CayenneEllis is going to die before she finishes 1001 books!

Currently reading on paper: A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
Currently reading on Kindle: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

I just found this list in 2013 and haven't read very many at all! I definitely aspire to read them all, but, although I'm only 19, I like to read a lot of other books too and don't expect to finish them all in time! The first 16 books are not listed in any order as I read all of them pre-list. The books are in the order they were read starting with number 17.

1)Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
2)The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
3)Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
4)The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
5)Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
6)Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
7)Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
8)Animal Farm by George Orwell
9)Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
10)Lord of the Flies by William Golding
11)To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
12)I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
13)The Shining by Stephen King
14)The Color Purple by Alice Walker
15)A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
16)Call of the Wild by Jack London
17)The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
18)Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
19)Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
20)Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
21)Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
22)Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
23)Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
24)Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
25)The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
26)The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
27)Amok and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig
28)Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
29)The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
30)The Stranger by Albert Camus
31)Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
32)Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
33)House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
34)The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox
35)The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary
36)Life of Pi by Yann Martel
37)Mercier and Camier by Samuel Beckett
38)The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
39)A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
40)The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
41)Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
41A)A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell
42)For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
43)The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
44)Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
45)The Complete Fables by Aesop
46)The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

Oh no, you won't die before you finish. That's the rule - you can't die until you've read at least 1001 from the combined lists. That's why we're doing this, it's the key to the fountain of youth!

Welcome, and happy reading!

Hmm, well then maybe I should start working so hard to finish them...just sit back, relax and read them veeeeery slowly!

Just completed Amok and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig. I enjoyed it, but wasn't blown. I'd give it 4 stars. I've posted my full review under the title itself.

I just finished Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll. To give you an idea of what a happy, light, easy read it was, I started and finished within two hours, while babysitting! It's a lot of fun with some great poetry.

7/10.

I've finished two books since I last updated!

The first I finished was The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. Man goes crazy, bad luck for himself, his twin sister and the narrator.

7/10 - like.

I also read The Stranger by Albert Camus. Shout out to my local library. Frenchman goes through his life without paying much attention, makes poor decisions, discovers the meaning of life(?).

5/10 - meh.

You have a great start there. Happy reading!

I like your "Meh" and "Meh+" rating.

Ha, thank you! Meh is like, wellllll it was alright. And Meh+ is like I liked it more than just Meh, but I wouldn't say that I actually Like'd it.

Shush, it makes sense to me! =P

In book related news, I'm currently reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. I am currently LOVING both of these!

I just finished Fingersmith by Sarah Waters early this morning. I read the last 500 pages in the span of twelve hours! It gave me a terrible headache, but oh my GOODNESS it was worth it! This is up there with the best books I've ever read, and it was sooooooo worth it. Oh my goodness, definitely the best book I've read on the list and I'm all aflutter with the sheer excellence of this novel! If you're looking for a page turner, a mystery, a love story, an excellent story, read this one!

10/10 - Love+++++++++

Finished Time's Arrow by Martin Amis yesterday. Was COMPLETELY unimpressed. Ugh. In fact, I disliked it so much I didn't even bother to write an actual review. It was hard to follow, and generally uninteresting. I was not invested in the character and so I was not invested in the major pivotal plot point that I was waiting on and knew would occur early in his life and late in the book. The whole 'time told backward' narration device did NOT get any easier to keep up with, as I had hoped it would early on in the book. Dialogue was a pain especially. The only things that saved this book from a 'Hate' was that it was short, so the torture didn't last too long (although it still managed to drag) and I did enjoy the theme of hurting and healing.

Still, I would not recommend this book.

3/10 - Dislike

Completed House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski quite a while ago, and am still wrestling with my thoughts.

It has taken me quite a while to develop a review for this and I still don't really know where to begin. i guess the most obvious is a good place to start. Would I recommend it? Absolutely! Even if it's a trip you don't happen to particularly enjoy or understand, it is still a crazy and worthwhile trip.

I don.t really get it. I don't think I'm at the level of complete misunderstanding that a lot of readers of this book are, but I don't feel like I completely understand it - in fact, I don't think it's possible to completely understand it - and that frustrates me. I like to understand. I like to take a long journey between the covers of a novel and have all my questions answered by the end of the story. House of Leaves does not do that. House of Leaves laughs in your face when you suggest that, maybe, you would appreciate it if it would do that.

I feel that I could make this review either ridiculously long, filled with pointless tirades on the things I liked, disliked and didn't understand, but I don't think anyone would get much out of that, so I'll end with this. This is a book you're going to have to read to believe.

8/10 - Like+

I am not much for re-reading, but I do plan to re-read House of Leaves one day. I think that it's so challenging even to read just for story on a first time, that you really have to read it again to hope to tackle the references and structural elements of the book. Or I guess you could read it the first time very slowly with much cross-referencing to other things, but that's not my idea of a fun first read.

#13 - I am not a big re-reader either. I just re-read the entire Harry Potter series this year and while I loved it, was desperately looking to be surprised by a new book by the time I finished it. I agree that House of Leaves would be an excellent re-read, but right now I don't know if I could ever actually bring myself to. Hopefully, I will warm more to the idea when a little more time has passed, but I feel like a couple of the thrills were a little cheap and I won't interested in devoting another several hours of my time (plus all the time for references!) to it for another several years, at least. I would really love to find a good overview of the hidden concepts, though! As a general rule, I like all of my stories wrapped up in a neat little bow by the conclusion, and the purposefully open end is still weighing on my mind.

Definitely years after a first read is the way - I think I read it in 2007, so I'm starting to seriously consider re-reading in the near-ish future. My husband wants to as well, so I think it would be nice to do it together, although I read much faster than he does.

I tend to like open-ended, so that's no problem for me.

#15 - That seems like a good length of time! So maybe in 2019 I'll come back to it. =P

Today, I finally finished The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox. As you might remember, this was this forum's group read...for September. Whoops! Well, when I started college this fall, things got so busy and although I was enjoying this book, it did drag a little bit.

Arabella, a lady of quality in England in the 1700s has had her head completely turned by the romances of an antique period. She's become a ridiculous and, coincidentally, hilarious character. This is a long account of her etiquette mistakes based on a wild imagination and her conviction that the events of her beloved fictions are true (spoiler: they're not).

Although I really enjoyed this book in the beginning, I felt that it went on simply way too long. It was adorable, then cute, then charming, and then it was old. The 100 or so pages before the strong of final events were pure drudgery. That said, I would still recommends this read!

5/10 - Meh.

Late last night I finished our December group read, The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. Over all, I did definitely enjoy it. It was a quiet, slow, thoughtful book. The format was very interesting, thanks to the story within a story (within a story, etc) sometimes. That part of the story was certainly interesting. My favorite characters included Abe Fields who made the end of novel excellent, Forsythe, who made the whole novel shine, and of course Morel and Minna. Normally I'm not a big fan of the main characters, but Morel and Minna are great and well fleshed out.

Good book, if you're interested in action alone, not so much.

7/10 - Like

Finished Life of Pi by Yann Martel this afternoon. I have been reading this book for what seems like forever. I started it in August I could believe - and then barely touched it through the end of September, October and November. I just started my first quarter of college this fall and simply didn't have time for books, plus what time I did have was put towards The Female Quixote which was a terribly overdue library book.

I really did enjoy this story. I adored the whole beginning of the story, the entirety of Part 1, as in before they boarded the ship. I also really enjoyed the (SPOILERS!!!)

carnivorous island he comes across.
This was a very interesting, thought provoking book that was a nice, pleasant book for cold fall/winter afternoons.

As for a brief summary (which I am not nearly good enough at including in these posts), Piscine Molitor Patel, Pi for short, is a young Indian son of a zoo owner. Eventually, Pi, his parents and his brother all decide to go to Winnipeg, Canada and take a large portion of their animals with them. The ship crashes, and Pi struggles to survive versus a tiger, the ocean, and his own religion.

Mercier and Camier by Samuel Beckett...I can compile my thoughts pretty briskly for this one. I am not smart enough for this book. This is probably not a good beginning Samuel Beckett novel. Would not recommend.

3/10, or 2/5 - Dislike

You're not smart enough? That makes me pretty stupid, because I was just admiring your post on The Roots of Heaven, about the different layers going backwards. I hadn't noticed but you are right of course.

I'm glad you enjoyed that post! As for Meecidr and Camier, you know how sometimes you go through the first hundred or so pages of a book thinking, SURELY it will all make sense if I keep pushing through, and then eventually it does? This book was like that, except you never got to the part where it actually made sense. It was very Beckett, from everything I've heard about him. Very circular and absurd...but if there was a deeper meaning below all the absurdities, it certainly went over the top of my head.

Just finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This is my first on a short list of rereads of books on the list that I know I started but I'm not sure if I ever finished. Either way, I certainly don't mind reading this one again! This is a deeply beloved one in my family, and we must have at least 3 copies of it floating around the house. Just as good as I remembered!

9/10 or 5/5 - Love

A re-read of the list in order to add free books to my new Christmas gift (yay! A Kindle PaperWhite) I discovered a new book I read (and hated) in elementary school. I probably ought to reread it because I don't remember reading it, but I DO remember hating it! So I'm glad I can cross Call of the Wild by Jack London off my list!

Started and finished A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens today - the first of a long lover affair with my Kindle! What a quick, charming read that has certainly soothed my fear of Dickens. I might take on one of his larger works quite soon!

5/5 - 9/10 - Love

Started and finished The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman today (#2 on my Kindle) and WOW. A short one and a GREAT one.

5/5 - 10/10 - Love+

I thought it was excellent as well. A great glimpse into what women went through back then.

Completed Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster in the early hours of the new year. While I understand why many people disliked it, I personally adored it and will be haunted by it for days to come.

5+/5 - 10/10 - Love+

I enjoyed it too... and felt your confession allowed me to pipe up!

I would have said more on the subject but I thought I was the only one in this forum who enjoyed it! I loved the depiction of Italy, loved the slow fleshing out of Gino and Miss Abbott, loved watching Philip come alive, loved the apparently burgeoning romance between Miss Abbott and Philip... A night's sleep has only improved this book in my mind!

I also read the negative comments on it on LT, but now you certainly make me curious. Have you read other books bij Forster? Which did you like best?

I have never read any of his other books, this was my first of his, largely because I was able to put it on my Kindle for free thanks to the Gutenberg Project and because I liked the title

Another fan of Where Angels Fear to Tread, and I also liked the movie. But it did make me say "oh, those silly Edwardians." I didn't like it as much as A Room with a View, and I think that's all I've read by him.

It's nice to see a positive review of Where Angels Fear to Tread it's the only one I have left to read on the list. The last one I read was Howards End which I didn't like, but I really liked the others A room with a View and A Passage to India .

33 - it is definitely about silly/stupid people doing silly/stupid things, but I still couldn't help but love/feel sorry for most of them!

>34 kiwiflowa: Howard's End gave me hope that I wouldn't always hate Forster, since A Passage to India was an experience I absolutely hated! I love that we all react so differently.

I also enjoyed Where Angels Fear to Tread.... but would have liked it even more if I hadn't read other Forster books. I found it had similar elements to A Room with a View, but the latter was even better.

I did like A Passage to India but that was one of the few instances where the movie was better than the book because it moves the plot along a lot faster.

Finished For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway on my Kindle several weeks ago, but felt that I needed time to collect my thoughts before I reviewed it. I'm still not sure exactly what I think. I think that, overall, I enjoyed this novel. Reading it definitely helped soothe some of my fear of Hemingway - he's really not as scary as I thought he was or as bad as everyone makes him out to be! Unlike a lot of people in our GR, I kind of enjoyed the love story especially at the end. Like a lot of people in our GR, I thought the ending was a little too abrupt. The thing that stuck with me the most out of this whole novel was Anselmo, who I thought was a great and interesting character.

4/5 - 7/10 - Like

Finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Have lots of feelings. This will have to be a placeholder until I figure out what exactly those feelings are.

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I do not like loose ends. That whole artistic technique of leaving things up to the reader's interpretation totally infuriates me. I mean, I recognize that this is an accepted way of doing things, but it still drives me up a wall. That said, Murakami is probably not the best author for me! I did go into this book knowing that he is famous for his loose ends and his dropped subplots and his crazy story lines. I loved the book. I LOVED this book. I hated the ending, but I actually found it a lot more satisfying than I thought it would be. But I still loved it. I especially enjoyed the Nutmeg and Cinnamon Akasaka story line. He does an excellent job of encasing you in the mundane unreality of the world he creates. I found myself reading this novel in sets of at least 70 pages at a time, but then I had to do something to reaffirm to myself that I was not actually living in the Wind-Up Bird's world and all that craziness wasn't actually happening. But I have so many questions. Here are just a few of them.
Spoilers ahead:

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Is May Kasahara in love with Toru Okada? Does Kumiko Okada ever come back to Toru? What is the deal with Noboru Wataya? What did he do to Kumiko and her sister? What exactly was his power? What happened to Creta and Malta Kano? Did Creta really have Toru's baby and name her Corsica? Whatever happened to Lieutenant Mamiya? What's up with the guy with the guitar case? What is that something that Nutmeg Akasaka and Toru pull from the women's heads? Who was the women calling Toru on the phone - was it really Kumiko? Who is the hollow man that protected Toru in the hotel parallel universe? What does the wind-up bird signify? Why did it take Cinnamon Akasaka's voice? What was the actual significance of the mark on Toru's cheek? WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

5/5

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks is a story told in three parts. The first part follows a young Stephen Wraysford as he is sent to Amiens, France to learn about the work of a textile factory there. He is housed there by Rene Azaire, the head of the company, his young wife Isabelle Azaire (formerly Fourmentier) and Rene's children, Lisette and Gregoire. Stephen quickly becomes infatuated with Isabelle, and Rene is soon revealed to be abusive. Isabelle and Stephen carry on a short and illicit affair until they are forced to run away together.

The second section is set during the war and focuses on Stephen, now an officer in the army, and a miner who works digging tunnels for the army named Jack Firebrace. We also meet an officer with the miners named Michael Weir, who is a close friend of Stephen's and who helps Stephen to remain calm by forcing Stephen to care for the constantly panicking Michael. This is a bleak and depressing look at the war. On leave in Amiens, Stephen meets Isabelle again through her sister Jeanne, and a new romance clearly begins to brew.

The third part of the story deals with Stephen's granddaughter Elizabeth, who is having an affair with a married man named Robert. They love each other deeply, but Robert has no intentions of leaving his wife, apparently out of laziness and fear of what society will think. Elizabeth seeks out the story of her grandfather in an effort to learn more about herself.

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My feelings on this novel seem to reflect the feelings of most everyone else who read it (I began this book in February with the group read, but college got in the way of my ability to keep up). The only thing I seem to disagree with everyone else on is that I find the story of Isabelle and Stephen to be much stronger than the war portions of the story. Although the war section is interesting, it took a while for it to grow on me, and I finished the book without remembering some of the characters that had died earlier that Stephen kept bringing up. The only redeeming part of Elizabeth's section of the story, meanwhile, was her visits to Tom Brennan which I found heartbreakingly real and touching for her to do in a very out of character way. Otherwise, I found Elizabeth and her married boyfriend Robert equally obnoxious. I believe Faulks meant for their to be a parallel between Elizabeth and Robert's relationship and the relationship of Isabelle and Stephen, but it fell flat. The sympathy I felt for Isabelle and Stephen's affair was not present in the slightest for the self-centered couple of Robert and Elizabeth. I certainly found myself concerned for the child they conceived, since there was no decent and caring character like Jeanne there to care for it. Anyway, although I felt the novel dragged, I did enjoy its portrayal of an ethereal, short and doomed love affair and it's interesting insight into a war I know little about.

#39 Great review! Very recognizable: Love the book, but what happened?! A specialty of Murakam,i I suppose, which you can either love or hate.

Thanks, Simone. :)

Memorial Day weekend I finished The Complete Fables by Aesop. The edition I read was translated by Olivia and Robert Temple. It was a...weird...experience. I don't know what exactly I expected out of Aesop's Fables, but this wasn't it. The stories were exceptionally short - there were over 300 fables in 262 pages. Many of them made little to no sense - I simply couldn't connect many of the fables to the silly, apparently pointless proceeding story. I DID find it interesting how many stories I recognized, and the insights from the translators on some of the confusion over translation as well as insight into Ancient Greek life and where these fables were gathered from. Anyway, I guess it was an easy read to check off the list and it wasn't boring or bad or anything.

3/5.

Finally completed The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth and I was not impressed. That book druuuuug. I had been considering taking a break from the list for a while, and this one pushed me over the edge. I'm currently reading a YA novel and a guide book to Disneyworld and am enjoying it much more! I'm sure I'll find my way back to the list soon, I just needed a break from ~literature~.