Mandy's comments (member since Nov 30, 2007)

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

I think that when a writer using the "writing style" consistently then it is just that, what El said, a writing style and not merely a gimmick.

I loved Saramago's writing with Blindness, no punctuation and no names helped me appreciate the story more, I felt like I was going through what the characters were going through and thought the writing style really worked.

With McCarthy's The Road I absolutely loved it, it captured me right from the very start.

Death in The Book Thief I thought was a great use of a narrator, one I hadn't come across before and considering Death was a character I wouldn't class that as a gimmick.

With the above three they're not gimmicks to me, they are really good writing styles and I will read more from all three authors. I don't think the writing style has little relevance, therefore not a gimmick, I think the writing style has significant relevance in the reader's appreciation of the story.

Having said all of that I'm finding it hard to come up with something I would consider a gimmick but I will keep thinking. I don't know, a gimmick to me would be buy this book and get a free book with it, you know, trying to sell off the book. Don't think the writing styles are trying to sell the books in the aforementioned per se, if you like the writing style of those authors you will read more by them. However, if they added say a pair of reading glasses to Blindness that would be a gimmick and it might be a one-off purchase so as to sell that particular book, or a road map with The Road or a "stolen" book with The Book Thief.

Hm, I'm rambling now but there you go, that's my opinion ☺

8 books
158 shelves

7 books
141 shelves

6 books
130 shelves

5 books
118 shelves

3 books
78 shelves

2 books
53 shelves

Oh, bummer you missed out Katie, Sara and Madeline. Maybe you could make your own thread in this folder and we can still see how you progress ☺

1 book
41 shelves

This does sound like fun. I'm guessing it will all just fit together once it's started so not stressing about the how tos at the moment. Can't wait.

Lyn, I'll send you an email and thanks ☺

Lori, beautifully put.

I finished this one a couple of days ago.....BRILLIANT! I honestly wouldn't want any part taken out and would feel crazy as well, Jessica, if I had to read the abridged version.

Lori, not yet, about 150 pages to go. Should hopefully finish this weekend.

April, 100 pages a day is a great goal. I found it hard to stick to my 50 pages a day.

Yes, you will, Lori :)

Ah, the end of chapter 92, tears were there beyond my better judgment.

Thanks, Jon. Alls I know is it's an Adventure Classic, that's it, no notes at the back, nothing else, nada. And yes, I thought it might have been for some such reason.

I'm up to chapter 76: Progress Cavalcanti the Younger.

Am loving this book and the twists it takes. For such a large book to keep entertained I say Dumas is a master.

One question, the Countess G_________ - do we end up getting her name or is this done on purpose because of how things were written in that day and she was perhaps someone known?

I think I found some of my wedding vows here in Secret Mothers' Business again (a few good passages here and there but this book is quite a drag really). This couple are just over 40, been together 8 years and have two children, they ended up getting married after 8 years and this is how she described it:

Our marriage was in honour of the history of our stamina, loyalty and the resilience of our partnership, not a wishful white weddinged grope into the future.

Words like these make me feel my wedding will be special after all this time together.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte *
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Epectations - Charles Dickens *
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger x
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis *
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis *
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x +
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell *
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x +
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x*
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon *
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens *
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck *
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Aleandre Dumas *
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt *
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn x
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Eupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Read=18
Loved=2
To be read=21

The to be reads are only including the ones I have at home now but there are 34 that I would like to purchase at some stage.

Sheep and Wolves
The Stand
Marley & Me Love and Life with the World's Worst Dog
For One More Day
The Gift
This Other Eden
My Sister's Keeper
Year of Wonders
The Kite Runner

And a very close to 5 star book:

Shantaram