The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion
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So, What's On the Bedside Table these Days? -- Part 1
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Me too Alex. I found the same of Middlemarch and The Mill on..."
I've always enjoyed her, but do find that, as you say, you have to get into her rhythm. Right now because of where I'm at, I almost have to do that each time I pick the book up. It's worth the work to me though.
P.S. Good to see you out here Chris. I've missed your comments.
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Me too Alex. I found the same of Middlem..."
I am really busy with work, but I'm trying to at least keep one eye peeled on you guys having all this fun with the great books you're reading. I'm off to New Mexico for three days next week for business, and I'm taking Stephen Mitchell's new translation of The Iliad with me. Enjoy your reading of Daniel Deronda! Cheers! Chris
Oh cool Christopher, very much looking forward to your opinion on that Mitchell translation.
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I plan to review it here on GR and on my literary blog.
By the bye, the hardback edition I received is beyond beautiful, with a longish Introduction, maps, and glossary, and the hardcover binding (with deckle edges) is gorgeous. A true bibliophile's delight!
Just joined Goodreads. I am currently reading REAMDE by Neal Stephenson as a break from my re-introduction to the classics after retirement in 2008. It is a great adventure novel about computers, viruses, russian gangsters and terrorists.
Next in line is perhaps Mill on The Floss, or Tom Jones.
Regards,
Bill
Next in line is perhaps Mill on The Floss, or Tom Jones.
Regards,
Bill
Last night I started "The Heart of the Matter", by Graham Greene, which has been on my to-read list for ages. Really, really enjoying this book; Greene has to be among my favorite writer's of all time.http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76...
My class just finished Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, an obvious classic. Though I was a smidge upset at relinquishing the surprises and thrills captured in the story and moving on with my dull life, I am now able to begin reading any book I want now that we have finished our reading books for the year, and might I say, my stack of reads is beginning to pile up. I have been intently reading Diana by Sarah Bradford since February, and am nearly done with it. For those of you who are unaware of this book, it is a biography of the late Princess Diana, a long-time hero of mine, and if you are a fan of objective biographies, I highly recommend this one. Some biographies evoke a sense of bias and subjection without a consideration of the other, but Bradford's standpoint in this book considers the plight of both Diana and Charles during their marriage, though in some points, the sympathy does lean in Diana's favor. All in all, it is a fascinating read with many facts I was unaware of, and I hope to finish it soon. Up next for me is Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx (I just recently striked up a mini obsession with the Marx Brothers).
Me Talk Pretty One Day and When You're Engulfed in Flames, both by David Sedaris.
jane austen- orgueil et préjugés - pride and prejudice en français! love both versions !
Rida wrote: "I've been looking for Native American lit too! ..."Rida -- consider taking a look at the work of these authors and see if you find any of interest to you: Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Power, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie. (I have read at least part of one book from each of them -- and the "part" was probably from the "best" of these -- I still intend to return to it one day.) If none here appeal, try: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...
BunWat wrote: "I like Sherman Alexie."He was scheduled to be at BEA (Book Expo at Javits Center in NYC) this week. Something happened such that he was not there, at least as planned. But we saw the poster for him in the area where he was to be interviewed and were hoping that we might have seen a glimpse of him in person.
Reading the books here, but besides that I'm reading The Hunger Games trilogy. Go ahead and mock. ;) But love them. Just finished the second, and will take a quick break with an Alexander McCall Smith Isabel Dalhousie novel - The Right Attitude to Rain - and then start the last HG book - Mockingjay.
Language of Gender and Class by Patricia Ingham on transformation in Victorian Novels
Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn
Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn
E. wrote: "Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn"Brilliant book...the affects of American imperialism and culture on the Philippines.
Can't remember the details because I read it years ago, but do remember that it was intense.
As I recall, I particularly liked Susan Power's
The Grass Dancer
. But I don't believe she has ever become prolific, like Erdrich.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Power -- indicates a couple of books with which I am not familiar and confirms that my memory of her as being Sioux (Dakota?) was correct.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko may have been the first book by a Native American to receive book length reviews -- won't swear by that piece of trivia, but I think I recall reading that sometime, somrwhere. I have the book now (probably picked up when Borders went out of business), I lost a library copy of the audio recording several years ago. Maybe someday I'll actually get it read. It has an excellent reputation, but can be hard going at places with its recollections of Vietnam intermingled with tribal lore.I associate Silko with Pueblo Indians, this gives a more complete description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_M....
The article also names three other authors that were cited by critic Alan Velie as "Native American Masters": N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor and James Welch. I do not know that critic nor the works of those authors.
Lynnm wrote: "E. wrote: "Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn"
Brilliant book...the affects of American imperialism and culture on the Philippines.
Can't remember the details because I read it years ago, but do reme..."
I'll tell you what I think when I have finished reading it.
Brilliant book...the affects of American imperialism and culture on the Philippines.
Can't remember the details because I read it years ago, but do reme..."
I'll tell you what I think when I have finished reading it.
Fiji: A Novel is on my bedside table these days. It's an historical action-adventure set in 19th Century Fiji. My co-writer/son James and I wrote it; it's currently on Amazon's bestseller lists and it's free to download on Kindle from now until Wednesday June 13.
More reviews are welcomed...
http://amazon.com/dp/B0057YCZM0/
http://amazon.co.uk/dp/B0057YCZM0/
(Our first published novel, The Ninth Orphan, is also in the bestseller lists and is also free to Kindle readers until June 13).
These are on my bedside table back home right now (I'm spending summer away):
And these are the ones I'm reading now:
And those I've enjoyed this summer:
I've just finished reading "Anna Karenina." Now I just started "The Hobbit" and from the looks of it, I'm getting quite addicted. :)
There is Kim by Rudyard Kipling and L'homme qui regardait la nuit by Gilbert Sinoue :)
I'm trying to finish "Lady Audley's Secret" so that I can start "Agnes Grey." It is a quick, interesting read. Also started reading the Father Brown mysteries. I think they are great, though I noticed many people don't.
On my bedside table are: Remarkable Creates by Tracy Chevalier, t.c. boyle stories, Bram Stoker Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories, The Human Revolution Book One by Daisaku Ikeda, The McGraw Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage and (finally) Living Vegan for Dummies.
After several months abandoned, have been dipping into
by Walter Isaacson once again. It really is good, especially if you are interested at all in the technology (computer) industry over the last decades of the 1900's, along with the human turmoil surrounding the creation and marketing of some innovations that have changed our lives forever.I continue to read
by Eric R. Kandel. (The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain from Vienna 1900 to the Present) Some of you may have seen Kandel on the Charlie Rose show as he talked about the brain/memory research that led to his Nobel Prize in 2000. Here he steps back to his native Vienna to explore the development of the awareness of the unconscious in shaping human response to art, hope, fear, life, death... Not exactly page turner reading (not Stieg Larsson's
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
or E.L. James's
Fifty Shades of Grey
-- which latter, unlike Barbara Walters last night, I'm not sure I'll admit publicly to reading) but a deeply satisfying read to be savored a few chapters at a time, with perhaps an occasional pause for a dip into Umberto Eco's
or
. History of Beauty, On Ugliness.
Lily wrote: "After several months abandoned, have been dipping into by Walter Isaacson once again. It really is good, especially if you are interested at all in the technology (..."I came across On Ugliness in a little coffee shop while traveling through Costa Rica. It was just sitting there in a pile of newspapers and books and for the next 2 hours I was glued to my chair and my coffee remained pretty much untouched.
Reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror at the moment after finishing The Turn of the Screw.
I'm just over half way through both McTeague and The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli. I've been wanting to read both, but have to admit they're taking a bit of effort to get through.
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I am also slowly, but surely, replacing all of my Penguin softcover copies of Dickens' novels with hardcover Everyman's Library editions. I just replaced my well-worn (to the point it was falling apart) copy of Dombey and Son and am looking forward to a reread of it soon.
Christopher wrote: "I just finished a reread of Bleak House and Hardy's The Return of the Native. ."
Last year I finally read Bleak House for the first time. I loved it!
Last year I finally read Bleak House for the first time. I loved it!
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Last year I finally read Bleak House for the first time. I loved it!"
A beautiful book, from start to finish. It and Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend are Dickens' very best, with perhaps Dombey and Son a runner-up. Bleak House is just such a magisterial and sweeping tale though!
I decided to finally get around to reading those missed books that are so often referenced. Today it is The Wind in the Willows. How do you get to my age and not have read it? I don't know.
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The former does have a Victorian setting but is not old. It's Ste..."
I just finished rereading A Game of Thrones myself. Upon the second read, I still thought it good, but not what I would call an epic book. I'm going to reread the next three books in preparation for reading the fifth and newest book which I just purchased.
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The former does have a Victorian setting but is not old. It's Ste..."
Another great Steampunk series (there are 2 so far-does that make a series?) starts with
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack and includes lots of political and literary references.
I'm currently reading The Story of a Lie, by Robert Louis Stevenson; Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, by Jon L. Lellenberg; The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle; Robert Louis Stevenson, Science, and the Fin de Siecle, by Julia Reid; Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell; and A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson.
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Wow and I thought I read a lot of book simultaneously. My list doesn't even come close. I'm reading Moby Duck and The Secret Notebooks of Freida Kaholo
hehe, Deborah, I sometimes get stuck midway through a book, and I also received 2 or 3 books for Christmas, so my reading is more schizophrenic than usual! What is Moby Duck?
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What is Moby Duck?"
Moby Duck is a non-fiction book about 28,000 bath toys (ducks, beavers, and turtles). They were in cargo containers on a ship, and the containers fell off. The bath toys are being used to chart ocean behavior. In fact, there are several areas that are basically a big circle of plastic junk that just stagnant there because of the currents. Interesting, but I have to say, I'm not impressed by the writing. It's not as well written as I would like. The language is fine, but there are many notes which are long asides inserted into the story that I feel should have either been made part of the story or eliminated - not put into a note.
I am reading the Pickwick Club by Dickens and The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins, my first from him. If anyone is interested in Dickens' please join my Pickwick Club. http://www.goodreads.com/group/invite...
Jonathan wrote: "....If anyone is interested in Dickens' please join my Pickwick Club. http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/9......"Jonathan -- you do know about the on-going reading in this club of the works of Dickens?
I just started reading the book "Innocence and Wwar" by Ian Strathcarron where he retraces the path of Mark Twain through the Holy Land that produced the book "Innocents Abroad".
I am reading Richard Wright's Native Son and so far it is enjoyable. The book is thought provoking and the story interesting.
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The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910
Books mentioned in this topic
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (other topics)The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli (other topics)
McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (other topics)
Love in the Time of Cholera (other topics)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Philip Levine (other topics)Michael Connelly (other topics)
Kazuo Ishiguro (other topics)
Gerald Durrell (other topics)
Rumer Godden (other topics)
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Me too Alex. I found the same of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss. For ..."
I found Middlemarch kind of tough sledding at first, but after 50-60 pages I seemed to find Eliot's rhythm and I was off to the races. The Mill on the Floss was simply a superb novel from the first page to the last. Daniel Deronda was another novel that I really enjoyed (really almost two novels in one, in fact). Eliot has become one of my favorite Victorian authors.