Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion
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Which LIST book did you just finish?
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Lisa
(last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:56PM)
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Nov 24, 2007 05:39PM
I just finished Farewell to Arms and To Kill a Mockingbird. Life of Pi and a few others on the list were on my list to read soon.
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I just finished A Handmaid's Tale. Very good, thought provoking book.
I just finished Persuasion by Jane Austen. Not my favorite of hers but very good nonetheless.
Never Let Me Go is fantastic!
I just finished Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. I never would have read Dogulas Adams if his books hadn't been on the list, but now I love him. I always pictures physics majors with thick glasses being his intended audience, but I really enjoyed the book.
Just finished To Kill A Mockingbird, am ashamed that I have not read it before now.
I just finished Naked Lunch last week. Some people don't like it, but I loved it. I am now reading The Master and Margarita and I am loving it also!
Tani, you have to get another version! I loved Les Miserables. It is a book to be enjoyed.
Annecater, I read To Kill a Mockingbird again this past summer and was blown away. I read it when I was a child, but it took on such new meaning now (I'm a "baby" lawyer, so it reminded me of all those ideals that law school beats out of you.)
Jennie, geeks are trendy now, too. ;)
I love Douglas Adams. I'll admit I'm a tad bit geeky, though.
Barbara and Tani -- I thought I posted this earlier but -- maybe I didn't -- the way to read through Les Miserables is to get a few friends to read it also and talk each other through the "between" sections because the history, etc which Hugo is setting forth does bear on the story and gives depth and richness to the book which should not be missed. I read this with a couple of others on my online group CR before we came to this site and the three of us loved our esperience of the book. It so happened I was actually in the area where some of those historical referenced sections took place so shared photos and my own observations during a visit to the site of Waterloo -- but even without that -- talking over those sections can help.And I totally agree with Elizabeth that it is a book to be enjoyed -- but I don't agree that one needs to avoid the unabridged version to do so -- I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the book and will always have a special feeling for it. I will say though that I had read a short version /book-of-the month-club version several times in my teens before I set out to read the whole thing. AND I'd seen the musical twice.
Dottie,Thanks for the suggestions about reading the book with some friends. I don't recall hearing this before (maybe I wasn't in the group just yet), but I do appreciate you sharing the idea once again.
I so much want to read it and have for a long time.
My friend gave me his copy that he had read over and over again and he has notes in the margins. When his dad gave him a beautifully bound copy, he gave this one to me. It is special because I know how special it was for him since it was personalized by him. This may actually help me to read it.
Thanks again.
Just finished Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I'm faced with this whole ranking anxiety all over again. I feel like such a downer giving book after book a rating of 2. It reminds me of a teacher in high school who reminded us that the grade of C meant average and didn't necessarily imply bad. I feel that way about two stars.This book had an interesting story, was well written enough, and at no time made me hate it. On the other hand, at no time did it make me love it, nor do I think there was anything especially noteworthy about it. It was average.
So I apologize that I return here book after book and post lukewarm responses, but most of the books I have read off this list are just ok. Like Middlesex.
The Light of Day by Graham Swift.Unfortunately another 2.
Just finished Lolita by Nabokov. Loved it. 4 stars from me. Not sure which one to dive into next - but just got '1001 books to read before you die' today and it's so easy to get inspired by it!
I just finished Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. It was a pretty good read, but I did not really get the ending, and I also never really understood why Lucy made the decisions that she did.
The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. This book was wonderful. For all my complaining about how so many of these books were just ho-hum, this book came along to acutely demonstrate the difference between an ok story written passably well, and a wonderfully well-written story. Four strong stars.
Just finished Time's Arrow by Martin Amis. Definitely one of the weirdest books I've ever read. The book goes backwards in time, and though there are other books like that, this one takes it to the extreme where it is similar to watching a movie in reverse: people walk backwards, garbagemen leave trash on the street, people go to a doctor feeling well and leave feeling sick, etc. It was a pretty good book though, once you get past that jarring feeling (the book is about the Holocaust, so in a sense it is supposed to be jarring).
Unless by Carol Shields. A beautifully written book about the aftermath of a heart-rending event. However, it feels too grounded in particulars to be universal.
Just finished The Lambs on London (only 3 stars frome me). I'm reading Decline and Fall now. It's excellent so far (I'm on chapter six). Anne
I just finished the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I thought I'd grab something short to start my excursion through the 1001 books. I enjoyed this book, and Spark's style. She uses blunt repetition to keep the story moving. I would be interested to see how this book would be written today. It seems like many boarding school stories about single, sexual feminist teachers stems from this book. One question on length: is it a novella at 180 pages, or still considered a novel?
kimberly - I think it could be either a novel or novella. I googled it a little, and most of the definitions said that a novella is 30,000 to 40,000 words long, which isn't that helpful. I did find one guide that said that a novella is focused on one particular theme instead of many, which might be a more helpful definition. Here's the guide if you're interested. As for me, I just finished On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I really liked it a lot, for the most part. It had great characters with distinctive voices, which is always something I like. I'm debating between 4 and 5 stars...If only I could give it 4 and a half. That would solve the problem quite nicely!
I'm currently reading several books at a time: Saturday by Ian McEwan, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I'm a little stalled on all of them simply because I don't have a lot of reading time at the moment. Hopefully that'll change once the semester is over. And speaking of Les Mis, I wanted to thank Dottie and Elizabeth for the encouragement. You reminded me that I should be reading the book to enjoy it, not just to get through it. I'm hoping I'll be able to approach it with more patience the next time I pick it up and enjoy it properly.
Tani - "You reminded me that I should be reading the book to enjoy it, not just to get through it. " That is a wonderful insight that I often forget when grabbing a book for the purpose of checking it off a list. The whole "consumption" versus "absorption" problem. I just read the Pit and the Pendulum because I knew it was only 10 pages and would be an easy check mark on the excel sheet. ;)Thanks for the link!
I just finished Stephen J. Cannell's Three Shirt Deal, a great mystery in the Shane Scully series.Detective Shane Scully must choose between saving his marriage, having an affair or freeing an innocent man: http://www.threeshirtdeal.com/
Saturday by Ian Mcewan. I'm still letting the book settle before I too harshly judge it. At the very least, it is quite impressive how much research McEwan did on neurosurgery to be able the write the book. That being said, I'm not sure the rest of the novel lived up to that research.
Hello, just joined this group because I have the guide itself and I'm interested. The last one I read was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which is surely un-dislikeable. I read the whole thing out to my daughter over a couple of weeks (she's aged 11 - I omitted the frequent swearing). I'd already read it and it's just brilliant.
I've finished The Godfather and I loved it. I enjoyed the films (well, one and two was ok), but the book was amazing. It was a really quick read for me too! It gave me a whole new depth to the story that I wouldn't have known before. yay!
Ernest Hemmingway "The Old Man and the Sea"
When The Leaves Stop Falling, by Kelly Moran....ME! Check it out, it's getting great feedback!
home.wi.rr.com/kellymoran
I just finished A Christmas Carol by charles Dickens.
The Colour by Rose Tremain - one star.Ugh! This was one of those books that had a good beginning, about 70 pages or so, and then went tremendously downhill.
The novel follows a husband and wife who have decided to start anew in New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century only to be thwarted at every turn and estranged. Blah blah blah.
So if that WAS the story it might have been an ok read. The writing was nothing impressive, but the initial renderings of the characters was well done.
And then the author sort of goes beserk. She adds a dash of completely ill-fitting magical realism in the relationship between a young boy and his Maori nurse; a soupcon of homosexuality; a thimbleful of early feminism; etc. etc.
By the halfway mark, the book is so convoluted that having finished it, I'm still not sure which part the author intended me to focus on. Had she pared down her opus and concentrated on the strong suit, which was her research and accurate rendering of a specific place and time, I think it would have been far more successful. As it stands, however, the book is sort of one giant mess.
Oh, and as an aside. I cannot abide writers (and the culprits are frequently women) who refer to the male genitalia as "his sex." God, could you get more romance novelly than that?
Just finished Paulo Coelho 'Veronika decides to die' - liked it but didn't find it amazing. I do understand why it's on the list though!
I just finished Lolita right before Christmas. I had read it before and thought it was good. However, since then I've been working for child abuse prevention organizations, so this time when I read it, it was a completely different experience. Still good, but more disturbing.
"Never Let Me Go", a very sad and unsettling story.
Disgrace was an amazing book!! SO crazy but so interesting and it left my reading group with so many questions and so many unsaid thoughts...too dark at times but WOW.
Just finished "The Island of Dr. Moreau" last night and I really liked it. It was kinda creepy and dark but still very good.
Most recent one finished was The Brothers Karamazov, though this was my third time reading it. This list give a whole new meaning to "so many books, so little time". How am I ever going to have time to re-read those that really hit home with me.
The Hound of the Baskervilles & The Yellow Wallpaper (can't recall if I mentioned that one previously).
hi there,I read a book of daniel defoe called :Robinson cruiso"
It was a long time ago..but as a boy of 18 it was quite interesting to enjoy the illustrated Robinson Cruiso ..It was a wonderful book.
I loved it.
Best regards
tusher
The Hound of the Baskervilles, The sign of four, A Study in Scarlet, The Return of Sherlock Holmes,His Last Bow,The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes & many more of great character sherlock holms written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that I read; will upload as i recall in days ahead. The Lost World (Modern Library Classics),The Poison Belt: Being an Account of Another Amazing Adventure of Professor Challenger (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
A great auther & great creations...
must read books for the readers..
regards
tusher
The Postman Always Rings Twice - James CainThis is a very quick read - a bit violent, but anyone who enjoys the hard-boiled detective novel will probably like this.
I just finished the Godfather. I may be only person in America who has never seen the movies, so I approached the book with some trepidation, but was blown away by the plot and characterization. Yes, there were cliches. And, yes, the grammar is quite bad in places. But what a great book!! Now I'll watch the movies.
do you think so? i didn't like the book and marveled how it could have made its way onto any 'best' list. the story line felt predictable and the conversations stilted. i tossed it from my collection. i'm hoping other books by zadie smith (on the reading list) will prove better.
So I went on vacation with a number of books. I won't go into reviews here, but I managed to dispense with:The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor - 2 stars
Fury by Salman Rushdie - 4 stars
Nowhere Man by Aleksander Hemon - 2 stars
Unless by Carol Shields - 2 stars
Platform by Michel Houllebecq - 4 stars
Schooling by Heather McGowen - 5 stars
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - 3 stars
All in all, a pretty good haul.
Sorry, add to that Choke by Chuck Palahniuk - 3 stars
And In The Forest by Edna O'Brien - 2 stars
The Golden Notebook and The Grass is Singing both by the current Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing
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Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
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