Books Previously Read

To make me feel better and to make my status bar not so depressing, I've decided to list the books I've already read prior to starting on this 1001 list.

Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
The Joke – Milan Kundera
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
Emma – Jane Austen
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I haven't stopped reading!

Just because I've given up on blogging doesn't mean I've stopped going through the list...

I've read:
The World According to Garp - John Irving
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

I've tried to read but have put down for now:
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro

I have to blog about how I liked the books I've read but for now, this will do.

1001 Book Hiatus

After Wittgenstein, I decided to purge myself and stop reading these important books for now.

I'm currently reading Murakami's After Dark (I love Murakami), which is a bit different from his usual fare but is still a compelling read.

I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (yes, yes, I know--I still mostly enjoyed it). I also read this bizarre kinky-ish book (Book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson) which is an interesting read, to say the least.

I'll get back to the list soon. Unless I get sidetracked.

Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson

I gave up on this book after 20 pages. I tried. I really tried. But it was just so hard to read. Damn near impossible I must say.

Now, I have a fairly open mind, especially about books. I read just about everything and won't discount a book just because it's not "normal". But this book is beyond the realm of my capability.

It's a rambling monologue by an insane woman, who may or may not be the last person on earth. And when I say it's rambling, it really rambles on. Each paragraph is connected to the previous by a very tenuous thread which doesn't have any continuous thought (from what I read anyway). And when I say monologue, it is just that. An insane woman talking to herself. For the entire book.

Now, if this is something you find interesting and would like to read, I wish you the best. Don't forget to tell me what it's all about.

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

If I had to describe Sexing the Cherry in one word, it would be easy. Bizarre.

Describing it in more than one word is the hard part.

This is not so much a novel but a mishmash of disjointed stories. There are some stories I liked (story of the dancing princesses) and some which made me laugh out loud.

But, all throughout the novel, I failed to see the point. I really did. Now maybe it's because I'm not intellectual enough to read between the lines. I can defer to that. But, really, it was too out there for my liking.

The book felt like a disguised social commentary. (For me) It failed in that respect as well. The author tried to tackle too many issues (pollution, discrimination, religious zealousness and lots more) that it ended up a hodgepodge of ideas.

Would I recommend this book? Maybe, just for the experience of it. But it's certainly not one to end up on my bookshelf.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This book seemed promising as it seemed to digress from the usual type of books I've been reading from The List. Thriller, murder-mystery and Ancient Greek.

The Secret History can be (and has been) described as a page-turner. Yes, it was more exciting than typical "Important Book" fare but I was able to walk away partly through it to read other books (The Road, Suite Francaise) that weren't on my list. That fact, I think, is more a testament to the author's writing rather than to my renowned self control (yes, I do exercise it occasionally).

The book reminded me too much of Special Topics in Calamity Physics and that affected my appreciation of it. Admittedly, The Secret History was written over 10 years before Calamity and it's likely to have served as research material for the latter. Nonetheless, I could not help draw comparisons between the two.

History is a murder mystery set in a small college in Vermont and revolves around Richard (poor boy on scholarship from California) and his new friends (eccentric classmates from a very small, exclusive ancient Greek class).

Yes, the writing was quite good, character development was extensive (albeit unconvincing in some) and the pace was well set. However, the book had a tendency to ramble, the plot had inconsistencies here and there, and the central characters were not at all likeable (not that they have to be, really, but I like to root for my characters).

All in all, a good first effort from a writer. It still leaves me wondering why this (instead of a number of other better books) was included in The List. Yes, it's better than ordinary fare (The Nanny Diaries, for one. God help me, I broke down and read the damn book because of the upcoming movie starring Scarlett Johanssen. Book was BAD.) but nowhere near the best.

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

I had previously read Sarah Waters' Fingersmith via Jax. I thoroughly enjoyed that book so I was happily looking forward to reading Tipping the Velvet.

I was disappointed. Now, I can't differentiate between the effect of my higher than usual expectations and the actual (not very good) writing but I just didn't like this book.

Yes, it's gender-bending and modern thinking (maybe). But, it felt like a romance novel for lesbians. It read like one of those epic Danielle Steele (yes, I have to admit, I've read my share of her books. this was in my early teens, mind you. so shut up) novels with improbable plot twists but for lesbians.

Does it sound like i'm homophobic? I'm not and I don't wish to come across as one. My emphasis on the book being about lesbians is that that idea is exactly what the book seemed to be touting.

I felt like the book was saying (yes, yes, i know books don't actually speak. i'm not completely silly), "Hey, lookie here! A book about lesbians! How marvellously exciting and ingenious!."

Now the book isn't deplorable or horribly bad but I have to wonder how it made it to my List. It's worst crime is being mediocre. This List has a lot of explaining to do...