Book recommendations, please

[Franz Ferdinand]

Well, a week into March and I will admit it: I failed February's reading task, fairly spectacularly. I got about 250 pages into "Gravity's Rainbow" and I think I will take that as victory enough. Maybe next year!
I changed March from "Les Miserables" to "2666", try to keep it somewhat contemporary. So far so good, it's been an easier read than I thought, but I am expecting some craziness to drop.

[Franz Ferdinand]

The funniest book I have read in a *long* time: Notes From A Small Island: by Bill Bryson. Once you finish, you will want to start all over. This is hilarious if you have ever been to Britain.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" was a great book and I enjoyed Bryson's style a lot.

[cam]

Any of the excellent mysteries by Robert Crais. The two very macho p.i.s Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, are entertaining and the stories full of neat little wanderings.

The funniest book I have read in a *long* time: Notes From A Small Island: by Bill Bryson. Once you finish, you will want to start all over. This is hilarious if you have ever been to Britain.



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[flipp525]

I am currently reading Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" for the second time.

There's a restaurant opening up down the street from me called 'Eatonville', named after the fictional all-black town in Hurston's famous novel. I live in an historic, what was once almost exclusively, African-American neighborhood and many of the area's most popular eating establishments are homages to famous African-American writers, singers and actors ('Marvin', named after Marvin Gaye and recently visited by the Obamas; 'Busboys & Poets' which takes its name after an old newspaper reference to Langston Hughes, etc.)



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[Heksagon]

Franz, have you read anything else by Solzhenitsyn? I read Cancer Ward some years ago and I've been planning to read some of his other works since then.

[dreaMaker]

Guy de Maupassant: Novellas

[Franz Ferdinand]

I finished "Don Quixote" a few days ago, it was one of those classic novels that you feel enriched reading and can boast you have read it, but probably not something to read again. I enjoyed the humor and their strange situations, but the second part of the novel was quite a bit mean-spirited and unsympathetic towards its well-meaning but mad characters.

Also snuck in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Solzhenitsyn. As an example of struggles in the sheer face of totalitarian oppression and indecency, it is fairly vivid; as just plain literature, it is lacking. Perhaps I was hoping for too much considering his stature among 20th century novelists (winner of the Nobel Prize and all), but it was a very underdeveloped book, no real characterization and plot development, and nowhere near (for lack of a better word) poetic enough to really drive its situation home. I could feel the agony and the cold, but I just did not know enough about the characters to really sympathize.

January is done, off we go to "Gravity's Rainbow"! Wish me luck! :p

[barrybrooks8]

Because I'm a dork, I read the four novels that the Adapted Screenplay nominees were on based on for last year (No Country for Old Men, Oil!, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Atonement). Oil! was easily the best, and it's amazing that it was even considered adapted. At least 4/5 of the novel have nothing to do with There Will Be Blood.

[The Original BJ]

My 2008 lineup:

"The Children of Men," P.D. James
"Gone With the Wind," Margaret Mitchell
"Winnie-the-Pooh," A.A. Milne
"The Old Man and the Sea," Ernest Hemingway (2nd x)
"The Plague," Albert Camus
"Things Fall Apart," Chinua Achebe (2nd x)
"Light in August," William Faulkner
"The Call of the Wild," Jack London
"Catch-22," Joseph Heller
"Brave New World," Aldous Huxley

I am currently reading Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" for the second time.

Wish I had accomplished as much as I did in '07, but am happy to have gotten through what I did.

[Sonic Youth]

The Savage Detectives is like chopping through a ridiculously dense thicket, but keep at it. I know it starts out like some horny, pretentious college literature, but the work undergoes many, many stylistic changes and ends up being something of a repudiation of its young characters sophmoricism. It's really a series of short stories sandwiched between two novellas, or a single novel interrupted halfway with a series of short stories. In any case, it's one of those books where you're better off making a list of all the characters as you read so you can keep track of them when they reappear. And I've earned my bragging rights: I started it at the end of '07, 10 or 11 months before the Bolano bandwagon began in earnest.

I'll give 2666 a try when I'm in my seventies, and after I've read Finegan's Wake.

Didn't read as much in '08 as I did in '07. Besides finishing the Belano:

American Pastoral - Philip Roth
Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
The Death of My Brother Abel - Gregor von Rezzori
Muriella Pent - Russell Smith
Peace - Richard Bausch
Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson

Keep turning those pages, ya'll.

[Okri]

I'd recommend tackling 2666 even if you don't love The Savage Detectives. I didn't finish the latter. I might join you in your quest - we'll see. My goal is to read 100 books this year, and I nearly did it last year. My movie going did suffer (as did my TV watching), but strangely, I don't mind so much.

[Franz Ferdinand]

I was quite disappointed with the Adiga work. An interesting voice, an original take, but something was missing. That said, Steve Toltz' A Fraction of the Whole is a masterpiece of the highest order - I read about 300 pages in a single sitting. Just a book that devoured me.

I was also disappointed with The Imposter, but only in a relative sense - The Good Doctor remains one of my favourite books of the past five years.

Outside the Toltz, I'd rank Roberto Bolano's 2666 as a stunning work (and his death really hits knowing the sheer breadth of his talent). And The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a breathtakingly brilliant thriller - and another early demise I mourn (Steig Larsson).

Adiga was lacking a certain something, though I certainly didn't mind reading it. Toltz was hilarious, there was a lot to love, but also a lot to nitpick over - I was particularly missing any spatial relativity, considering the novel hopped so much around the globe. It was still a generous novel and one of the most enjoyable I read this year. Galgut's writing is something special, very sparse but rich.

I've been reading "The Savage Detectives", about 70 pages in, and it's becoming a love-it-or-hate-it type of book. So far I'm on the fence, but it's a thin fence. I have "2666" waiting to be read, but I'm a bit more apprehensive about it now.

[Franz Ferdinand]

For this year I have set myself a lofty reading list, primarily to clear out some space on my bookshelf and get around to reading books that have been there for years unread.
January: "Don Quixote" and "The Brothers Karamazov" (both of which I've been half done for a year now)
February: Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
March: Victor Hugo, "Les Miserables"
April: Dante, "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso" (the Hollander translations)
May: David Foster Wallace, "Infinite Jest"
June: James Joyce, "Ulysses"
July-Aug: Leo Tolstoy, "War and Peace"
Sep-Dec: Marcel Proust, "In Search of Lost Time" (the six-volume Modern Library edition)

Jesus Christ, you humble me. Brothers K is the only one of those I've ever managed. Gravity's Rainbow has sat on my shelf for over a quarter century. And if I got through one of these in a five year period, I'd walk around thinking I was the literature stud.

Truly, I'm in awe of you.

I'll let you know how it actually works out, I made it as imposing as possible. I highly doubt this list will get finished, but here's hoping!

[Okri]

I was quite disappointed with the Adiga work. An interesting voice, an original take, but something was missing. That said, Steve Toltz' A Fraction of the Whole is a masterpiece of the highest order - I read about 300 pages in a single sitting. Just a book that devoured me.

I was also disappointed with The Imposter, but only in a relative sense - The Good Doctor remains one of my favourite books of the past five years.

Outside the Toltz, I'd rank Roberto Bolano's 2666 as a stunning work (and his death really hits knowing the sheer breadth of his talent). And The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a breathtakingly brilliant thriller - and another early demise I mourn (Steig Larsson).

[Mister Tee]

For this year I have set myself a lofty reading list, primarily to clear out some space on my bookshelf and get around to reading books that have been there for years unread.
January: "Don Quixote" and "The Brothers Karamazov" (both of which I've been half done for a year now)
February: Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
March: Victor Hugo, "Les Miserables"
April: Dante, "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso" (the Hollander translations)
May: David Foster Wallace, "Infinite Jest"
June: James Joyce, "Ulysses"
July-Aug: Leo Tolstoy, "War and Peace"
Sep-Dec: Marcel Proust, "In Search of Lost Time" (the six-volume Modern Library edition)

Jesus Christ, you humble me. Brothers K is the only one of those I've ever managed. Gravity's Rainbow has sat on my shelf for over a quarter century. And if I got through one of these in a five year period, I'd walk around thinking I was the literature stud.

Truly, I'm in awe of you.