9 posts tagged “reading”
Books: Show us your summer reading list.
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.
I read all year. Here's what is in the stack right now...
Book: Show us a book everyone should read before they die.
Submitted by Rob.
Every American should read this:
On a whim I went down to Elliott Bay Books for an Americano, a new moleskine notepad, and an Iris Murdoch novel - just in time to catch a reading by Joe Boyd who has released a memoir of his years producing music in the 1960's, White Bicycles.
From what he read the book seems to be beautifully written and steeped in nostalgia for the time before utopian idealism turned ugly. While he was talking about his experience at Woodstock I couldn't help but think of my dad, somewhere out there in the mud-caked sea of hippie kids; two years before I was born some bit of my DNA was soaking up LSD and Joan Baez.
The only question anyone wanted to ask the author was: "what was so-and-so like to work with?" When asked about Nick Drake he read the section about meeting the fragile young man whose shyness did not match his good looks and posh accent. He was just a boy, attending Cambridge, smoking nervously, embarassed by his own talent, and horrified by performing for an audience. Boyd believes that if his music had been publicly revered then as it is now he might still be with us. It must be horrible to be blessed with a talent that large and to think that it is not wanted.
Of course someone had to ask what Syd Barrett was like, before his mind disintegrated. Boyd said it was like a flip was switched. One week Barrett was lucid and intelligent and rational, and the next he wasn't making sense and could barely lift a guitar.
People are fascinated by those who have slipped away from the fragile space we think is safe and steady. I think the fascination comes from the innate awareness that each of us stands only inches from the edge o a cliff we cannot see, and it only takes one step to find the solid ground is not there any longer.
Book: Show us a book you started reading but never finished.
Around page 4.000 or so I decided its title should be taken literally. I plan to try again someday as I think DFW is one of the best living writers. But, the footnotes.....
Book: Show us one of your favorite works of fiction.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the first Murakami I read and considered by many to be his finest work. I love the Alice-in-Wonderland-like shift into a bizarre, mirrored reality that Murakami uses so frequently in his work. This is a metaphysical detective story written in a style similar to Raymond Chandler but with more subtle humor and leaps into the surreal.
Thanks to Vanna for another way to avoid the spring cleaning effort.
Instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you have read a bit from but never finished, italicize the ones you might want to read in the future, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10-foot pole, and do not do anything to the ones you’ve never heard of.
1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride And Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)4. Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: (Tolkien)8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Brontë)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (E. Brontë)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
42.The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Gift & Award Bible NIV (Various)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brahares)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
What are five books that changed your life?
Inspired by Ms. Genevieve.
Here's what I've been reading lately, or finished recently...
