Sean’s Comments (group member since Jan 30, 2019)

Sean’s comments from the Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die group.

Finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Oddly satisfying.

Welcome Chloe, and congrats on getting all that accomplished. Will be great to see you around and reading with us!

Awesome thank you!

The two lowest I have read are:

1313 Cataract Osadchy, Mykhaylo 2.461195 2.488938 240 3.53 30
1265 The 120 Days of Sodom Sade, Marquis de 3.074788 3.069315 376 3.12 11457

Cataract was decent, poetic writing.
120 Days was... well we mostly know what 120 Days is.

Coming up very soon because I saw that I have access to them:
1309 I Thought of Daisy Wilson, Edmund 2.535591 2.553811 278 3.32 53
1274 Forever a Stranger and Other Stories Haasse, Hella S. 2.968644 3.026774 127 3.75 51

The highest that I have yet to read is
41 The Daughter Matesis, Pavlos 4.198550 4.233543 214 4.31 1161

I just thought of something. There is supposed to be a 2022 version coming out in February. I don't mind waiting until then....

Either way.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Sean wrote: "I use this Wilson Score-sorted list a lot. Love it."

Not difficult, just takes some time. But you made it hard to say "no".

Is there anything you want changed from last time?"

And nothing needs to change from last time except the three new books. I like how it was adjusted in the second iteration to take into account that longer books tend to get better ratings.

This last list looks good. I also have the "wrong" Three Kingdoms. This one is better i agree.

Thank you very much.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "Thank you. Removed the second one. Now my list of combined lists has 1315. Anyone know what the right number is?"

Would it be difficult to add in the three newly discovered books? Or just let me know where they fit into the above list?

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Night Boat to Tangier
Tyll


I use this Wilson Score-sorted list a lot. Love it.

Karen wrote: "The Clay Machine-Gun by Victor Pelevin
Wow! I never thought I would encounter Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Boxall book."

haha! no kidding. That book was bizarre. I think we need a bookshelf for bizarre books.

I think this list would be shorter if it contained books that would still exist without war.

Here are some (edit) more books with war references (/edit) yet to be listed from my most recent readings:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Cataract
Kidnapped
The Dispossessed
Promise at Dawn
Legend
Cryptonomicon

Andrew wrote: "I wonder, does the The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing count? She was technically born in Iran, but spent like 90% of her childhood in the then-South Rhodesia and set the book there..."

Your challenge. Your rules. A similar exception was in the "B Country" category. Check out that thread to read about it. If you are okay with making the exception then I say go for it.

Welcome Paige. The LIST is certainly a great way to find new books. And it's quite the journey. We challenge ourselves in a few different ways in this group. Looking forward to see what you read.

Bob wrote: "The Nose: By Nikolai Gogol - Illustrated by Nikolai Gogol A book as plain as... but no...."

I LOL'ed! :D

I might predict
Hamnet
The Vanishing Half (which I read and it was just ok)
Summer
Shuggie Bain
The Nickel Boys
Ducks, Newburyport
Poor -- Edited.... poetry
Girl, Woman, Other
The Mermaid of Black Conch
Edited to add Luster to replace Poor
Edited to add The Death of Vivek Oji to round it off to an even 10

Anybody read any of these?

I've also seen An American Marriage on the list of Women's Prize for Fiction. I read that one and liked it.

I started The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Over the last few days I finished Cataract by Mykhaylo Osadchy. He was a poet and he wrote like one. Writing about the Gulag prison system yet his prose was lyrical and descriptive. This lended a much different style compared to any of the other books I've read on similar topics.

I also finished At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien. This was a bizarre book that had me shaking my head in wonder most of the time.

Aubrey wrote: "Does the 1001 compilation include works by any Bolivian authors?"

Not that I am aware of

RJ - Slayer of Trolls wrote: "The ruminations on the duality of man, as well as the consequences paid by Jekyll for the sins of Hyde, reminded me of The Picture of Dorian Gray.."

I agree and I thought the same thing while reading it..."

A very good comparison. I also thought about Dorian while reading J&H.

A couple months ago my local book club read the third installment of the You series. There's a part where Joe sees his new love interest recommending a book by Haruki Murakami. "Murakami" becomes a euphemism for something that I will let you discover for yourself.

This month somebody in the same club decided we now needed to read some Murkami. So we are starting The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

I am also starting At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien

It was a good time to read this one: right before Halloween.

I enjoyed this book. I've known the story since I was a kid. I have seen many adaptions of it. Looney Tunes comes to mind. I think Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and others all took their turns as Jekyll and Hyde. But knowing the story and actually, finally, reading it are completely different things. And it didn't disappoint.

I have to wonder what it would have been like reading this and NOT KNOWING that Jekyll and Hyde were the same person. When would I have figured it out. I guess 135 years makes for the ultimate spoiler.

A very marked difference in the style from Kidnapped, the last Stevenson book we read. Moving from adventure to horror I suppose that's to be expected. I think he excelled in the horror and suspense department.

While I knew that Hyde represented pure evil, I don't think I ever knew that he actually assaulted and murdered.

I'm glad we got to read this classic.

Time to discuss!