Galen's comments (member since May 26, 2008)

Galen's comments from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die group.

I just read 'Wise Children' by Angela Carter--very fun writing style, great female characters. I think it was cut from the newer list, but I recommend it.

Rebecca goes very quickly and is engrossing, Casino Royale is a quick read and doesn't require much concentration--same with Get Shorty. Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time is also quick, The Cement Garden is a quick read although dark. Choke is a fast read, although some people don't like it because it is fairly explicit about sexuality and language. The Things They Carried goes quickly, but is difficult subject matter (the Vietnam War). The Secret History is another engrossing read, but doesn't require too much concentration. I thought Felicia's Journey was a quick read, but another one that is a bit dark. Some of H.G. Wells' books are short and don't require too much concentration, and The Picture of Dorian Gray is short and not too hard to keep track of. (Not all of these are on both lists, but I liked all of them...so I think they are worth reading whether they are on the list you are reading from or not).

Jennifer, Midnight's Children stays about the same in pace and writing style, but the story does get much more into the history of India and Pakistan as the story goes on.

I'm reading Atonement now, and so far think it has its interesting points but is overall moving quite slowly.

I just finished La Pére Goriot by Balzac--I read the translation by Reed. I LOVED it--I actually stayed up late one night to finish it, which I don't think I have ever done for a classic (just for cheesy murder mysteries). I highly recommend it, at least that translation. Great characters, timeless themes, well-constructed story.

Jennifer wrote: "Well, I'm wrestling with Midnight's children by Salman Rushdie. I loved it at the start, but the digressions (I know they are the whole point of the book, but I am a conventional sod I suppose) ar..."
I just read Midnight's Children and LOVED it. But I did find it a bit much to read during the chaos of the holidays and took a break from it, and it was surprisingly easy to come back to. Hopefully you can stick with it... I just started Hawthorne's "The House of Seven Gables", and I'm finding it hard to adjust to the dense writing after a bunch of modern reads lately.

I am spending the year in Europe, where I have tended to live in places without television. My reading has more than doubled over my average for the past couple years--of course, I also have no big house to clean, and fewer friends around. I also commute to work on the bus, rather than driving...another hour of reading a day right there. Not only have I read many more books, but the quality of book has gone up--more classics, fewer mysteries and thrillers that I used to read by the dozen. It has made me realize that when I move back to the states I need to make some adjustments to priorities, so that I keep up at least some of the good reading habits.

I just started Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie--100 pages in and I am LOVING it. I am actually looking forward to a 9-hour trans-Atlantic flight on Wednesday so I can really get into it.

Christina, I just read Wide Sargasso Sea after Jane Eyre, and I loved them both...but it did raise a lot of questions for me about whether I would have liked WSS without having read Jane Eyre. It was interesting to read some of the literary criticism of WSS before and after reading the book. They are such different books, even though they do have the same characters. Happy reading!

Just started The Maltese Falcon by D. Hammett...I have seen the movie, but it was a while ago.

I'm a one-book-at-a-time person, but the exception is when reading something heavy (literally and/or figuratively). If the book is long enough that it is too big to fit in my purse, or dense enough that I can't read it in distracting places like the bus, then I have an alternative, fluffier read going at the same time. I try to stick to one book at a time, because otherwise I end up ignoring the more challenging book and neglect it for so long that it is even harder to pick it back up...lacking in discipline, I suppose.

Pam,
I enjoyed Middlemarch, but I have read quite a few other Eliot books this year so I had a "warm-up" to the writing. It is pretty dense at times, and there is not always much action. But it has so many more ideas to it than, for example, Pride and Prejudice, so it is more satisfying. It takes effort...but in the end I think it is definitely worth the trouble. There are some fascinating insights on marriage and on charity, and on women's roles in that era. That said, I feel no guilt in indulging in a few absolutely no-redeeming-qualities thrillers in the next few weeks to give my brain a break!

This weekend I finally finished Middlemarch (my second read, but the first time it took so long to read that I didn't get much out of it), and followed that with American Psycho. Which was brilliant, but pornography as art was a shock to the system--perhaps especially after 700 pages/2 weeks straight of Victorian literature.

Four that I have really enjoyed are "Last American Man" (Elizabeth Gilbert), "Blue Blood" (Edward Conlon), "Fast Food Nation" (Eric Schlosser) and "Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight" (memoir by Alexandra Fuller). I also found the Iraq invasion section of "One Bullet Away" incredibly interesting; the book is a memoir of a Marine captain. Michael Pollan and Jared Diamond are great--but as an ecologist, reading those feels too much like work for me, so I have a tough time relaxing and just enjoying the reading of them.

I also like that the books are listed in chronological order--it helps with putting the books in perspective historically. That 'Country Girls', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', and 'Rabbit, Run' all came out in the same year is fascinating to me. Not to mention how ahead of her time Zora Neale Hurston was with 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.

Oh, despite the fact that some of you are Gatsby-haters, I will share with you my least favorites...

1. Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
2. Elementary Particles (Houellebecq)
[I will stop picking on the French here, my residency permit might get revoked...]
3. Heart of Darkness (Conrad)--2 reads and I still can't like anything about it other than the descriptions of the river
4. Rabbit, Run (Updike)

There are others which I didn't really enjoy nor did I see the 'novelty' of them, but nothing that I really couldn't stand like those 4. So less than 5% of the books I've read from the list did I really hate; that isn't too bad a percentage.

I read it when I was young, and again this year--20 years difference in perspective made me enjoy it much more. Now that I am actually responsible for feeding, housing, and clothing myself, as well as figuring out how to fix and grow things around the house, it was much more fascinating to consider what it must be like to completely construct your own life without most conveniences. And as a scientist, I found Crusoe's views on his own agriculture interesting. As far as some of the older books on the list go, I thought this was pretty readable--although I don't argue that there aren't tedious parts, and that despite recognizing the differences in culture between then and now, the racist ideas are difficult to read.

Fantasia, It looks like you like mysteries--I highly recommend Rebecca (by D. DuMaurier), The Secret History (by Donna Tartt), and the mysteries by Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. On the List AND good mysteries/suspense.

Also in no particular order,

The Country Girls
A Tale of Two Cities
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Great Gatsby
Rebecca
Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
The Secret History
Love in the Time of Cholera
On the Road

Sharron, you are going to need to watch a couple hours of comedy tv or otherwise cheer up to soothe your brain after two such depressing (but good!) reads.
Thanks for the input on Collins' The Woman in White--it was great. I could definitely see the parallels to Rebecca, which I loved. I am putting more Collins and DuMaurier at the top of my 'to read' list.
I am going to try Wells' The War of the Worlds this evening...not my usual type of read, but a friend passed on a copy so I will give it a go.

Just finished Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Long, the ending didn't wrap up as quickly as I wanted it to, but it was overall a really well-developed suspense story. Great characters! On to something modern.