Derrida) - 9
26. The City of the Sun (Tomasso Campanella) - 4
27. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) - 9
28. Swann’s Way (Proust) - 9.5
29. City of the Dreadful Night (James Thomson) - 7
30. Antigone (Sophocles) - 8
31. Ethics of Ambiguity (Simone de Beauvoir) - 7
32. Remains of the Day (Ishiguro) - 7
33. A Hero of Our Time (Lermontov) - 8
34. Eugene Onegin (Pushkin) -10
35. Atonement (McEwan) - 6
36. Travel Writings (Basho) - 7
37. Being and Nothingness (Sartre) - 10
38. Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu) - 6

Ezee E
12-27-2007, 05:48 PM
If a book doesn't get past a 6 for me, I probably won't finish it.

Books that I know I finished this year, or rather ones that were in the past quarter of the year as I don't really keep track of these things:
The Exorcist
No Country For Old Men
Candy Girl
I Am Legend
The Lovely Bones
Haunted

I swear there's at least two others. I'll add The Road to that list too in a week or so.

Benny Profane
12-27-2007, 05:52 PM
Following Thirdy's suggestion in another thread, here are all the books I finished this year, with ratings out of 10:


7. Dead Souls (Gogol) - 8 for the first half, 3 for the second half
14. The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov) - 6.5
32. Remains of the Day (Ishiguro) - 7
35. Atonement (McEwan) - 6


Agreed on Dead Souls, though my low rating is mostly because it's so incomplete. But I'd like to know why the "low" scores on the other three, when you get a chance.

Raiders
12-27-2007, 06:08 PM
Road, The (McCarthy) 91
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The (Murakami) 65
March, The (Doctorow) 83
Suttree (McCarthy) 87
Comfort of Strangers, The (McEwan) 69
Lullaby (Palahniuk) 42
Autumn of the Patriarch, The (Marquez) 94
Lovely Bones, The (Sebold) 70
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (Oe) 85
Jazz (Morrison) 77
Golden Age, The (Vidal) 39
Waves, The (Woolf) 62
Candide (Voltaire) 81

There were a couple more I started and didn't finish and probably one or two I read and am forgetting.

These are also just the first time reads. I re-read a couple of books as well.

Ezee E
12-27-2007, 06:19 PM
Ah, that's right. I read "Haunted" by Palahniuk and thought it was a writer trying to be Palahniuk pretty much. Also read "I Am Legend" and "The Lovely Bones"

Benny Profane
12-27-2007, 06:27 PM
The Great

1. The Road -- Cormac McCarthy
2. Darkness at Noon -- Arthur Koestler
3. V. -- Thomas Pynchon
4. The Remains of the Day -- Kazuo Ishiguro
5. The Devil in the White City -- Erik Larson
6. Gravity's Rainbow -- Thomas Pynchon
7. The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Very Good

8. The Plague -- Albert Camus
9. Going to Meet the Man -- James Baldwin
10. Under the Banner of Heaven -- Jon Krakauer
11. A Handful of Dust -- Evelyn Waugh
12. The Crying of Lot 49 -- Thomas Pynchon

The Good

13. Henderson the Rain King -- Saul Bellow
14. No Country for Old Men -- Cormac McCarthy
15. Vineland -- Thomas Pynchon
16. Rabbit is Rich -- John Updike
17. Factotum -- Charles Bukowski
18. The Sportswriter -- Richard Ford
19. The Blind Side -- Michael Lewis
20. Candide -- Voltaire

The Somewhat Decent

21. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- Robert Heinlein
22. Good to Great -- Jim Collins
23. Blink -- Malcolm Gladwell
24. Dead Souls -- Nikolai Gogol




I can't say I read a bad book all year. All in all this has been a truly spectacular year for me, reading-wise.

Duncan
12-27-2007, 07:17 PM
In no particular order:

The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
Fear and Trembling - Kierkegaard
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
The Odyssey - Homer
The Koran - An illiterate dude's followers
No God but God - Aslan
Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut
Steppenwolf - Hesse
Herzog - Bellow
Faust - Goethe
Dubliners - Joyce
Life of Pi - Martel
Screened Out - Baudrillard
Dharma Bums - Kerouac
Some book of poems - Ginsberg
Book of Longing - Cohen
The Children of Hurin - Tolkien
Notes from Underground - Dostoevsky
Moby Dick - Melville
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Carroll
Nietzsche reader - Nietzsche
Civilization and its Discontents - Freud
Heretics of Dune - Herbert
Anil's Ghost - Ondaatje
Walden - Thoreau
A Universal History of Iniquity - Borges
Ficciones - Borges
Dreamtigers - Borges
The Remains of the Day - Ishiguro
Sculpting in Time - Tarkovsky

There are definitely a few more lying around my dorm room down in New York that I'm just forgetting at the moment. Edit: Like the Borges stuff I just added. Edit2: And now the Ishiguro.

Duncan
12-27-2007, 07:19 PM
Hmm, so I guess that's only about a book every two weeks. Not very good. It's been a busy year though.

Thirdy
12-27-2007, 07:24 PM
In no particular order (English titles where available):

Books read in 2007

1. The Children of H̼rin РJ. R. R. Tolkien
2. Camino del Sur РC̩sar Vidal
3. El s̩ptimo velo РJuan Manuel de Prada
4. The Sea – John Banville
5. Travels in the Scriptorium – Paul Auster
6. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
7. Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
8. Leviathan – Paul Auster
9. Ocean Sea – Alessandro Baricco
10. When We Were Orphans – Kazuo Ishiguro
11. Le Cimetière marin - Paul Valéry
12. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
13. Herzog – Saul Bellow
14. The Guiltess – Hermann Broch
15. Agnes Grey РCharlotte Br̦nte
16. Schopenhauer’s Telescope – Gerard Donovan
17. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
18. The Plague – Albert Camus
19. Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
20. La ciudad y los perros – Mario Vargas Llosa
21. Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse
22. The World According to Garp – John Irving
23. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
24. The Great Gatsby (2nd) – F. Scott Fitzgerald
25. The Bell Jar (2nd) – Sylvia Plath
26. The Go-Between – L. P Hartley
27. Dubliners – James Joyce
28. Cat’s Cradle (2nd) – Kurt Vonnegut
29. Orlando (2nd) – Virginia Woolf
30. The Neon Bible – John Kennedy Toole
31. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
32. The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
33. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel GarcÃ*a Márquez)
34. Niebla – Miguel de Unamuno
35. Elephant and Other Stories – Raymond Carver
36. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
37. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
38. The Interpretation of Murder – Jed Rubenfeld
39. Answered Prayers – Truman Capote
40. Other Voices, Other Rooms – Truman Capote
41. The Years – Virginia Woolf
42. GreguerÃ*as – Ramón Gómez de la Serna
43. El caballero del hongo gris - Ramón Gómez de la Serna
44. The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
45. The Moviegoer – Walter Percy
46. The Sportswriter – Richard Ford
47. Independence Day – Richard Ford
48. Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig
49. Letter from an Unknown Woman – Stefan Zweig
50. Las ratas – Miguel Delibes
51. The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life - Armand M. Nicholi
52. Atonement (2nd) – Ian McEwan
53. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
54. They Came Like Swallows – William Maxwell
55. Don’t Call It Night – Amos Oz
56. The Life of Hunger - Amélie Nothomb
57. The Character of Rain - Amélie Nothomb
58. Fatelessness – Imre Kertesz
59. La lluvia amarilla – Julio Llamazares
60. Bestiario – Julio Cortázar

Thirdy
12-27-2007, 07:29 PM
Waves, The (Woolf) 62

Please explain the rating. This is probably my favourite book of all time.

lovejuice
12-27-2007, 09:32 PM
The Somewhat Decent

21. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- Robert Heinlein
24. Dead Souls -- Nikolai Gogol


i'm curious about these two entries. care to offer your thought.

Gogol is the father of socialist realism in literature which, in my book, equals shit. but since he's most revered, i always want to check his work out. (perhaps only so i can pan down the whole movement.)

i feel somewhat responsible for MOON since i remember i'm the one who recommend it to you.

Melville
12-27-2007, 10:48 PM
Agreed on Dead Souls, though my low rating is mostly because it's so incomplete. But I'd like to know why the "low" scores on the other three, when you get a chance.
Yeah, my rating for Dead Souls is entirely due to its incompleteness. The Master and Margarita was amusing, but its satire didn't have much weight. I think I must have missed some essential feature of it, since I wasn't really sure what it was saying about Jesus and Pontius Pilate. Remains of the Day seemed a bit too obvious in its technique. If the story is going to be told through subtext, I don't think the subtext should be so blatant. Atonement was too drawn out, its characters seemed too much to be serving purely literary purposes, and it didn't have much to say that interested me.

However, as you implied, I actually gave all of these books positive scores. I didn't really dislike any of them.


Gogol is the father of socialist realism in literature which, in my book, equals shit. but since he's most revered, i always want to check his work out. (perhaps only so i can pan down the whole movement.)
I have never heard him referred to in that way. His work is mostly absurd comedy consisting of layers of irony and satire. He was a major influence on Dostoevsky, who's dark humor is very similar to his. I think my favorite thing by him is his short story The Nose. Dead Souls is terrific as long as you stop with the first part.

lovejuice
12-28-2007, 12:20 AM
I have never heard him referred to in that way. His work is mostly absurd comedy consisting of layers of irony and satire. He was a major influence on Dostoevsky, who's dark humor is very similar to his. I think my favorite thing by him is his short story The Nose. Dead Souls is terrific as long as you stop with the first part.


yeah. i'm think of Maxim Gorky. :confused: :frustrated: sometimes it's kinda hard to keep all those names straight in your head.

Kurosawa Fan
12-28-2007, 12:25 AM
I'll post my list either tonight or tomorrow. It's on my laptop, which I usually only use at work.

lovejuice
12-28-2007, 12:55 AM
i'll do favorite book(s) from each month.

jan: "cosmicomic" with "i, claudius" comes very close second.

feb: tennessee williams' memoirs

mar: foucaults's "discipline & punish"

apr: hemingway's "the first forty-nine stories"

may: thebes at war

june: three ways tie among "the power and the glory", "darkness at noon", and "what we talk about when we talk about love"

july: roberston davie's "high spirits"

aug: the remains of the days

sep: the adventures of augie march

oct: the tale of two cities

nov: kiss of the spider woman and two other plays

dec: derrida's "the politics of friendship"

Melville
12-28-2007, 01:04 AM
yeah. i'm think of Maxim Gorky. :confused: :frustrated: sometimes it's kinda hard to keep all those names straight in your head.
Well, I have heard Gogol referred to as the father of social realism, so calling him the father of socialist realism sounded somewhat plausible. But Gorky makes much more sense.

Qrazy
12-28-2007, 01:14 AM
yeah. i'm think of Maxim Gorky. :confused: :frustrated: sometimes it's kinda hard to keep all those names straight in your head.

You fail at life. Your PhD and massive reading lists are now worth nothing. Better luck next incarnation.

transmogrifier
12-28-2007, 01:30 AM
Off the top of my head:

The Road - 6
The Kite Runner - 6
Into the Wild - 8
Into Thin Air - 8.5
The God Delusion - 8
Director's Cut - 3

Mysterious Dude
12-28-2007, 03:21 AM
The Epic of Gilgamesh ***
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater **½
The Scarlet Letter ***
The Trial ***
Death Comes for the Archbishop **
The Stranger ****
Invisible Man ***½
Lord of the Flies ****
Things Fall Apart ****
A Long Way Gone ****

More books than I've ever read in a year, I'm sure. I expect to do even better next year.

I may finish Heart of Darkness before the year is out, as well.

Wryan
12-28-2007, 03:38 AM
In "honor" of Beowulf coming to the big screen this past year, I'd suggest John Gardner's Grendel to all of you if you haven't read it and especially if you've read Beowulf. It's such a slick work. Pretty potent at times. Especially an Unferth scene that comes outta nowhere and cracks you across the face.

transmogrifier
12-28-2007, 05:00 AM
Now that I'm home, a fuller list, now that I can see my bookshelf:

Fiction:
The March - 8
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - 8
The Big Sleep - 7.5
A Scanner Darkly - 7
The Road - 6
The Kite Runner - 6
Little Children - 5.5
The Director's Cut - 3

Non-Fiction:
Consilience - 7.5
Into the Wild - 8
Into Thin Air - 8.5
The God Delusion - 8
Cosmos - 9
Blink - 7.5
Undercover Economist - 8
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors - 7.5
The Blind Watchmaker - 7.5
Constants of Nature - can't remember
How to Dunk a Donut - 8
The Tipping Point - 8.5
Broca's Brain - 7.5

Benny Profane
12-28-2007, 05:48 PM
i feel somewhat responsible for MOON since i remember i'm the one who recommend it to you.

I really don't remember too much about it, other than I felt it was a little over-detailed, and the ending was somewhat abrupt. It's not that I didn't like the book, it's just not one of the best I read this year. I would recommend it to any fan of science-fiction, most definitely.

Sycophant
12-28-2007, 05:55 PM
By far the best thing I read this year was Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events saga. It's just about the best thing I've ever read.

What I read this year (none of which I disliked):

All 13 books of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
The Golden Compass/Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman
Salmonella Men on Planet Porno by Yasutaka Tsutsui
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
An Insider's View of Mormon Origins by Grant H. Palmer
The Trial by Franz Kafka
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

Uh... I'll add more if I remember them. I know I actuallky read a good deal more than this.

Fezzik
12-28-2007, 06:32 PM
I really haven't read that many books this year, considering my past years, but...

Out of the Silent Planet (Lewis) [2nd] - 95
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Rowling) -85
A Clash of Kings (Martin) - 85
A Storm of Swords (Martin) - 98
A Feast for Crows (Martin) - 80
Beach Music (Conroy) [4th] - 98
Wicked (Maguire) - 90

...lots of popular lit there. Ah well, I am who I am :)

(and yes, I'm a Conroy fanboy)

Stay Puft
12-29-2007, 05:29 PM
Being a full time student means reading lists pouring out of every orifice, so most of this was for school, including a class in popular fiction which was lame.

Utopia (Thomas More)
The Unfortunate Traveller (Thomas Nashe)
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (John Lyly)
A Small Place (Jamaica Kincaid)
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
The History of Sexuality (Michel Foucault)
Theories of Popular Culture (Dominic Strinati)
The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
Star (Danielle Steel)
A Million Little Pieces (James Frey)
Blood Shot (Sara Paretsky)
Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding)
Death of a Transvestite (Ed Wood)
Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons)
Bone (Jeff Smith)
Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut)
Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)
Venus in Furs (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch)
Justine (Marquis de Sade)

And more textbooks and course packages and essay collections (etc.) than you can shake a stick at - assuming you are prone to shaking sticks at things.

As usual, I hardly got around to much of what I had wanted or planned, but then reading the entire run of Bone over the summer is enough to satiate.

dreamdead
12-29-2007, 08:18 PM
Discounting a bucketload of 17th century plays, this year's reading was impressively small:

Atonement (McEwan) ****
A Personal Matter (Oe) *** 1/2
Dispatches (Herr) ***

I'm assuming that one of the grad classes in the next year will be a seminar class, so hopefully things will improve. Similarly, The Road and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber will be read early next year since I'm teaching them.

jesse
12-30-2007, 03:53 AM
I looked at my list for this year and my heart sank--by far the smallest amount of books read since I started keeping track in college. :cry:

*also eagerly awaits SpaceOddity's list*

ledfloyd
12-30-2007, 04:28 AM
I loved The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem and The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. Atonement was really good. I can't remember if I read anything else I really loved this year. I reread a ton of books. I think I read the Road last year.

lovejuice
12-30-2007, 05:24 PM
*also eagerly awaits SpaceOddity's list*

indeed. i feel like i'm attending 18th century french ball where we flaunt reading lists and Space is some sorta Madame de Pompadour.

SpaceOddity
12-30-2007, 06:50 PM
indeed. i feel like i'm attending 18th century french ball where we flaunt reading lists and Space is some sorta Madame de Pompadour.

*hates that bitch*

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ppGWrzJ0yBI

*rests case*

Lucky
12-30-2007, 11:50 PM
This was not a good reading year for me.

Il Visconte Dimezzato - Italo Calvino
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis - Ugo Foscolo
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Remains of the Day - Ishiguro
The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
Fifth Business - Robertson Davies

Kurosawa Fan
12-31-2007, 03:48 PM
My list, a bit disappointing at only 26:

The Best:

1. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
2. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
3. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
4. Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
5. No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
6. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
7. The Night Gardener - George Pelecanos

The Great:

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
9. On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
10. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
11. Death Be Not Proud – John Gunther
12. Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero – David Maraniss
13. Post Office – Charles Bukowski
14. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
15. About a Boy – Nick Hornby
16. The Stranger – Albert Camus

The Good

17. Beasts of No Nation - Uzodinma Iweala
18. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
19. I Love You, Beth Cooper – Larry Doyle
20. Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu
21. City of Bones - Michael Connelly

The Meh

22. A Grief Observed – C.S. Lewis
23. Killing Floor – Lee Child
24. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

The Ugly

25. The Ruins – Scott Smith
26. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay

Raiders
12-31-2007, 04:21 PM
The Ugly

25. The Ruins – Scott Smith


Man, the second half of that book must really suck. I remember you saying some good things about it for a while.

Kurosawa Fan
12-31-2007, 04:45 PM
Man, the second half of that book must really suck. I remember you saying some good things about it for a while.

It's down there mainly for wasted potential. It could have been fantastic, but it's so needlessly drawn out that it becomes insufferable at points, and feels way too repetitive. It has some brilliant moments, but overall it was a severe disappointment. It's a shame too, because A Simple Plan was wonderful. The Ruins could make a great 90 minute film, though the trailer for the film looks pretty terrible.

origami_mustache
12-31-2007, 04:58 PM
I need to read more...

Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman
Haunted
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Capricorn
Less Than Zero

SpaceOddity
01-01-2008, 07:49 AM
I read less every year, too. Alas.

Isabel Allende - Eva Luna
Anne Bronte - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Isabel Allende - The Stories of Eva Luna
Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
Angela Carter - Nights at the Circus
Edith Wharton - The Glimpses of the Moon
Isabelle Allende - Daughter of Fortune
Salman Rushdie - Shalimar the Clown
Helene Grimaud - Wild Harmonies
Robertson Davies - Fifth Business
Andrei Makine - A Life's Music
Isabel Allende - Portrait in Sepia
Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Rebecca West - Harriet Hume
Salman Rushdie - The Ground Beneath her Feet
Christopher Isherwood - Goodbye to Berlin
Thomas Mann - Death in Venice
Robertson Davies - Murther & Walking Spirits
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
William Goldman - The Princess Bride
Robertson Davies - The Rebel Angels
Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
C.S. Lewis - A Grief Observed
Robertson Davies - What's Bred in the Bone
C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man
Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew
Rebecca West - Henry James
Henry James - The Aspern Papers
Leonard Cohen - Beautiful Losers
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch - Venus in Furs
Turgenev - First Love
Henry James - The Altar of the Dead
Jeanette Winterson - The Passion
Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone
Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means
Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet (re-read)
Jeanette Winterson - Sexing the Cherry
Angela Carter - The Magic Toyshop
Isak Dinesen - Winter's Tales
Isak Dinesen - Ancedotes of Destiny
Carson McCullers - The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Edith Wharton - Summer
Flaubert - A Simple Heart
Iris Murdoch - The Time of the Angels
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
Rebecca West - The Birds fall Down
Isak Dinesen - Ehrengard
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Salman Rushdie - The Moor's Last Sigh
Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
L.M. Montgomery - Anne of Windy Poplars
Sir Walter Scott - Ivanhoe
Philip Pullman - Northern Lights
Philip Pullman - The Subtle Knife
Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned
Martin Amis - Money
Henry Fielding - Tom Jones
J.G. Ballard - Vermilion Sands
Dostoyevsky - The Idiot
Jeanette Winterson - Written on the Body
Scarlett Thomas - The End of Mr. Y
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife
Bohumil Hrabal - Too Loud a Solitude
Jeanette Winterson - The Powerbook
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
Dante - Inferno
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (1818 text)
Turgenev - Fathers and Sons
Richard Matheson - I am Legend
Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
Martin Amis - Time's Arrow
Philip K. Dick - Valis
Dickens - Great Expectations (re-read)
Daphne du Maurier - Frenchman's Creek
Chekhov - About Love and Other Stories
Daphne du Maurier - Jamaica Inn
Iris Murdoch - The Unicorn
Jean Cocteau - Les Enfants Terribles
Euripides - Medea
Iris Murdoch - The Bell
Euripides - Hecabe
Zola - La Bete Humaine
Euripides - Electra
Jean Genet - Our Lady of the Flowers
Euripides - The Trojan Women
Thomas Hardy - Far from the Madding Crowd
Nicholas Meyer - The Seven Percent Solution
Graham Greene - The Quiet American
Elizabeth Gaskell - Mary Barton
Euripides - Heracles
Knut Hamsun - Pan
Andrew Lang - The Pink Fairy Book
George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss
J.G. Ballard - The Day of Forever
Dickens - Bleak House

Thirdy
01-01-2008, 09:32 AM
Most impressive, as always. Congratulations.

Boner M
01-01-2008, 12:04 PM
Pretty tiny list, as usual.

Cormac McCarthy - The Road
James Joyce - Dubliners
Kenneth Anger - Hollywood Babylon
Jonathan Rosenbaum - Movie Wars
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka - In the Penal Colony
Charles Bukowski - Post Office
Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip
Raymond Carver - Short Cuts
Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye

Also read half of Blood Meridian and Kafka on the Shore, but got sidetracked with each (former I got tired of, KOTS I just didn't continue with for no apparent reason, since I liked it well enough).

SpaceOddity
01-01-2008, 01:52 PM
Most impressive, as always. Congratulations.

Thanks. :)

My most loved was Notre-Dame and most loathed was Tom Jones.

jesse
01-01-2008, 04:28 PM
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned I didn't know you had read this... what did you think?

I've gotten about 2/3 through, put it down and never picked it up again. Two times actually, about a year apart.

And yes, impressive as always. My half of the bargain will be up tonight.

SpaceOddity
01-01-2008, 05:38 PM
I didn't know you had read this... what did you think?

I've gotten about 2/3 through, put it down and never picked it up again. Two times actually, about a year apart.

And yes, impressive as always. My half of the bargain will be up tonight.

Oh, I preferred it to Gatsby and Tender. Yay for grey-eyed heroines. I liked Gloria...

"Very few of the people who accentuate the futility of life remark the futility of themselves. Perhaps they think that in proclaiming the evil of living they somehow salvage their own worth from the ruin - but they don't, even you and I..."

"Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. Trying to preserve a century by keeping its relics up to date is like keeping a dying man alive by stimulants."


*awaits your list* :p

Thirdy
01-01-2008, 08:23 PM
Tender is the Night is my favourite Fitzgerald. Heartbreaking and beautiful.

ledfloyd
01-01-2008, 08:51 PM
i think i read tender as the night this year. i love it either way. "i know myself, but that is all." is one of the greatest last lines ever. perhaps THE greatest.

maybe this year i'll keep track of all the books i read for a change.

jesse
01-02-2008, 01:28 AM
Oh, I preferred it to Gatsby and Tender. Yay for grey-eyed heroines. I liked Gloria... Well then I'll have to give it another shot...

jesse
01-02-2008, 01:39 AM
The bad: this is the smallest number of books read since I started keeping track in college. And I probably never started and never finished so many books either as I did this last year.

The good: I did read more the theory this year than I have since I finished school.

New books read. Favorites get a star.

The Western Canon - Harold Bloom*
Decreation - Anne Carson*
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst
Why Read the Classics? - Italo Calvino
Inferno - Dante* (first time in its entirety)
Les Grandes Meaulnes - Alain-Fournier
Emma - Jane Austen*
Medea - Euripides
Gilgamesh - Unknown
Oedipus Rex - Sophocles

Revisiting old favorites:

The Hours - Michael Cunningham
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

Books I started and never finished, that I remember offhand:

She Came to Stay - Simone de Beauvoir
Wuthering Heights - Charlotte Bronte
Men in the Off Hours - Anne Carson
After Theory - Terry Eagleton
Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman - Ruth Gruber

Acapelli
01-02-2008, 01:52 AM
Prepare for a very tiny list.

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (McNeil & McCain)
Franny and Zooey (Salinger)
Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut)
Shopgirl (Martin)
A Long Way Down (Hornby)
The Areas of My Expertise (Hodgman)
Box Office Poison (Robinson)
Naked (Sedaris)

Didn't finish (but will eventually):
Infinite Jest (Wallace)
Breakfast on Pluto (McCabe)

SpaceOddity
01-02-2008, 07:52 AM
Books I started and never finished, that I remember offhand:
Wuthering Heights


*scowls*

monolith94
01-02-2008, 10:06 PM
Venus in Furs (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch)


Hey, I read this in 2007 too! What'd you think?

monolith94
01-02-2008, 10:08 PM
38. Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu) - 6

The idea of rating a text like this strikes me as, frankly, bizzare and reductionist. It's strange that I can feel so at ease rating films, but the idea of rating books fills me with disgust.

For the record, I'd give this one a 10, and beg to disagree with you. I mean, would you assign a number grade to The Koran? The Bible? The Zohar?

Milky Joe
01-02-2008, 10:28 PM
The idea of rating a text like this strikes me as, frankly, bizzare and reductionist. It's strange that I can feel so at ease rating films, but the idea of rating books fills me with disgust.

For the record, I'd give this one a 10, and beg to disagree with you. I mean, would you assign a number grade to The Koran? The Bible? The Zohar?

Ha... yeah I'd give the Bible maybe a 4. Too convoluted... too... preachy, ya know?

monolith94
01-02-2008, 10:47 PM
My list of books read in 2007 is on my downstair's computer. I read around 36, depending on what you'd count as full books.

Duncan
01-02-2008, 11:11 PM
Been a couple years, but I remember the Tao Te Ching being exceptionally cryptic. I liked descriptions of it better than the text itself.

Melville
01-03-2008, 04:13 AM
The idea of rating a text like this strikes me as, frankly, bizzare and reductionist. It's strange that I can feel so at ease rating films, but the idea of rating books fills me with disgust.

For the record, I'd give this one a 10, and beg to disagree with you. I mean, would you assign a number grade to The Koran? The Bible? The Zohar?
Yeah, the rating is kind of arbitrary. But I thought the philosophy was too simplistic, and, as Duncan noted, somewhat cryptic in style. (Yes, I'm aware that both the simplicity and the cryptic style are intentional and self-consistent.) I haven't read the whole of the Koran, and I'm not sure that I've even heard of the Zohar, but as for the Bible, Job, Ecclesiastes, the crucifixion, and Revelations get a 10; everything else is middlin'.


My list of books read in 2007 is on my downstair's computer. I read around 36, depending on what you'd count as full books.
I just listed everything of note, regardless of length. Some of the "books" that I listed are less than 20 pages long.

megladon8
01-03-2008, 04:49 AM
I'l ltry to compile my list in the next few days.

Duncan
01-03-2008, 05:44 AM
Man, I don't rate films or books, but I'd give Job a 1 just on principle. I honestly cannot understand how that book is considered to have something significant, or even simplistically noble to say about suffering.

Melville
01-03-2008, 06:06 AM
Man, I don't rate films or books, but I'd give Job a 1 just on principle. I honestly cannot understand how that book is considered to have something significant, or even simplistically noble to say about suffering.
That was my initial reaction as well. However, God's reasoning, that he is right to cause suffering because he's God, eventually won me over. But seriously, I think his argument, that his divine plan cannot be understood by mere mortals, is in the end his only plausible defence. Of course, whether or not that divine plan is worth the tears of one tortured child, as she beats her breast and cries out to dear Father God, is debatable (hopefully you catch the Dostoevsky reference).

Anyway, I love how Satan just walks into God's meeting (coming "from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it") and convinces him to torture Job and destroy his family.

Duncan
01-03-2008, 06:25 AM
That was my initial reaction as well. However, God's reasoning, that he is right to cause suffering because he's God, eventually won me over. But seriously, I think his argument, that his divine plan cannot be understood by mere mortals, is in the end his only plausible defence. Of course, whether or not that divine plan is worth the tears of one tortured child, as she beats her breast and cries out to dear Father God, is debatable (hopefully you catch the Dostoevsky reference).

Anyway, I love how Satan just walks into God's meeting (coming "from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it") and convinces him to torture Job and destroy his family.
Oh, I've read most everything Ivan says in that book at least twice.

The ending of Job is what infuriated me the most. It's as though that tortured child was magically given a bunch of dolls to play with, and everything was perfectly fine. I've read speculation that the ending was added on at some point. That seems likely to me.

Melville
01-03-2008, 07:50 AM
The ending of Job is what infuriated me the most. It's as though that tortured child was magically given a bunch of dolls to play with, and everything was perfectly fine. I've read speculation that the ending was added on at some point. That seems likely to me.
Yeah, that ending is pretty silly.

Kurosawa Fan
01-03-2008, 01:52 PM
I fall somewhere in between Melville and monolith on Tao Te Ching. I also read it this year, and I agree that at times it can be too cryptic, but I thought the simplicity was perfect. It's from a far less jaded time, and there were passages in there that made me wish we could all go back and live with that frame of mind. It may not be possible, but it is certainly ideal. I found most of the book very satisfying spiritually.

Mysterious Dude
01-03-2008, 02:33 PM
Giving ratings to particularly old works of literature does seem odd to me. I gave The Epic of Gilgamesh three out of four stars, but I'm not sure if I really feel that way. It's like giving a rating to a cave painting. It defies rating.

Melville
01-03-2008, 06:48 PM
I fall somewhere in between Melville and monolith on Tao Te Ching. I also read it this year, and I agree that at times it can be too cryptic, but I thought the simplicity was perfect. It's from a far less jaded time, and there were passages in there that made me wish we could all go back and live with that frame of mind. It may not be possible, but it is certainly ideal. I found most of the book very satisfying spiritually.
I don't think you can draw those historical conclusions from the philosophy in the Tao Te Ching. After all, Sun-Tzu's The Art of War was written around the same time and place. And do we really want to go back to the Warring States period of China? It wasn't exactly sunshine and lollipops.

Anyway, why do you say that Lao Tzu's frame of mind is ideal? He wishes for the extermination of knowledge, and he states that the populace should be uneducated. He has a perfectly reasonable metaphysical basis for this idealization of ignorance, but I can't say it strikes me as ideal.

Kurosawa Fan
01-03-2008, 08:42 PM
I don't think you can draw those historical conclusions from the philosophy in the Tao Te Ching. After all, Sun-Tzu's The Art of War was written around the same time and place. And do we really want to go back to the Warring States period of China? It wasn't exactly sunshine and lollipops.

Anyway, why do you say that Lao Tzu's frame of mind is ideal? He wishes for the extermination of knowledge, and he states that the populace should be uneducated. He has a perfectly reasonable metaphysical basis for this idealization of ignorance, but I can't say it strikes me as ideal.

By "go back and live that way", I didn't mean go back to the time when the text was written, I meant go back to the beginning of civilizations and start over with some of the philosophies of the Tao Te Ching front and center in our minds.

And I don't think it praises the extermination of knowledge, but rather the extermination of the importance of knowledge of others. It stresses focusing on knowing yourself, striving for enlightenment rather than wisdom. That to me is very important, and would go a long way to alleviating some of the problems in our culture.

Melville
01-03-2008, 09:22 PM
By "go back and live that way", I didn't mean go back to the time when the text was written, I meant go back to the beginning of civilizations and start over with some of the philosophies of the Tao Te Ching front and center in our minds.
Ah, that makes more sense.


And I don't think it praises the extermination of knowledge, but rather the extermination of the importance of knowledge of others. It stresses focusing on knowing yourself, striving for enlightenment rather than wisdom. That to me is very important, and would go a long way to alleviating some of the problems in our culture.
Where does the text encourage knowing oneself? The uncarved block should be thoughtless, shouldn't it?

"In governing the people, the sage empties their minds but fills their bellies... he always keeps them innocent of knowledge."

"Is it not because he is without thought of self that he is able to accomplish his private ends?"

"Are you capable of not knowing anything?"

"My mind is that of a fool—how blank."

"Exterminate learning and there will no longer be worries."

Kurosawa Fan
01-03-2008, 09:37 PM
Directly from the text:



Knowing others is wisdom;Knowing the self is enlightenment.Mastering others requires force;Mastering the self requires strength;He who knows he has enough is rich.Perseverance is a sign of will power.He who stays where he is endures.To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.

There are other passages I have highlighted in the book I bought, but this was the one I found after a quick search. When the "novel" speaks of knowledge, it's separated from enlightenment.

Kurosawa Fan
01-03-2008, 09:44 PM
To me, the text is all about enrichment of the spirit. It's about enlightenment, and there is no enlightenment without finding and knowing yourself. It stresses that material possessions can't and won't enrich your spirit, and knowledge of other people is irrelevant in life. It isn't fulfilling. It leads to jealousy, envy, and misery. I like this little blip I found while looking for passages:


Tao is nameless, goes beyond distinctions, and transcends language. Perhaps the Tao, like the Dharma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma), is what physicist David Bohm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm) means by "that which is", perfectly being what is, both all and nothing. "My words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice. Yet no one under heaven understands them; no one puts them into practice"

Melville
01-03-2008, 10:00 PM
There are other passages I have highlighted in the book I bought, but this was the one I found after a quick search. When the "novel" speaks of knowledge, it's separated from enlightenment.
Hm, I don't remember that line you quoted. Maybe our disagreement stems from differing translations. Where is that line in the book?

Anyway, given the underlying metaphysics of ineffability and nothingness, and the constant call to "embrace the void", be empty-minded, and so forth, it seems obvious to me that the enlightenment Lao Tzu presents is all about a passive, anti-intellectual mode of being. Self-knowledge would only come in as a quasi-Buddhist admission of one's own non-existence.

Kurosawa Fan
01-03-2008, 10:10 PM
Hm, I don't remember that line you quoted. Maybe our disagreement stems from differing translations. Where is that line in the book?


Could be. I have the Barnes and Noble edition. I'm not at home, so I'll have to check later and let you know.

Melville
01-03-2008, 10:11 PM
To me, the text is all about enrichment of the spirit. It's about enlightenment, and there is no enlightenment without finding and knowing yourself.
Tell that to the Buddhists and they'll decry you as a personalist. I don't think finding and knowing yourself is necessary for enlightenment.


It stresses that material possessions can't and won't enrich your spirit, and knowledge of other people is irrelevant in life. It isn't fulfilling. It leads to jealousy, envy, and misery. I like this little blip I found while looking for passages:
I think the text goes a whole lot further than just denouncing knowledge of other people. But even that is enough for me to strongly disagree with Lao Tzu's philosophy. Like it or not, our existence is intersubjective, and to say that knowledge of others is irrelevant in life is to deny the structure of life itself. In that case, Taoism is only one step away from Buddhism's denunciation of existence all together.

monolith94
01-04-2008, 12:03 AM
How can a person be in anyway considered enlightened if they do not know themselves? The meaning of enlightentment comes from Buddhism: the title of Buddha means the enlightened one, if my understanding of the religion is correct. It means that the Buddha achieved knowledge of his present and all past lives. This tradition is very much alive in contemporary society, this search to gain knowledge of past lives, and not all of it is Shirley Maclaine chicanery.

Melville
01-04-2008, 12:38 AM
How can a person be in anyway considered enlightened if they do not know themselves? The meaning of enlightentment comes from Buddhism: the title of Buddha means the enlightened one, if my understanding of the religion is correct. It means that the Buddha achieved knowledge of his present and all past lives. This tradition is very much alive in contemporary society, this search to gain knowledge of past lives, and not all of it is Shirley Maclaine chicanery.
Buddhism holds that the self doesn't exist. A "person" is simply a sequence of karma formations, which persist solely as a habitual manifestation of desire. Enlightenment is reached upon ceasing to desire and realizing that there is no self, at which point the karma formations and the cycle of reincarnation cease. In some sense this is knowing oneself, so I guess it's just a semantics issue.

lovejuice
01-04-2008, 04:40 PM
Jeanette Winterson - The Passion
Jeanette Winterson - Sexing the Cherry


i really love PASSION, but was turned down by ORANGE. is CHERRY worth reading? in fact should i give her another chance?




Isak Dinesen - Winter's Tales
Isak Dinesen - Ancedotes of Destiny
Isak Dinesen - Ehrengard


do you like her? the last time i did a top ten fav. author, she's number 10. now she's bumped off by robertson davies. i absolutely love certain stories in WINTER. haven't read DESTINY. and EHRENGARD is...what it's, i guess.



Iris Murdoch - The Unicorn
Iris Murdoch - The Bell


funny you manage to read two of her novels i haven't. what do you think of them? your opinion on the dame in general? she is my second favorite auther. (i'm actually now in the middle of cato and henry which is wonderful. if it turns into a mess in the end, i won't be too surprise though, knowing murdoch.)

SpaceOddity
01-04-2008, 09:38 PM
i really love PASSION, but was turned down by ORANGE. is CHERRY worth reading? in fact should i give her another chance?

Cherry's worth reading. But doesn't compare to The Passion.



do you like her? the last time i did a top ten fav. author, she's number 10. now she's bumped off by robertson davies. i absolutely love certain stories in WINTER. haven't read DESTINY. and EHRENGARD is...what it's, i guess.

Which stories did you like? I love The Dreaming Child & Peter and Rosa. The Diver was my fave from Anecdotes of Destiny. Ehrengard was meh.
What have you read by Robertson Davies?


funny you manage to read two of her novels i haven't. what do you think of them? your opinion on the dame in general? she is my second favorite auther. (i'm actually now in the middle of cato and henry which is wonderful. if it turns into a mess in the end, i won't be too surprise though, knowing murdoch.)

I preferred The Time of the Angels to both The Unicorn and The Bell. I don't adore her. Have you read most of hers?!?!?
*cowers at impossible feat*

lovejuice
01-04-2008, 10:03 PM
Which stories did you like? I love The Dreaming Child & Peter and Rosa. The Diver was my fave from Anecdotes of Destiny. Ehrengard was meh.

WINTER was about six years ago, but from my memory I like the first story, especially the blue jar which is a tale within that story. I like the one in which a mother has to do a hell of plowing to save her son. And I think I like Peter and Rosa. Is that the one in which

the lovers fall into the lake and die because they don't want to let go of each other's hold? :cry:


What have you read by Robertson Davies?

high spirits which is his collection of ghost stories. LOVE it. Deptford trilogy, and i just started on Cornish. finished REBEL.



I preferred The Time of the Angels to both The Unicorn and The Bell. I don't adore her. Have you read most of hers?!?!?
*cowers at impossible feat*

:P I only read half. in fact i haven't read ANGELS either, so this is like one eighth chance. :)

SpaceOddity
01-08-2008, 06:55 AM
WINTER was about six years ago, but from my memory I like the first story, especially the blue jar which is a tale within that story. I like the one in which a mother has to do a hell of plowing to save her son. And I think I like Peter and Rosa. Is that the one in which

the lovers fall into the lake and die because they don't want to let go of each other's hold? :cry:



Yep. *sniffs*
When are you posting your full list?
*nags*

lovejuice
01-08-2008, 06:21 PM
cut and paste from my blog

S. Freud's "The joke and its relation to the unconscious"
S. Zizek's "The Metastases of Enjoyment"
C. Mouffe's "The return of the political"
J. Derrida's "The politics of friendship"
C. Schmitt's "Political Theology" & "The Concept of the Political"
V. Woolf's "A Room of One's Own"
W. M. Miller Jr.'s "A Canticle for Leibowitz"
R. Davies's "The Rebel Angels"
J.M. Coetzee's "Foe"
M. Moorcock's "Behold the Man"
M. Puig's "Kiss of the Spider Woman and two other plays"
K. Johnson's "The Magician and the Cardsharp"
M. Foucault's "The History of Sexuality: an Introduction"
A. Bechdel's "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic"
C. Dicken's "The Tale of Two Cities"
P. Roth's "American Pastoral"
S. Plath's "The Bell Jar"
J. Fforde's "Lost in a Good Book"
J. J. Saer's "The Investigation"
S. Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March"
I. Dinesen's "Ehrengard"
O. Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
W. Percy's "The Moviegoer"
K. Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day"
I. Murdoch's "A Severed Head"
A. Carter's "The Magic Toyshop"
J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow"
T. Williams's "27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Short Plays"
R. Carver's "Cathedral"
R. Davies's "High Spirits"
S. Bedbury's "A New Brand World"
I. Calvino's "Hermit in Paris"
J. Bowles's "Plain Pleasures"
H. Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird"
M. Amis's "The Information"
T. Capote's "In Cold Blood"
G. Greene's "The Power and the Glory"
M. Atwood's "Dancing Girls"
A. Koestler's "Darkness at Noon"
R. Carver's "What We Talk about When We Talk about love"
A. S. Byatt's "Angels & Insects"
B. Friedman's "The Moral Consequences of Economic"
G. Grass's "The Gunter Grass Reader"
N. Frye's "The Secular Scripture"
P. Coelho's "The Valkyries"
N. Mahfouz's "Thebes at War"
F. Dostoevsky's "Demons"
E. Hemingway's "The First Forty-Nine Stories"
G. Swift's "Last Orders"
C. Caudwell's "Illusion and Reality"
N. West's "The Day of the Locust"
S. Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle"
T. Eagleton's "Literature Theory"
J. Sartre's "No Exit and Three Other Plays"
L. Althusser's "Lenin and Philosophy and Other Ess...
J. Piaget's "Structuralism"
J. Bowles's "Two Serious Ladies"
G. Lukacs's "The Historical Novel"
I. Murdoch's "The Sacred and Profane Love Machine"
M. Atwood's "Surfacing"
J. Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man"
U. Eco's "Six Walks in the Fictional Woods"
M. Foucault's "Discipline & Punish"
N. Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival"
C. Bukowski's "South of No North"
S. Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling"
I. Calvino's "The Path To The Spiders' Nests"
W. Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury"
T. Williams's "Memoirs"
F. Nietzsche's "Beyond Good & Evil"
A. Bester's "Virtual Unreality"
H. Bergson's "Matter and Memory"
R. Davies's "World of Wonders"
T. Williams's "The Glass Menagerie"/"A Streetcar Name Desire"
G. Grass's "Crabwalk"
G. Deleuze's "Francis Bacon"
R. Graves's "I, Claudius"
E. Graff's "Stepping Left"
J. Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies"
A. Camus's "The Myth of Sisyphus"
I. Calvino's "Cosmicomics"
A. Carter's "Wise Children"
C. Milosz's "The Captive Mind"

megladon8
01-09-2008, 01:45 AM
The first three may have been 2006, but I'm not sure. I just remember reading them recently, and I'm pretty sure they were my spring reading binge in 2007.

Everything after that, though, I'm certain of - and I've listed them in chronological order according to when I read them! :)

"Arthur & George" by Julian Barnes - 6
"Superfolks" by Robert Mayer - 5
"Coraline" by Neil Gaiman - 8
"Rose Madder" by Stephen King - 6.5
"Insomnia" by Stephen King - 8.5
"Pet Semetary" by Stephen King - 5.5
"The Word for World is Forest" by Ursula K. Le Guin - 7
"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card - 10
"A Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin - 8.5
"Scar Night" by Alan Campbell - 3

At this point, the disappointment that was "Scar Night" pretty much led me to giving up reading for a few months. But luckily I got back into it at the beginning of October, and read...

"The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger - 9
"Atonement" by Ian McEwan - 10
"The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman" by Angela Carter - 7.5
"Girlfriend in a Coma" by Douglas Coupland - 5.5
"Galactic Pot-Healer" by Philip K. Dick - 6.5
"I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson - 10
"Sputnik Sweetheart" by Haruki Murakami - 8.5
"Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 6.5
"The Tenant" by Roland Topor - 7.5
"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole - 9
"City of Glass" by Paul Auster - 9.5
"Falling Angel" by William Hjortsberg - 7
"Ghost Story" by Peter Straub - 5
"A Canticle for Liebowitz" by Walter M. Miller, Jr. - 8.5

Qrazy
01-09-2008, 04:46 AM
cut and paste from my blog


That's like a book every four or five days. You have to speed read right?

monolith94
01-09-2008, 12:48 PM
Why didn't you continue with George R.R. Martin, meg?

megladon8
01-09-2008, 03:40 PM
Why didn't you continue with George R.R. Martin, meg?


Well I didn't get the second, third, etc. books in the mail until my reading binge was pretty much already ruined by "Scar Night".

I definitely plan on reading the rest.

I also have the first of the "Malazan Books of the Fallen" - I believe it's called "Gardens of the Moon" - by Steven Eriksen to read. They were very highly recommended to me by my boss.

monolith94
01-10-2008, 02:07 AM
I'd recommend quickly rereading a game of thrones before moving onto the sequels, the plot in that series is so dense and there are so many characters.

In 2007 I read:

A Storm of Swords - George R. R. Martin
A Feast For Crows –George R. R. Martin
Teacher Man – Ian McEwan
The Mote In God’s Eye – Larry Niven & Pourelle
Good Life, Good Death – Gehlek Rimpoche
Dreams - C.G. Jung
The Horse & His Boy – C.S. Lewis
Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C.S. Lewis
The Silver Chair – C.S. Lewis
The Hellenistic Age – Peter Green
Paradigms Lost – John Simon
The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga – Swami Vishnu-Devananda
Shadow of the Torturer – Gene Wolfe
Galactic Pot-Healer – Philip K. Dick
Claw of the Conciliator – Gene Wolfe
The Twenty Greatest Philosophy Books - James Garvey
Dreamers of Dreams – John Simon
Sword of the Lictor – Gene Wolfe
Citadel of the Autarch – Gene Wolfe
Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip-Mining of American Culture
Venus In Furs – Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- J.K. Rowling
Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
Meetings With Remarkable Men – G.I. Gurdjieff
I Heard the Owl Call My Name – Margaret Craven
The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier
Beyond the Chocolate War – Robert Cormier
Wolf By The Ears – Ann Rinaldi
Holes – Louis Sachar
The Sandman: Endless Nights – Neil Gaiman
Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
Persepolis 2 – Marjane Satrapi
Enter 3 Witches – Caroline Cooney
Catcher In The Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
Valis – Philip K. Dick

Not bothering to include the textbooks I had to read for class. Didn't finish "Eva" by Peter Dickinson cause it sucked.

megladon8
01-10-2008, 02:17 AM
Yeh I think I will re-read "A Game of Thrones".

Back when I was reading it, I thought a lot of it was very Shakespearean. Sure, it takes place in a fantasy world, but it's completely character/plot driven. No cheesy sword-and-sorcery, dragons and damsels in distress stuff. It's quite dark and uncompromising.

Melville
01-10-2008, 06:06 AM
Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Is this any good? I have it on my giant reading list, but I'm not sure if I'd like it.



K. Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day"
Strange that so many of us read this last year.



N. West's "The Day of the Locust"

How was this?


That's like a book every four or five days. You have to speed read right?
Yeah, lovejuice and SpaceOddity are making the rest of us look like chumps.

lovejuice
01-10-2008, 06:22 AM
"The Day of the Locust" is a piece of post-modernist nonsense. i'm saying this as a complement if you know what i mean.

Qrazy
01-10-2008, 05:45 PM
"The Day of the Locust" is a piece of post-modernist nonsense. i'm saying this as a complement if you know what i mean.

Seriously though, with all the stuff on your plate how do you manage just the time to read so much? Did you ever do a speed reading course or at least apply speed reading techniques to get through a lot of material in a shorter amount of time?

lovejuice
01-10-2008, 05:54 PM
Seriously though, with all the stuff on your plate how do you manage just the time to read so much? Did you ever do a speed reading course or at least apply speed reading techniques to get through a lot of material in a shorter amount of time?

i am actually siamese twins.

well for one thing i don't need that much sleep, i guess. 5-6 hours a day is good. and i don't drive, i use public transportation, so each day i spend a lot of time at a bus stop and on a bus reading. and i am an hermestic type. i can do anything with unusual speed, but as said before i don't need to analyse or discuss books later on, so i just devour them in amount. i probably get from one book less than other people do.

Qrazy
01-10-2008, 08:25 PM
Ah k, I was wondering if you had any speed reading courses you could recommend my way.

lovejuice
01-10-2008, 08:42 PM
seem like a good time to quote the wood man.

"I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."

SpaceOddity
01-10-2008, 09:53 PM
I don't read quickly unless I'm enthralled. I got through Hunchback in one day, without confining myself to the house or reading into the night.

*loved Esmeralda*

*shakes fist at fate*

megladon8
01-11-2008, 12:57 AM
i am actually siamese twins.

well for one thing i don't need that much sleep, i guess. 5-6 hours a day is good. and i don't drive, i use public transportation, so each day i spend a lot of time at a bus stop and on a bus reading. and i am an hermestic type. i can do anything with unusual speed, but as said before i don't need to analyse or discuss books later on, so i just devour them in amount. i probably get from one book less than other people do.


I feel like you are my twin.

I, too, spend a lot of time reading on the bus - in fact, I probably won't read much (if at all) this weekend.

And I, too, rarely analyze a book whilst reading or even shortly after reading it. Most stories I appreciate at face value, unless I read them more than once - and it takes a really, really exceptional story to get me to read it twice or more.

I also don't retain a lot of what I read. For example, I don't really remember any of the character names from most of the books I read in the last 3-4 months, and some books I've even forgotten major plot points.

It's sad, but I can't really do anything about it. I've always been like that. And being on high doses of mind-altering anti-depressants doesn't really help the situation...

Melville
01-11-2008, 01:12 AM
I read spectacularly slowly (probably about 2 or 3 minutes per page, unless I'm reading something really light), so I've looked into speed reading. But it turns out to be based on reading without internal vocalization—basically just treating words as symbols, like the way I read math. That seems like a good idea when you're just reading to gather information and don't care about the "sound" of the writing, but I wouldn't want to read a novel that way. How do other people read? Do you internally vocalize, or do you treat words and sentences as purely symbolic?

D_Davis
01-11-2008, 01:13 AM
Public transportation is heaven for readers. I just read 75 pages of To Marry Medusa on the way home. I started the book today at lunch, and I'm almost half way done with it. A solid, uninterrupted hour can yield many turned pages. I stopped watching films a couple of months ago (the last movie I've seen is The Mist), and since then I've read ten books. With the two-hours per film I used to spend, I can read quite a bit. It's awesome.

megladon8
01-11-2008, 01:22 AM
I read spectacularly slowly (probably about 2 or 3 minutes per page, unless I'm reading something really light), so I've looked into speed reading. But it turns out to be based on reading without internal vocalization—basically just treating words as symbols, like the way I read math. That seems like a good idea when you're just reading to gather information and don't care about the "sound" of the writing, but I wouldn't want to read a novel that way. How do other people read? Do you internally vocalize, or do you treat words and sentences as purely symbolic?


I vocalize internally...but after about 7-10 pages of unitnterrupted reading, usually that voice goes away and it just becomes like a film in my mind.



Public transportation is heaven for readers. I just read 75 pages of To Marry Medusa on the way home. I started the book today at lunch, and I'm almost half way done with it. A solid, uninterrupted hour can yield many turned pages. I stopped watching films a couple of months ago (the last movie I've seen is The Mist), and since then I've read ten books. With the two-hours per film I used to spend, I can read quite a bit. It's awesome.

At least you left the world of film on a very high note! :)

Qrazy
01-11-2008, 02:30 AM
I read spectacularly slowly (probably about 2 or 3 minutes per page, unless I'm reading something really light), so I've looked into speed reading. But it turns out to be based on reading without internal vocalization—basically just treating words as symbols, like the way I read math. That seems like a good idea when you're just reading to gather information and don't care about the "sound" of the writing, but I wouldn't want to read a novel that way. How do other people read? Do you internally vocalize, or do you treat words and sentences as purely symbolic?

Supposedly once you get good at it you retain more than you would reading normally... but I'm guessing it's harder to analyze the meaning of the style this way like... how the length of the sentences/paragraphs/etc reflect upon the content expressed... word choice, etc, etc. But I don't really know.

lovejuice
01-11-2008, 03:00 AM
Supposedly once you get good at it you retain more than you would reading normally... but I'm guessing it's harder to analyze the meaning of the style this way like... how the length of the sentences/paragraphs/etc reflect upon the content expressed... word choice, etc, etc. But I don't really know.

close reading is totally not my thing, although i can see how valueable it mustbe, especially for a writer. perhaps one day i'll do it on my favorite book like the unbearable lightness, or the sea, the sea.

Duncan
01-11-2008, 06:16 PM
Really depends on the material for me. With Gravity's Rainbow it's taking a solid 3 minutes per page. Candide, on the other hand, took maybe 45 seconds per page. Part of that is simply the amount of text on each page.

jesse
01-12-2008, 02:18 AM
I read spectacularly slowly (probably about 2 or 3 minutes per page, unless I'm reading something really light), so I've looked into speed reading. But it turns out to be based on reading without internal vocalization—basically just treating words as symbols, like the way I read math. That seems like a good idea when you're just reading to gather information and don't care about the "sound" of the writing, but I wouldn't want to read a novel that way. How do other people read? Do you internally vocalize, or do you treat words and sentences as purely symbolic? I internally vocalize because the way the words and sentences sound is extremely important to me (and I've been trained to read closely by training and/or necessity). I consider myself a fairly fast reader, though I have no clue as to how long a page would take me to read. My short attention span is more of an issue, and is why I'm always in the middle of a number of books, reading twenty minutes/half hour of each before moving on to the another. I'm actually trying to move away from that, and I'm finding it easier to spend longer periods of time with one book.

If I just analyzed words as symbols I don't think I'd bother reading in the first place.

megladon8
01-12-2008, 02:27 AM
Really depends on the material for me. With Gravity's Rainbow it's taking a solid 3 minutes per page. Candide, on the other hand, took maybe 45 seconds per page. Part of that is simply the amount of text on each page.


Amount of text and the density of the text, definitely.

Plus, enjoyment/interest definitely has a big influence on the speed I read at. A book could have really large text (ie less) on each page, but if it's a chore for me to read it, it'll take longer because my mind will keep wandering.

SpaceOddity
01-12-2008, 08:25 AM
I vocalise internally and have the 'film in my head' at the same time.

Sycophant
01-12-2008, 06:33 PM
I vocalise internally and have the 'film in my head' at the same time.
Yeah, that's what I do. In special cases, not only am I running the "film in my head," I'm imagining what the actual adaptation would be like.

So, as a result, I read pretty slow and am a little embarrassed about it. Usually takes me about two minutes per page, though obviously that depends on the page.

megladon8
01-12-2008, 06:50 PM
Yeah, that's what I do. In special cases, not only am I running the "film in my head," I'm imagining what the actual adaptation would be like.

So, as a result, I read pretty slow and am a little embarrassed about it. Usually takes me about two minutes per page, though obviously that depends on the page.


I used to find it both embarassing and frustrating that it took me so long to read.

For some reason I've sped up in the last couple of years, though.

I just remember sitting in class in high school and watching people flip several pages during the time it took me to read one, and feeling really stupid.

It's a dumb thing to feel embarassed about, though. I'd give up my speed in an instant if it meant I could retain and more deeply understand what I read.

Qrazy
01-12-2008, 09:44 PM
I used to find it both embarassing and frustrating that it took me so long to read.

For some reason I've sped up in the last couple of years, though.

I just remember sitting in class in high school and watching people flip several pages during the time it took me to read one, and feeling really stupid.

It's a dumb thing to feel embarassed about, though. I'd give up my speed in an instant if it meant I could retain and more deeply understand what I read.

Yeah, that's why I hesitate to embrace or work on my speed reading. I can assume it's the case that it's true people who speed read retain more... but I don't see how they could possibly have a deeper understanding. I find it's incredibly beneficial to allow your mind to wander and reflect upon the meaning of the ideas, symbols, character psychology, etc while you're reading... to pursue a thought a passage inspires in you, even write it down and begin to extrapolate versus pushing it out of your head to return to the text and the author's thoughts. The most important element of reading for me is the given and take between the author's thoughts and my thoughts. I will certainly have thoughts on what I've read after I've read it as well, but to shut down the thoughts I have during the reading in favor of direct textual cognition... seems too limiting to me.

megladon8
01-12-2008, 10:19 PM
Well the thing with me is that I am not purposely trying to read quickly - it's just the natural speed I read at.

I actually find it quite distracting to consciously try to slow myself down.

It's kind of a catch-22 situation. If I keep reading quickly the way I do, I don't retain as much, and I don't have an understanding of what I'm reading much past the surface, or more obvious analogies.

But if I consciously slow myself down, I get frustrated and put the book down.

This is why I have a ridiculously hard time trying to read Shakespeare. I honestly, for the life of me, cannot understand that language at all.

I read "Hamlet" three or four times in high school, and "Romeo & Juliet" twice, and even after all those re-reads, I still had no idea what the hell was going on unless someone explained it to me.