Fifty book challenge 2009

[endless psych]

Originally Posted by 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.

6) Elephants on acid - Alex Boese

[amytiger]

A bit of catching up to do here. I'm going for 100 this year

001. Lian Hearn - Across The Nightingale Floor
002. Charlaine Harris -Dead Until Dark
003. Charlaine Harris- Living Dead In Dallas
004. Charlaine Harris- Club Dead
005. Charlaine Harris- Dead to the World
006. Charlaine Harris- Dead As A Doornail
007. Charlaine Harris- Definitely Dead
008. Charlaine Harris- All Together Dead
009. Charlaine Harris- From Dead to Worse
010. John Ajvide Lindqvist- Let The Right One In
011. Ma Jian- Stick Out Your Tongue
012. Stephenie Meyer- Twilight
013. Stephenie Meyer- New Moon
014. Stephenie Meyer- Eclipse
015. Stephenie Meyer- Breaking Dawn
016. Barry Farber- How To Learn Any Language
017. Charles de Lint- The Blue Girl
018. Jack Kornfield- The Eightfold Path for the Householder
019. Lady Murasaki (trans. Richard Bowring)- The Diary of Lady Murasaki
020. Cory Doctorow- Little Brother
021. Lian Hearn- Grass For His Pillow
022. Nahoko Uehashi- Seirei no Moribito

Especially recommended is Little Brother which you can read for free at the author's website.

[Runt]

I've decided to give this ago after realising through some stupid meme thing that there are hunners of books I always meant to read but just forgot about them. So far

1. Hitch hikers guide to the Galaxy
2. The restaurant at the end of the Universe
3. Life, the Universe and everything - Took me ages to finish this because it was shite, really dull compared to the first two so won't bother reading the next ones.

[endless psych]

Originally Posted by 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.
6) Elephants on acid - Alex Boese

7) Chaos - James Gleick

A book that does the inconcievable, makes mathematics seem interesting and exciting. Also managed to make me finally grasp what complex numbers are about a decade or so to late to be of any use...

[supernothing]

1. Cormac McCarthy - The Blood Meridian
2. Ryzard Kapuscinski - The Soccer War
3. Ryzard kapuscinski - My African Life
4. JM G Le Clezio - Terra Amata
5. Roberto Bolano - The Savage Detectives
6. John Fante - The Road To Los Angeles
7. William Falconer - As I Lay Dying
8. Jean Claude Izzo - A Sun For The Dying
9. Cormac McCarthy - The Road, to be honest I was a bit put off it by the whole Oprah's book club/celebrities talking about how it had changed thier life thing - but it was good. I've heard it described as a post-apocalyptic fable or warning, but to me it seemed more like an individual thought experiment - it is hard to figure out what message we should draw from it. Pure different from the language of The Blood Meridian, totally parsed down and economic. Looking forward to reading some of his stuff between the two, starting on the Border Trilogy the now.
10. David Peace - GB84, very interesting fact based fiction about the miners strike, written by the guy that wrote Red Riding. Good to learn about the strike, of which i knew little. The narratives are (there are two seperate ones) ambitious as fuck and jump between a number of characters constantly which can be quite heavy going. Decent though

[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
9. american psycho - bret easton ellis
10. after dark - haruki murakami
11. dexter by design - jeff lindsay
12. three and out - tom henry
13. coraline - neil gaiman
14. fleshmarket close - ian rankin
15. too weird for ziggy - sylvie simmons

16. the runes of the earth - stephen donaldson

[princessoPUNK]

Originally Posted by 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
14. Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer
15. Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
16. Class, The Secret diary of a Teacher in Turmoil - Jane Beaton
17. Those Faraday Girls - Monica McInerney
18. Stories we Could Tell - Tony Parsons
19. My Favourite Wife - Tony Parsons
20. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
21. Q and A - Vikas Swarup
22. Testimony - Anita Shreve
23. The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Ernest Hemingway

24. P.S. I love You - Cecilia Ahern
25. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
26. How to be Good - Nick Hornby
27. Art Therapy with Children on the Autistic Spectrum - Kathy Evans, Janet Dubowski

Originally Posted by amytiger

016. Barry Farber- How To Learn Any Language

Barry Farber is the name of the man Rachel was supposed to marry in Friends. It made me laugh when i saw this!

[Rowsbette]

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
10. William Leith - The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict
11. Hanif Kureishi - My Beautiful Laundrette & The Rainbow Sign
12. Christine Geraghty - My Beautiful Laundrette
13. Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road
14. Emma Smith - The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare
15. Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles
16. William Shakespeare - Titus Andronicus
17. William Shakespeare - Hamlet
18. William Shakespeare - Othello
19. Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights

20. Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
21. Bram Stoker - Dracula

[the.definitive]

Originally Posted by the.definitive

7. The Beach - Alex Garland. I've avoided reading this for YEARS because I went to see the film and I hate reading books after I've seen the movie. Thankfully I've forgotten most of the film by now and somehow managed not to picture Richard as Leonardo DiCaprio.

8. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates. I loved this, it's just so intelligently written and almost uncomfortably perceptive. Totally devastating as well, I felt a bit drained when I finished it.


I'm falling shamefully behind in the reading stakes, here....

[the.definitive]

Originally Posted by the.definitive

8. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates. I loved this, it's just so intelligently written and almost uncomfortably perceptive. Totally devastating as well, I felt a bit drained when I finished it.


I'm falling shamefully behind in the reading stakes, here....

9. The Best A Man Can Get - John O'Farrell. Was awright. Mildy amusing, bit of a neat ending.

[supernothing]

1. Cormac McCarthy - The Blood Meridian
2. Ryzard Kapuscinski - The Soccer War
3. Ryzard kapuscinski - My African Life
4. JM G Le Clezio - Terra Amata
5. Roberto Bolano - The Savage Detectives
6. John Fante - The Road To Los Angeles
7. William Falconer - As I Lay Dying
8. Jean Claude Izzo - A Sun For The Dying
9. Cormac McCarthy - The Road
10. David Peace - GB84[/b], very interesting fact based fiction about the miners strike, written by the guy that
11. Cormac McCarthy - All The Pretty Horses Amazing book, so well written. The story surrounds a cowboy in south texas in 1949 and is basically a subversion of the western; a kid with all the traits and dreams of a western hero but with a world thats changing too fast for him. Kind of hemingwayeasque characters with Faulkners love of the South and a gatsby-style end of an era steez.

[Rowsbette]

Originally Posted by the.definitive

9. The Best A Man Can Get - John O'Farrell. Was awright. Mildy amusing, bit of a neat ending.

Is that the one where a husband is leading a double life in a flat full of guys? If so, I don't understand why that author's so popular. Alright for mindless holiday reading, but not exactly worthy of all the praise he gets.

Originally Posted by supernothing

1. Cormac McCarthy - The Blood Meridian

My sister gave me that today, really looking forward to reading it once my exams are finished.

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
10. William Leith - The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict
11. Hanif Kureishi - My Beautiful Laundrette & The Rainbow Sign
12. Christine Geraghty - My Beautiful Laundrette
13. Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road
14. Emma Smith - The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare
15. Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Urbervilles
16. William Shakespeare - Titus Andronicus
17. William Shakespeare - Hamlet
18. William Shakespeare - Othello
19. Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
20. Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
21. Bram Stoker - Dracula

22. William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
23. William Shakespeare - Measure for Measure
24. Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

[the.definitive]

Originally Posted by Rowsbette

Is that the one where a husband is leading a double life in a flat full of guys? If so, I don't understand why that author's so popular. Alright for mindless holiday reading, but not exactly worthy of all the praise he gets.

Yeah, that's the one. I enjoyed his condensed facts book on the history of Britain that I read earlier this year, but this was just very middle of the road. It was just really obvious, and the ending was borderline cheesey. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good. I don't think it helped that I'd just finished Revolutionary Road right before it.

[Kenny]

I've been reading lots since I handed in my dissertation, around Christmas, so I should get into this. To catch up (according to the book app on my facebook profile):

1. Philip Pan - Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
2. William Boyd - Any Human Heart
3. James Mann - About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China
4. Douglas Coupland - Microserfs
5. Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night
6. Ben Goldacre - Bad Science
7. Christopher Meyer - DC Confidential
8. Ted Fishman - China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World
9. Greg Palast - The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
10. Joshua Kurlantzick - Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World
11. Duncan Hewitt - China: Getting Rich First: A Modern Social History
12. Frances Wood - The First Emperor of China
13. Conor Foley - The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War
14. Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross - The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security

[Pretty Kitty]

1. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
2. Emma - Jane Austen
3. The secret garden - F. Hodgson Burnett
4. Alice's adventures in wonderland - Lewis Carroll
5. Through the looking glass - Lewis Carroll
6. The adventures of Pinocchio - Carlo Collodi
7. What Katy did - Susan Coolidge
8. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
9. The call of the wild - Jack London
10. Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare
11. Round the world in eighty days - Jules Verne
12. The importance of being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
13. The picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
14. Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett
15. Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
16. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - A.C.Doyle
17. Duma Key - Stephen King
18. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
19. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

20. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
21. The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare
22. The Comedy of Errors - William Shakespeare

I read the Merchant of Venice for English in high school, it actually surprised me how much more I enjoyed it just because I didn't have to read it.