Darwin8u’s Comments (group member since May 22, 2013)

Darwin8u’s comments from the Completists' Club group.

Cecily wrote: "Have the completists caught up with The Bone Clocks and more recently, Slade House?

After TBC, I reread Thousand Autumns, and realised I'd underrated it before. My ..."

Yup. Completist again. :)

1. Cloud Atlas (5*)
2. Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (5*)
3. Black Swan Green (5*)
4. Ghostwritten (4*)
5. number9dream (4*)
6. Slade House (3*)

Other

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism (3*)

Number9Dream has moved up in my estimation from a 3* to a 4*.

Jonathan wrote: "I have Completionanalyisationarismed Gaddis. He is da bomb."

fanfreakintasticradulations!

I'm late to lunch and pissed that Cormac McCarthy didn't make the list. Dalkey can go press and screw a ripe watermellon now.

Night Soldiers novels:

* Night Soldiers (1988)
* Dark Star (1991)
* The Polish Officer (1995)
* The World at Night (1996)
* Red Gold (1999)
* Kingdom of Shadows (2000)
* Blood of Victory (2003)
* Dark Voyage (2004)
* The Foreign Correspondent (2006)
* The Spies of Warsaw (2008)
* Spies of the Balkans (2010)
* Mission to Paris (2012)

Stand-alone novels:

* Your day in the barrel (1976)
* The Paris drop (1980)
* The Caribbean Account (1981)
* Shadow Trade (1983)

I've read all the Ripley novels and want to expand to her short stories and other novels soon. SO:

1. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
2. Ripley Under Ground (1970)
3. Ripley's Game (1974)
4. The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
5. Ripley Under Water (1991)

I think the Ripliad is a good place to start with Highsmith (pats own back).

Reestablished my complete-hood by reading and then watching and then checking and revisiting 'the Counselor'. Even though CM had a large role in the movie, the screenplay is still worth the read because it contains parts that exist in celluloid now only on Ridley Scott's cuttings covered floor.

Just finished Cormac McCarthy (for now).
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

Just finished all of Cormac McCarthy. I'll have to be back on this thread in about a month once 'The Counselor' gets published. But, hell, that just lets me finish twice right?

William Herschel wrote: "Darwinateyou, which has been your favourite Dickens novel? I just finished Our Mutual Friend and found it least favourable. But David Copperfield is delightful. :)"

I'm enjoying David Copperfield, but loved Great Expectations and Tale of Two Cities. I haven't really been disappointed by Dickens yet, but I don't think I've got enough Dickens experience to really speak. Ask me again in a year plus, or ask MJ now. I think he is better positioned to speak.

MJ wrote: "Thanks, I hadn't heard of that Drood book before. I'm looking forward to all the books around the books that will follow my Dickens completion."

Don't forget to also read Carey's Jack Maggs.

Realistically, I won't come close to finishing Dickens this year. I really want to finish Proust and McCarthy too. I'm close enough with McCarthy to actually taste the cold finish and I'm pacing well with Mssr Proust. Dickens is a recent goal, so I'm more casual about what I will be able to do in 2013.

No. No logic. Size and popularity are probably somewhat correlated. I read 'Tale of Two Cities', 'Oliver Twist' and 'Great Expectations' (popular) before I really thought about reading them all. I know I want to save 'Bleak House' (best for last) till the end, so there is that.

It also depends on which Dickens novel I've recently found at the used bookstore in an everyman's library version. But I imagine that is correlated with popularity and I also imagine that popularity with Dickens is somewhat correlated with size (imperfectly, but somewhat).

If I have two copies, say one penguin or modern library paperback AND the everyman's library version, I do feel more compelled to read the book sooner, but again that is probably indirectly correlated to popularity and size.

Mainly, it is just where the wind blows me and what I've read immediately before. Right now I'm reading 'David Copperfield' and I think my next read will be 'Our Mutual Friend', so no... just the weight of the moon and the spin of the stars and the way my cheese curdles (tyromancy).

Serialised Novels:

The Pickwick Papers (April 1836-November 1837)
The Adventures of Oliver Twist (February 1837 to April 1839)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (April 1838 to October 1839)
The Old Curiosity Shop (April 25, 1840 to February 6, 1841)
Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty' (February 13, 1841, to November 27, 1841)
The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (January 1843 to July 1844)
Dombey and Son (October 1846 to April 1848)
David Copperfield (May 1849 to November 1850)
Bleak House (March 1852 to September 1853)
Hard Times: For These Times (April 1, 1854, to August 12, 1854)
Little Dorrit (December 1855 to June 1857)
A Tale of Two Cities (April 30, 1859, to November 26, 1859)
Great Expectations (December 1, 1860 to August 3, 1861)
Our Mutual Friend (May 1864 to November 1865)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (April 1870 to September 1870).

I've owned the book for almost twenty years now and occasionally just pull it out, open it, smell the pages, rub the spine against my cheek, and quickly reshelf. I've got to just start digging. I might just rent a cottage in the mountains with one lamp and one lightbulb and not much else and just sit alone and read for a couple days.

Aubrey wrote: "Gass is the only author I can imagine who's going to cause me to turn around one day and realize I've inadvertently gotten through their entire bibliography."

Me too. I remember Pynchon's novels dancing and swelling till one day, I just gobbled most up. I thinkst the same will happen with Gass. Dalton's law will make the inevitable expansion of his books reach some crisis at some future time that will only be resolved by actually sitting my ass down and reading them.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: Thank you. So much for getting anything else done today."

Yeah, I don't think I've been as excited about an author page since I first ran across the Thomas Pynchon Spermatikos Logos on the Modernworld.com

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/

Didn't know if you all caught this new site:
http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/exhibits...

MJ wrote: "Premature completionism!"

I just spit a little. I think Pynchon (V. and Vineland left), DFW (since the new book is coming out this Fall), and maybe if I'm ambitious Gaddis.

Mike wrote: "You're very welcome, and good job on the CM completionist pursuit. Looking forward to The Counselor."

Yes, me too. I just ordered The Stonemason and The Gardener's Son from eBay. So, as soon as they get here ...

Carla wrote: "But Conrad, I can't abide-- I find his writing labored and ...well, not entertaining. Shoot me, but there you have it."

Shoot? Never. But, I might leave you on an remote island near Borneo and burn your thatch roof down. I think the labor of Conrad is part of his prose's difficult charm. It is like the stutter of a genius whose brain is running two steps faster than his mouth, except with Conrad you are not sure if his brain is running faster than his pen, or if he has simply lapped his 3rd language too.