Read Your Own Books 2009

2010 Book Progression!

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:50:32 +0800

Here is my list of books which I hope to read this year…

~~Struck out~~ = finished; Bold = currently reading.

~~Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal - J.R. Ackerley~~
Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow
Six Memos for the Next Millenium - Italo Calvino
The Plague - Albert Camus
Tokyo Cancelled - Rana Dasgupta
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
The Collector - John Fowles
Black Mass - John Gray
Aleksandar Hemon - The Lazarus Project
Travels with Herodotus - Ryszard Kapuscinski
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
~~The Member of the Wedding - Carson McCullers~~
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Yukio Mishima
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
Couples - John Updike

Books which are not on The List which I have completed:

The Glass Demon - Helen Grant
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle (I absolutely loved this. Will be purchasing more Holmes in the immediate future.)

Maybe this year I’ll stick to the list and actually finish everything on it! FINGERS CROSSED!!!

Currently reading. _antitrance

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:58:00 +0800

Currently reading.

_antitrance

2010 Book Progression!!!

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:56:00 +0800

So, I have just finished reading my first book… except it is not one from the list. Which kind of defeats the point of making a list, but hey!

Hence, I am starting a list for books I have read which aren’t from The List:

1. The Glass Demon - Helen Grant.

This book isn’t actually released until May 2010. I managed to get a review copy while I was working at Puffin Books. It’s a teen / adult thriller-y book set in the Eifel region of Germany. It’s got German folklore and murder and intrigue. It’s got loads of Dan-Brown-stylee really short chapters so you get through it really quick. Don’t let the mention of Dan Brown put you off though… it’s actually quite well written if this is your kind of thing and even if it isn’t, it’s still an enjoyable read. The author’s debut novel, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, won at least one award and I’d quite like to read that one as well…

This isn’t really the kind of thing I’d generally pick up to read but since I had it, I decided to read it and was pleasantly surprised.

_antitrance

2009 / 2010

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:04:03 +0800

I can’t work out if I won or failed in 2009. I’ll go for winning. Here’s how it turned out:

A list for 2009:

In bold, are the ones I have started reading but then stopped for whatever reason. (I tend to read many books at the same time, as you can see…)
The struck out are those I have finished.

A list of books I plan to read in 2009:

~~The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood~~
~~The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks~~
Status Anxiety - Alain de Botton
~~The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov~~
The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
The Plague - Albert Camus
Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Truman Capote
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
The Collector - John Fowles
~~Brighton Rock - Graham Greene~~
Deep Simplicity - John Gribbin
Chocolat - Joanne Harris
~~Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway~~
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
~~Ascent - Jed Mercurio~~
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
~~Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut~~
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
~~The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde~~
~~Old School - Tobias Wolff~~
~~Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates~~

Random other books (not on the list) which I read:

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
Slumberland - Paul Beatty
Metropole - Ferenc Karinthy
Fup - Jim Dodge
Cards on the Table - Agatha Christie
Pastoralia - George Saunders
The Moving Toyshop - Edmund Crispin
Why Are You Doing This? - Jason
Charlotte’s Web - E. B. White
The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie
After the Funeral - Agatha Christie
Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster

So, for 2010, my list is as follows. Some stuff from last years list and some new stuff:

Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal - J.R. Ackerley
Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow
Six Memos for the Next Millenium - Italo Calvino
The Plague - Albert Camus
Tokyo Cancelled - Rana Dasgupta
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
The Collector - John Fowles
Black Mass - John Gray
Aleksandar Hemon - The Lazarus Project
Travels with Herodotus - Ryszard Kapuscinski
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Carson McCullers - The Member of the Wedding
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Yukio Mishima
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
Couples - John Updike

Maybe this year I’ll stick to my list and actually finish it!

So here was my list for 2009, plus the following: Wuthering...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:25:46 +0800

So here was my list for 2009, plus the following:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Sound Design by David Sonnenschein

The Twilights (for a second time… don’t judge…again.)

The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff

John Adams by David McCullough

So a funny thing happened, I read some of these, and added others. The following is what actually happened in 2009:

Read:

Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green

The Twilights (all four)

Eat Love Pray

Middlesex

The Witch of Portobello

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Autobiography of a Yogi

—-

Currently Reading:

Brave New World

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

——-

So overall, not bad a bad year for a slow reader. Those I didn’t get to will get carried over into the new year. I want to thank butterflyeffects for creating a community of readers. I’m not sure I would have stuck to it were it not for this blog- not that I posted reviews after every book- but it still helped me to see each book through. And for that I thank you. Are we continuing this literary journey into 2010???

- somethingmeaningful

Ahem.

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:46:06 +0800

I mostly failed at this. Thanks to Vanessa for trying to get the ball rolling though. Here’s to 2010!

magicrob

zwinnick: Brilliant stop-motion ad by the New Zealand Book...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:58:18 +0800

zwinnick:

Brilliant stop-motion ad by the New Zealand Book Council

You know you love it. via rectorjay

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:50:48 +0800

You know you love it.

via rectorjay

10 of the best: Secondhand bookshops | Books | The Guardian

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:40:20 +0800

10 of the best: Secondhand bookshops | Books | The Guardian

"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:18:06 +0800

“Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”

- P. J. O’Rourke (via blogossauro)

iainbroome: Claire Armitstead, literary editor of the Guardian,...

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:16:50 +0800

iainbroome:

Claire Armitstead, literary editor of the Guardian, Sarah Crown, editor of guardian.co.uk/books and William Skidelsky, literary editor of the Observer, discuss this year’s shortlist for the Man Booker prize

Summer Reading

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:11:00 +0800

Perhaps unconventionally, these books are listed in the order read. That is, from right to left (bottom-to-top): Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy, Book 3) by Richelle Mead, Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress, Book 1) by Jeaniene Frost, The Dead Girls’ Dance (Morganville Vampires, Book 2) by Rachel Caine, Succubus Blues (Georgina Kincaid, Book 1) by Richelle Mead, Storm Born (Dark Swan, Book 1) by Richelle Mead, Midnight Alley (Morganville Vampires, Book 3) by Rachel Caine, Fangs for the Memories (The Young Brothers, Book 1) by Kathy Love, Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, Book 1) by Patricia Briggs, The Immortals: Evermore by Alyson Noel, One Foot in the Grave (Night Huntress, Book 2) by Jeaniene Frost, Betrayed: A House of Night Novel (House of Night Novels) by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast, Midnight’s Daughter (Dorina Basarab, Dhampir, Book 1) by Karen Chance, Chosen: A House of Night Novel (House of Night Novels) by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast, At Grave’s End (Night Huntress, Book 3) by Jeaniene Frost, Touch the Dark (Cassandra Palmer, Book 1) by Karen Chance, Claimed by Shadow (Cassandra Palmer, Book 2) by Karen Chance, Sex and the Single Vampire by Katie Macalister, Untamed (House of Night Novels) by P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast, The Secret Circle: The Initiation and The Captive Part I & The Secret Circle: The Captive Part II and The Power by L. J. Smith, Thorn Queen (Dark Swan, Book 2) by Richelle Mead

sputnik sweetheart

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:50:00 +0800

Like other contributors to this blog I too have fallen (way) behind on my reading targets for this year, but what I have read I have thoroughly enjoyed and considered more than if I’d gone nuts and drank more coffee and read more just to tick the books off my list.

I also like pictures of books because they are simply nice.

I enjoyed reading Murakami’s ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’. It took me out of myself as is his style. But it was a bit soppy and now I’m off to read something about war, because I’m a real boy and I like guns and bruises etc too.

magicrob

61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list | Los Angeles Times

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:06:11 +0800

61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list | Los Angeles Times :

brilliantlydisruptive:

(vai fluffynotes)

My Progress So Far

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:34:00 +0800

So here’s my progress on my book list a little more than halfway through the year. Strikeouts are the ones I’ve finished; bold are the ones I’m currently reading; italics are the ones I tried and had to abandon for various reasons (e.g., subject matter was too upsetting, just didn’t care for it, ran out of time and it was due at the library, whatever). It’s pretty lame how few I’ve finished, but anyway:

~~1. Dombey and Son, by Charles Dickens (reading this one now, will carry into 2009)~~
2. The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brien
3. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan
4. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, by Alex Ross
5. When Will There be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
6. The Toss of a Lemon, by Padma Viswanathan
7. Super Flat Times, by Matthew Derby
8. Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene (Hi, antitrance!)
9. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
~~10. Such a Pretty Girl, Laura Wiess~~
11. For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago, by Simon Baatz
12. Waste, Eugene Marten
13. The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram, by Thomas Blass
14. Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, by Thomas Cathcart
15. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Underground, 1981-1991, by Michael Azzerad (Hi, outtheother!)
16. Culture Jam, by Kalle Lasn
17. No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court, by Edward Humes
18. The Outsider, by Colin Wilson
~~19. The Interpretation of Murder, by Jed Rubenfeld~~
20. The Little Girl and the Cigarette, by Benoit Deteurtre
21. This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel J. Levitin
22. A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, by David M. Friedman
~~23. The Consolations of Philosophy, by Alain de Botton~~
24. You Idiot! — The First Book, by Nate Gangelhoff
25. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
26. The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, by Alison Bechdel
27. The Family Mashber, by Der Nister
28. How to Read a French Fry: And Other Intriguing Stories of Kitchen Science, by Russ Parsons
29. Jill, by Philip Larkin
30. Writings on an Ethical Life, by Peter Singer
31. How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, by Pierre Bayard
32. True Crime: An American Anthology, by Harold Schechter
33. America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life, by Benoit Denizet-Lewis

And the books I’ve read that weren’t on my list:

1. Stone’s Fall, by Iain Pears
2. Don’t Get Too Comfortable, by David Rakoff
3. Jumped, by Rita Williams-Garcia
4. Blue Boy, by Rakesh Satyal
5. The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009
6. Little Bee, by Chris Cleve
7. Bluegrass, by William Van Meter
8. Mop Men, by Alan Emmins
9. Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates
10. The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout
11. Zen and the Art of Knitting, by Bernadette Murphy
12. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

(post by frothyparadise)

Pic of the Day: It Rained So We Camped Inside - Tim Walker - My...

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 02:11:25 +0800

Pic of the Day: It Rained So We Camped Inside - Tim Walker - My Modern Metropolis

coffee-achievers:sperare:lencowgill: (via lukestorms)

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:10:08 +0800

coffee-achievers:sperare:lencowgill: (via lukestorms)

“All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce...

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:04:10 +0800

“All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.”

— Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

via slaughterhouse90210:

i did actually read this book earlier this year, and this reblog is as good as a review as I can give.

its very good and everyone should read it…

(it hasn’t got Lou Ferringo in it tho’)

burningfp

reckon:tobia: booklover:libraryland: (via bookshelves)

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:27:09 +0800

reckon:tobia: booklover:libraryland: (via bookshelves)

Brahm Stoker: “Dracula” Although this wasn’t...

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:48:00 +0800

Brahm Stoker: “Dracula”

Although this wasn’t on my list (and judging by my original list, it’s clear to see why most of them were shelved, I’ve started re-reading them, and just put them down again…there were a few that were good, but mainly you know, most of them, are better off staying shelf worthy). Anyway, this is the next read. The first book that I read for this list was “Frankenstein” which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I’m a tad excited about reading this cheeky book.

Obviously, “Dracula” is a classic, and has been made into film, parodied into cartoons and has had songs written about it and has been re-invented and adapted with that horrendous series of “Twilight” books (god help me, if i ever lay eyes on the word “incredulous” again - ha!)…so, when it comes to it…what more is there to say…other than, ” I vant to suck your blooooood”…Love marychrist