Fifty book challenge 2009

[sylvianorth]

4. Angela Carter - Shadow Dance

What did you think of it?

[Mwezzi]

My reading has been seriously affected by everything this year, so naturally I'm late in starting this game.

1. Dune - Frank Herbert

A great story, but occasionally some of the words that were invented or co-opted for it seemed a touch overboard and pointless, and the language and writing sometimes reached Biblical levels of repetitiveness. Also, the dialogue just seemed to drag in places. However, the plot itself easy enough to keep abreast of considering it took me about three months to read.

[Fiona_B]

1. piercing - ryu murakami
2. cross country - james patterson
3. in the miso soup - ryu murakami
4. darkly dreaming dexter - jeff lindsay
5. dearly devoted dexter - jeff lindsay
6. dexter in the dark - jeff lindsay
7. the unbearable lightness of being - milan kundera

8. the catcher in the rye - j.d. salinger

[princessoPUNK]

1. Diary of a Wife - Anias Nin
2. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
3. Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination - Helen Fielding
4. The Weight of Water - Anita Shreve
5. A Wedding in December- Anita Shreve
6. The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro
7. Love, Etc. - Julian Barnes
8. Vienna - Eva Menasse
9. The Family Way - Tony Parsons
10. A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy - Charlotte Grieg
11. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
12. The Pilot's Wife - Anita Shreve

13. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer

[Mwezzi]

1. Dune - Frank Herbert

2. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Malcolm Gladwell

A few assumptions here and there but an interesting bit of popular psychology.

[Rowsbette]

What did you think of it?

I really liked it... after reading so much of her later complex stuff it was a refreshing change. I'd read it before when I was like, seventeen, but could hardly remember any of it. Did you like it?

1. Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
2. Angela Carter - The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History
3. Angela Carter - Heroes and Villains
4. Angela Carter - Shadow Dance
5. Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier
6. Sarah Gamble - The Fiction of Angela Carter
7. Angela Carter - Several Perceptions

8. D. M. Thomas - The White Hotel
9. John Berger - Ways of Seeing

Both excellent, especially The White Hotel. Was totally unprepared for the brutal ending though, I don't think I've cried so much at a book in my life.

[sylvianorth]

I really liked it... after reading so much of her later complex stuff it was a refreshing change. I'd read it before when I was like, seventeen, but could hardly remember any of it. Did you like it?

I loved it, Angela Carter is a mental bastard. If you haven't already you should take a look at The Bloody Chamber and other stories, esp the Bluebeard part

[Pretty Kitty]

I just bought the 100 classic book collection for the DS. I'm sorted.

[Rowsbette]

I loved it, Angela Carter is a mental bastard. If you haven't already you should take a look at The Bloody Chamber and other stories, esp the Bluebeard part

Thanks for the heads-up, but I already love that collection. Especially the Bluebeard part! Used to re-read it every year whenever I went abroad. Because I've been studying AC for what feels like FOREVER I'm getting a bit sick of some of her weirder stuff, but I don't think I'll ever tire of that one.

[Flump]

1. All The Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
2. The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
3. Cities of The Plain - Cormac McCarthy
4. Mute Witness - Robert L. Pike

5. The Reapers - John Connolly

Never heard of it before, picked it up at Morrisons because it was cheap and I liked the cover!Pleasant enough read about assassins trying to kill each other. Ingenious and gory deaths aplenty. Back cover gave away far too much of the plot though.

[endless psych]

1) The Stuff of Thought - Steven Pinker
2) Counterknowledge - Damian Thompson.
3) Can robots Really think? - Peter Cave
4)Freakonomics - Stephen D Levitt, Stephen B. Dubner

5) Mistakes were made (but not by me) - Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.
Brilliant pop-psych book about cognitive dissonance, apart from the rather unnessecary bit near the end about relationships, heartily reccomended.

[Witch]

1 - patricia cornwell -scarpetta
2 - patricia cornwell - cruel and unusual
3. patricia cornwell - the body farm
4. patricia cornwell - black notice
5. patricia cornwell - last precict
6. patricia cornwell - trace
7. patricia cornwell - predator
8. patricia cornwell - point of origin
9. patricia cornwell - book of the dead
10. patricia cornwell - blow fly
11. toni maguire - dont tell mummy
12. virgina andrews - heaven
13. jackie collins - american star
14. virgina andrews - dark angel
15. virgina andrews - web of dreams
16. virgina andrews - gates of paradise
17. virgina andrews - fallen hearts

[princessoPUNK]

Originally Posted by princessoPUNK View Post
1. Diary of a Wife - Anias Nin
2. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
3. Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination - Helen Fielding
4. The Weight of Water - Anita Shreve
5. A Wedding in December- Anita Shreve
6. The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro
7. Love, Etc. - Julian Barnes
8. Vienna - Eva Menasse
9. The Family Way - Tony Parsons
10. A Girl's Guide to Modern European Philosophy - Charlotte Grieg
11. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer
12. The Pilot's Wife - Anita Shreve
13. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer

14. Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer

[the.definitive]

3. The Crow Road - Iain Banks. Loved it.

4. On Beauty - Zadie Smith. I liked it much better than White Teeth, found it so easy to get into.

I'm not doing very well in the whole "50 books" front so far, I blame having a temporary flatmate. I just end up sitting about talking shite until bed time.

[supernothing]

1. Cormac McCarthy - The Blood Meridian (finished it this year), it's the only McCarthy book i've read and it's amazing. Total bleak image of the romantic "western" idea, with no likeable characters but one of the best in any book i've read, The Judge.
2. Ryzard Kapuscinski - The Soccer War, amazing reportage from Poland's only international correspondant from the 70s to late 80s, the man was witness to a lot of wars and revolutions.
4. Ryzard kapuscinski - My African Life (i think). Similar stuff but all based in africa and quite repetitive
5. JM G Le Clezio - Terra Amata, amazing, if hard going, novel from the nobel prize winner. Snippets from the life of one boy growing up, but full of existensial-pseudo-mystical-scientific asides. Definately worth is, Le Clezio's language and style is amazing.
6. Roberto Bolano - The Savage Detectives, not quite finished yet but almost there, definately the best latin american novel i have ever read.

7. John Fante - The Road To Los Angeles, pretty hillarious coming of age novel about a kid thats read too much neitzsche, by the man Bukowski called "my god".

8. William Falconer - As I Lay Dying