50 Book Challenge for 2011

[fashionista-ta]

13: Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Sometimes I get so irritated by the reputation of some novelists - and the way that men are accorded the status of being serious writers by virtue of their gender - that I have to go back to their earlier works to remember why they were hailed as brilliant.

I need for you to 'splain to me about Updike then I really do not love Rabbit. To me the best things in the books are random factoids he throws out there ...

But I have to admit, for some reason practically all my favorite authors are women. I just find it hard to connect with most male authors. Dickens gets a free pass for a Christmas Carol, but most of the rest I'm not too crazy about

 

[Ziegfeld Girl]

I've started my seventh book. At over 800 pages it will be the longest book I have read this year but I really like what I've read so far.

01. A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi
02. Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
03. See Naples and Die by Penelope Green
04. The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho
05. If This Is a Man by Primo Levi
06. Girl By Sea by Penelope Green
07. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

​

 

[Alvedansen]

01. John Steinbeck - The grapes of wrath
02. Richard Matheson - I am legend
03. Joyce Carol Oates - Big mouth & Ugly girl
04. Ken Follett - The pillars of the earth
05. Haruki Murakami - Afterdark

on to the next book...

 

[Lola Montès]

I'm still far behind most of you. I began my fourth book this week-end, Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.
So far I like it.

 

[Belowen]

Finished my seventh book, now onto the eight...

01: American Subversive by David Goodwillie
02: The Collector by John Fowles
03: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
04: Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
05: The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
06: The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
07: Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien
08 : The Forest Of Hands & Teeth by Carrie Ryan

​

 

[kito09]

Onto my sixth.

1. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
2. What Happened to Anna. K by Irina Reyn
3. Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
4. The Seamstress by Frances De Pontes Peebles
5. The Lovers Room by Steven Carrol

6. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
​

 

[tigerrouge]

14: Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

I also read He's Just Not That Into You because the book came free with a magazine (some time ago, it's been gathering dust) although I won't be counting it, not least because the inside layout was an exercise in how to waste space, the page count could easily have been reduced by half.

 

[fashionista-ta]

^ Ah, you should count it

I am making rather slow progress through my current book

 

[kate_is_goddess]

'The Catcher in the Rye' - check. Didn't like it at first, especially the kind of youth language the protagonist uses, but I got used to it after a while and I even found it quite entertaining sometimes, especially his phrases to describe his feelings about things (e.g. "That killed me" or "I wasn't so hot about it"). It's interesting to see how much the english/american language (and also typography) changed since the 50s.
I was expecting a totally different storyline though, judging by the title & cover design. All in all I liked it, it's also quite fitting to the psychoanalytic stuff I have to study at the moment.

Next up:
8// The Collector by John Fowles
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[ChrissyM]

^^i think with catcher in the rye you really have to appreciate the writing style and how well done the stream of consciousness is expressed...

 

[kate_is_goddess]

^yeah... also, I like how you get what problems 'Holden' has without it ever having to be explained explicitly (does that make sense? too many verbs in that sentence ). He does say "I'm depressed" a lot, but it's way deeper than that and you can almost feel it through his actions & thoughts, even though he himself doesn't see it.

 

[fashionista-ta]

I was in my 30s I think when I first read Catcher in the Rye, and I absolutely hated it. I came to the conclusion that you have to 'catch' it sooner than that, like chicken pox I'm also not sure I 'got' Holden & his issues ... not sure what that says about me I also kept waiting for the exciting part that gets the book banned, and never found it

 

[Alvedansen]

^i totally agree, you have to be in your teens when you read the book first, otherwise it's just one big eye-roll. i was so sick of his ~problems~ at the end i just wanted to smack him
it catches teens' feelings quite well, but it was terribly repetitive

 

[kate_is_goddess]

I think the constant repetition is another way of showing how much he is 'stuck' in his head.
Maybe I am misinterpreting it a little (or over-interpreting), but I saw all sorts of mental illnesses in his behavior, he almost has a borderline personality disorder. And I don't think teenagers would understand or get that aspect, because his problems (depression, anxiety, etc.) go way beyond the typical teen problems imo... But as I said, maybe I'm just seeing this because I just studied psychotic disorders I'm sure you can interpret it in many other ways!

 

[Alvedansen]

01. John Steinbeck - The grapes of wrath
02. Richard Matheson - I am legend
03. Joyce Carol Oates - Big mouth & Ugly girl
04. Ken Follett - The pillars of the earth
05. Haruki Murakami - Afterdark
06. Gayle Forman - If I stay

...slowly diminishing that pile of books i'm reading at the same time

 

[mmBop]

Finished:
1.The One You Really Want by Jill Mansell
2. Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

3. The Secret to Teen Power by Paul Harrington
4. Die Braut sagt leider nein by Kerstin Gier

 

[wild roses]

^i totally agree, you have to be in your teens when you read the book first, otherwise it's just one big eye-roll. i was so sick of his ~problems~ at the end i just wanted to smack him
it catches teens' feelings quite well, but it was terribly repetitive

I was in my teens when I read the book, for the first and only time, and I couldn't stand Holden either.

Congrats to those of you past 10 books already! I'm barely finished with my 5th!

 

[ChrissyM]

i first read catcher in the rye in high school and liked it a lot and have reread it since (must have been a few years back now... maybe 5+?) and had gotten even more out of it the second time around...

maybe i'll reread it again this year as well...
i consider it to be one of my favorites so i should probably remind myself why

 

[purplethistle]

I was really hoping to do a lot of reading over the summer holidays, instead I've only just started I'll need read a short wrap of "Crime and Punishment" to pluck the courage to read it

Anyways, currently reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Racing through it, nearly finished it in one afternoon after stopping to clean the car, play a bit of music etc.

 

[Nemova]

I officially gave up on A Clockwork Orange (that nadsat ) and took up on The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein instead. My list so far looks like this:

1. Satori in Paris - Jack Kerouac
2. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
3. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas - Gertrude Stein