Sammy’s Comments (group member since Nov 18, 2020)

Sammy’s comments from the Sinful Readers Anonymous group.

Although, if you like insane books, it's pretty hard to top Finnegans Wake... I've read some bonkers stuff, but that one is... special.

Also having said that... I'm looking forward to reading Auster's 4 3 2 1! I never write off an author completely on one book, which has paid off several times already :)

I've only read The Crying of Lot 49, which |I didn't enjoy, (read too soon after a less than pleasing run-in with Paul Auster... the similarity didn't do him any favours, lol!) but there are a few others of his I'm actually looking forward to trying. Mason & Dixon and Gravity's Rainbow being high up on the list.

Not a fan of Updike and Ellis either, or most of the rest of the American post-modern lot for that matter.

I personally love James Joyce, though he's definitely quite divisive, and I was extremely surprised by how much I enjoyed Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. Same with Memoirs of a Geisha and The Art of Fielding

Candide makes me chuckle, as does A Modest Proposal, both of which are short, and also available for free online, so no excuse not to ;)

Dangerous Liasons was extremely good, and pretty much everything on the list by Isaac Asimov or Philip K. Dick is pretty awesome (though you're likely aware of that already, lol)]

I'm a huge fan of Thomas Hardy, though his books tend to be a bit on the miserable side, so probably best read in the right kind of mood.

Haruki Murakami is another favourite. His books tend to range from the slightly odd to the utterly weird, but my personal favourite is Kafka on the Shore (a good one for cat lovers!)

Others I'm fond of: Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel García Márquez, Herman Melville, Jeffrey Eugenides, George Orwell, W. Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark.

Books that came as no surprise they were 4/5 star reads (and some that did: The Godfather, The Kreutzer Sonata, Brave New World, The Collector, Dead Souls.

There will no doubt be plenty more, but that's what immediately came to mind, lol.

Yeah, I'm doing the combined list of 1317 (or thereabouts). I've read around 285 of them so far, so almost at the 1000 to go stage! lol.

I've been drip-feeding my books onto the GR tbr. Unfortunately that does mean that my goal of having less books on there than I had at the start of the year is usually most likely to fail, lol.

Jenny wrote: "Aw, Sammy, but then you miss gems like Interstellar super explorer.

I keep meaning to look at that 1001 book list, but haven't yet. Several organizations have come out with lists ..."

I regret nothing!! :D

The Boxall one seems to be the most widely accepted (at least over here!), and certainly the easiest to get hold of. Plus they update it every few years, which helps. I do have a physical copy, which I like because of the bit of background on each book, but you can also just use the list. Loads of copies of the list online, though I spent a couple of £ and got this spreadsheet:

https://arukiyomi.com/?page_id=4230

Because I'm too lazy to put all that data into a sheet myself, lol. But it works out fun stuff, like how many hours of reading I've yet to do, and how old I will be when I'm done. It also, rather amusingly, tells me I'll probably die in about 40 years :D :D

I've got a couple of re-reads on the go of large series (Discworld and Raymond E. Feist's Midkemia books), and re-read my favourites quite regularly (and for some reason they're all around 1000 pages! lol.)
But I do try to limit my re-reading as much as possible, as I own literally hundreds of books I haven't read yet, and I'd like to get through them. I'd also like to complete 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die before the title-mentioned deadline, and at my current rate I'll be in my 70s when I finally get there, so I'd best get a wiggle on! :D

As for self-published books, unless we're subjecting ourselves to one for backroom BOM/challenge points purposes, I stay the **** clear! If there's one thing that'll drive me nuts, it's a book that hasn't been properly edited, and very few people that self-publish are willing to go through the time, effort and cost of getting a professional editor to go over their book for them. I have been bitten, and now avoid like the plague.

I figured I'd just pick one every time I'm ready for a new book (outside of challenges!). At least that way I may get around to some of the books I've been putting off for years (Brighton Rock was one of those. I feel very accomplished now that it's done, lol)

Sonia wrote: "Dang girl. How many prompts do you have in that tiny jar?

Btw, I'm totally copying you and change my profile pic :)"

I didn't count them, but I cut up 3 12x12 inch sheets of paper into strips, so a lot! lol :)

And a new prompt this morning: "Read a book between 400 and 500 pages"

Figured it would be a good time to finally start reading

That was one of those "I adore the cover of this book so am doing the grabby-hands thing" books.

My new prompt today was "Read a book with a kind of stone or metal in the title"

After checking carefully for possible Uno use, I picked Brighton Rock :)

My prompt this morning was "Read the next book in a series", so I chose .

I almost picked a Discworld, but then remembered Uno is coming up and the next one has a green cover :D. Seriously, I swear challenges limit my reading more than help it, lol!

I'm just going to use it every time I finish a print book (may do another for audio, not sure yet), depending on challenges I may or may not be needing to work on at the time. Should finish my current book tonight or tomorrow morning, so I'll get to use my new shiny! Yay! :D

Finished my jar (as you can see the glue is still wet! lol.)

I usually use random.org. But I saw the jars and got all grabby-hands, lol.

I've only done the contents of the jar so far, but I plan to prettify it tomorrow :D

Yeah, I see book jar, I want book jar. I'm currently making book jar, lol.

I am totally going to make myself a book jar when my daughter moves out and I have somewhere to go to read again!

She was supposed to move out today, but hubby's car was wrecked over the weekend (it was parked in a parking bay at the time, not his fault, lol), but the company that was supposed to deliver him a courtesy car yesterday has so far not come through yet, and are now saying some time tomorrow. Blooming typical. She's moving 300 miles, so it's not like we can bundle her in a taxi with all her stuff either!
If they don't get here first thing, she'll not make the job interview she has set up for tomorrow, which doesn't help matters... *head -----> desk*

But book jar! Book jar sounds awesome! :D

I just keep finding more and more of them... I have probably 2 or 3 dozen "first in series" books on my tbr which will end up on the list if I enjoy the first one... *sigh*

All of the plans!

- Read 200 books
- Read 60 new books from the 1001 list
- Finish 5 series
- End year with less tbr books than I started with (audio: 115, tbr: 200)
- Get through The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, one story per week (starting on the 15th of Jan)

Progress:

- 395/200
- 64/60
- 9/5
- audio: 139, tbr: 291
- status: 9th story read