A years worth of reading.

Cafe Society
1

About this time last year I posted a list of 100 best books I’d made up by combining a bunch of lists found on the net. What with ties and one thing and another the list ended up being 159 books long.

During 2004 I read the following:

Lolita
Catcher In The Rye
The Great Gatsby
Invisible Man
1984
On The Road
To The Lighthouse
To Kill A Mockingbird
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Brave New World
The Sound And The Fury
Lord Of The Flies
Heart Of Darkness
A Clockwork Orange
Beloved
A Passage To India
42nd Parrell
Things Fall Apart
The Sun Also Rises
The Naked And The Dead
Native Son
Brideshead Revisited
Women In Love
The Wind In The Willows
The Age Of Innocense
Portnoy’s Complaint
All The King’s Men
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
A Farewell To Arms
Wuthering Heights
Wise Blood
Winesburg, Ohio
Wide Saragasso Sea
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Tin Drum
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie
Sophia’s Choice
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Metamorphoses
Death Comes For The Archbishop
As I Lay Dying
An American Tragedy
A Room With A View
The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz
The Sheltering Sky
The Heart Of The Matter
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
The Good Soldier
Nostromo
Madame Bovary
Lord Jim
Howard’s End
Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland
Absalom, Absalom
A Bend In The River
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Kim
Pride and Prejudice
Tess Of The Durbervilles
Babbit
Appointment In Samarra
Possession: A Romance
The Wapshot Chronicles
Tender Is The Night
Angle Of Repose
Mrs. Dalloway
Middlemarch (Halfway through it)
Ironweed
Deliverance
A Prayer For Owen Meany
The Bridge Of San Luis Rey
Love In The Time Cholora
Gulliver’s Travels
The Magus
Light In August
Crime And Punishment
Song Of Solomon
The Trial
Not particulary looking for any special response. Just mostly wanting to gloat, and yes, I’m retired.

2

So, which was the best? :slight_smile:

3

How painful was it to read A Clockwork Orange without prior knowledge of Russian? (It was bad enough with it :p)

4

I don’t know a lick of Russian and I loved A Clockwork Orange. Actually, I didn’t even know many of the words were Russian or derived from Russian until my dad pointed it out.

Good grief, that’s a lot of books. Retirement is gonna be sweet. :slight_smile:

5

Wow! How do you keep track of all the books you read!?

The Catcher in the Rye was an awesome book, wasn’t it?

6

Zhao Daoli

Lolita, The Tin Drum, Sophia’s Choice, Catcher In The Rye, and Angle Of Repose were very good. I really enjoyed them from start to finish.
Paladud

Anthony Burgess is English and it was written in English. Perhaps you’re thinking of, “A Clockwork Orangeski.”

7

Wow, good job! Good idea too, to make a list and stick to it. That’s quite an accomplishment. :slight_smile:

I’ve read about half the books on your list, and wish I had them to read for the first time again. How did you like Winesburg, Ohio? That’s in my TBR pile.

I keep a Word list, and only managed 53 books last year.

I’d like to plan my reading, but I’ve bought books like crazy over the last couple of years. Mostly I’m just whittling away and trying not to buy any more for awhile.

8

You should gloat. Not a beach book in the bunch.

I love Deliverance. How did the Magus hold up? Haven’t read that in 15 years or more?

Winesberg is one of my favorites. Angle of Repose too.

Which authors do you wish to return to?

9

I didn’t care a lot for “Winesburg, Ohio.” Just didn’t do it for me. Ethen Fromme was great.

“The Magus,” was a good read. Well written with interesting characters. It’s difficult seeing it being a success if it were written today though.
“Wuthering Heights,” was Craptactular. JESUSHFUCKIN’CHRIST people get a grip on your lives. After reading it I was forced to assume that they charged for printing based on the number of sentences in a book. A typical sentence might be run like this - , , , ; ; : ? , ; . And Madame Bovine wasn’t much better.
I haven’t given a lot of thought about which authors to return to yet. There are still a goodly number on the list to get through. I’m putting off, “Don Cornholey,” “Ulysses,” anything by Henry James or Samuel Beckett until the end in the hope that I die before I get to them.

10

Braggart. :smiley:

I couldn’t even list all that I’ve read. My memory is bad, and I read alot.

I’ve read a lot of Bukowski, because for some reason I missed him all these years and I’m now infatuated

I’ve read a lot of newspapers, magazines, and crap on the internet.

I have a basket of books sitting by my couch that includes:

Betting on the Muse–Bukowski
Love is a Dog from Hell–Bukowski
The Last Night of the Earth Poems–Bukowski
White Line Fever-- by Lemmy Kilmister
Second Nature–Alice Hoffman
Bridal Bargains

I’ve read a couple of Elmore Leonard books, and Lord of the Barnyard by Tristan Egolf, a collection of stories by Franz Kafka, and A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, Mystic River, Cruel Shoes, by Steve Martin, Four Seasons by Stephen King, and many more that I cannot recollect right now.

I love books. All books.

11

I will also brag and say I’ve got several of the books you’ve mentioned, and have actually read them. Mostly in college.

12

I’m referring to the made-up slang which Alex uses. A good third of it is very difficult to divine even in context and with knowledge of the root words.

13

You have good taste. :slight_smile:

Can I have your opinion on these books:*
Invisible Man (Ellison, not Wells, right?)
Mrs. Dalloway
As I Lay Dying*

I keep a Word list of books I’ve read too. I’m glad I’m not the only one that geeky. :smiley: I even rate them on a 1-10 scale so that, years from now, I’ll know which ones are worth reading again.

14

The edition I read had a glossary in the back that helped quite a bit :stuck_out_tongue:

15

Paladud

Really? Wow, I thought he just made it up himself. I liked the slang, a good touch. It read and sounded to me like some mostly illiterate psycopath-in-training should sound like. Well live and learn.
Nightwatch Trailer

Yeah, me too. Comes of being an accountant in my case. I have to list everything.

The “Invisible Man,” came as a suprise to me. I honestly thought it was going to be the sci-fi book. “Native Son,” was, IMHO, better though. Thought provoking is the best term I can think of at the moment for it. I felt sorry for the protaganist, good ol’ what’s his name. He seemed a decent fellow and everyone shat upon him.

“Mrs. Dalloway,” beat the be-jebbers out of, “To The Lighthouse,” which is the best that can be said of it. An interesting study of 1920ish English society might be kinder. But Virginia Woolfe will never be a favorite author of mine.

“As I Lay Dying,” was the best of the several Faulkner books on the list. They actually had a recognizable goal to work toward.

16

So you didn’t like some of these books? Did you dislike some of them from the start, but persevered?

The reason I’m asking is because I don’t persevere, even with acknowledged good reads. I’ll give it a few chapters, and if it’s not satisfying on some level, I put it aside. Sometimes I go back to it, sometimes not.

I had the same problem with Wuthering Heights – the , , ; : , , – my brain couldn’t find a normal reading rhythm. I was hoping it was just the particular edition (Everyman Library).

What from the list did you dislike the most?

17

Here’s my 2004 list – I’d rate them all from 7 to 10, except for The Straw Men, which was IMHO overhyped and therefore disappointing. I didn’t list books that I didn’t bother to finish.

Most of these writers were new to me. Don Robertson is my new favorite. I think Paradise Falls is The Great American Novel. :slight_smile:

A Fine Balance is the only book I’ve read by an Indian author. I didn’t know how I’d relate, fiction-wise, to such a different culture. The book was incredibly affecting.

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

Therese Raquin, The Dram Shop, Germinal, The Earth by Emile Zola

The Ideal, Genuine Man, Victoria at Nine, Paradise Falls, The Three Days, By Antietam Creek, The River and the Wilderness by Don Robertson

Criminals by Margot Livesey

The Innamorati and The Flight of Michael McBride by Midori Snyder

Sunset and Sawdust by Joe Lansdale

The Straw Men by Michael Marshall

The Missing by Thomas Eidson

Jean de Florette/Manon of the Springs by Marcel Pagnol

Tethered by David L. Martin

The Faceless Killers by Henning Mankel

Dust by Arthur Slade

Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson

lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub

Winter Queen and Murder on the Leviathan by Boris Akunin

Daughter of My people by James Kilgo

Dead Man’s Hand by Tim Lebbon

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

The Gunslinger (re-read, the revised edition), Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah by Stephen King

The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears

Stiff by Mary Roach

Death’s Acre (by the guy who started the Body Farm)

Lover of the Grave by Andrew Taylor

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erickson

The Trial of Elizabeth Cree by Peter Ackroyd

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Depraved by Harold Schechter

Stone Angel and The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence

A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

Swords for Hire by Will Allen –

Ilium by Dan Simmons

Twice Dying by Neil McMahon

The Cabinet of Curiosities and Still Life With Crows by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Charles De Lint by Charles DeLint

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

18

This should have been Waifs and Strays by Charles DeLint. :smack:

19

“Wuthering Heights,” in a landslide.

“To The Lighthouse,” by Virginia Woolfe. The first half was utterly boring. The second have was better and only somewhat boring. I started it and made 25 or so pages before throwing just so something would happen. Picked it back up a couple months later and waded on through. “Mrs. Dalloway,” by VW also was pretty good. After having read Lighthouse it was a major suprise.

“A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man,” was a bit of a trial and not enjoyable. I only got through it by constantly reminding myself that it wasn’t very long.

“Wise Blood,” “Winesburg, Ohio,” “Death Comes For The Archbishop,” and “The Bridge Of San Luis Rey,” didn’t do it either. Archbisop and Bridge were, in my opinion, just very ordinary and not especially interesting. I can’t see the attraction for any of these four.

20

<i>Winesburg, Ohio</i> is my favorite book ever. :smiley: I’m working on a German translation, in fact.