March 2012, Which book are you reading?

Starting the new month's thread since I just finished another book from the list...

I finished The Plot Against America- my book to read at work on lunch break- and will be starting Veronika Decides to Die for book club later this month.

Still reading Snow from last month.

Still reading Middlemarch... and about a third of the way through...

Still reading Trainspotting , (which the touchstones don't like apparently.)

Still reading Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. Good, but not his best.

Just finished 11/22/63 and am going through withdraw without a book selected to start

bosco, I just finished that the other day as well- along with two other books I was reading! I hate when I finish all my books at the same time...

I'm still reading A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, it does tend to get put to one side for other reads a bit too happily by me. (C'mon! The cover promised me dinosaurs living under the earth's crust! 100 pages in, and they're still wandering tunnels and discussing geology. It'd better be a bloody great dinosaur with pointy fangs eating up at least one member of the small party to make up for this very, very slow start.)

I'm finally rounding the end of Autumn of the Patriarch - bits of it are good, but on the most I just want him to get some darn full stops!

Also plugging on (as always) with Metamorphoses and enjoying the group read of Clarissa.

Wow - that's surprisingly few for me... what to pick next! Oh - I forgot, I'm also two thirds into Tipping the Velvet which is awfully naughty, but great fun.

I'm just over halfway through Rites of Passage, and the next one I have lined up is The Siege of Krishnapur.

Still reading Vanity Fair.

Sorry, my original message related to a different group. As soon as I finish my current non-1001 book, I'm starting Rameau's Nephew.

I haven't finished Howard's End from February, but I just completed The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. I was very impressed and I actually think I may re-read this book later in the month.

If you are a fan of Graham Greene, please recommend a second reading. On the 2010 list, Greene had:

The Honorary Consul
The Quiet American (is there such?)
The Power and the Glory
Brighton Rock

as well as The End of the Affair.

The previous 1001 list included:

The Third Man
The Heart of the Matter
England Made Me

If a recommendation is from the previous list, I'm curious to your reaction that it's been dropped in deference to the five listed in 2010.

NOTE: Thanks always to Arukiyomi for the data.

#13> The End of the Affair is wonderful. Greene is marvellous, and that's my favourite of his (not that I've read all of his as yet!).

I also loved The Quiet American, and I enjoyed The Third Man (would have enjoyed it more had not everyone assumed I'd seen the movie and told me the ending) and Brighton Rock. I have The Honorary Consul on Mt TBR.

I hope you do like Howards End too, that was one of my favourites from last year (or was it 2010 now...?).

Thanks. I am intrigued by Greene. And, yes, I liked Howard's End (2010 and earlier). You may recall, Greene had a reference to Forster in 'End of the Affair'.

Still reading Buddenbrooks and it's a lovely read :)

I am still reading Snow! Help!

I've abandoned On Beauty and started Out of Africa. Aaaaah, it fits my mood much better.

I'm starting On The Road today. Almost finished with Veronika Decides to Die.

The Quiet American and The Power and the Glory are great, great books. The Quiet American is possibly top 10 all-time books, for me. At least top 15.

I'm reading Brighton Rock now. It's an interesting little book. The Boy, Pinkie, is a sadistic little bastard.

Very reluctantly started A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, but so far (10% in) it's surprisingly easy going.
Hoping to get through vol. 4 of "Arabian Nights" this month.

#20 I love Brighton Rock - we studied it at school and I still think about some of the passages. Brilliant book.

I'm reading Gilead at the moment - which isn't on the list but the sequel(?), Home, is and I want to try and read them both this month.

Finished up Trainspotting yesterday.... next up is 2001: A Space Odyssey

Finished Tipping the Velvet - great fun :)

Also I only need a quiet fifteen mins to finish Ovid! Woo!

I am halfway through The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov. I did not realize that Asimov was on the list until I saw the thread on the next group read.

Also, I just wanted to mention that I am another fan of The Quiet American.

I finally finally *finally* finished The Magic Mountain. Boy what a climb it was! I came close to giving up during some of the debates between Settembrini and Naphta, and when Peeperkorn came unto the stage I was ready to throw the book out of the window. But in the end, looking back on it - what a mighty novel!

I'm going to read something light now - maybe some comics, or a collection of bad jokes...

Cat's Eye--#212--4 Stars--Atwood at her best.

Just about to start The Bell Jar. I skimmed through some pages this morning, and it looks highly readable so I'm looking forward to it.

After that, I think I might have to take a break from list books so I can bow to peer pressure and read 'The Hunger Games' in advance of the movie's release later this month. :)

#28 LOL - I've just done that...

I finished the Ovid - woot! About 40 pages left of Autumn of the Patriarch - but those may take me another month. It's on the dense side!

Also just started The brief and wondrous life of Oscar Wao which is so far quite great.

The Old Wives Tale--#213--3.5 Stars. A very well written and engaging story of coming of age and questions about the purpose of life. Highly recommend it.

Finished Snow by Orhan Pamuk finally (and hated it). Going to start on Foundation by Isaac Asimov next.

Hi jillbone, why did you hate Snow? It's still unread in my bookshelf, so I wonder why it should remain there.

>32 MikeMonkey: Here's why I hated it.

Thanks, now I see!

Just finished Foundation by Isaac Asimov and on to Kim by Rudyard Kipling.

Managed to squeeze in a short one: The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark, only 140 pages.

I just read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

The Turn of the Screw and I'm not liking it.

I finished Black Dogs yesterday afternoon and am on to Smila's Sense of Snow.

I'm starting The World According to Garp.

I finished A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and started T.H. White's The Once and Future King series on audiobook. I am through The Sword in the Stone and began part II last night. It's nice, but also at times quite boring and I don't really have the patience to listen.

I also read Trollope's "The Warden" and started "Barchester Towers" and hope to make it to The Last Chronicle of Barset (which is the only one on the list) some time late this year.

I read Magic Mountain a few years ago. It is a challenging read. Congratulations!

I'm almost done with Nana by Emile Zola. I'm enjoying it, but I had to scan the first chapter several times after reading it. Zola has 14 chapters, each is plus or minus 30 pages. Each chapter is set in one location around one event.

In the first chapter Zola introduces a dozen characters - all central to the story and all with French names. I actually had to write them down until I had them fixed in my mind.

I am also reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and agree with BekkaJo #29 - "so far quite great" though the dialects are challenging.

Thanks for the recommendation from Wookiebender #14, ChamberK #20, and BillieJean #25. I have The Quiet American in the queue to read after I finish Nana.

43 - Thanks for the heads up on Nana, it is next up in my DailyLit queue.

I am hoping to finish Bleak House today. I like that it is a mystery, but unless something spectacular happens in the last few pages, it isn't going to rank as a favorite Dickens.

I plan to read Bleak House either this spring or this summer. I've got a personal mission to read as much Dickens as possible, and I think that's next on the plate... unless I fall for Nicholas Nickleby first..

I finished Snow this month. It took some effort on my part because it wasn't exactly a "fun" read. Very different and one that I now think of often--maybe it's the surrealistic way Pamuk combined theater with violence and death that seems almost mundane to the characters in the novel.

I'm taking on Lord of the Rings again - have only ever made it 100 pages into the second book but determined to finish the whole thing this time around. Halfway through the first book at the moment and enjoying the revisit. :)

Finished with 2001: A Space Odyssey tonight.... I'm planning to get an early start on The Corrections next.

Finally finished Kim by Rudyard Kipling and will start on Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood next.

I recently started reading The Glass Bead Game. It seems like it's going to be pretty interesting.

Finished Cat's Eye and Vanity Fair this week. Up next is Les Miserables

Finished Testament of Youth--#214--4.5 Stars.

Finished reading Bleak House. Interesting use of 2 different narrators throughout the book. Took me way too long to get through this one, and I'm looking for a short read next time. Waiting for inspiration to pick which one...

Just started The Quiet American #209 after finishing The Tale of Two Cities 3 stars - not my favourite Dickens

I finished The Once and Future King by T.H. White and read the very short Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. The latter one was so short it felt like cheating, but TOaFK made up for it in length.

On Beauty, I think.

OK. I finished Nana and while I'm mid-way through The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao I started The Quiet American.

Wow! I read it straight through, leaving Oscar in the lurch for the whole weekend. Greene tells a compelling story - thanks again for the recommendations from Wookiebender, ChamberK, and BillieJean. Anyone looking for a great, short - 180 pages - read, should go for this story.

For me, it provides an interesting perspective on Vietnam in the 1950s. I finished elementary school and started college in the 1960s so Vietnam was a rapidly evolving, ever changing story in my life. Greene's story is set towards the end of the French involvement with the mearest seeds of the American involvement.

Just like The End of the Affair, also by Greene, The Quiet American involves two men drawn to the same woman and yet the men establish an enduring relationship. In both novels, one of the three principals dies. Odd. Will I find this troika again if I read another novel by Greene?

In End of the Affair, Greene referenced E.M. Forster and I had just finished Howard's End. In The Quiet American Greene references Nana which I just finished. So, if I read Greene again, will he again reference the author or book, I just finished?

Finally... finished... A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Can't say this is going to go down in history as a favourite of mine. Took far too long to get anywhere (literally: 150 pages of wandering tunnels is not an exciting read), and far too much declamation of scientific theories that sounded totally crackpot to me. (Although geology is not my strong suit; and maybe they were less crackpot in the 19th century).

On the plus side, it's a nice group of characters. Our narrator is a bit of a wuss and wants out all the way; his Uncle is the driving force and is rather manic; and then there's their stolid reliable Icelandic guide. I also rather liked the original Iceland setting, but I laughed that they chose a volcano with a pronounceable name to descend, not Eyjafjallajökull or its equivalent. :)

Will be moving onto Testament of Youth soon, just have to finish a library book that's due back this weekend first...

Finished The Corrections... will be starting The Sea, The Sea next.

It would be very nice to read what you think about the books, and why...

I recently finished The reluctant fundamentalist which kept my interest but was less thought-provoking than I expected. I am now one third into Orlando which I find much easier to enjoy than Mrs Dalloway. However, it's going slowly because these loooooong sentences put me to sleep.

I started Regeneration the other night. It is really good.

With my March reading --

Nana
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Quiet American --

I bring my total against the 2010 list to

143 books and
104 authors.