September, 2013: What are You Reading?

So, I'm still reading Portrait of a Lady. I am 2/3 through and I have to say I am entranced by the story and the characters.

Meantime, I have started The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi, an Italian survivor of the Holocaust. This is not a memoir. Rather it is a deep, thoughtful analysis of the human condition displayed in the many roles exhibitied in the "Lager" (a concentration camp). It's a disturbing read, so I need to take sips, not gulps.

Still picking my way through Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. Yesterday I started listening to Interview with a Vampire but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to stick with it--both overblown and boring at the same time.

I'm reading The Female Quixote for the group read and loving it. On audio I am listening to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and that one is kind of disappointing. I had expected more. It's oddly hard to follow on audio books and somehow not very gripping.

#3 - Not sure audiobook is to blame - I didn't find it very gripping in book form either.

#3- I didn't enjoy the book, either. I, too, had expected it to be more engaging.

I'm still reading Midnight's Children and started Fear of Flying. I just got Brighton Rock in the mail yesterday and may start that as well.

Read Mrs. Dalloway over the holiday weekend, and now starting the epic Don Quixote. And Kavalier and Clay is utterly fantastic, but it ain't for everyone.

I am finishing Generation X (boring) and then back to the list with Molloy, Cry the beloved country and, still patiently waiting but somehow not very appealing, The Book about Blanche and Marie.

I finished The Female Quixote which I had already started in August.
I am now reading this month's Powell, The Military Philosophers, and Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

I'm also reading The Female Quixote for the group read, which alternates between tedious and amusing for me.

I read two 1001 books last month! The Comfort of Strangers (quite ick yet compelling) and Howards End (not my favourite Forster but still great because it is Forster).

I'm currently rushing my way through a quick read Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates. Lots of mentions about this being an "American Myth" which I've never heard of (probably because I'm not American) so I will do some reasearch (i.e. check wikipedia) when I'm done.

Yes, The Comfort of Strangers does have a strong ICK factor! But interesting, and short, so an easy one to knock off the list. Overall I liked it.

I've been planning to read Black Water this year but have gone off on another tangent so might not. I have only a vague idea of what it's about, in part because I'm Canadian, but I think more because I'm too young to remember (ha! At 50 I'm too young for something. That's great!). So "American Myth" with strong emphasis on the American and even stronger on the "who were adults at the time it happened." Not sure many people who were born in the US in the 70s, 80s or 90s would have the first clue about it.

Trying to read Ivanhoe and Rabbit Redux. Not feeling the love yet for either.

I've started Life of Pi by Yann Martel which is already more gripping and thoughtful than I expected, and am waiting on a hold at my library to start The Female Quixote for the group read.

Okay. My first Beckett. Molloy. After just three pages I feel like throwing it in a corner and never pick it up again. Can you convince me that it is worth reading?

Oh no! I had Molloy in mind as a first Beckett too. How long is it?

Funny, I just got Black Water out from the library on a whim. I'm pretty sure it's loosely based on Ted Kennedy's car accident where he drove a car off a bridge with a woman passenger. He swam away and left her to die. I think he was convicted of something like reckless driving, but I don't even know that he served any jail time. I guess there are still a lot of unknowns - was he drinking, why didn't he call police/ambulance right away (he waited til the next morning before saying anything), and there is even speculation on the other side that he wasn't even driving or maybe even in the car. I don't know much about it all (I think it happened in the late 60s or early 70s and I wasn't born then) but I know people said the scandal was one reason he never ran for President.

Currently, I'm reading Race Matters. Not quite a long book and it's awkward. Not in that the book is poorly written. No, the writing is crisp and the flow is really great. At the heart of the problem is the content, which discusses racial undertones and tensions, not to mention double standards in the United States. It's only about 160 pages, but it's dense and challenging.

#15. It's only 170 pages, but they are filled with the thoughts of Molloy, page after page. No dialogue, no chapters; I am not afraid of words, but these... Anyhow, you should see for yourself, maybe you'll love it. I got impatient after a few pages and will leave Molloy on my tbr pile a little longer!

Finished with The Female Quixote this morning. I'm planning on starting the first book in The Sea of Fertility series next.

Ah September...the madness of "back to school," the weather getting colder, the nights longer...and seemingly the reading slower!

First one done for the month was The Trial and I have now started The Military Philosophers and am still coasting along with The Female Quixote on the Kindle.

I finished Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates. I found it interesting to read, a horror story really like The Pit and the Pendulum and would recommend it to the rest of this group if for no other reason than it's a novella at under 120 pages and a quick one to knock off the list.

However, I read up about it on wikipedia and found out what the story was based on (as japaul22 mentions above) and the whole thing made me angry.

I'm about 50 pages into the The Adventures of Augie March. This is my first Bellow - the character descriptions are fantastic and vivid but thus far I feel like I need to focus quite a bit or I realize all of a sudden that I've read two pages without actually 'reading' them.

Done with the September Powell and 3/4 of the complete Dance to the Music of Time.
I squeezed in a very short classic, Castle Rackrent, by Maria Edgeworth and today I started Ivanhoe.
About 50 pages are left of Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting which feels like an exercise for his later The Unbearable Lightness of Being and has some interesting thoughts on writing and music.

I finished Portrait of a Lady. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm now reading Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant. I'm enjoying this, too.

I've recently finished One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich and Empire of the sun. Right now I'm reading Reveries of a solitary walker. So far, the first chapters are full of 'Woe is me!'

#21. I read Black Water a while ago. Didn't know it was based on a true story. I've just read the wikipedia article and now I'm really angry too.

Finished Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert and Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz. Now on to The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa.

I'm reading The Last Temptation of Christ. Interesting. I suspect I'll have to look some stuff up to be able to differentiate the biblically-based from the completely fictional, since my grasp of anything religious is tenuous at best.

Just finished with Spring Snow, the first book in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy. It was quite good, looking forward to reading the others in the series!

My next list book will be The Forest of the Hanged, which took me about two years to find... hoping that all the effort was worth it!

Almost done with The Adventures of Augie March, which has been a revelation to me - I am becoming a Bellow fan!

Next up: The Adventures of Caleb Williams. I had no idea that William Godwin was married to Mary Wollstonecraft and was the father of Mary Shelley. Learning that has made the prospect of reading this one just that little bit more interesting.

I'm reading The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt. For some reason it is taking me FOREVER to finish, and it isn't like I want to spend much more time in the company of the so-very-irritating Frederica Potter.

#31, urgh, i hated that book! I read another in the series too, Still Life, because I was working on Still Life painting and it seemed like I should read it. What a mistake! Frederica is so annoying.

I am finally reading the last volume of Kristin Lavransdatter which is just as compellingly beautiful and other as the first two were. This is one of those books that I'd never have found without the 1001 list and I'm glad I did. Its wonderfulness balances out the very annoying Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay which I am still slogging through on audiobooks.

Having finally finished The Female Quixote (which seemed much longer than it actually was) I felt like a bit of light relief so have gone with War of the Worlds next.

I just finished Interview with a Vampire. I can't understand why it's on the list. It certainly takes itself very seriously. Onwards . . .

Oh, and I'm loving The Children's Book. I keep forgetting that one is on the list.

Maybe Interview with a Vampire is on the list because it really started all that "romantic vampire" stuff. Which isn't necessarily something to be grateful for, haha, but it was very influential.

I just started Perfume last night, having finished The Last Temptation of Christ a couple of days ago.

Finished with The Forest of the Hanged this morning, which I thought was great.

Next up for me will either be Good Morning, Midnight or the next book in the Sea of Fertility series: Runaway Horses, whichever arrives from interlibrary loan first.

Just finished Black Dogs which I loved. McEwan is a master of the straightforward novel that is really much deeper and more complex than it seems.

Maybe Interview with a Vampire is on the list because it really started all that "romantic vampire" stuff. Which isn't necessarily something to be grateful for, haha, but it was very influential.

That's along the lines of what I expected them to say, but in their writeup they talk about the humanity of the book. I don't find the write ups in 1001 Books very helpful for the most part, and what I managed to pull out of this one is that the book is well done without veering into being “mawkish or sentimental,” and notes its “brilliant chiaroscuro.”

On the other hand, 501 Must-read Books says : “the definitive Gothic masterpiece, Interview with a Vampire is not gratuitously scary, bloody and gory; it is literature that beautifully depicts the shared human experiences of guilt, love, sex and mortality through the eyes of the undead.”

Simone2's review of The Turn of the Screw has prompted me to make this one next up on the Kindle after the finishing the surprisingly brilliant War of the Worlds

Not far from finishing The Military Philosophers so will most llikely pick up Dangling Man as my first Bellow.

#38 Oh no, what is this 501 Must-Read Books you mention Nickelini? I haven't heard of it before. Another list I should tackle before I die?!

#40 - Yes, I found 501 Must-Read Books on the sale table for $10 so I couldn't resist. It's pretty good actually. They divide the books by categories (classics, modern fiction, non-fiction, memoir, etc.) and then the books are listed within the category in alphabetical order by author. There is only one book listed for any author in each category, but there is a sidebar with other good books that author has written. There is some overlap with 1001 Books, but it goes different places too, so it's not a duplicate. I really think you need both ;-)

Still loving the rather long The Children's Book, and have started to listen to Cider with Rosie on audiobook. It won't take long as it is a very short book.

I'm currently in the middle of The Bell Jar it's a pleasant odd ball kind of a book. Nothing has happened yet to provoke me to have a stronger opinion.

Just finished Notes from the Underground.

I am reading Les Miserables and really enjoying it. I'm glad this group tackled it as a group read so I can go back and read those comments. It helped to have it pointed out that Hugo's tangents act as breaks from the story so you can catch your breath and aren't overwhelmed by the story. If only I had thought of that when reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame!

Just finished The Secret History and starting To the Lighthouse.

I have finished The Thin Man, whick I thought very funny and have just started in A Buyer's Market, part 2 of A Dance to the Music of Time. Still getting used to Powell's way of writing.

Am listening to Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. I started this book a long time ago and hated it but the CD version was cheap so I thought I'd give it another try. Mistake!

Finished those mentioned in #23 + 2 short ones: Vathek - a mix of Gothic lit and Arabian nights I didn't enjoy at all - and The Interesting Narrative which was in fact very interesting before it became too religious.

I am working my way through some of those difficult pre-1800s (the 2 titles above among them) and without thinking much started The 120 Days of Sodom. This has now been on hold for a couple of days and I don't know yet if I can go on or if it will become my first abandoned 1,001 book. I survived American Psycho, but this is much worse and the "real" physical violence against all those children hasn't even started yet. Anyone here who finished it? This has been on the list since the first edition and the Boxall says something about "the arithmetical and permutational aspect of the sexual violence that is perhaps the novel's key". Well...

#49 I flipped through the book and read a few pages in the cafe of a bookshop. I decided I didn't want to buy it or read it cover to cover. I will confess that since then I ticked that book off as 'read' on the list even though I didn't really. I have since then, learned more about the author, I can't remember where? But that was quite interesting.

Just read some of the reviews here and I don't know if I'll get to the end. Someone wrote it becomes unbearable from day 44 on, and I'm only around day 5 or 6 and it's bad enough. In any case I won't rate it just as I didn't rate American Psycho.

For now I escaped into another early one which is more promising: Caleb Williams by William Goodwin.

Really enjoyed The Feast of the Goat and Chess Story!

With my September reading:

The Drowned and the Saved, Portrait of a Lady, and Bel-Ami

I bring my totals to: 124 authors and 166 books.

Started A Void today, which I've been looking forward to reading for a long time.

Reading Out of Africa by Karen blixen. I finished recently the pigeon by Patrick Suskind but I prefer Perfume : the story of a murderer, That I found deeper and much more interesting.

The pigeon is too french for me with a boring description of the parisian Life... (Even if the book is fun by other aspects)

Sorry for my bad english

Just finished the excellent To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and now starting The Hours.

#51 Nathalie, I've made it about as far as you have. I won't say I've abandoned it just yet, but The 120 Days of Sodom is definitely not a book to be read in large doses. I thought I had read some where that the book was an allegory to the French Revolution, but now I can't find anything about that. I read the Wiki article on de Sade and he seems like one sick you-know-what. It seems maybe this book was a little autobiographical, which will make it even harder to read if/when I pick it up again.

I was hoping to finish Les Miserables for September, but am going to miss that goal by a few days.

#57: I haven't yet been able to read on, I am too scared. The factual writing makes it worse. I'm just glad it's incomplete, at least that's what I read somewhere, otherwise it would be unreadable.
I must check the Wiki article on de Sade soon.