Which World Library Book did you just finish?

[Laura]

I've just finished Things Fall Apart. Short, simplistic, gripping in parts and I liked the narrator but didn't like the book enough to want to read anything else by Achebe.

[Laura]

I finished Wuthering Heights yesterday, it took a while to get into it, although it gained momentum at the end I really didn't like it and Heathcliff was so horrible!!!!!!

[Lesserknowngems]

I agree Heathcliff was horrible, but to me that was what made the book good. I read it as a tragedy of what happens when people like him and Cathrine are treated as they are by their surroundings.

[Rob]

I didn't "just" finish it, but as I am new to this community, within the last six months or so, I finished Eliot's Middlemarch, which despite its length I enjoyed.

I typically like shorter novels, but I liked the depictions of the community life and its residents.

I'd recommend it.

[Laura]

Finished Crime and Punishment last night- dark, grim, depressing, but a more entertaining and easy read then I thought it would be, I'm still not 100% sure what I thought of it, I think it'll take me a few days....

[josearcadiobuendia]

I just finished Independent People, great novel from an author who was complete unknown to me. The first 100 pages are simply superb. I look forward to reading something by H.Laxness. Any recommendations??

[J_BlueFlower]

Finished Othello. Book number 29 from the list.

[Novecento]

Dante's Divine Comedy, read it rather fast-paced for it was almost like a duty after reading Ulysses and after becoming aware of all the reference by artists i like. I can see why, rather remarkable considering when it was written. Reading it with few interruptions for close readings did not seem such a bad move though I felt bad sometimes. If you get struck with every name and check out the historic reference that is made it will take you a very long time. If you ignore them it seems that it is easier to get a sense of the whole that this text seems to be constructing...i read a German version from 1966, at times the translation worked marvellously. Guess for the final parts of the book to be effective one would need to read the Italian/Latin version though...the representation of paradise seems to work largely on using a different tone, as Dante refrains from any explicit notions of the state of paradise, always telling that reader that words could not do justice to what he witnessed...I seem to remember that Las von Trier made a cynical remark about that in an interview: Dante finds it so easy to figure suffering and pain but so hard to do the same for the qualities supposed to be found in paradise..tells a lot for him about the thing we call "life".

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

Finished a second read of The Odyssey, which I read while reading Ulysses for the first time. I don't think the one helped much with the other, but I enjoyed reading through it again. The first time was the Stephen Mitchell translation--this second was an old translation by William Cowper. The style was completely different, but I kind of enjoyed it.