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May Readings

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett
Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
The Resort by Bentley Little
The Revelation by Bentley Little

Books I finished this month that were started last month:

A Home At the End of the World by Michael Cunningham
Different Seasons by Stephen King

And the one book that will be finished after this month is Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.
 
Wow, what long lists.

I'm pretty sure I've only read one book (that I could mention here, anyway) so far this year...

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl by Tracy Quan.
 
Framing Class - Diana Kendall
The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett
Gone, Baby Gone - Dennis Lehane
Out of the Silent Planet - CS Lewis
Dark Lady - Richard North Patterson
The Promise - Chaim Potok
Better Together - Robert Putnam
Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
 
Having read two books in just over three months I finally broke out of my reading rut this month:

The Dog of the South - Charles Portis - 7/10 - Not quite to the standard of 'True Grit' but still a solid, if quirky read. A modern day, well 50's, western come road movie in book form.

White & Red - Dorota Maslowska - 7/10 (re-read) - Potty-mouth Polish Journalist writes potty-mouthed Druggy novel. So Potty-mouthed I decided to read it again.

Dreamers - Knut Hamsun - 7/10 - Full review.

Ideas That Changed the World - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto - 8/10 - 178 inventions, political & philosophical ideas all jazzed up with pretty pictures to make a coffee table book for the chattering classes. I liked it.

Scenes from the Bathhouse - Mikhail Zoshchenko - 6/10 - Soviet era b@st@rd son of Gogol. Humorous short stories, more like sketches actually, which have aged a bit too much.

Eats Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss - 6/10 - Take away the overly strained attempts at humour and you're left with a reasonable punctuation guide, which I should have read more carefully.

Soul - Andrey Platonov - 9/10 - Full review.

The Helmet of Horror - Victor Pelevin - 8/10 - Full review.

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess - 9/10 - Put this book off for to long as I thought the slang would make it a pain to read. Turns out most of it is anglicized Russian and even my, very, basic grasp on that language allowed me to read it with ease. It's a classic, but we all kinda know that.

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe - 8/10 (re-read) - I have a couple of other Achebe books on order, so I found time to re-read this corker of a book.

Pelagia & The White Bulldog - Boris Akunin - 8/10 - I'd already read four of Akunin's Fandorin series, so I knew what to expect from this, a good old fashioned detective story with a bit more meat on the bones than usual and a turn of the 19/20th century Russian setting.

Playing for Keeps - Alex Stewart - 5/10 - Bog standard sporting autobiography, seems to have been written without disturbing the author’s sleep patterns.

K-S
 
Wasn't too much in the mood for Augie March right now... New job is getting in the way of enjoyment of a book of any substantial size. But I did just finish

The Stranger by Albert Camus
 
The books that I read in May are

Baghdad Burning – Girl Blog from Iraq
The Falls – Joyce carol Oates
The Book of Illusions - Paul Auster
The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro
 
A much more productive month than April:

*Dog handling : a novel (not something I would recommend; took me quite a while to read the book and by the end, I was wondering why I had even bothered to read it)

*Size 12 is not fat (excellent read and I really enjoyed it; might consider buying the book in the future and hope to purchase the next two books that will be released in the series in the next couple of years)

*Wild grows the heather in Devon (it was okay; liked the historical context of the book, but I doubt I will read again, even though the author is a very good writer)

*Towards the sunrise (probably the best book in the four novel set and really liked the historical context that it was set in [WWII] and the story line)

*Little White Lies (my last read for the month and it was really good and I really enjoyed it; highly recommend it if you are looking for a lighter read for the beach or for a trip)
 
The Fallen – T. Jefferson Parker (was very good, unique premise)
The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole – Stephanie Doyon (really enjoyed this)
A Field of Darkness – Cornelia Read (okay debut)
Mad Mouse – Chris Grabenstein (fun read)
Family and Other Accidents – Shari Goldhagen (I expected it to be better)
Dead Center - David Rosenfelt (love all his books)
The Art of Mending – Elizabeth Berg (ugh – didn’t finish)
The King of Lies – John Hart (great debut mystery)
A Long Way Down – Nick Hornsby (audio version, the voice actors are wonderful)
My Only Story – Monica Wood (boring – didn’t finish)
Sleeping Beauty – Phillip Margolin
 
The Bestseller - Olivia Goldsmith
Marrying Mom - Olivia Goldsmith
Fashionably Late - Olivia Goldsmith
Full Circle - Michael Thomas Ford
Dumping Billy - Olivia Goldsmith
The Stolen Child - Keith Donohue
 
jaynebosco said:
A much more productive month than April:

*Dog handling : a novel (not something I would recommend; took me quite a while to read the book and by the end, I was wondering why I had even bothered to read it)

*Size 12 is not fat (excellent read and I really enjoyed it; might consider buying the book in the future and hope to purchase the next two books that will be released in the series in the next couple of years)

*Wild grows the heather in Devon (it was okay; liked the historical context of the book, but I doubt I will read again, even though the author is a very good writer)

*Towards the sunrise (probably the best book in the four novel set and really liked the historical context that it was set in [WWII] and the story line)

*Little White Lies (my last read for the month and it was really good and I really enjoyed it; highly recommend it if you are looking for a lighter read for the beach or for a trip)
Do those books have authors?
 
lol, do those books have readers? :p

A slightly more productive month than April but still nowhere near what I was reading in March.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
The Van, Roddy Doyle
Oranges, John McPhee
Rashōmon, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
 
In reverse order, including those shaming unfinishables...

Rabbit is Rich, John Updike (still plodding my way through)
The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_fourstars.gif
The Long Good-Bye, Raymond Chandler apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_fivestars.gif
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick (R) apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_fivestars.gif
The Wall Jumper, Peter Schneider apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_threestars.gif
Snow is Silent, Benjamín Prado apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_threestars.gif
The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (R) apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_fourstars.gif
Carol, Patricia Highsmith apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_threestars.gif

Icelander, Dustin Long (abandoned: what's the matter with me?)

The Sportswriter, Richard Ford (R) (abandoned)
Modern Baptists, James Wilcox (abandoned)
Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_threestars.gif
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene apalimpsest.org.uk_images_smilies_icon_fivestars.gif
 
1. If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor
2. Oracle Night - Paul Auster
3. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors - Roddy Doyle
4. Chuck Palahniuk - Diary
5. Out - Natsuo Kirino
6. Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood
Unfinished - The Sea - John Banville
 
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky (current)
Fortress Of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem (current)
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (R)
Innocent Erendira & Other Stories - Gabriel G. Marquez
Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
Saturday - Ian McEwan
 
Every Good Boy Does Fine by Tim Laskowski
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Fury by Salman Rushdie
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
No Way to Treat a First Lady by Christopher Buckley
God Shaped Hole by Tiffanie DeBartolo
Death of an Ordinary Man by Glen Duncan (boring)
 
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