Putty's List

I'll try to remember what I have read this year. It's only April so I should be able to come up with most of them. I'm not sure whether this is only an exercise in ego for keen readers but what the hell.
Carpentaria
stiff
the god delusion
a book of short stories by ethan cohen (the movie guy) I can't remember the name of and don't have in front of me
Catch 22 for about the hundredth time
Now I'm drawing a blank. I must have read more than that. Oh No my personal credibility as a library thinger is on the line. I'm going to struggle to make 50 at this rate. I'll have to have a look at my bookshelf and see whether anything comes to mind.

Phwew! Thought of a couple more. Voss was the killer, along with Carpentaria come to think of it. Real time eaters. I really liked Voss by the end though. It started out seeming like it was going to be one of those books where the reader stoically makes their way through in the full knowledge that they are going to receive no reward from plot but by the end it was a bloodbath nailbiter that married Joseph Conrad to Queinten Tarantino.
Well, perhaps not quite but it ended up a really interesting book with some real gems of moments.

Unpolished Gem was a great read and gave me a whole new insight into the lives of people I have been good mates with for more than a decade.

Gates of Eden was the name of the Ethan Coen book. Would have helped had I been able to spell his name. Thank you google. That's seven. Still a long way from 50. I might need to get an Alistair Maclean compendium to catch up

nice try and brush off by shane maloney came in a three book compendium with stiff . I heard him interviewed on ABC RN and thought he and his books sounded interesting. Unfortunately they really weren't. The material was great with lots of cynical insights into Australian Labour politics underpinned by a deep distrust of the right but the hero was such a loser that I really couldn't sympathise with him and the writing was just not good enough to do the material justice. I guess I don't usually bother much with detective novels these days and so people who are into that sort of thing might be a bit happier with them but I really couldn't be bothered. Would probably be good reading if you were sick.

musicophilia makes 10.

the lost continent is 11. I'm not making much progress though, for two reasons. One is teach yourself latin which I am about 2/3 of the way through and which has taken up a lot of my reading time since, in a moment of madness, I picked it up and thought, "I wonder whether I could get anything out of this?" It is, at least, a pleasantly pointless activity. The other reason is the new translation of war and peace with all the bits that were originally in French (lots of the dialogue and letters) left in French and just the Russian translated to English which I am really enjoying but which is really not a book-a-week kind of book.

I forgot, Oliver Twist too

well that was a bit of a dud effort. Teach yourself latin and war and peace are probably titles to be avoided in a 50 book challenge with 2 small kids, a house to paint and a job to do. Still, it's nice to know that unfounded optimism is not dead.

I'll try again this year. Might count W&P again as I am still 2/3 of the way through it.

well that was a bit of a dud effort. Teach yourself latin and war and peace are probably titles to be avoided in a 50 book challenge with 2 small kids, a house to paint and a job to do. Still, it's nice to know that unfounded optimism is not dead.

I'll try again this year. Might count W&P again as I am still 2/3 of the way through it.

alright, off to a better start this year. I am going to count war and peace again this year, then there was jungle capitalists, a sense of the world, the kite runner and the great war.

Looks like you are off to a great start. I am reading W&P, too, although slowly. I have only finished Parts 1 & 2 of book 1, but I am enjoying it. It's funny that although I read it before (25 years ago), I remember none of it. It is all new to me. Good luck with your reading challenge and have fun with those two small kids! :)
--BJ

Thanks for the encouragement. w&P is such a great read I am almost jealous of you even though I only finished it a month or so ago. I think you spend so long with the characters you really miss them when you finish.

Anyway, I have knocked off a fortunate life and death sentence (Don Watson) and am about to start on Midnight's Children. So things are moving along, although I suspect that I will struggle to reach 50.

Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills has been a very pleasant read and a refreshingly straightforward one after Midnight's Children. Gerard Durrell's My family and other animals makes 10. Unfortunately we are at the end of June so it doesn't appear that I am on track for 50.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave and Howard's End moves things along a little.

Suddenly it is June 2010 and it looks like I let things slide a bit there. What have I read? Madame Bovary I've just started, Fever Pitch came before that, then The Pelican History of England: The Seventeenth Century and Reformation Europe 1517-1559. There was A Fraction of the Whole, The Infinities, Summer Crossing, Holding the Man, Generation Kill make up a grand total of 9 which doesn't seem too flash for half a year. I have read two thirds of Ulysses this year which must count for something (although in truth I started it sometime last year). Still, it is unlikely that I will hit 50. Does becoming a Dad for the third time in 4 and bit years count for anything?