All the books lmichet's read since January

So I didn't know about this book challenge idea in January-- I'm not even sure I was on LibraryThing at the time-- but I have in fact read 59 books so far, listed below in the order I read them. I am sure that all of them except for All Quiet on The Western Front and for the collected Sherlock Holmes were first-time reads. I also read TWO (very different-- written and revised nearly 50 years apart) editions of Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger.

A bunch of these are also obscure books I had to read all the way though for classes-- books about European history, mainly. So they're pretty dang obscure. Also here are some very long, story-heavy graphic novels which I consider to be legitimate books, like From Hell

I'm still going!

Neuromancer
Human Nature (Doctor Who the New Adventures)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles: A Detective Story (Mortalis)
The Valley of Fear (The Oxford Sherlock Holmes)
Watchmen
Maigret and the spinster
Confessions (Penguin Classics)
The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (The Haskell Lectures on History of Religions)
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (Penguin Classics)
Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western
Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Reaktion Books - Essays in Art and Culture)
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Penguin Classics)
Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man (Oxford India Collection)
Complete Sherlock Holmes
Something Fresh
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
And Then There Were None
Lucky Jim (Penguin Classics)
Uncle Fred in the Springtime (A Blandings Story)
The Children of Men
Burmese Days: A Novel
The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
No Country for Old Men (Vintage International)
Perfume
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Maus: A Survivor's Tale
V for Vendetta
From Hell
The Master and Margarita (Penguin Classics)
Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error
Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations
Surely You're Joking, Mr.Feynman!
My Name Is Red
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Signet Classics)
Brazilian Adventure (Marlboro Travel)
Passage to India
The Cherry Orchard
The Glass Menagerie
The Maltese Falcon
Tartuffe and Other Plays
The Tin Drum
The Great Escape (Cassell Military Paperbacks)
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Long Fuse: An Interpretation of the Origins of World War I
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)
The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Crime and Punishment
All Quiet on The Western Front
Inverted World
Testament of Youth (Penguin Classics)
Under Fire (Penguin Classics)
Good-Bye To All That
The Code of the Woosters
The Song of Roland (Penguin Classics)
The Storm of Steel: From the Diary of a German Stormtroop Officer on the Western Front
Zero Hour
The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War
Journey to the End of the Night
The Sandman

welcome lmichet!
According to your profile you joined LT in May this year, so it was impossible to join this group in January ;-)
Impressive list, some titles I know and want to read someday, the only one I have read is Montaillou and that was long time ago.

Montaillou was definitely the best book I read for that class (a class on medieval culture), and I would totally read it again-- more slowly-- if I had the free time to do it. Medieval peasants are cool beans.

Out of all the one's I've read so far, though, I think The Road was my favourite.

Welcome!

Welcome! Nice list. I really liked The Road too.

We're doing this again next year, so be sure to join up!

How did you find Blood Meridian? Not many folks like it much, especially after reading one McCarthy's other, more well-received, novels?

Welcome!!

blackdogbooks: I thought Blood Meridian was painfully intense-- at times difficult to get through-- but it WAS good. Good as in deep, I suppose. At any rate, I couldn't put it down, even though the imagery gets pretty foul and there are some really twisted scenes in there. Eventually the reader's desensitized to the violence, which is what he was aiming for: he's trying to make a point about the violence and depravity of that frontier culture from which many modern Americans draw so much influence. It's not for everyone, but it's still a classic. I enjoyed it more than No Country For Old Men because I found it more profound.

There's also a vague unreal element to the story that I loved, because I love magic realism. It comes out at the end and smacks you in the face like a hammer-- and has instantly provoked everyone I've known who has read it to clap their hands to their head and shout "Oh my God, I just got it!" It's an outstandingly constructed piece of work. America has few craftsmen in McCarthy's league.

At any rate, I totally recommend it to anyone who can stomach the violence.

Welcome to the group--and for bringing an impressive reading list with you. I loved The Road and have Blood Meridian sitting on the table to read.

Welcome to the group - I see you have been reading two of my favourite authors - Conan Doyle and Wodehouse - I have recently read Bring on the Girls part of Wodehouse's Autobiographical trilogy. Very witty and enjoyable. Have you read this at all?

- TT

#8: Thanks! I hope you like Blood Meridian. I myself have asked my dad for several McCarthy books for Christmas and hope to begin next year's list with Outer Dark or All The Pretty Horses.

#9: I have not read any of the Wodehouse autobiographical books, but I should get around to them soon, if I have any self-respect. Whenever I get stressed I break out a Wodehouse book and plow through it in a couple nights. My favourites are the Uncle Fred ones, I think: I've been trying to get my hands on Summer Lightning for a while now. I'll give Bring on the Girls a look too, then!
As for Conan Doyle, The Adventures and Exploits of Brigadier Gerard is probably the most undervalued thing he's ever written. I have no idea why everyone is not reading it-- they're much, much funnier than Holmes and I got the same thrill reading them for the first time just over a year ago as I got when I first read Sherlock Holmes in third grade or so. They're brilliantly constructed little stories, and Gerard as a character is also excellent. He never wrote as many as he did about Holmes, but they're much lighter than anything else I've ever read by him-- better for reading in planes and cars and when you're bored and stuck in uncomfortable places. If you haven't read them, you definitely should.

I've wanted to read The Letters of Abelard and Heloise for years -- how was it? What are you studying that has you in all these cool books?!

Was Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women interesting?

Enjoyed your thread -- and it's clear I'm not the only one!

Suslyn: I read both of those books for a class on Medieval culture. It was taught by a medievalist prof who was also part of the Women and Gender Studies department, or something-- his speciality is the study of lay female religious recluses in Belgium, called beguines, I think-- and it was one of the best history classes I've taken these past two years. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise were pretty fascinating if you consider their history together, and I recall that the edition I read had a very good foreword that made reading the letters a lot more interesting. As for Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, THAT one was pretty difficult to wade through. I remember that some of the chapters were significantly more interesting than others. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone to read unless they're actually a medievalist interested in gender studies-- something that I am not. It's a profoundly academic book, and was not written for the general public at all. It's also stiflingly long.

> 10 Yes, I have read the Brigadier Gerard stories and love them. I regret there are only two collections. I have all of Doyle's historical novels as well. Not read those yet - will add them to my 2009 list.

- TT

Thank you -- I really adored some of those dry tomes I read while others growned in grad school. If I'm ever near a good library again I'll check it out. Caveat -- There may be excellent libraries here in Bucharest, at least I hope so, at least in the Universities!, but I have trouble just reading Romanian ingredients in the grocery store! Oh how I'd love our next post to be at Cambridge or Oxford! LOL one can dream :)

#14-- yeah, before I went to college I was living in a pretty small suburban town with a pretty infinitesimal library-- I don't think they've bought any books there since the 1970s that are not on a bestsellers' list. But now that I have access to the 2.7 million books in the stacks (my college has a crazy enormous library because it aggressively hits up alumni for library funding), it's getting easier and easier to read stuff I never would have got around to otherwise. When I have kids I am definitely make sure they grow up near a huge university library. Huge libraries are excellent.

#7-10 That was a great Blood Meridian redux. Glad you enjoyed it. Many folks stop early on when the violence gets to be too much. But, if you stick with it, you are rewarded with so much wonderful writing and story.

Prop2gether, you must read it now!!!! That would be another lonely addition to your TBR pile to match the herculean numbe you've added to mine!!

lmichet, I really enjoyed the Border Triology, which starts with All the Pretty Horses.

Just finished Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. THAT was a pretty trippy experience. It's honestly one of the weirdest things I've ever read, but it's also excellent. Crazy imaginative vignettes doused with philosophy. Also an outrageously quick read. So that makes 60. I won't finish 75, I don't think-- but I have most of December off between terms, and I can just knuckle down and blaze through a bunch then, so perhaps I'll get pretty close.

Now I'm working on Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

Oh fubar! I was going to wait until next week for Blood Meridian, and now I may have to start it this week. Almost kidding! ;-)

Read Riddley Walker this week. It is FANTASTIC. The absolute best book I have read all year. It's outrageous. Yes, it's 'science fiction'-- because apparently all apocalyptic fiction is science fiction-- but it's no more science fiction than The Road is. It's about other things. It's about humanity in the same way that The Road is. But it's very different.

Absolutely no reason not to read that book.

Well, there's another one to go on the TBR pile...8^}

Some people have talked about the dialogue interfering with their ability to appreciate the book. Did you find it difficult at all?

#22: It's a challenge, yes. I read it much more slowly than I would have read any other book of that length-- it's only about 220 pages long and it took me about three days to get it done. The language trips you up, yes-- but it's critical to the story, too. Hoban has each word meaning more than one thing, and the philosophy of the whole book, the real meaty meaning of it, is as much a part of that language as it is its own idea. He couldn't have told this story any other way. So I guess by the end of it I was glad to have had the challenge.

Every once in a while I would get to a word I didn't know how to translate, but I found that I could always get the sense of it through context. Furthermore, the edition I had had a glossary in the back for some of the tougher ones, which helped. If anyone is intimidated by the language they should make sure they're reading the edition with the glossary.

Knocked out the 62nd book in one day-- it was The Day of the Triffids. Quite good. It's incredible to think that this was the one book which almost singlehandedly created the horror/post-apocalyptic genre, all by itself. Furthermore, it's one of those science fiction books which was clearly written with an aim towards quality writing, not just science fiction. And not many people know about it. It seems like one of those books that could benefit from a good Hollywood remake.

#24 lmichet: I have several of John Wyndham's books on Continent TBR, including this one. My local library does not appear to have many of his, though, so it may be a while before I get to them. They look like I would really enjoy them. Thanks for the reminder.

>24 lmichet: Imichet, it's amazing how some concepts just stick in the mind - I read Wyndam about 35 years ago and saw the films of his books - even now I call big plants Triffids! The Midwich Cuckoos is quite memorable too. Was the film the Children of the Damned based on that? Or am I confusing the two?

ETA: It was The Village of the Damned!

- TT

Hey, all, are you aware that Day of the Triffids is the book under discussion in Group Reads- Sci-fi? Come on over and make some comments!

(If someone wants to tell me how to make a link, I will do it.)

>27 ronincats:: ronincats

To make a link to anything on the Web, you use the following format:

<a href="URL here">English here</a>

For example, to make a link to this page, I might type:

<a href="http://www.librarything.com/topic/50111">This thread</a>

which would come out as:

This thread

Sorry for the stutter post...

Here goes.

The Day of the Triffids

Thanks, Tad!

sweet, thanks, I'll take a look!

Fall-term finals make it difficult to read books, but I managed to get through The Name of the Rose this week. It was tremendously difficult and extremely rewarding-- and I say difficult, but I've also had six years of Latin from middle and high-school and have taken courses on the medieval philosophy covered in here. So it was a challenge, and it made me think and remember.
So the bottom line is that I have no idea how someone who hasn't learned the stuff I've been spending the last two years on could possibly get the same amount of information out of it as I did. I mean, the discussions the characters have a pretty simple, but they still quote titles and historical figures at one another almost incessantly. When a character makes a sly reference to a book by Peter Abelard, without even an italicization to tell you that he's doing this, and then the other character responds by brushing him off and not even responding to his mention of said title-- I mean, how is anyone going to know that someone just told a joke? I did, because I know about Peter Abelard's Sic et Non and just happened to barely remember what I'd learned about it, but about 99.9 percent of common readers don't. So my question is: how many of you have read this book? How much did you get out of it? There's a medievalist professor at my school who teaches an entire Freshman seminar on this book alone. I wasn't in the seminar, but after reading it I wish I had been-- it's FANTASTIC. But the demands that it puts upon specific reader knowledge, though usually manageable, are sometimes a little crazy.

At any rate, I give it five stars. Maybe I should read some more Eco.

wow! I had no idea. Thanks for educating me a bit.

I haven't read The Name of the Rose, but I have read Foucault's Pendulum and it had basically the same issues. Every once in a while I would recognize a factoid that sounded familiar, but it was more or less a thousand pages of what, for all I knew, could have been a bunch of made-up history. Having said that, I really enjoyed it and almost couldn't put it down, but it left me puzzled as to who Eco's intended audience is--himself? Because I would be surprised if there were more than a dozen people in the world who have the same extensive knowledge that he does, which makes the fact that his books are all bestsellers pretty amazing.

hi Imichet
I read The name of the Rose in October. I only had one year Latin at highschool, but in the Dutch translation there was in the back a list with translations of all Latin tekst.
I have probably missed a lot, but enjoyed the book very much and rated it with 4 1/2 stars

I read The Name of the Rose about ten years ago, when I was a history undergrad studying a fair bit of medieval church history and had recently taken a Latin course. I reckon that if I re-read it now, I'd miss a lot of the allusions I caught then - and out of the total I probably missed a lot of them back then. I would certainly have missed a lot of the deeper philosophical stuff.

I suppose part of the genius of the book is that people can understand it even without the specialist knowledge. The specialist knowledge, the knowledge of what is historical fact/fiction and close familiarity with the medieval and postmodern philosophy enrich understanding of the book immeasuably - but it is still understandable without them. (Maybe? I'm thinking out loud here, so maybe not...)

I'm tempted to try reading it again. I loved the book when I read it back then.

#35: In his postscript he talks about making the story interesting for readers while still indulging his crazy medievalist cravings. I'd say his skill lies in balancing the two. The Name of the Rose has its strengths in that it's very obviously a take on a classic variety of mystery. There's the philosophy business, but there's still a bunch of people getting killed-- so knowing who did it and how is actually extremely interesting. I actually guessed the method of murder myself before finishing, but I could not have possibly got the culprit right, so I was really gratified by the way he resolved that aspect of the story-- there was just the right amount of challenge, I think, in that regard. In other words, it's an excellently-paced mystery.

Furthermore, the story is clearly 'Sherlock Holmes is a monk today!' And that resonates well with any English-speaking reading audience, I think/; it's a character we already empathize with. And in European audiences the history would have been a good draw-- I mean, it's their cultural history, so of course they're going to be interested by at least some of it. So the philosophy is still all over the place, but there's enough lying around for us to grasp and be contented with without having to really comprehend the rest. Which is a shame, because he's written something outrageously deep here, but no one who isn't a philosopher or a medievalist is going to get that full experience.

His intended audience is, I think, 'smart people,' or people he considered smart enough to be worthy of reading his books. The bar is set pretty high, and he set it there on purpose-- I have no idea why, if he actually wanted to sell it, but there you go. He obviously wrote this as an intellectual exercise, but he peppered it with traditional novel and mystery elements. It's like he's baked a cake out of celery and then frosted it over with pure sugar: celery cakes are pretty eh, I would imagine, but I sure like frosting enough on its own.

#36
My version didn't have any Latin translations in it, but even though it's been almost three years since I've studied any, I'm still OK for simple vocabulary and the simpler verb tenses. I feel like I need to find an edition with the translations to make sure I actually understand parts of it, though.

#37: I agree. There's definitely enough novel here around the philosophy textbook to make it exciting. It's also extremely well-paced, I think-- I didn't begrudge it the 450+ page count, because the whole mystery business is enough of a draw. Eco certainly knows how to write an interesting story, which in the end is what counts, I guess.

>38 lmichet:: From what you said, it sounds like The Name of the Rose maybe has more of a plot than Foucault's Pendulum--perhaps that makes it more accessible to a wider audience? Do you have any plans to read Foucault's Pendulum? I've read several reviews of people who liked one book but not the other...

>40 wunderkind:: wunderkind, I've read both; Foucault's Pendulum, IMHO, is much weirder, and definitely less plotty, although I did still enjoy it. I loved The Name of the Rose - reading this thread, I daresay I didn't get much above 25% of the references, but I thought it was fantastic. I also really love Eco's essays - How to Travel With a Salmon is one of the (very few, since DH doesn't really read much) books we have two copies of after the Great Library Combination that is entailed by marriage.

#40
I do plan on reading Foucault's Pendulum someday, but probably not this year, since I think I ought to read something by Foucault first-- and I'll probably get a chance to do that for school next term. So it'll come along eventually, and then I'll make my decision.

Right now I'm working on Cold Comfort Farm, which is absolutely hilarious so far and which will be, when I've finished it, #65 for the year (I forgot to mention that I finished Fighting the Great War by Michael Neiberg last week, too, and that it was rather dull.)

>42 lmichet:: Just FYI, the Foucault referenced in the title is Leon Foucault, the physicist, and not Michel Foucault, the philosopher/sociologist. I only mention it because after I read Foucault's Pendulum I took a class where we read Discipline and Punish and I was very excited to make the connection until I realized I had the wrong guy. Unless you meant the physicist in the first place, in which case I respect both your acumen and your willingness to read 19th century physics tracts. :)

19th century physics tracts

I've got a few laying around folks can borrow, but none by Foucault...Milliken, Mach...8^}

Crap, there's more than one Foucault?

Oh well. I'm taking a lit theory class next term where they cover the OTHER Foucault. Oh well.

Then I guess I'll just have to read the novel in a state of total ignorance, because there's nothing on this earth that can get me to read about physics

Finished #65, Cold Comfort Farm, which, I have determined, is THE best humour book I have EVER read, beating out most things by P.G. Wodehouse by at least a lot. It is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. At any rate, I am astonished. And the version I read was one of those Penguin Classics ones with the hilarious covers by famous cartoonists-- this one was by Roz Chast, with grim-looking portraits of dissolving farmdwellers' portraits all over it.

One of the few books that actually made me laugh while I read it. Best, I think, was her decision to set it twenty years or so in the future, and to put, for no apparent reason, video-phones and 'the Anglo-Nicaraguan wars of '46' into it. Priceless.

>46 lmichet: -- they sell penguin classics here. I'll watch for it. Thx.

I just mooched that same copy of Cold Comfort Farm--that cover is sitting here on my desk looking at me. After your review, I may move it up and have it be book 150! I mooched it in the first place based on recommendations from the group here.

>46 lmichet: Imi, I keep hearing about Cold Comfort Farm. Your enthusiasm (better than P..G.Wodehouse!) has finally prompted me to look out for this book. My local library system is logging it as out from every branch! The branch I use is showing it as missing - someone loved it so much they refused to return it! I will order it.

- TT

My only quarrel with Wodehouse is that I frequently find his stories hard to tell apart, I've read so many of them. They kind of mix together. There's no chance of that with Gibbons-- I guess the fact that I like Cold COmfort more than many wodehouses I've read is that it't utterly unique in every possible way.

I loved Cold Comfort Farm when I read it earlier this year. Cariola also mentioned a movie version, which I promptly purchased, and even my non-reading husband liked it. I heartily recommend both the book and the movie. They are both terrific!

>51 alcottacre: Stasia, I should be able to pick up Cold Comfort Farm on Saturday as checking another copy in my local library, they are showing it as being on their shelves! Thanks for your warm recommendation - I am really looking forward to reading it.

>50 lmichet: I agree Imichet that Wodehouse has a distinctive style that is very samey the more you read him - I have restricted most of my reading of Wodehouse to the Jeeves books. I have a few of his other books that I haven't read yet.

- TT

On the other hand, the musical By Jeeves! was a hoot-following the pig through the weekend. Friends keep borrowing the disk--excuse me, disks--since they don't seem to return them!

#52:

Try reading some of the Blandings 'Uncle Fred' books. I find that they're generally more creative than the Jeeves-and-Wooster ones. Jeeves and Wooster essentially follow the same plot, but with rotating aunts and rotating friends and rotating women. the Uncle Fred ones are usually a bit different.

#53:

There's a musical about Jeeves and Wooster?

Yes, and it's quite a lot of fun. Wikipedia's got an outline, but the cast recordings are available on CD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_Jeeves

My daughter introduced me to it several years ago when a revival was staged.

>54 lmichet: Thanks for the recommnedation, Imi. I will get one right away!

- TT

Just finished Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. Definitely a challenge to get through-- it's really, really disturbing. But also interesting, of course, like everything he writes-- however, this one is not as tightly written as some of his later stuff, like Blood Meridian or No Country for Old Men or the Border Trilogy. Child of God is I think one of his earlier ones, and you can tell. The storyline flops around a little bit. Furthermore, the whole point of this novel is, essentially, McCarthy trying to see if he could portray a serial murderer/necrophiliac in a sympathetic light. A kind of writer's game. And he certainly succeeded, but that doesn't stop it from being viscerally unsettling. I gave it three stars not because I was disturbed, though-- the experience of allowing a writer to disturb you while still appealing to something in you is something everyone should have every once in a while-- but because the story does seem a lot more floppy than his later ones. Not much happens, and in the end a lot of it feels pretty useless. But it's extremely quick.

Read this one if you're trying to be a McCarthy completest.

Finished both Gentlemen of the Road and The Final Solution by Michael Chabon today. Both very short and quite good, but Gentlemen of the Road was in places totally overblown language-wise (it was in a faux-nineteenth-century-novel style deliberately, but sometimes got out of hand) and The Final Solution, though quite good, left me with a lot of questions and unsettled ends. He never really resolves the personal problems of the Sherlock Holmes character, nor of the other characters who are not the Jewish boy, and the Jewish boy's story is already so vague that I felt like the story was over before I had even met most of the characters. Even the villian's motivations are very vague. It was a good story, but it felt like a net of a story, full of confusing gaps. I plan on reading some of his longer books very soon.

I have The amazing adventures of kavalier and clay in one of my TBR piles, but haven't read any Chabon yet. That's definitely one of his longer ones!

Gentlemen of the Road is my favorite Chabon. The flowery 19th-century style worked for me. Have you read The Yiddish Policemen's Union?

Chabon is mentioned often on our posts and thus I'm going to track down some of his books in 2009.
Thanks to all for the recommendations!

>54 lmichet: Imi, I just finished my first "Blandings" book and it was excellent - not an "Uncle Fred" one. It was Heavy Weather. See my review on my thread. Touchstones playing up.

Thanks for the recommendation.

- TT

Done with #69, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. It was pretty great-- she is an excellent writer, and the emotional content of the book was beautifully sincere-- but it felt awfully repetitive, and a lot of the characters tended toward passivity. However, the scenarios were pretty diverse, so I kept reading eagerly. I gave it a 3/5 simply because I found it a little bit frustrating.