This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

emeraldstar wrote: »

That made me laugh. Not sure what you were expecting

Well take Great Expectations for example. You could argue it's the life and times of Pip Pirrup but it's quite an interesting life and you get caught up in it. Nickleby just seems to be his literal life story with all the unnecessary bits included.

Decuc500

I just read The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers. Very powerful story about the effect of war on a soldier, in this case the American invasion of Iraq. A bit bleak and hard to read at times but the writing was poetic. Cormac McCarthyesque I might say.

Callan57

Tom Joad wrote: »

Half way through Bleak House at the minute and really struggling to find a reason to keep reading it! Am I missing something as loads of people recommended it to me

That's a tough one all right.
Why is everyone here reading such depressing books at the moment?

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Callan57 wrote: »

That's a tough one all right.
Why is everyone here reading such depressing books at the moment?

Is it the weather?

Aenaes

Callan57 wrote: »

Why is everyone here reading such depressing books at the moment?

I'm nearly finished Blood Meridian. It's going alright, not really fond of the way it's written and the lack of quotation marks are annoying.

emeraldstar

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Well take Great Expectations for example. You could argue it's the life and times of Pip Pirrup but it's quite an interesting life and you get caught up in it. Nickleby just seems to be his literal life story with all the unnecessary bits included.

That's how I felt about David Copperfield. Overly long and often rather dull at times.

emeraldstar

Tom Joad wrote: »

Half way through Bleak House at the minute and really struggling to find a reason to keep reading it! Am I missing something as loads of people recommended it to me

Oh no, really? I love that book!

I can highly recommend the recent BBC miniseries though...

SarahBM

I have never read Dickins and I dont really want to, to be honest. and the posts above are not changing my mind

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

SarahBM wrote: »

I have never read Dickins and I dont really want to, to be honest. and the posts above are not changing my mind

Great Expectations is pretty amazing, in my opinion. Not that depressing really.... maybe.

SarahBM

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Great Expectations is pretty amazing, in my opinion. Not that depressing really.... maybe.

Ya, you see Im not a big fan of depressing stuff. I hated A Thousand Spendid Suns for Example. But I loved 1984, :rolleyes:

Im apprehensive about starting Misery. I dont think I will like Stephen King.

I am liking the Count of Monte Cristo but my gawd its taking me ages. and I am starting my masters so I will have even less time to read

Damn life getting in the way of my reading.

Sidebar - I heard John Connolly on the radio with Matt Cooper last wk. I really liked him plus I was impressed that he says he reads a book a wk! But he something along the lines that there is no point wasting time reading a bad book. How many of ye would give up on a book if you were not enjoying it?
I feel obliged to finish a book even if I dont like it. Dont know why.

MagicMarker

Our Mutual Friend is also rather good.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

SarahBM wrote: »

Sidebar - I heard John Connolly on the radio with Matt Cooper last wk. I really liked him plus I was impressed that he says he reads a book a wk! But he something along the lines that there is no point wasting time reading a bad book. How many of ye would give up on a book if you were not enjoying it?
I feel obliged to finish a book even if I dont like it. Dont know why.

I don't like to quit a book, I won't be defeated by paper! However... Madame Bovary really tried my will and also Shall We Gather at The River.

SarahBM

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I don't like to quit a book, I won't be defeated by paper! However... Madame Bovary really tried my will and also Shall We Gather at The River.

note to self, dont read them!

I gave up on Gone With The Wind and Doctor Zhivago. I just couldnt hack it, but I do plan to go back and read them again.
I should be reading lecture notes and journals right now, but no, I am here discussing books. Maybe I should have done a Masters in English instead, I would get to read for homework then

Tom Joad

SarahBM wrote: »

note to self, dont read them!

I gave up on Gone With The Wind and Doctor Zhivago. I just couldnt hack it, but I do plan to go back and read them again.

Gone with the Wind is one of my favourites of all time :eek: - but then I do like historical novels - can really immerse myself in the period. Never tried Doctor Zhivago.

Callan57

Tom Joad wrote: »

Gone with the Wind is one of my favourites of all time :eek: - but then I do like historical novels - can really immerse myself in the period. Never tried Doctor Zhivago.

I've never got around to reading Gone with the Wind but I loved Dr Zhivago - very different to the movie IMO

Tom Joad

Callan57 wrote: »

I've never got around to reading Gone with the Wind but I loved Dr Zhivago - very different to the movie IMO

Have never seen the movie either so I'm a blank canvas - might have a go at it soon - is it easy to read or tough going??

Callan57

Tom Joad wrote: »

Have never seen the movie either so I'm a blank canvas - might have a go at it soon - is it easy to read or tough going??

I'd heard a lot of people say that but in honesty I didn't have a problem reading it ... but then I love Anna Karenina & War and Peace so I'm not exactly impartial.

Tom Joad

Callan57 wrote: »

I'd heard a lot of people say that but in honesty I didn't have a problem reading it ... but then I love Anna Karenina & War and Peace so I'm not exactly impartial.

Good stuff - Anna Karenina is definitely in my top ten of all time so not an issue.

Saorenza

I love Gone With The Wind. I give up on books all the time; some I come back to, others I don't.

I am reading At Home by Bill Bryson at the moment; nice antidote to all the language shift stuff I had to read for college.

Belle E. Flops

I used never give up on books but I've come around. Nearly always finish them but there have been a few I couldn't be bothered to keep going with.

I gave up on Madame Bovary aswell, could not get into it at all. Painful bloody book.

SarahBM

To those of you who have read War and Peace and Anna Karenina - Fair play, I dont think I could even attempt them!

My best friend LOVES Gone with the Wind and she has read it about 3 or 4 times. I made her watch the film against her will (I love the film) and she hated it.
I also loved the film of Doctor Zhivago, but I found the book very tough going. I think I find most things that have been translated from russian hard going. The Master and Margarita for example. Monte Cristo is easier than I thought it would be actually.

Give me Austen any day though.

Billy de Bollix

Reading "fly fishing" by J.R.Hartly. boring as f**k but I want to get it read before they make a film about the advert.

salacious crumb

SarahBM wrote: »

I have never read Dickins and I dont really want to, to be honest. and the posts above are not changing my mind

I loved A Christmas Carol, but then I had to read Hard Times for my LC, and never, ever want to read Dickens again :pac:

Honey-ec

SarahBM wrote: »

Sidebar - I heard John Connolly on the radio with Matt Cooper last wk. But he something along the lines that there is no point wasting time reading a bad book. How many of ye would give up on a book if you were not enjoying it?
I feel obliged to finish a book even if I dont like it. Dont know why.

This only came up here a few weeks back. I used to feel obliged to finish any book I started. Not anymore, though. Life is too short to force yourself through books you're not enjoying when you could be reading something else. It was quite liberating when I let myself accept that not finishing a book wasn't a failure!

Anyway, in other news, got my reading list for this year's Lit module. So long, Reading for Pleasure, it's been a great summer


Hammond, Paul and David Hopkins (eds). 2007. Dryden: Selected Poems (Longman Annotated Poets Harlow: Pearson)

Lonsdale, Roger (ed.). 2009. The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Stephen Greenblatt (ed.). 2012. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edn, vol. 1 (New York: W. W. Norton and Co.).

Extract from John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis (1666)

Extract from James Thomson, To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton (1727)

Ann Yearsley, To Mr. ****, an Unlettered Poet, on Genius Unimproved (1787)

John Milton, ‘L’Allegro’ (c. 1631); ‘Il Penseroso’ (c.1631); Lycidas (1638)

John Denham, Cooper’s Hill (1641)

Andrew Marvell, Upon Appleton House: To My Lord Fairfax (c.1654); ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ (1650)

John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)

John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667)

The book of Genesis from the Bible, chapters 1-3, King James’ Version.

JohnBunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part 1 (1678)

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’(c. 1680); ‘The Maimed Debauchee’ (c. 1675); ‘Upon Nothing’ (c. 1678)

Aphra Behn, ‘The Disappointment’ (c. 1680)

John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681); Mac Flecknoe(1676)

William Congreve, The Way of the World (1700)

Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1714 version)

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, ‘To the Nightingale’(1713); ‘A Nocturnal Reverie’ (1713)

Mary Barber, ‘Written for my Son, and Spoken by him at his first putting on Breeches’ (1731)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters (1763)

Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)

Jonathan Swift, A Short View of the Present State of Ireland(1727)

Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729)

Samuel Richardson, Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740)

Henry Fielding, Shamela (1741)

Henry Fielding, ‘Preface’ to Joseph Andrews (1742)

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,Gentleman (1759-67)

Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (1771)

Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770)

George Crabbe, The Village (1783), Book I

Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)

emeraldstar

Honey-ec wrote: »

Anyway, in other news, got my reading list for this year's Lit module. So long, Reading for Pleasure, it's been a great summer

Samuel Richardson, Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740)

Do yourself a favour and kill yourself now!

Honey-ec

emeraldstar wrote: »

[/COLOR][/SIZE] Do yourself a favour and kill yourself now!

I nearly did when I initially got the list.

:mad:

SarahBM

that is some list. I'll just say best of luck with that!

Gamayun

Two books since I last posted here:

The Notebook by Ágota Kristóf

The first in a series of three short novels following the story of a pair of twins, sent to live with their grandmother during wartime.
This is written in an almost fairy tale manner, with really short sentences, two-page chapters and very plain, unflowery prose. Virtually none of the characters are named, instead they are known by a descriptive, e.g. The shoemaker, the officer etc. Even the country in which it is set and the ongoing war are not named, though both are easily deduced. The more shocking or violent passages are given the same flat-prose treatment as the mundane, leading to an unusual but highly satisfactory read. I look forward to reading the other two books. Disconcertingly, each of the three books has a different translator (from the original Hungarian) but hopefully the style will remain consistent.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

This is my third Mitchell book , after The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Ghostwritten, and Black Swan Green is quite different from those titles. This is a coming-of-age novel revolving around a thirteen year old named Jason Taylor. It's set in 1982 and has tonnes of references to the era, I would imagine that anyone who has grown up at that time (in Britain ideally but we had UK TV here then also) would get a nostalgic kick from these. I found this a solid, if unspectacular read. Interestingly there has been a Corkonian in all three of the Mitchell books I've read so far, he lived (lives?) in Cork so the dialect and slang are spot on.

AnnyHallsal

Finished Beckett's Molloy which was spellbinding from start to finish. Funny, profound and the most beautiful prose.

Now reading the beloved Roth's Everyman. It's a short 'un.

Callan57

Finished Under A Blood Red Sky and enjoyed it a lot.

Now it's on to A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki - I've read good review of this so looking forward to it a lot.

Saorenza

I really enjoyed a Tale For The Time Being.

I finished At Home by Bill Bryson last night. Enjoyed it.

[-0-]

Reading George Orwell's Diaries, introduction by Christopher Hitchens (written less than a month before he died).

To say to book is amazing would be an understatement. The hardship Orwell went through is impressive.

Hermy

Iain Banks final novel, The Quarry, was a wonderful book despite or because of it's unsentimental tale of terminal illness.
I was also struck by the dedication - For all my friends, family and fans, with love - something that normally passes me by.

MagicMarker

Started reading 'Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln', so far it's REALLY good.

Slattsy

Alan Partridge's autobiography - funniest thing i've ever read.
Couldnt recommend it highly enough.

Also, if you dont like people looking at you on a bus/train then dont read it as it really is laugh out loud stuff.

Saorenza

Reading Contested Will by James Shaphiro - about the reasons people seek an alternative author/s for Shakespeare's works.

Don't seem to be able to read fiction at the moment though I have a big pile that I want to read.

Frank McGivney

My First Post here, I constantly reading, so great to find someplace with other readers. I just about finished "The testament of Mary" by colm Tobin which is so well written and thought provoking and I about a third of way through "A star called Henry" by roddy doyle which is such a brillant book i think

Swiper the fox

Frank McGivney wrote: »

My First Post here, I constantly reading, so great to find someplace with other readers. I just about finished "The testament of Mary" by colm Tobin which is so well written and thought provoking and I about a third of way through "A star called Henry" by roddy doyle which is such a brillant book i think

I love Toibin's descriptions of the apostles as a bunch of ne'er do wells, it is a very interesting take on the most well known story of all.

I also loved A Star Called Henry, quite funny and also a good and fairly accurate historical yarn for those who wouldn't have a great deal of knowledge of that decade particularly now during the upcoming centenary celebrations.

I finished the Rwandan Cycling book "land of second chances" last night, excellent sports/human interest story. I bought the eamonn Dunphy book the other day so will probably start on that tonight but something else on my shelves might grab me instead.

8mv

Currently re-reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak before the film comes out. I'd forgotten how good it is. The film trailer looks kind of ordinary - no mention of the books narrator - Death.

Callan57

8mv wrote: »

Currently re-reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak before the film comes out. I'd forgotten how good it is. The film trailer looks kind of ordinary - no mention of the books narrator - Death.

They left out the core of the story in that case

Frank McGivney

I was talking to someone about the book thief yesterday, It sounds really good. I think Tobin really hits the mark with the way what was essentially the start of the early Christian church was manipulating things from the beginning
Ah you man Roddy Doyle is so good. Laughing at 1 in the morning reading a book is always a good sign and its not just the funny bits the whole was he gets the stry out to you is so good

Callan57

Just finished off A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.
When I picked this one up I wasn't aware it was on the Booker Shortlist 2013 but I am not at all surprised, it's an amazing and original read. I enjoyed it immensly.


I have a book of short stories, The Pre-War House & Other Stories, which I want to get finished over the weekend hopefully.

Saorenza

I enjoyed A Tale For The Time Being very much too. It was so affecting I had to put it aside for a week or so (I was reading it not long after my mother died). I started Bryant and May and The Memory of Blood by Christopher Fowler yesterday. I wanted some silly fiction I curl up with and get in. Also I am going to London next weekend so I wanted a London based story.

Belle E. Flops

I've postponed Fanny Hill. It's grand, but I can't say it's a book I'm dying to continue reading.

Going to start 'Rosemary's Baby' now. Thought it would be appropriate for the season coming up.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

I'm dying a death with Nicholas Nickleby still. If his life and times were as boring to live through as they are to read I think the book will end in mass suicide.

Tom Joad

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I'm dying a death with Nicholas Nickleby still. If his life and times were as boring to live through as they are to read I think the book will end in mass suicide.

Feel the exact same about Bleak House at the minute - am persevering but just about - down to about 5 pages a day now.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

Tom Joad wrote: »

Feel the exact same about Bleak House at the minute - am persevering but just about - down to about 5 pages a day now.

Mine's from the library and it has to be brought back on Tuesday. I can't bring myself to renew it but I don't want it to beat me either so I have 400 pages to get through in 2 days :eek:

Tom Joad

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Mine's from the library and it has to be brought back on Tuesday. I can't bring myself to renew it but I don't want it to beat me either so I have 400 pages to get through in 2 days :eek:

Rather you than me . I've finished 2 other books since picking up Bleak House - might finish another 4 before I do but will definitely finish Bleak House - I'm stubborn like that

Swiper the fox

Tom Joad wrote: »

Feel the exact same about Bleak House at the minute - am persevering but just about - down to about 5 pages a day now.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Mine's from the library and it has to be brought back on Tuesday. I can't bring myself to renew it but I don't want it to beat me either so I have 400 pages to get through in 2 days :eek:

Can I recommend this to ye, my 7 year old daughter got it from the library the other day and really enjoyed Bleak House:p

http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/book/1~FC~FC7~3848/illustrated-stories-from-dickens.aspx

Tom Joad

Swiper the fox wrote: »

Can I recommend this to ye, my 7 year old daughter got it from the library the other day and really enjoyed Bleak House:p

http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/book/1~FC~FC7~3848/illustrated-stories-from-dickens.aspx

In my house we just use the naughty step for punishment :P