June 2008: Which Book from the 1001 List are You Reading?

I'm just starting The Third Man by Graham Greene.

I'm interested in hearing what you think of it. I read The End of the Affair last month and didn't love it, but I'm curious about Greene's other works.

As for me, I'm reading A Room with a View by E.M. Forster.

Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud. Young children cope while traveling with their New Age mother in 1960s Morocco. I missed the movie, but now very much look forward to seeing it.

Still working (slowly) through Anna Karenina. Also reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which should be a piece of cake in comparison.

I'll be starting my way through Proust later today -- I can't wait!

I'm *not* starting Proust, because I am a coward :).

I just finished Steppenwolf which was good, but not as good as Siddhartha.

I am almost done with A Void, which I am not really enjoying very much. A little too *much with the witty, intellectual allusions and not enough of the decent character and plot side of things.

Next books up for June are Rosshalde (another Hesse book), Like Water For Chocolate (because my wife owns it and it looks like a fairly quick read) and Under the Skin (because it was recommended on this site).

And if my interlibrary loan is delivered in June, I will read Adjunct: An Undigest as well.

-- M1001

I started Under the Skin today. It's quite gripping so far, and enjoyably enigmatic.

This week, I've also read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson (love it), Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte (great, though I liked some sections better than others), and the first two books of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (good).

#2: I loved A Room with a View--read it a month or so ago.

I'm about 30 pages from the end of Empire of the Sun. No idea what I'll tackle next.

I'm reading "To Have and To Have Not" by Hemingway. Hating all the racist words.

I've just started Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for snø by Peter Høeg.

#10 I loved that book - actually loved all the books I've read by Høeg.

I just finished slow man by Coetzee and started reading enderby inside by Anthony Burgess. Next I'll give Elective Affinities by Goethe yet another shot.

I've only read one Jane Austen book, so I decided to read Persuasion with the Barnes & Noble Women Literature by Women group.

#7 I think Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is my favourite book of the ones I've read so far this year. I've enjoyed some of Jeanette Winterson's other works, like Sexing The Cherry, but this one was so powerful and the setting so familiar (I used to live in Lancashire) that it really spoke to me. Her writing is sharp and incisive and she draws her characters so well.

As for my current read, Empire Of The Sun inspired me to read more J G Ballard so I'm halfway through The Drowned World right now.

This morning on the tram to work, I started reading The Great Gatsby. At first I started with the introduction (it's a Wordsworth Classic pocket edition) but after a few pages I saw that it was spoiling the plotline so I delved in. Loved the first 10 pages! Now I have something to look forward to when I head to work ;-)

#13 good choice, dlc, one of Ballard's best, IMO.

I making my way through The Brothers Karamazov and I have to admit it is getting better in the second half -- either that or I am growing used to Dostoyevsky's rather histrionic style. I just want to gouge the eyes out of some of the characters, they're so tedious.

Although, I have fond memories of War and Peace, I am just not sure about Russian Lit. Between Brothers K and Dr. Zhivago which I read recently --- I don't know, tough going for me.

I changed my mind and put The Third Man aside before I got into it, and am instead reading The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen

Just started The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I'm enjoying the humor.

I'm halfway through Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey and enjoying it as an interesting break from grittier reading.

Nickelini I have A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen in my library an author I don't know at all.

> Merry10
I really enjoyed Oscar and Lucinda too :)

I'm reading The Floating Opera, by John Barth, but the descriptions of the court cases the protaganist- a lawyer - are involved in are losing me a little and I'm beginning to itch for my next read... possibly Little Women

I started listening to Jane Eyre on audiobook today, as read by Juliet Stevenson.

I'm reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I was a bit apprehensive, not having read Rushdie before. And I'd seen some comments recently (Grammath?) that led me to believe it might be a difficult read. And it is, in a way. It's not my usual cup of tea and it took me longer than most to get immersed in the style and the plot. But now I'm drawn to it and enjoying it.

#22 yep, guilty as charged. Not my bag at all.

Just started Fingersmith. I've heard lots of good things.

I'm planning to have a Jane-a-thon and read straight through my Austens chronologically.

I'm working on George Eliot's Middlemarch in installments. I just started book6--The Widow and The Wife.

I'm 180 pages into my 720 page copy of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Muskateers. This is my first Dumas, and it's pretty quick reading. The closest thing I've read to compare him to would be Robert Louis Stevenson. I like Dumas' writing better so far. He is really engaging, and despite this being a 720 page book I don't think it will take me that long to get through it.

I started Jane Eyre today. I have Fair and Tender Ladies and The Eyre Affair on Mt. TBR and thought I'd enjoy them more if I read the classic for background. I didn't expect to like this, but the Preface to the Second Edition, dedicating it to Thackeray, was stunning!

I've been reading a lot of non-1001 the past couple weeks, but I started The Virgin Suicides today, and Mansfield Park will be next.

My experience with Jane Austen is a little lopsided - I've read the big three - Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility more times than I can count (their spines are broken, poor things) but I haven't really touched anything else. So I'm going to try to get through the rest of them before I go re-read P&P for the 10th or whatever time.

Yesterday I got started on Nostromo by Joseph Conrad; a few chapters in, and I'm enjoying the writing, but the narrator has been jumping somewhere else each chapter so no central plot has really shown itself yet.

#30 Yeah, Conrad takes awhile to get to the action with this one. Hang in there.

I'm reading Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, and I've got to say, it's amazing.

I hope you all have a good month with your books!

#32: Ah, good. I got a copy from Bookmooch a month or two back, and have been thinking of reading it soon. (I liked Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close fairly well, and I've heard that Everything is Illuminated is better.)

Slogging my way through Dining on Stones. It's a slow, slow read.

I have Cloud Atlas after that.

Glad I'm not the only one out there slogging . . . my current slog is The Heat of the Day, by Elizabeth Bowen. Some parts of it have been pretty good, but it's taken me days to get through this latest chapter. Part of the problem is that I'm busy and tired. I've read one other Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout, which is also on the 1001 list. I remember having similar objections, but when I finished the book there was a lasting residue that was somewhat pleasant. :-)
Not sure if either of them is a book that I MUST read before I die, though.

I too am slogging away. My particular slog is Stendahl's le rouge et le noir. I'm reached a point in the book where I've read too much to give it up completely but I'm am not enthused about continuing.

I started Song of Solomon on Friday. I love how Morrison writes.

>36 socialpages:, I understand why you get stuck in Le rouge et le noir - the writing style can be so bad, and Sorel must be one of the most loathable figures in French literature. On one side he's focused on hiw own genious, on the other side he's a complete loser. The book was too pathetic for my own liking, switching from one emotion to the other while you're turning to the next page.

I'm reading 5 books ...in 4 languages... strange but relaxing...Amado'Gabriela , cravo e canela, Meneghello'Libera nos a Malo ( super!!!!) ,Apuleio's Metamorfoseon (not in Latin!!!), McCall Smith'e Espresso Tales and Gaudé's Dans la nuit Mozambique.
have you got any suggestion about Portuguese or Brezilian contemporary novels to read

FINALLY finished The Third Policeman, and will probably be awfully ambivalent on how I feel about it for quite some time.

Read Heaney's translation of Beowulf today and was rather impressed. I'm shocked that no version of the text is in the 1001 anywhere, but it was still certainly worth the read.

I'm debating on whether I want to start Nabokov's Bend Sinister (non-1001) or Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills.

Dczapka, I thought Bend Sinister was very cool--it's the only Nabokov I've ever read, so I can't compare it with others. You can read my review at post #3 at: http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=26007

Of course, you may not want to waste your time with a non-1001 book.

It's not a matter of "wasting my time," it's a matter of having something in the realm of 60 books to read before the end of August! Gotta get to them all eventually, 1001 or not. :)

I'm reading Angela Carter's Wise Children, it's absolutely knocking my socks off with a cheerfully, bawdy and compassionate style. A wonderful read.

dczapka -- I made that comment with a wink. I should have added the emoticon ;-)
Anyway, Bend Sinister is not a quick read. There's a lot going on and if you read it too quickly, you'll miss the beauty of it. At least that's my take on the book.

Finished God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. (Pretty good - still can't decide whether it was meant to be philosophical, humorous, or both.) More than halfway through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Still working through Anna Karenina. Looks to be a good month for my 1001 list.

Little Women got hijacked in favour of Seize the Day, Saul Bellow :)

Nothin' but love, Nickelini. :-)

I'm noticing what you're saying about Bend Sinister though. (I almost abbreviated it, then quickly realized the implications.) It's written in a way that almost forces you to read slowly and patiently, to take everything in at an at-times-excruciatingly slow pace. I really love the word play, though, and the mystery is pretty engrossing so far.

Reading Age of Innocence but I'm not sure yet what I will start in the next couple days once that's finished. Maybe something alone the lines of H.G. Wells or Melville.

Hello everyone - it's been a while since I posted on here. A couple of months ago I read Don Quixote, and the other week I finally finished In Search of Lost Time, which I'd been working on on-and-off (mostly off) for the past 3 years. Last week I read Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, and I've just started Iris Murdoch's The Bell. The first three were all wonderful, wonderful reads - most definitely time well spent - I'm especially pleased with making it to the end of Proust and being rewarded with possibly the most amazing 200 pages I've ever read. I'm only 30 pages in to the Murdoch, but my goodness, does she know how to start a story! I was hooked after the first paragraph.

Put Jane Eyre aside until school's out and picked up Cider with Rosie yesterday evening.

Finally finished The Heat of the Day, and I can say with great confidence that none of us have to read this one before we die. Our lives will all be fine without it.

Next up is a non-1001 book, and then I'm on to Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood.

I read Casino Royale over the weekend, without realising it was on the list. Now that I have read it, I'm not sure why it is on there.

Now onto Jane Eyre on audiobook, read by Juliet Stevenson, who is very well suited to the task. Liking it a lot so far.

Finally finished Dining on Stones, or as I like to call it How Many Times Can Ian Sinclair Drop J.G. Ballard's Name Into A Book.

Now I'm onto Cloud Atlas and I have The Poisonwood Bible following that.

About 850 pages into War and Peace.

> 55
why does Ian Sinclair drop Ballard's name so much ?

I finished Seize the Day, and started Little women.

Finished reading the Moonstone a few days ago. It has the distinction of being one of hte first British detective novels. It was riviting at some passages and a little dry in others. I didn't reallyt like how the author switches narrators. From the standpoint of getting different points of view on the situation it was necessary. On the other hand I thought some of the narrators wer borring. Overall pretty good but not my favorite by any means.

#57 I have no idea. What's funny is at the end there's this review by J.G. Ballard calling Dining on Stones OMG THE BEST BOOK EVAR! And I was like "Yeah, because it was 459 pages of free advertising for you."

I'm about halfway through Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller and I'm enjoying it very much so far. It's my first Calvino.

Finished Adjunct: An Undigest through an interlibrary loan.

Finished If On A Winter's Night A Traveller last week. It was a very unusual book and definitely worth reading. A must-read for readers, writers, read-writers and writer-readers.

Finished Never Let Me Go over the weekend. Decent novel as well.

Started Remembrance of Things Past, and when I say started, I mean I finished fifty pages of 3000+ pages, so I have a long ways to go.

Started Under The Skin.

-- M1001

Wuthering Heights - hysterically good.

About 360 pages in Brothers Karamazow.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie.

I'm currently reading A Handmaid's Tale, which I like very much, and The Wasp Factory which is also enjoyable. These are some disturbing reads for the happy, warm month of June.

>65 bookishbunny:: bookishbunny, I just read Midnight's Children a couple weeks ago. What do you think of it so far?

June so far has been:

The Poisonwood Bible - I'm going to have to read more on Africa I think

A Passage to India - racial tension

The Sea - lots of big descriptive words, little story, boring

To Have and To Have Not - full of racist comments and attitudes, bothered me

Think I will start I Know Why the Cages Bird Sings next

#63 - I just finished The Brothers Karamazov earlier this month. Are you enjoying it? I found the begining slow going, but it gets better. Overall, I am glad I read it, but definately NOT on my - will read again someday list.

I am reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles right now, and loving it.

I just finished Possession: A Romance while on holiday and loved it. I've now started on Infinite Jest and I can't quite decide what to make of it yet. I'm enjoying it at the moment simply because it's weird.

I'm starting Seize the Day today, and probably The Crying of Lot 49 after that. Both are nice, thin books making them perfect for the train.

I am just starting Oscar and Lucinda.

I just finished War and Peace, and am now starting The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.

Took a bit of a 1001 break this month, but after knocking off The Third Policeman and Portnoy's Complaint, I've begun Amerika.

I've just started Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier, which is quite short and the writing is lovely.

>71 Elee:: Elee, I've heard lots of good things about Posession and am planning to read it in July. Can't wait!

>73 hemlokgang:: hemlokgang, hope you enjoy it! I did ...

So far this month I've read The Collector by John Fowles, The Bell by Iris Murdoch and The Lover by Marguerite Duras. "The Collector" was my favourite of those three, but they were all good reads.

I'm currently plodding with no great enthusiasm through Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley. It's not bad, it's just not what I want to read right now (a comic novel written in the 1930s about a bunch of Englishmen).

I am hopefully going to read The Island of Dr. Moreau this week and possibly A Clockwork Orange this week too or next week.

I just finished The 39 Steps. I wanted to read The Quiet American next but could not find a copy, so I am going to read If This is a Man by Primo Levi.
--BJ

I just started my Jane-a-thon today. I started Sense and Sensibility, and am about a third of the way through. With all the contemporary reading I've been doing, I'd forgotten the language difference. Those first three or four chapters were hard to get back into Georgian era English. But now I'm back in the flow. Should start P & P tomorrow, don't know how fast it'll go after that. (I've read the first two before, but never read the rest or seen the movies!)

Finished Under the Skin. It was okay but I didn't think Faber was a particularly good writer and I had a tough time relating to the characters. Mostly, it was just depressing, but the plot concept was very original.

Finished Wide Sargasso Sea. I picked this up because I really liked Jane Eyre and wanted to hear the story about the mad woman in the attic. News flash: Jean Rhys is no Charlotte Bronte. Didn't like it very much.

Still reading Remembrance of Things Past. I will probably be cutting and pasting this touchstone for quite a while :).

Started On Beauty. Still too early to comment.

-- M1001

Finished Sense and Sensibility and my review is In the Shadow of Mt. TBR

Next on the Jane-a-thon list is Pride and Prejudice. :-D

K.A Mom...

Is that profile picture for real or what?

-- M1001.

Gawd I hope not! Rabid Seal in Seoul Zoo? Don't remember hearing that on the news. I found it on the net and saved it to my photobucket. I used to put it on people's MySpace comments with the caption:

"Why Little Ping grew up to club baby seals."

It always makes me laugh, no matter how many times I see it.

I've started on Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood.

> 81
I didn't enjoy On Beauty, and gave up on it. Hope you fare better.

I just finished The Poisonwood Bible and I am now starting on The English Patient

I spontaneously started Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden today. I'm already through Part One and am greatly intrigued -- much more engrossing than Saturday and without the extraneous detail of his later books. I can't wait to see what Part Two brings!

I read The Cement Garden last month and still find it one of the most disturbing books I've read on the list. Interested to find out what you think when you finish Part Two.
I haven't had many successes this month. I didn't enjoy Le Rouge and Le Noir (boring) or Pnin. The Red Queen was okay but not of the same standard of writing as other 1001 books. On the plus side was Veronika Decides to Die and Like Water for Chocolate. I have only just started this last one on Nickelini's recommendation and I am loving it.

I am reading The Bonfire of the Vanities which is starting to be enjoyable. An easy read.

#81 - I agree with you re: Wide Sargasso Sea; I read it recently and was disappointed.

I started Seize the Day last night.

#88, I hated The Red Queen the first half was ok, but when I got into the second half and I got a two paragraph discription of 'Babs' (ugh) pubic hair I gave up hope. I finished it but good god.

Drabble also put herself in her own book, which is just annoying.

@ #88:

Finished Part Two tonight in one sitting. While I can't say it's the most disturbing novel I've ever read, it's certainly unsettling. McEwan's handling of one particular tension -- first brought up on the third page of the novel, and not truly resolved until the third-to-last -- is masterful, and while I was not surprised by what happened during the climactic scene, I was rather shocked by HOW it played out.

Strangely, I was not reminded of Lord of the Flies, like so many reviews were. I found the novel far more interesting as a sexual narrative than as a narrative of arrested development, perhaps because there's something disarmingly matter-of-fact about the presentation.

In general -- and I will probably elaborate more on this in my LT review -- I was really pleased with the compactness and precision of McEwan's language in this early work, as opposed to Saturday which I felt was detailed to a fault and lost focus in its attempt to be exhaustive. This novel is just the right length, uses just the right words, and by the end, hits just the right note. I was really quite impressed, and my interest in Ian McEwan -- especially his earlier works -- has been greatly renewed.

Anyone who has read Saturday or Atonement and been left underwhelmed would do well to go back and see how he got started -- you might be rather pleasantly surprised.

Reply Message 88: socialpages

I just finished Veronika Decides To Die yesterday, all in one day. Quick read, and a decent book. Coelho likes to address "The Big Questions" in the story. It felt a little bit spoon-fed to me at times, but I realize he is going for an accessible approach to complex philosophical questions. Overall, worth reading.

-- M1001

reply Message 92: dczapka

I read Saturday quite a while ago. I agree that there was way too much detail in the writing. It was less about telling a decent story and more about saying "Hey! Look at how many pages I can write about a 24-hour period of time!"

There's some decent writing in the story, but at what cost?

-- M1001

I've finished Pride and Prejudice. My review is In the Shadow of Mt. TBR.

Now, I'm off to start Mansfield Park.

@ #94:

My thoughts exactly, M1001. Which is why I was initially hesitant to go back into McEwan so soon -- particularly since I'd heard from several reliable sources (and one random lady I saw reading it in the waiting room at the hospital I work at) that it was written in a similar, excruciatingly-detailed style.

Which is why I'm so utterly shocked at how much I've been enjoying Amsterdam, which I will almost certainly finish before the day's end. Even the long passages in the Lake District, free of dialogue and filled with description, seem meaningful and important, and not filled with superfluous description.

This leads me to two suspicions:

a) McEwan's shorter work, which is by definition more controlled, is superior to his longer, more languorous work.

b) Perhaps less plausible, but still worth considering, is that the Booker Prize victory with Amsterdam somehow affected his writing style or, perhaps, the willingness of his editors to restrain or contain him.

More thoughts?

I finished The English Patient today and I will now be starting Unless. I really loved The Stone Diaries so I hope Carol Shields lives up to expectations.

Started The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky today.

Postscript: Finished Amsterdam today. It was FANTASTIC. As good, if not better, than The Cement Garden, and as emotional and riveting as the earlier work.

I'd have to read another one of McEwan's longer works (like The Child in Time, for instance) to know for sure, but I suspect he's a much better author when he writes shorter novels, as I've found both The Cement Garden and Amsterdam to be phenomenal.

EDIT: Fixed touchstones.

Finished Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, very good. I was slightly disappointed with the ending, but overall pretty good read. Next one will be Brave New World.

I started The Sound and the Fury yesterday.

#100 I just read Brave New World this year and I loved it. I'm a big fan of dystopian novels so let me know what you think.

Read "ADA." It is, by far, his superior work (some may find it dull and slow-moving, but it is like that on purpose.) When you finally finish it (it is no more than 600 pages) you will feel a sense of joy and happiness that books can be so powerful. It is about an incestuous romance between two children who discover they are brother and sister. But there is so much more! It is about love, time, philosophy. It is Nabakov's War and Peace. Read it! You will not be sorry!

I am reading both Madame Bovary and Contact. Very different from each other, but I am enjoying them both.
--BJ

ETA: Oops! I guess I should have posted this on July!