Liz's comments (member since Oct 05, 2008)

Liz's comments from the The Next Best Book Club group.

I picked the shortest book I had left in order to meet my goal of 500 pts.

10.2. Percy Bysshe Shelly: Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth. A fun read, the narrator's voice is amusing & some of the glossary entries are hilarious.

Books Read: 28
Tasks Completed: 20
Total Pages Read: 7595
Total Points: 505
Liz (Bklyn)

30.3 Summer Peace accord: If Not Now, When? (Jewish) & A Bend in the River (Muslim)

Ooooh, one more task to go to break 500.....

Books Read: 27
Tasks Completed: 19
Total Pages Read: 7459
Total Points: 495
Liz (Bklyn)

4 books
109 shelves

Liz (Bklyn)

Stephanie wrote: "Wow alot of great ideas. Can't wait to see what the final list will look like. I am looking forward to my first challenge.
"

The tasks for the 5, 10, and 15 pointers have been finalized & are posted in a separate group (see post one in this thread and post one in this thread).

Or go directly to the new Seasonal Reading Challenge Group

25.3 Mod Squad: From Cynthia's shelf I chose The Thirteenth Tale, a quick delightful read. And it's revolves around books! From Lori's shelf, I read The Wasp Factory A Novel, which was a wonderfully written and completely disturbed story.

Books Read: 25
Tasks Completed: 18
Total Pages Read: 6694
Total Points: 465
Liz (Bklyn)

3 books
102 shelves

Liz (Bklyn)

I have been stalled on a book for two weeks and finally gave myself permission to set it aside & pick up something faster & more enjoyable. So, I have completed 30.8-1001 books with The Reader and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.


Books Read: 23
Tasks Completed: 17
Total Pages Read: 6104
Total Points: 440
Liz (Bklyn)

15.5. Current Events: Darkness at Noon. The protagonist is arrested and jailed for things he has not done. His investigators, Ivanov and Gletkin, seek a public confession and interrogate him using a number of methods.

I originally read it assuming I'd pair it with an article on Guantanamo but it is also comparable to events in Iran.


Books Read: 21
Tasks Completed: 16
Total Pages Read: 5736
Total Points: 410
Liz (Bklyn)

mirage

Mon wrote: "by the way, is it just me, or is BBC completely mad for leaving our Franz Kafka?! and Henry James?! nietzsche? and VIRGINIA WOOLF?! (they swapped kafka for memories of a geisha?)

where are the feminists...."

But if they swapped your above mentioned authors with books similar to Memoirs of a Geisha, the title of the thread would be "apparently the bbc reckons most people will not have read any of these 100 books"

I somehow have managed to read 68.5 of the books (half of the complete works of Shakespeare) without reading Kafka, Henry James, or Nietzsche.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Lisa, Bright and Dark
The Loony-Bin Trip
Darkness Visible A Memoir of Madness
Girl, Interrupted

Motherless Brooklyn the movie!?!! Could be very good or very bad, but Ed Norton......hmm.

1 book
35 shelves

If we locate beauty in the eye of the beholder, what happens when the beholder looks elsewhere?

-Alain de Botton
On Love A Novel

50.1: Beowulf on the Beach What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits and Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West.

The book about books I found for a $1 and had bought it on a whim a few days before the challenge was announced. It was a fun read, the author's style was conversational and too self-consciously slangy. However, I now own the translations he recommends of several monsters of literature that I had never considered reading before (The Aeneid, Inferno, The Odyssey). I choose to read Blood Meridian because it was the one book in his fifty that I thought didn't belong on a list of "Literature's 50 Greatest Hits". It was an amazing and amazingly gruesome read. I am still not sure it's one of literature's best books (I prefer the sparse prose of The Road), but perhaps history will prove me wrong.

Books Read: 20
Tasks Completed: 15
Total Pages Read: 5520
Total Points: 395
Liz (Bklyn)

Petra wrote: "

Repeat the Quizz task (read the first Quizz book that you've never read). "

Personally, I'd prefer this to be expanded somehow to offer more than one choice. I understand the desire to get us to read something we never would have without this challenge, but I also have no desire to force myself to read a book I don't enjoy. (I will not be completing this task for the Summer Challenge & if used in the fall am likely to skip it again, unless I get lucky enough to get a book already on my to-read list).

Manday wrote: "Berkeley, California does not celebrate Columbus day. Instead, they celebrate Indigenous People's Day. Read a book written by a Native American or about Native Americans.
That is really neat!!
"

I was thinking something along these lines, but expanding it to be any indigenous people -- Australian Aborigines, Eskimos, etc.

Finally, some more points!

25.8 Goodreads authors: The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho and On Love by Alain de Botton. I loved, loved On Love, best described as novelistic essays. However, it took a long time to read because I really wanted to take my time and read every sentence, as so many were perfect and thought-provoking.

15.2 Casting Call: The Monsters of Templeton. I actually finished this book weeks ago, but I am horrible with remembering names to go with faces and deciding on actors was torture.

The cast:

Willie Upton: Kate Hudson
Vi Upton: Elizabeth Shue

Reverend Melkovitch: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Clarissa: Natalie Portman

Zeke Felcher: Jake Gyllenhaal
Peter Leider: Orlando Bloom

Big Tom: Jeff Bridges
Little Thom: Michael J. Fox
Johann: Harry Groener
Sol: Kurt Russell
Doug: Harry Hamlin
Frankie: Colm Meaney

Marmaduke Temple: Ewan McGregor
Remarkable Prettybones: Meryl Streep
Hetty: Beyoncé Knowles
Elizabeth Temple: Alexis Dziena
Noname: Malese Jow


Books Read: 18
Tasks Completed: 14
Total Pages Read: 4818
Total Points: 345
Liz (Bklyn)

Location, location,location: read two books by two contemporaneous authors set in the same place, i.e. Old New York by Edith Wharton and Washington Square by Henry James or Club Dead by Charlaine Harris and The Appeal by John Grisham

reaper

33 authors, 30 books

and another half dozen books or so that I've partially read...