August 2016: What 1001 Books are you Reading?

I don't know about you-all, but it's hotter than heck where I am. What books are you reading to help you forget about the weather this month?

I am still, and maybe for the entire month, reading three loooooooong books:
Sodom and Gomorrah, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement.

I am in Long Book Land also - 860 pages in to Dos Passos' U.S.A.. However I do expect to finish this around the weekend and move on to our group read The Tartar Steppe.

Currently reading The Path to the Nest of Spiders and then will move onto One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. I'm planning to join the group read of The Tartar Steppe once the book arrives from the library too.

Currently reading 120 Days of Sodom, The Devils, and Smiley's People. I have The Long Goodbye out from the library and it is rainy where I am so will be read sooner rather than later.

Just finished Silas Marner and I'm now about halfway through Crime and Punishment.

For the 8th month, Clarissa. And now I've added to the fun with The Brothers Karamazov.

I'm currently reading Tarzan of the Apes, and The Butchers Boy and have just started a re-read of The Brothers Karamazov for a book group and I appear to have finally restarted my read of House of Leaves but I'm wary to actually put that into print...

Other than that I have just taken out about 6 books from the library, none of which are chunksters (Bel-Ami, The Man in the High Castle, The Buddha of Suburbia, The Graduate, Junky & Kiss of the Spider Woman) so I'm hoping to read all of those as well.

I'll no doubt 'read' some audiobooks once I've finished with Tarzan but I'm not sure yet what they will be, although Cranford is almost due (I've got a Library hold) so I'm pretty sure that will be one of them.

I've almost finished listening to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I'm liking more and more as I get further along.

Up next on audio will be Atonement. I've read one other non-list McEwan, but this will be my first 1001 by him. It checks off one of my resolutions for reading several of the many-book authors this year.

In print, I'm reading Elizabeth Costello for my first Coetzee - another one speaking to my resolution.

And I have Black Water home from the library for my first JCO from the list.

Looks like August will be the month of popular contemporary western authors.

I am in the middle of Sense and Sensibility and Gormenghast
(finished Titus Groan so continuing on with the second one).

Still suffering through Rousseau's Confessions on audio: I thought I would have to give up but it's gotten slightly better since he's had to flee arrest. On paper, reading The Tartar Steppe for the group read.

This is what it feels like to read Tristram Shandy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNkrjMixxSA

A Sentimental Journey follows, and I hope it's a swift journey as well.

I'll probably conclude the month with The Man of Feeling and carry that into next month.

>12 MartinBodek: It turns you into Arnold Schwarzenegger?

I liked Tristram Shandy, but I read it at a pace of no more than 10 pages a day.

Yes, by virtue of having to lift the bugger so repeatedly, over such a long time, even though the version I'm reading is on Kindle. :-)

2 pages of this tripe is even too much for me.

>13 ursula: No, Buddha's Little Finger does that

I tried to start The Ambassadors by Henry James while on vacation, but it was too hard to get in to. Now that we're back, I think I'll give it another try.

Being obsessed by the Booker longlist as the moment, I do have a bit less time to read 1001 books as well. But I am now joining the Group read, The Tartar Steppe.

On paper, moving on to volume three of Memory of Fire by Eduardo Galeano, which is a wonderful book. On audio, about to wrap up Rousseau's Confessions and moving on to Under the Volcano.

>18 annamorphic: Under the Volcano was...interesting on audio, but I wish I had read a paper copy, as I have trouble following non-linear narratives in audio.

I just realized that the book I am listening to now The Secret History by Donna Tartt is on the list. I am pretty sure that the reason I picked it was because I enjoyed The Goldfinch not because I knew it was a 1001 list book. Nice surprise.

I'm almost done with The Ambassadors and actually found that I really have enjoyed it. I decided to pick up The Master since it's about Henry James.

Planning on reading A Severed Head next with The Grapes of Wrath and The Garden Party waiting in the wings.

I just started The Scarlet Letter. So far so good.

I read 50 pages of the promising-but-will-obviously-soon-be-full-of-the-horrors-of-war Under Fire by Henri Barbusse.

I've just started on A Severed Head Amerynth. It's my first Iris Murdoch and I now understand why so many of you have almost raved at the beauty of her prose. It's so clear and precise and she seems to be able to make nearly any subject incredibly absorbing.

>19 ELiz_M: thanks for the warning. Under the Volcano is indeed very hard to follow on audio. I fear I may have a traffic accident while I am fiercely focused on Lowry, trying to figure out what is going on.

Just started volume one of The Search for Lost Time Swann's Way - might not be the best way to get my number up in af hurry.

>27 Henrik_Madsen: Ah, but you can always remind yourself that you are reading quality, rather than quantity

For August I read There but for the and Anna Karenina. Just started The Charterhouse of Parma.

@M1nks: I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It's definitely not my favorite by Murdoch, but I liked it quite a bit.

I just finished Transit, an enjoyable read about people in Marseille during WWII, waiting for a chance to get on a ship out of Europe. Next will be The Music of Chance for September's Group Read.

I'm reading my third of the month, Memento Mori, after finishing The Return of the Soldier and The Life and Death of Harriett Frean.

I'm hoping to also finish Summer Will Show on my long plane flight home tomorrow.

That will put me at 4 1001 books read in a month, which is what the app says I must read in order to finish all the books before I die...haven't done that before and probably won't do it again! I hope I live longer...