...almost there

BossArky

One of my aims this year was to read a book a week for the year. Work and life are pretty busy so that is a lot given my lifestyle.

At the moment I am half way through my 47th... which leaves me with 5 more books to get through by Dec 31st after the current one.

Given that I have a number of exams I am looking for a number of short-ish books i.e. <200 pages so that I can rattle them off without having to cut into my studying time. I also want these books to be worthwhile reads. The latest one "Old Man & the Sea" at just under 100 pages is a good example.

Any suggestions?

Any one else keep a log what they have read (apart from trawling through the threads on here)?

# Title Author
1 Pandora's Star Peter F.Hamilton
2 Judas Unchained Peter F.Hamilton
3 Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt
4 Veronika decides to die Paulo Coelho
5 Day of the Locust Nathanael West
6 The Dream life of Balso Snell Nathanael West
7 The Great Gatsby F.Scott Fitzgerald
8 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
9 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
10 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking
11 Men are Mars, Women are from Venus John Gray
12 Thud Terry Pratchett
13 The Man in the High Castle Philip K.Dick
14 The Alchemist Paulo Coelho
15 The 5 people you meet in Heaven Mitch Albom
16 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
17 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
18 The Valkyries Paulo Coelho
19 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
20 The Subterranean Railway Christian Wolmar
21 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
22 Pincher Martin William Golding
23 Trainspotting Irvine Welsh
24 A Sunday at the pool in Kigali Gil Courtemanche
25 Cosmos Carl Sagan
26 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
27 The Player of Games Iain Banks
28 The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie
29 Pirates and Emperors, Old and New Noam Chomsky
30 The Rules of the Game Pierluigi Collina
31 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
32 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
33 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
34 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S.Thompson
35 Les Misérables Victor Hugo
36 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
37 The Phantom of the Opera Gaston Leroux
38 Macbeth William Shakespeare
39 Life of Pi Yann Martel
40 I Know You Got Soul Jeremy Clarkson
41 Million Dollar Habits Brian Tracy
42 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Malcolm X
43 East of Eden John Steinbeck
44 Mr Nice Howard Marks
45 Loosing my Virginity Richard Branson
46 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
47
48
49
50
51
52

MrJoeSoap

Haven't done it this year but will certainly try it next year. Great idea.

Your library must know you by name at this stage

I'd recommend Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer if you can get your hands on it.

TheNibbler

Great idea!
How about The Pearl by John Steinbeck? Good book and nice and short. Of Mice and Men is another of Steinbeck's that's pretty short but you'ver probably read it.

Esmereldina

TheNibbler wrote:

Great idea!
How about The Pearl by John Steinbeck? Good book and nice and short. Of Mice and Men is another of Steinbeck's that's pretty short but you'ver probably read it.

Have you read any Haruki Murakami yet? Most of his aren't so short (they be about 200 or more pages) but I read them really fast cause they are so compelling and also easy to read! Also one of is, i think East of the sun, north/south of the something else?? is only about 100 pages. I know that's not much help regarding title, but it's been years since I read it... I'm sure if you did a google search or suchlike for him, you'd come up with the title anyway...

DublinWriter

TheNibbler wrote:

Great idea!
How about The Pearl by John Steinbeck? Good book and nice and short.

I was going to suggest that myself - great book.

Another good short one to read would be 1984.

Or you could do the Rengeration Triology in three weeks?

But whatever you do, don't start Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake. It took me 5 years to read the former.

BossArky

Thanks for the ideas folks. I actually get all of my books on ebay as I find it easier than getting to a library. Following your responses I have placed bids on the following:

- Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer
- Of Mice and Men
- Dance Dance Dance (or something with a sheep in a waistcoat on the front) by Haruki Murakami

I've previously read The Pearl, 1984 and Ulysses :eek: Trying to limit myself to one Joyce a year or I'll go insane. Read Portrait of an Artist earlier in the year... so Finnegans Wake can wait for a while.

As for the Regeneration Trilogy - is it worth bothering with? Just read a quick review on amazon. I'm not too keen on war books having read various ones detailing the chasing of Bin Laden, the Taliban, plus the battle of Baghdad. The exception to the rule was Catch 22, which I suppose wasn't exactly a war book.

Backtoblack

BossArky wrote:

One of my aims this year was to read a book a week for the year. Work and life are pretty busy so that is a lot given my lifestyle.

At the moment I am half way through my 47th... which leaves me with 5 more books to get through by Dec 31st after the current one.

Given that I have a number of exams I am looking for a number of short-ish books i.e. <200 pages so that I can rattle them off without having to cut into my studying time. I also want these books to be worthwhile reads. The latest one "Old Man & the Sea" at just under 100 pages is a good example.

Any suggestions?

Any one else keep a log what they have read (apart from trawling through the threads on here)?

# Title Author
1 Pandora's Star Peter F.Hamilton
2 Judas Unchained Peter F.Hamilton
3 Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt
4 Veronika decides to die Paulo Coelho
5 Day of the Locust Nathanael West
6 The Dream life of Balso Snell Nathanael West
7 The Great Gatsby F.Scott Fitzgerald
8 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
9 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
10 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking
11 Men are Mars, Women are from Venus John Gray
12 Thud Terry Pratchett
13 The Man in the High Castle Philip K.Dick
14 The Alchemist Paulo Coelho
15 The 5 people you meet in Heaven Mitch Albom
16 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
17 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
18 The Valkyries Paulo Coelho
19 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
20 The Subterranean Railway Christian Wolmar
21 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
22 Pincher Martin William Golding
23 Trainspotting Irvine Welsh
24 A Sunday at the pool in Kigali Gil Courtemanche
25 Cosmos Carl Sagan
26 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
27 The Player of Games Iain Banks
28 The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie
29 Pirates and Emperors, Old and New Noam Chomsky
30 The Rules of the Game Pierluigi Collina
31 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
32 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
33 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
34 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S.Thompson
35 Les Misérables Victor Hugo
36 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
37 The Phantom of the Opera Gaston Leroux
38 Macbeth William Shakespeare
39 Life of Pi Yann Martel
40 I Know You Got Soul Jeremy Clarkson
41 Million Dollar Habits Brian Tracy
42 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Malcolm X
43 East of Eden John Steinbeck
44 Mr Nice Howard Marks
45 Loosing my Virginity Richard Branson
46 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
47
48
49
50
51
52

Funnily enough I've read a lot this year too.. many of the list above.
Perhaps something by John Steinbeck to get you to 52? The Pearl, The Red Pony? I've read both & can recommend and I have bought Of Mice and Men for my "To~Read~Stack"!
(Actually, I've just seen no 43 above, d'oh).
Is there a rule against two books by the same author?

Backtoblack

Note to self: must read entire thread before posting in future!

For next year though, i'm just finished reading "Enron, the rise and fall" - well worth a read! And I'm always one to mention "No logo" by Naomi Klein too! Brill book!

Esmereldina

hope you enjoy the murakami :cool:

tSubh Dearg

How about The Night Train by Martin Amis? Quite a good read. Bit odd but very short.

Chinafoot

The Dark by John McGahern is another good one.

hullaballoo

The Secret History by Donna Tartt is very good. Possibly the best book I've ever read. However, it's average length.

Edit: I don't mean 6" or anything, but it could take more than a week, that's all.

Skellington

Animal Farm by George Orwell. interesting read.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Diary - Choke - Fight Club all by Chuck Palahnuik
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

All shortish, good books.

nesf

Some recommendations mostly from my own reading this year:

Sub 200 pages:

Six Easy Pieces: Fundamentals of Physics Explained - Richard Feynman
Six Not-so-easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-time -Richard Feynman

Over 200 pages:
The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki
Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Concept of the Mind - Gilbert Ryle
Straw Dogs - John Gray

Over 500 pages:
The Blank Slate - Stephen Pinker
The Gardens of the Moon - Stephen Erikson (and the rest of the series)

There's a nice bit of variation in the above. If you are looking for two quick reads Feynman's two are perfect since you've already been dipping your toe into pop physics this year. I simply cannot recommend them enough with regard to getting your head around the basic and not so basic concepts in physics.

The others are all entertaining (to me anyways), you might find a couple good. I've been meaning to keep a log for years. Maybe it's a good new years resolution to keep.

28064212

PunK05 wrote:

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

All shortish, good books.

Hey, just read all five Hitchhiker books, you'll be sorted

Backtoblack

Had a look at my books last night -
"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury!!!!
Great read, short, perfect to get you closer to 52!!!

Fr Clint Power

I would second South of the Border, West of the Sun by Murakami. I would also suggest Of Love and Other Demons and Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Marquez, both are very short, and superb reads.

Fr Clint Power

Sorry forgot to mention Slaughter House 5 by Vonnegut another great short book.

BossArky

Ok, I have just put another round of bids on the following based upon the advice above:

• Chuck Palahniuk - Choke
• GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ - OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
• Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
• THE SECRET HISTORY..By Donna Tartt
• Enron The Rise and Fall Loren Fox
• GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ - OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
• Haruki Murakami, South of the border west of the sun

It is now up to the post man to deliver them asap.

Those which are not mentioned in this post I have either read before or couldn't find (at least at a reasonable price) on ebay.

Thanks

scojones

Best of luck dude! Please let us know how you get on.

nesf

This is what I remember reading this year but I know I'm forgetting a load of stuff (probably the crappier stuff that I've blanked from my memory!).

Nowhere close to a book a week I'm afraid. Part of the problem is me always having a "textbook" on the go I think. It definitely slows down your pace of reading. I also skim read a lot with academic stuff, i.e. I read enough to have a fairly good idea of what's being discussed and where it is if I ever want to get into depth about it. It definitely distorts my counting of books, there's about a dozen more I could add but at most I'd have skimmed a few chapters that interested me rather than actually sat down and read them. That and I've a bad habit of going on amazon or into a bookshop while I'm halfway through a book and picking up a few new ones that I proceed to start reading and then I go to the bookshop before I finish them...


Novels/Faction/etc
1. Common Sense, Science & Scepticism – Alan Musgraves
2. The Wisdom of Crowds – Alan Suroweiki
3. The Irish Pregnancy Book –
4. Gardens of the Moon – Steven Erikson
5. Deadhouse Gates – Steven Erikson
6. Midnight Tides – Steven Erikson
7. Memories of Ice – Steven Erickson
8. House of Chains – Steven Erickson
9. The Bonehunters – Steven Erickson
10. Quicksilver – Neal Stephenson
11. The System of the World – Neal Stephenson
12. The Confusion – Neal Stephenson
13. Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
14. Cyptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
15. Cobweb – Neal Stephenson
16. Interface – Neal Stephenson
17. Reinventing the Bazaar – John McMillan
18. Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
19. Freakanomics – Stephen Levitt
20. Six Easy Pieces – Richard Feynman
21. Six Not-so Easy Pieces – Richard Feynman
22. The Character of Physical Law – Richard Feynman
23. The Concept of Mind – Gilbert Ryle
24. Straw Dogs – John Gray
25. The Blank Slate – Stephen Pinker
26. The Pope's Children - David McWilliams





Textbooks/Collections of Essays/Skim Read
1. Essays by Kuhn, Popper & Miller
2. Essays by Hayek, von Mises, Freedman
3. Blackwell’s “The Companion to Theoretical Econometrics”
4. Blackwell’s “The Companion to the Philosophy of the Mind”
5. Blackwell’s “Companion to Philosophy”
6. Blackwell’s “Companion to Philosophical Logic”
7. Curd & Cover “Philosophy of Science”
8. Ethics – Spinoza
9. Nicomachean Ethics – Aristotle
10. The Languages of Logic - Samuel Guttenplan
11. An Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking – Salmon

Lafortezza

Bookmarked for teh reading suggestions. ty.

Backtoblack

BossArky wrote:

Ok, I have just put another round of bids on the following based upon the advice above:

• Chuck Palahniuk - Choke
• GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ - OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
• Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
• THE SECRET HISTORY..By Donna Tartt
• Enron The Rise and Fall Loren Fox
• GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ - OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS
• Haruki Murakami, South of the border west of the sun

It is now up to the post man to deliver them asap.

Those which are not mentioned in this post I have either read before or couldn't find (at least at a reasonable price) on ebay.

Thanks

Wohoo, I got two on the list!
"Enron, the rise and fall" by Loren Fox, is a tough read though - I don't have a degree in Finance so I had to concentrate on the "mark to market" finance and the Hedging and the SEC's etc - but definitley very interesting!
Best of luck with getting to 52, you've done so well, you deserve a medal (or something)!

Backtoblack

nesf wrote:

19. Freakanomics – Stephen Levitt

26. The Pope's Children - David McWilliams

I enjoyed the two above. I'm not sure that David McWilliams tv series is as good as the book. But the book could have been better too.
Freakonomics was ok - I'd have preffered it i think if it was called "Ekonomics" or something. Good all the same! LOL!

buck65

had a great autumn of reading:
Imperium by Robert Harris (great soap opera from Roman times, a pageturner)
New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (interesting , a little different but captivating nonetheless)
Fight Club and Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk ( short sharp, Chuck is great)
Complete polysyllabic spree by Nick Hornby (great reference for reading , I learned alot from this ) you would read this in 2/3 days
Island by Alistair Mc Leod ( poetic collection of short stories)
That they may face the rising sun by John Mc Gahern ( a little boring! sorry)

nesf

Backtoblack wrote:

I enjoyed the two above. I'm not sure that David McWilliams tv series is as good as the book. But the book could have been better too.
Freakonomics was ok - I'd have preffered it i think if it was called "Ekonomics" or something. Good all the same! LOL!

I enjoyed them both, have you read "Fooled by Randomness"? It's highly amusing and definitely something I'd recommend to anyone into finance and the markets. I'd also recommend it in general since I think that it's an important thing to be aware of.

Backtoblack

nesf wrote:

I enjoyed them both, have you read "Fooled by Randomness"? It's highly amusing and definitely something I'd recommend to anyone into finance and the markets. I'd also recommend it in general since I think that it's an important thing to be aware of.

Who wrote it?

ronano

slaughterhouse 5

its fiver in chapters and is very short

nesf

Backtoblack wrote:

Who wrote it?

18. Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb


I linked to it on the previous page aswell I think.

Backtoblack

Will keep it mind, Nesf!

Another two that spring to mind are:
The Diceman - Luke Rhinehart (weird and wacky)
Nineteen eight four - George Orwell (a must read! One of my favourite books)

The_Minister

If you want to throw some landmark sci-fi into the mix, I'd add Rendevous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke.

Also, The picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
EDIT: 2 things
1) Slaughter House Five is a must, well fone to the man who said that.
2) You said you read A Clockwork Orange, which version did you read? When it was first published an American Editor butchered it by cutting out the last chapter. The last capter is what makes the book, and if you didn't get to read it, then you are missing out.