memeage

[electricland]

from raithen:

Here are the current top 50 books from www.whatshouldireadnext.com. Bold the books you have read. Italicise the books you might read. Cross out the books you probably won't read. Pass it on:

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - got it out of the library once but didn't start it, I know it's supposed to be marvellous, but am not sure.
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown Thanks, Da Vinci Code was PLENTY.
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson - does getting halfway through count? I keep running into people who adore it, but I really had a hard time with it.
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess mmmmaybe...
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Ender's Game (The Ender Saga) - Orson Scott Card
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving - one day maybe...
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - that one is actually on the List of Doom!
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - never heard of it! Any good?
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway - since I loathed For Whom the Bell Tolls, perhaps I'll like this...
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert

Comments

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

I read The Life of Pi and thoroughly enjoyed it. Both The Kite Runner and The Shadow of the Wing sound quite interesting. The latter especially so as it invokes Foucault's Pendulum.

I hated The Old Man and the Sea. Hated. It. *shudders*

[themusesbitch.livejournal.com]

Definitely pick up a copy of The Kite Runner, it's excellent.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Good to know! I think my mother read it and liked it a lot, too. Right, on the list it goes.

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

I was just given a gift certificate to Chapters, so I might just get it. BSG dvds can wait.

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

As I had to run errands today, I did, in fact, pick it up. I'm looking forward to reading it.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

ok. good reason to avoid Shadow of the Wing.

*foucault* *shudders*

;)

(Check out datawhorevoyeur's recent journal entries for me on Foucault (and also ramblings au sujet de Bourdieu....)

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I know next to nothing about Foucault, but Foucault's Pendulum rocks my world. It's like the anti-Da Vinci Code.

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

That's another text that I must purchase. I'm really going to solidify that dork tag at work when I bring that in.

I know next to nothing about the Da Vinci Code and hope to keep it that way.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I know next to nothing about the Da Vinci Code and hope to keep it that way.

I read it near the beginning of the craze, and am still baffled that it's stayed on the bestseller lists for what, three years now? At least, I could easily evolve a theory to explain it, but I do try to think well of humanity on the whole, so I prefer to just be baffled.

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

Because I'm a horrible snob, I tend to eschew what's on bestseller lists and the such and go for the books that figure on the Booker Award shortlist and Prix Femina and Goncourt lists, etc. So, the whole thing just bypassed me entirely.

A friend of mine was conned into reading it and he said he found it lacking depth. That was enough to confirm my preconceived notions of the book. Did I mention that I'm a horrible snob?

[electricland.livejournal.com]

"Lacking depth" only begins to cover it. I mean, it's gripping enough, but I do prefer it if the fiendishly complex puzzles that have defied a solution for 600 years are complex enough that I don't figure them out 50 pages ahead of the main characters, y'know? And I am not the world's most demanding reader in that respect -- I'm perfectly happy to let mystery novels carry me along until All Is Revealed -- so it's bad if I'm screaming "Morons!" at the book.

Also, the female lead, a Frenchwoman, shows up for her first scene wearing stirrup pants and an Irish fisherman's jersey. With pockets. I have always found this hard to credit.

If you don't mind being insanely spoiled, the good folks at Making Light trashed it but good not too long ago. (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007095.html)

I fall somewhere in between the two. I mean, I do manage some prize nominees, and I only read bestsellers if I was going to anyway (does that make sense?). Even so my reading list is always completely out of control.

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

I have fond memories of Foucault from my 20th Century French Thought theory course. However, I'm hardly conversant in him and his theories now.

Have you read Barthes?

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I meant to read Life of Pi when it came out, and have meant to read it ever since, but never seem to get around to it. *guilt*

Maybe if my library branch has a copy in.

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

I got it when it came out and it impressed me enough to go out and buy Martel's other books. Not that I've read them yet. But soon. The pile by my bed is going to get overwhelming. Again.

Bonne lecture...

P.S. re Hemingway

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I have always understood that when it comes to Hemingway, there's the people who like The Old Man and the Sea and the people who like his other stuff, and there's very little overlap.

Mind you, the only Hemingway I've ever read was For Whom the Bell Tolls in Grade 10, which I loathed (the earth moved!). However, given that that's a LONG time ago now, maybe I should give him another shot.

Where do you stand on Faulkner?

Re: P.S. re Hemingway

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

I read The Old Man and the Sea for grade 9 language arts and hated it then. I haven't yet gotten over the hate. So, I'm probably not the most unbiased person out there.

I've never read Faulkner, to be honest. Once I finished high school, I went directly into French lit. The only books I've read in English of late have been post-modern/post-colonial or of the young adult vein. Rob Thomas' first novel is particularly good. But I do have a soft spot for his second novel, Slave Day.

If you want recommendations for good French texts, I'm your girl.

Re: P.S. re Hemingway

[raithen.livejournal.com]

well, you must go read something other than OM&tS by Hemingway, and you must read Faulkner. Then you must report. This is to add further data for a nascent theory ;).

Re: P.S. re Hemingway

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

I might have a book by Faulkner downstairs. I'll have to check. But give me sometime. I need to finish both Beirut Blues and Shake Hands With the Devil, which I've currently started. Then, there's Anna Karenina on my bedroom floor that's been waiting to be read for a while. I had planned to reread Le rivage de Syrtes, because it's been too long since I've read anything in French, but I can forego that for Faulkner. I'll have to give your Hemingway mandate some consideration. Any suggestions in particular?

Re: P.S. re Hemingway

[electricland.livejournal.com]

One day I will take you up on that! (My grandmother used to read French novels to keep her hand in, or her brain, or however you'd term it.) I'm ashamed to say I haven't read a French novel since high school. I should fix that.

Re: P.S. re Hemingway

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

I'm unfortunately very out of the loop of what's going on in literary circles in France. But as I plan to spend some time in France this summer, I will be buying some books. I should peruse the Prix Goncourt and Femina winners of the last decade and make some selections.

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

oh yes to 'life of pi'. mind blowing book.

hmmm...engine summer? ;)

i haven't read slaughterhouse 5 in eons. brings back memories. *g*

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Engine Summer definitely, when I get it unpacked again.

I read Beasts, did I tell you? I don't think I did. Very good, but his stuff is so dense -- rich? textured? -- I always feel I need to spend some time processing it before I can come to any conclusions.

I read Slaughterhouse 5 for the first time a couple of years ago. It was not at all what I expected.

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

ah yes, i'm thinking of the boxes of books now. it's a lot of fun to unpack them and rediscover treasures. and old friends. :)

and you're right, it is dense, rich and textured. i think that i enjoy it even more in the re-read because then i can immerse in the language even more.

as for slaughterhouse 5, saw the movie too....now that's a hard book to make a movie of. *bg*

[lilactime.livejournal.com]

The Lovely Bones is gorgeous, lush and made me cry like a baby. I've read it three times now.

I tried to read The Time-Traveller's Wife but the library copy I ended up with reeked of perfume. I need to try again on that one.

[themusesbitch.livejournal.com]

Definitely find an unscented copy: that is an amazing book. It was my #1 of all the books I read last year, and I'm recommending it to anyone who will listen.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I second the motion to read The Time Traveller's Wife, in non-stinky form. Very very good. Although I found the ending frustrating.

And perhaps I'll give The Lovely Bones another go, in that case! I got a bit of a case of everyone-is-reading-it snobbery at the height of its popularity, which I should move past.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

_Shadow of the Wind_ is good, but it's.... "literary." It's not a light book or a quick read. (I like to know that before committing to something, so that I can set aside the time and energy for it! ) Still, definitely good.

_Owen Meany_, similarly, is magnificent, but dense and layered and not a fast book to get through.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. Thanks! Good to know, both. (I need to spend more time with denser fare, I sometimes think.)

John Irving is one of those authors I somehow avoided reading in high school when everyone around me was reading him. (Others include Tom Robbins, Ayn Rand, and Pearl S. Buck.) Now I kind of regret this. (Well, not Ayn Rand particularly.) Although I mostly regret reading SO DAMN MUCH Margaret Atwood instead.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

Atwood. *shudder*

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I like her. Surfacing nearly put me off for life, though. *shudder*

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

I love Atwood. Though, I've struggled a bit with her Oryx and Crake. One day, I'll get through it.

I love seeing lists of books and remembering them like long lost old friends :)

[bryghtboy.livejournal.com]

Neuromancer and Cryptonomicon sort of fit into the same mental cubby hole for me, they have parts that make my brain race along a mile a minute in excitement and they also have really bleh parts... Part of the problem that I had with Cryptonomicon was the level of silly detail that he crammed into certain parts, but by the same token I also loved the level of detail at other times. Oh yeah, and Neal Stephenson does not know how to write endings.

I have 1984 and I haven't read Brave New World, some of my friends say that Brave New World is well worth the read but somehow I just can't get up the courage to wade through yet another all too human catastrophe. Though I feel like I should.

As a side note if you are looking for other brain bashingly sad catastrophes of a very human nature A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller is really good or The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing is a little more like a fable and a more introspectively personal level.

Re: I love seeing lists of books and remembering them like long lost old friends :)

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Brain-bashingly sad is an EXCELLENT way to describe A Canticle for Leibowitz. *sags*

I love Snow Crash and Zodiac and The Diamond Age, which is why I really should give Cryptonomicon another go. I find Stephenson is way better at plotting than Gibson, who REALLY can't write endings (or middles).

Thanks for the Lessing rec! And I would like to give Brave New World another try (I had it out of the library too at one point, but it got lost in the crowd).

[briasoleil.livejournal.com]

Also, I'd recommend more Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And I do so love Michael Ondaatje.