1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Challenge

[Sammy]

That was one of those books where I liked the ideas, but wasn't a fan of the execution.
didn't enjoy the movie either!

[Sammy]

I'm beginning to think Marquez may have needed some serious therapy for his unresolved sexual issues...

Or maybe he should have just gone and changed to writing pure smut. It may have helped him work through some stuff. 😆

[Denise]

I finished A Passage to India E.M. Forster. I did not enjoy it as much as Howard's End and A Room With A View

[Sammy]

I feel much the same about A Passage to India I preferred the other two as well.

[Gabby]

I haven't read a large number of these but am interested in reading more.
Read prior start 16

My Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Not sure how far I will get but it definately a good long term project :D

[Denise]

I finished The Razor’s Edge W. Somerset Maugham. I really liked it and want to read more of his books

[Sammy]

I love Maugham! The Painted Veil is my personal favourite, but I haven't read a bad one yet!

[Eldarwen]

I've only read "The Painted Veil" so far and I enjoyed that a lot. I also watched the film first, not realising it was based on a book, and I loved that, so I was pretty sure I wasn't going to not like the book ;-)

[Sammy]

And finally finished

Easier said than done, because I broke my reading glasses, and the print in this book was easily the tiniest I've seen yet 😆

really enjoyed it though, but that didn't come as much of a surprise, as I love Murakami.

[Sammy]

so I hated Money, but I mostly loved this one.

It's becoming a pattern with most male literary fiction authors I read... I always hate the first one and tend to love the rest.

Except for Saul Bellow and Jonathan Franzen. they just can't seem to budge from the 3-star range in either direction 😆

[Sammy]

Didn't like this as much as London Fields, but still better than Money.

I've not been doing so great this year in getting list books read. I guess I can blame that on very few of them showing up in the Plus catalogue, and I'm not allowed to buy books this year 😆

[Sammy]

I've been working my way through a hardback copy of the Lovecraft complete collection, but it's kinda languising because challenges keep getting in the way. So when this one popped up in the plus catalogue, I grabbed it!

Really enjoyed it. lovecraft was really great with the atmospheric writing!

[Sammy]

Woohoo, I'm on a roll this week!

Really enjoyed the title story, beautifully written. the rest of the collection was so-so.

[Sammy]

Not at all a fan of the writing. or the story, if I'm honest. I'm also baffled as to why one of the main MPGs is "mystery". there is absolutely no mystery here whatsoever.
Unless you count the fact that people actually consider this a good book 😆

[Eldarwen]

That might be the reason why ;-)

Such a well-known book and also turned into at least one movie if I'm not mistaken? Shame it wasn't all that great. It's one I figured I should definitely read from this enormous list I will most likely never get through haha.

[Sammy]

Well at least it's super short, so you'll feel like you're making progress on the list for relatively little effort 😆

[Denise]

I did a re-read of my second fave Jane Austen, Mansfield Park. I has a lot of Austen tropes...mean aunts (Aunt Norris), comedic moms (Aunt Bertram "Can I do without Fanny tomorrow?" She is incapable of independent thought), meddlesome newcomers (the Crawfords), and happily ever afters.

[Sammy]

Meh. It was ok, but for such a short book, full of stuff that didn't need to be there.

I'm also getting the feeling more than ever that McEwan is a terrible snob!