My goal for the new year is to read 50 books. Help me out?

Cafe Society
61

I’m still in and I will have to second, or third or whatever, the Harry Potter books, I read the first one in a day and now have the second one. Since I said I have already started I will end my quest on Dec 22, at least I hope I will. I have already read Kundera’s “Ignorance”, “Harry Potter and the Socerer’s Stone”, Philip K Dick’s “Flow My tears, Said the Policeman”. I’m currently in the middle of “The Princess Bride”.

Now my problem is that I got Lord of the Rings as one big book so can I count it as three books or one?

On a side note this might be kind of hard for me since during the summer I am a motorcycle rider so it will really put a damper onto my reading. I’m going to have to crank a ton of them out in the next couple of months.

62

Holy flurking shnit!!

I took some time this morning to c&p everyone’s suggestions into a list so that I could sort it out and see where I wanted to start…and after I culled out things I’d read, I was down to a mere 147 items. :eek:

I went to the library at lunch, and here’s what I decided to start with:

Umberto Eco - Foucalt’s Pendulum
Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy
Dodie Smith - I Capture The Castle

I have my work cut out for me, it seems. Those first two are huge!! Progress reports to come!

63

The Phantom Tollbooth – Norman Juster
The Search for Delicious – Natalie Babbit

64

<minor hijack>
I’m glad to hear so many people say Gaiman’s writing is good, since I just got Neverwhere and * Coraline* which will be the first of his books I’ll be reading.
</minor hijack>

65

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

Culture Jam by Kalle Laison (sp?)

66

I know you won’t read 'em all, so I gave you short summaries to help you decide on most of them. :smiley:

Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neal Hurston (woman’s independence from man)

Fences - August Wilson (father and son)
(upper two are African American…just finished the class)

Ender/Bean’s Series – Orson Scott Card (at least Ender’s game. I love that book!)

The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
(here’s a tip. I read this book and had to go back for the AP test and review it through sparknotes. I learned SO much from sparknotes it wasn’t funny. After you’re done, and you want more of something, see if it’s on sparknotes, etc. )
If you want shorter for a break (ha!) (as in short tales in one big book,) check out The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

Crime and Punishment -Dostoevsky (title is pretty summarizing – man’s punishment for his crime, both internal/external)

Death be not proud - John Gunther (Sad, about a young adult with a terminal illness)

Diary of Anne Frank

The Giver - Lois Lowry (vastly different lifestyle from what we know, futuristic)

Hachet -Paulsen (story of a lost boy’s survival in wilderness)

I never promised you a rose garden (story of a girl with a mental illness)

Walden - Thoreau (non-fiction, he describes his then way of life alone in the wilderness)

The things they carried - o’brien (vietnam story, non-fiction in the sense that the writer went to the war, fiction in most sense in that the concepts of truth and falsehood are major here)

Scarlet Letter -Hawthorne (adultery and its affects)

the red badge of courage (war story)

raisin in the sun - hansberry (african american struggles in Chicago)

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin 3 daughters and their pursuits of men.

The Pearl - Steinback (novella, really, short and simple words (6th grade level on purpose) but good message.

these next two are also novellas and easier reading, but deep if you search - Of Mice and Men - Steinback, Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway (parallel of his writing career - the sharks are his critics)

Paradise Lost - Milton (heavy reading. epic poem in heroic couplets regarding the human fall)

Moby Dick - Melville (an obsessive man’s desire to capture a whale)

These are of course NOT all the books I could write. I could go on…forever… dreamy look

of course my summaries are possibly flawed, lacking. It’s been years for some of these books. forgive me. :wink:

/Shadez

67

What a great thread!

I may be joining your adventure.

The idea of another thread for the participants is a great one-- for support, ideas for books, and discussion if one was so inclined.

I just finished my first Neil Gaiman book- Neverwhere and thought it was great. I’ve moved onto Terry Pratchett’s ** Discworld** series (though my library doesn’t have them all so I’m starting on number two, I believe. Don’t know how important it is to read them all in order) and I think they’re both great. Actually, I was begining to suspect for a little while there that they were the same person, one of the names being a pen name.

I’ve added eight books to my ‘Books To Read’ list so far from this thread, and that’s just jotting down a few that really captured my attention.

Some other books on my to read list that look promising:
The Night is Large- Martin Gardner
Double Fold- Nicholson Baker
The hot zone- Richard Preston
The Ideal Genuine Man- Don Robertson

Some other good books I’ve read recently (and not-so-recently)
Sphere-Michael Crichton
Timeline-Michael Crichton
Vox-Nicholson Baker (prepare for things to get, uh, rather steamy, and not in a very romantic way)
Blood Work-Michael Connelly
Void Moon-Michael Connelly
Montana Sky-Nora Roberts (don’t laugh. actually a pretty good read, with some decently enjoyable sex scenes)

I can’t believe I can’t remember any more just now. Well, you know how it is. Information flies right out of your head as soon as you try to call it up.

More later.

68

Man, now I’m all excited for this, Jadis. I’m absolutely sure I could hit 50 if I cut out some of my time on the internet. Actually, I bet if I cut out 15 minutes/day, I could get well over 50.

Anyway, whether you want to do it in a thread or an LJ community, I’m there. I think I’m going to try to read some more non-fiction this year, too.

Okay, some of my favorites from this year’s list (I do keep track, and hit 43 this year):
The Eagle and the Raven by Pauline Gedge. Not sure how easy this’ll be to get, it’s historical fiction by a Canadian writer. Fabulous, though. It’s about the Roman conquest of Britain, and I found it fantastically moving and absorbing.

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan. Short, lots of literary merit (I read it for an English class), very interesting and hugely disturbing.

Ab Urbe Condita by Livy. Well, the first five books, anyway. I just love it, it’s supposed to be a history chronicle, but it’s full of invention and action.

Bardic Voices by Mercedes Lackey. This is my non-literary pick. Fluff, but terrific, enjoyable fantasy. I’ve read the first three in the series, “The Lark and the Wren”, “The Robin and the Kestrel” and “The Eagle and the Nightingale” (not to be confused with the Eagle and the Raven!). The third was my favorite.

My hannukah present from my aunt was an astoundingly generous gift certificate to all the major bookstores up here. ime for a trip to one soon! Yay!

69

If your goal is to read at least fifty books a year, may I suggest keeping a journal? I’ve been a journal fiend for at least three years now, and every new notebook I start contains in the front a list of books I want to read but haven’t had a chance to. As I read the books, I note the dates I read them and the chronological order in which I read them; doing this, I know I read exactly 72 this year, meaning 72 1/2 for 2002 because I’m in the middle of a book on this New Year :slight_smile:

I second The Source and pretty much anything else by James Michener. I have not read a bad book by that man and I don’t think I could. The Source especially though; not to be too melodramatic, but it’s a book that changed my life in that it highly influenced the path I am taking in college (Middle Eastern studies.) I’m not saying it will do that to you, but it’s an astonishing read nonetheless.

I’m glad you’re reading The Power and the Glory; Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors. Be sure to read The Heart of the Matter as well; same brooding, sweltering atmosphere as the above, as well as the questioning of God and religion found in TPatG.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is a perennial favorite of mine.

The Hope and The Glory by Herman Wouk. If you like Israel or have no sympathies one way or the other, read these two books. They’re long (they were supposed to be one big book, but his editor forced him to condense them into two 600+ page books) but I easily breezed through 100 pages a day, easy. They tell the story of Israel through some excellently-drawn characters from the War of Independence to the aftermath of the bitter Yom Kippur War.

On the vain of Israel, read Michael Oren’s Six Days of War; it’s the best history I have ever read of one of the 20th century’s most controversial wars.

I would also recommend both Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down and his newer Killing Pablo. Bowden has a knack for combining extensive research and interviews with very intriguing stories. As good as the movie Black Hawk Down was (and I know some of you would argue, but I enjoyed it) the book was much better. The second one about drug kingpin Pablo Escobar was also extremely good.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley is also a genius adaptation of King Lear. Highly recommended.

70

Hmmm…as an avid reader, I feel I can add a few in here that I have found fascinating…

The Number Of The Beast by Heinlein. Yeah, I’ll probably get flamed on this one, but I found it fascinating reading. Slows down quite a bit at the end, but still ends well.

Rickenbacker by Eddie Rickenbacker. A very well written autobiography of a man a lot of folks have forgotten about.

The Shining by Steven King. Still brings chills to me every time I read it - the movie was nothing compared to the book.

The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits is fascinating reading about every single that has charted in the Billboard Top 40 since 1955. The stories behind the music are priceless. As a former radio personality, I used this book extensively - and still love it.

Good luck in your challenge!

71

Great idea, Jadis! I’m in. I have a few books in my queue already - plus I have the Easton Press 100 Greatest Books Ever Written collection, their Hall of Fame Baseball collection, and several others that I’ve never read. So I have plenty right here at home to get started on…

Too bad I’ve already read Gaiman, and Harry Potter (though Book V should come out this year, so that’s definitely on my list!)

The queue as it stands right now:
The October Horse by Colleen McCullough
Tales from Pluto by Terry Pluto (Cleveland-area sportswriter)
The Arabian Nights Entertainments

More as I decide which ones go where. I’m also reading the Baseball Timeline, but that’s for a research project.

72

I’m with you, Jadis! How shall we track- should we post and number or what? Post every 5 books? Thoughts?

I just visited my new library, so I’m raring to go. I checked out a book about bullying called “Words Hurt Forever”. Not a fun start, but a start anyway!

73

oooh, oooh. i want in! it seems like a wonderful self-challenge.

plus, i used a borders gift certificate i received for xmas to buy six albert camus books and one salman rushdie novel so i have plenty of material to start with. hopefully “midnight’s children” will save me from post-modern existential despair.
not only that, but i’m currently read doestoevsky’s “the gambler”.

so yes, count me in.

74

ok hey jadis, and all others. it doesn’t matter what other types of books you like, u must read the trilogy (i hope soon to be umm a ?quartology?) -quartology: 4 books in a series in my language-…that stars georgia, a quite cool english chick! * angus, thongs, and full frontal snogging… on the bright-side im now the girlfriend of a sex god… and knocked out by my nunga-nungas are all excellent and hilrious books. i must admit, i didnt start reading them till the second one was already oput, but itore through those two, and this x-mas, i read the whole third one in a car ride, and im not a person to usually read in the car nausea, but anyhoo, dont judge a book by it’s uhh…title! and please find out about these, ANYONE could find some entertainment in these!!
-*forever the freshness

75

Haven’t seen these mentioned yet:

Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove: Christopher Moore
Lamb: Also by Christopher Moore. Very funny bio of JC as told by his best friend Biff

Anything by Carl Hiaasen but especially Sick Puppy

And in the mind candy section:

Vampire books by Laurell K Hamilton, got to love that Jean Claude.
Eve Dallas/Roarke … in Death books by J D Robb

76

Yeah, anything by Orson Scott Card is good especally Enchantment, Pastwatch and Ender’s Game. I also like Anne McCaffrey, especally Pegasus in Space, The Rowan, Acorna and the other books in their series’. Mercedes Lackey is also very good, the Valdemar books aren’t her only ones, there’s also Wheels on Fire and the other books in that series (which I love) and the Diana Tregarde Investigations which are also great. Um… Morgan Llwellen is also really good, or at least what I’ve read so far has been.

Good luck on your goal. I would join you but I’m trying to do the opposite; not read so many (about a hundred if you count re-reads) books and focus more on other things. :smiley:

77

hi Jadis, I´d join you in the challenge, but then again, I read a lot of books in other languages (Spanish, German) that might not be available in English… looking forward to your recommendations, though.
So far I´ve read three books this year (yeah I know it´s only been a week… I was in bed with a cold :slight_smile: ) and I´d really really like to recommend Life of Pi byYann Martel - absolutely stunning, weird and (in parts) funny story about a boy who survives in a lifeboat on the Pacific for 7 months together with a royal Bengal tiger… won´t go into any details, but it was definitely the best Xmas present I got…
I second Neil Gaiman, especially Good Omens, and Douglas Adams, Nick Hornby etc. Someone said Canticle for Leibowitz: absolutely!
For some adventure, Arturo Pérez-Reverte´s The Nautical Chart, quite thick though, and new, so you won´t get it from the library`I´m afraid.
Very short, for in between (at the end of the year, in case you´re starting to fear you won´t make it) The Alchemist byPaulo Coelho.

78

oh damn, this got clipped off somehow… here comes the rest :slight_smile:

Absolutely awesome, meditative end-of-days-scenario science fiction novel:On the Beach by Nevil Shute (a nuclear war has wiped out about all civilsation on the Northern hemisphere, and people in Australia have nothing got to do but wait for the contamination to come southwards… no big action, just quiet and beautiful in a weird sort of way).
and then there´s always Arthur C. Clarke (2001 A Space Odyssey) , but you said you weren´t really into SciFi.
and what about Roald Dahl? The short stories, I mean, though the children´s books are cool as well. Some wicked black humour…
Well, Foucault´s Pendulum is a good choice and will keep you busy for a while… keep us posted on your progress!

79

This is a fabulous idea…and all you folk are going to sprain your brains with all them high falutin’ books.

So’s…

**On the lighter side **

**Holiday’s In Hell ** P.J. O’Rourke (actually, nearly anything by this man, he is a genius.)

**Pure Drivel ** Steve Martin. ( I bought the book alone just after reading the opening forward.)

**Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits ** I love this man. He summed up my philosopy for religion nicely in this book.

**Dave Barry Slept Here ** Dave’s version of American History. The more you know your US history, the funnier this is.

(Dave and Steve’s stuff are all very fast reads and I re-read them at least twice a year. )

**Breezy, Pastoral Books **

**The Lemon Jelly Cake ** Margeret Babcock Smith. Thanks Delphica for this one, I just love it. A story of small town at the turn of last century told through the eyes of a 12 yr old girl who’s Daddy is the town doctor and her best friend’s daddy is the Town’s minister. So they are the *bomb *.

**The Village School ** - A Miss Read Novel. (set in early 50’s in the country side of england. Hypnotic, entrancing, charming. (There are something like 25 Miss Read novels. They have a cult following.)

**Total Mental Fodder **

Romance Books are my speciality ( Hey, there are enough Trekkie’s here, someone here has to drop the Bell Curve.)

If you are looking for a well written romance novel ( no, that is not an oxymoron, you snobs.) I highly recommend:

**Dara Joy ** Triology: A Knight of a Trillion Stars, Rejar and Mine to Take. (Sci-fi, time travel stuff.)

**Lynn Kurland ** Just about any book she’s done. (Ghosts, time travel theme.)

**Mary Jo Putney ** Regency romances. Bar none, this woman can layer a story and have such depth to her characters it is amazing.

All are great pool side reading.

Oh, and the **Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Series ** is loads of fun and how often can you say that about a Sci Fi book?

80

Oh, if you’re talking romance novels – how about Jayne Ann Krentz, who also does Regencies as Amanda Quick. The sex is hot without being embarassing, her heroines are smart and together, and there’s usually some humor that’s actually funny. (BTW, she apparently picked “Amanda Quick” after determining that there were no romance authors with last names beginning with “Q.”)