I’ve just compleed Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, followed by Dick Francis’ Twice Shy. I guess next time I hit the library, I have to pick another book from the Modern Library’s 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century.
Care to recommend one? (Bearing in mind that I’ve already read Ulysses, Great Gatsby, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Sound and the Fury, Grapes of Wrath, Catch 22, Slaughterhouse-Five, Animal Farm, Handful of Dust, Lord of the Flies, Maltese Falcon, Zuleika Dobson, The Moviegoer, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Catcher in the Rye, Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Call of the Wild, and The Magnificent Ambersons).
I’d go with something by Sinclair Lewis – there are two on the list, Main Street and Arrowsmith. I’m reading Dodsworth now, but it’s not on the list. Stupid list.
I second anything by Sinclair Lewis. Recently read All the King’s Men (#36 on the list) and can recommend that. An American Tragedy (#16) and I, Claudius (#14) are especially good.
From the Board’s list, I’d suggest Brave New World, Darkness at Noon, 1984, and On the Road.
From the Readers’ list (generally more to my liking, except for so much Ayn Rand - ugh!), I’d suggest The Lord of the Rings, To Kill a Mockingbird, Dune, The Moon is A Harsh Mistress, The Stand, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy, On the Beach, Starship Troopers, The Hunt for Red October, and The Puppet Masters.
I’m still reading From Colony to Superpower. It’s slow going. I just started summer school so it’s had to go on the backburner, which disappoints me because I am loving it so far. I’m only 16% done with it, but it’s around a thousand pages, so I’m making pretty good progress.
Finished World War Z and did not enjoy it as much as many here. I found it repetitive and depressing. I thought there wasn’t enough substance in the end it was a page flipper.
Finished Red-Headed Stepchild the third in the Sabina Cain urban fantasy series. It was good enough to pass the time, but not good enough to recommend.
Right now I’m listening to The Winter Ghosts (audiobook) , by Kate Mosse. It’s slow going and not helped at all by the narrator, who hesitates constantly to add drama, I suppose. Whatever his intention, he sounds affected and unnatural and it’s very annoying.
Finally read Tana French’s In The Woods which has been discussed here a bit. I wasn’t bothered too much by the older mystery that went unsolved, and I was relieved that at least Adam didn’t discover he was the killer, though disappointed by his personal failures towards the end of the case and I really loved the characters and the way the newer mystery developed.
It was gripping enough that after there was a little rain today, I just stayed in and read the book straight through. Now I don’t know when I’ll be able to fall asleep.
Finished Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy. Very good. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but enjoyed it a lot. A bunch of white and black trash in Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 1950s, the protagonist just a tad better than the others. I learn from doing a bit of research that it is semi-autobiographical and was written over the space of three decades. Recommended.
McCarthy sure has a thing against quotation marks though, doesn’t he? I like to use them myself, but then I’m not an “artiste.” He seems somewhat ambiguous about apostrophes, using them sometimes, sometimes not.
Next up: Even though it’s still just over nine months until our next trip to the US, I’m going to read through the Lonely Planet: New York City guidebook.
I bumped my queue so that I could get to Cutthroats: The Adventures of a Sherman Tank Driver in the Pacific by Robert C. Dick. Less that 24 hours in and I’m already past 60 pages. Shouldn’t take long at all.
I actually reached the bottom of my TBR pile. The library should be sending more soon, but in the meantime, I’m revisiting A Simple Plan, by Scott Smith. I really enjoyed this book in the past, but it’s been a few years now, so it’ll be interesting to see if it holds up. If not, I’ll go root out Pat Conroy’s Lords of Discipline.
I’ve been plodding through The Three Musketeers. The story is so familiar - despite the fact that I’ve never read the book before, the pacing is so leisurely, and I can’t tell Athos, Porthos, and Aramis apart. May come back to it later. In the meantime, I’ve just barely started Martha Wells’ The Cloud Roads. I’m excited!
I really liked The Elegance of the Hedgehog, too, but have spent a lot of time trying decide how it should have ended. I didn’t like the way it ended, but what should have happened instead?
If you make it through the end of the entire series of books, you’ll learn how most of them eventually die … all except for one, who is still left alive.
