Raine's Progress

[Raine]

I honestly didn't think I would ever complete A Suitable Boy. It just seemed to keep going on and on. I think I got carpal tunnel syndrome from keeping the book lifted up to read! He spent so much time building up the characters and setting the stage that it really didn't start getting good until the last 100 or so pages.

Next up? Mort, Kane and Abel, Atonement and The Shadow of the Wind.

[Janet]

I loved "The Shadow of the Wind". Hope you like it.

[Janet]

Good to see you back. Haven't seen any posts from you for a long time.

[Raine]

I have been working a lot and stuck on "A Suitable Boy"!! We're also restoring one British Mini and modifying another.

[Raine]

Just ordered the following books from the Public Library:

The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome

Hope to get them soon.

[Raine]

Found that Swallows and Amazons would have been better had I been younger, just for the way it was written. Found the boating terms to be interesting.

Bridget Jones' Diary was tedious and irritating. Do young adults really think like that? I never worried about such things.

Reading Guards! Guards! now.

[Janet]

Raine wrote: "Found that Swallows and Amazons would have been better had I been younger, just for the way it was written. Found the boating terms to be interesting.

Bridget Jones' Diary was tedious and irritati..."
I agree with your opinion on both books.

[Raine]

Finished "Guards!Guards!"
Absolutely love how Terry Pratchett writes. I've suggested Discworld series to my husband for when he's finished with The Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind.

I've picked up "Vicky Angel" and "Double Act" by Jacqueline Wilson, "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and "Cold Comfort Farms" by Stella Gibbons.

[Raine]

Finished "Vicky Angel". Except for the haunting part, some of it hit home. My best friend drowned when we were in 3rd grade. I got in trouble and couldn't go to the church picnic where she drowned. I blamed myself for a long time. Her parents moved away the following year, unable to look at me. (while I know it was a reminder of her, it felt like so much more at the time.

On to "The Little Prince".

[Janet]

Raine wrote: "Finished "Vicky Angel". Except for the haunting part, some of it hit home. My best friend drowned when we were in 3rd grade. I got in trouble and couldn't go to the church picnic where she drowned...."

It must have been an emotional read for that reason.

[Raine]

Finished Cold Comfort Farm. Wasn't very impressed. The way she described the Starkadders reminded me of my ex-husband's family. All that torture of her manipulation and never do we hear about what the "rights" were, or what "nasty" was seen in the shed! I have a hard time when an artist writes quotes in dialect, and I'm sure that people in the waiting room were not thrilled when I was whisper-reading to make sure I understood what the characters were saying!

Reading "Kane and Abel" and "Double Act".

[Raine]

Just finished a couple of books and updated my list.

Currently reading Kane and Abel, and have Gormenghast on the table.

[Raine]

Finished Kane and Abel. Absolutely loved it. The plot itself was kind of predictable, but I love the entwining of true historical events and conspiracies. A prime example is when William Kane's father, a banker, died on "a" ship. There's a conspiracy that says JP Morgan (banker and financial backer of the Titanic) lowered standards on the Titanic as guided by the book "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan (1898) to kill Benjamin Guggenheim, Isa Strauss (actual name Isidor Straus), and John Jacob Astor IV, all opposers of the creation of the Federal Reserve. Interestingly enough, less than a year later, the Federal Reserve was created by the Rothschilds, Rockefeller, and JP Morgan. They were known as the Federal Reserve Cartel. Also to fuel this conspiracy was the insurance scandal that involved the Titanic and its sinking. 'Conspiracies: Titanic, the ship that never sank' and The Titanic Conspiracy: The Great Deception are great videos to watch.

On to The Gormenghast Novels.

[Raine]

Oh my God!!! The Secret History just dragged on and on and on... I didn't think it would ever end. It just kept going and going. It was so dull that I had trouble keeping at it.

I tried to read The Gormenghast Novels, but couldn't renew it because someone else wanted it. I've re-requested it, but it hasn't come in yet.

I've started the Magician today.

[Raine]

Here is where I am at right now:
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisted – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (In French)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

[Raine]

The original list posted. Almost finished.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (In French)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

[Raine]

Finished
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

Starting
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

[Raine]

Finished
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

Starting
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

[Raine]

I just finished

95. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Thank god! I found it very hard to get through it. Main character reminded me of certain people in my life, vulgar individuals who no respect for anyone or anything and always made excuses for both his failures and his lack of drive. I don't see how it won a Pulitzer Prize over So Long, See You Tomorrow. I read somewhere that it won because it has been cited as the most accurate literary representation of Yat. I believe that it has reached cult status much in the same way that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did. What I didn't realize is that the book was published some 12 years after the author's loss in the battle against depression.

The title was derived from a quote by Jonathan Swift: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

As my reward for persevering, I'm going to read the next book in the Wheel of Time series: The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

[Raine]

I just finished

95. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Thank god! I found it very hard to get through it. Main character reminded me of certain people in my life, vulgar individuals who no respect for anyone or anything and always made excuses for both his failures and his lack of drive. I don't see how it won a Pulitzer Prize over So Long, See You Tomorrow. I read somewhere that it won because it has been cited as the most accurate literary representation of Yat. I believe that it has reached cult status much in the same way that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did. What I didn't realize is that the book was published some 12 years after the author's loss in the battle against depression.

The title was derived from a quote by Jonathan Swift: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

As my reward for persevering, I'm going to read the next book in the Wheel of Time series: The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan