Challenge: 50 Books discussion

1. Godlike- Richard Hell an excellent book by one of my favorite punk rockers

2. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men- David Foster Wallace

Shibbie wrote: "2. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"

My library has this in ebook format and I was wondering about it. How did you like it?

Connie wrote: "Shibbie wrote: "2. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"

My library has this in ebook format and I was wondering about it. How did you like it?"

Some stories were quite funny and well written... some were so pretentious and self-referential that I would rush through them... two stories were so bad I stopped reading them partway. Overall probably about 60/40 on the great/not so great split.

3. The Wall- Jean-Paul Sartre

4. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - excellently written and love love love his prose style... but plot-wise I had trouble getting into it

5. Darkness at Noon- Arthur Koestler - something about this was just not appealing to me

5. We-Yevgeny Zamyatin

A most excellent dystopian novel

6. Tender Is the Night- F. Scott Fitzgerald

7. Miramar- Naguib Mahfouz

8. Demons- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Mired down a bit by its sheer length, must get back on task.

9. A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

Enjoyable enough fantasy book, but lacked significant excitement

10. Tropic of Cancer- Henry Miller

life of a libertine, I like.

11. The Time Machine- H.G. Wells
more allegorical than the Wishbone version I remember

12. Waiting for the Barbarians- J.M. Coetzee

13. Concrete Island: A Novel - J.G. Ballard

the first half was an excellent foraye into the mind of an isolated man; the second half was ridiculous

14. Collages- Anaïs Nin
a proper bookend to mr miller of last week. less libertine-y than I'd hoped.

15. Selected Declarations of Dependence - Harry Mathews

I quite enjoyed his prose... when he wrote it. The idea behind this collection was just too pretentious to work perfectly. But some of it was very good.

16. Michael Kohlhaas-Heinrich von Kleist

Taking justice into his own hands

17. Timequake- Kurt Vonnegut

18. The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammett

19. Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel- Calvin Trillin

20. The Age of Innocence- Edith Wharton


21. The Handmaid's Tale- Margaret Atwood

Can't believe I've put this off as long as I have. Must find more Atwood.

Margaret Atwood is wonderful! If you haven't already, I'd definitely recommend Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin, which are my favourites of hers. That said, everything I've ever read of hers has been great, so I'm sure you'll be happy with whatever you choose!

22. Lady Chatterley's Lover- D.H. Lawrence

It's always interesting to see what passed for obscene back in the day. This was actually obscener than expected. But also kind of boring.

23. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader- C.S. Lewis

Kind of a cop out, I admit. But I never did read this one as a kid. Weakest of the Narnia books? Perhaps.

24. The Brothers Karamazov- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Favorite Dostoevsky? Perhaps.

25. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez

not my cup of tea

26. Death in Venice- Thomas Mann

27. Mumbo Jumbo Ishmael Reed

takes a while to figure out what is going on, but well worth sticking to

28. Sweet Smell of Success: And Other Stories - Ernest Lehman

29. Quicksand- Junichiro Tanizaki

such complications prized innocence and virtue causes

30. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix- J.K. Rowling

Haven't picked up the potter series since the fourth book came out. They are enjoyable stories and quick reads despite their length, but I can't say I get the whole mania.

31. I, etcetera: Stories- Susan Sontag

I liked this quite a lot.

32. Sex at Dawn- Christopher Ryan

The case for man as a species which evolved with multimale-multifemale mating system seems pretty tight to me. An excellent and humorous exploration of human sexuality

33. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything - Steven D. Levitt

I found this less interesting than I thought I would - perhaps because I was familiar with the studies presented and reading the book was just a long winded rehash. Kind of disjointed, even within the chapters

34. The Blind Watchmaker- Richard Dawkins

Pretty excellent book on evolution

35 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling

I liked this one a lot.

36. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- J.K. Rowling

I did not care for the ending to this one at all. Too unnecessarily complicated, but at the same time too predictable. The thing about that Harry Potter books is that they are incredibly obsessive when you are actually reading them, but put them down for a while and you forget they exist, finish them and you find yourself unsatisfied.

Re Freakonomics: I tried it a year or two ago and couldn't get into it. Every so often I read one of the Freakonomics columns in the New York Times and when I'm through I say "ehhhh."

37. Darkmans - Nicola Barker

Did I enjoy this? Yes. Do I have any idea what it was about? No.

hahaha I LOVED Darkmans, but also had no idea what was going on!

38. Life Before Man - Margaret Atwood

what a delightful and realistic portrayal of the modern relationship

39. The Search- نجيب محفوظ
another look into the human condition

40. AMERICAN SKIN: A Novel - Don De Grazia

quick, reasonably enjoyable, reasonably entertaining bildungsroman

41. 69- Ryū Murakami
fast paced coming of age story with an original plot and a witty tone

42. The Reprieve: A Novel- Jean-Paul Sartre

43. Don Quixote-Cervantes

I cannot get over how hilarious this book is. I never expected it to be this good. Seriously, read it.

44. War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy

I am not making this easy for myself, am I.

As a bit of a Russophile I loved this look into a few families during the Napoleonic Wars - interesting both on the basis of the characters' growth as well as a look at how different people (okay, different rich people) dealt with the Napoleonic wars as well as a historical reevaluation of Napoleon. Because you know you can do all that in 1400 pages.