Reading challenge 2014: I've read 99 books but GRRM ain't one

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Reading challenge 2014: I've read 99 books but GRRM ain't one

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

I exceeded my goal last year by cheating with a lot of novellas,so I'll go for 60 this time, with the caveat that 20 should be by women. I've also got a headstart as I finished a book after calling time on last year's challenge.

1: The Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky as translated by David Magarshack.

The Goodreads

# ¿ Jan 2, 2014 15:03

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 16:38

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Qwo posted:

Is that a Mr. A collection?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2014 11:45

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

showbiz_liz posted:

Probably Moby Dick, and I also found that I'm a complete sucker for Tennessee Williams.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2014 18:36

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

screenwritersblues posted:

A Man for All Seasons counts as either forgotten or savaged? And Kevin Smith likes it?

# ¿ Jan 27, 2014 00:54

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

My sense of the film world's critical consensus was formed in my nan's house and let me tell you AMfAS is far from forgotten. It's basically that and The Name of the Rose.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2014 01:49

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

"Mr. Squishy posted:

2 Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
3 The Maltese Falcon by Dashiel Hammett
4 In the Midst of Life by Ambrose Bierce
5 Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
6 Mortal Coils by Aldous Huxley
7 The Looking Glass War by John le Carr�
8 The Card by Arnold Bennett
9 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

♀ 1/20
Σ 9/60

I come back to this thread and see a lot of bi-weekly updates. Jeezy Peezy.

Mr. Squishy fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Jan 30, 2014

# ¿ Jan 30, 2014 12:28

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

He has repeatedly posted that he likes to see people grow, presumably out of a sense of love for all mankind.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2014 03:26

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Stravinsky posted:

I'll stick my neck out and say that Ted Hughes wrote a good poem even if he did kill his wife.
e: and Phillip Larkin, also.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2014 11:01

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

I'm surprised that you've burnt it before taking a picture of it in the toilet.
Hunter S. Thompson refused to review books sent to him by soaking them in woodglue and sending them back as a doorstop, which I quite liked. I guess it lacks impact in picture form.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2014 21:44

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

10 Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley
11 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
12 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson
13 Lady with a Lapdog and Other Stories by Anton Chekov as translated by David Magarshack
14 Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
15 Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis as translated by William L. Grossman
16 My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey
17 The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot by Angus Wilson
18 Ultramarine by Malcolm Lowry
19 German Short Stories as selected by Penguin Duel Text
20 The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
21 Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets by Georges Simeon as translated by Tony White
22 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

♀ 1/20
Σ 22/60

A lot of books but none of them by women. I've got Mill on the Floss on my desk but it's just not grabbed me, although I can see it's very good. I've reviewed some of these in another thread so I'll just give some notes on the rest
Magarshack translates Chekov as well as he does Dostoyevsky. Lots of astutely observed stories, most verging on the tragic. My favourite of the bunch was A Boring Story, which reminded me a lot of The Tunnel
Crome Yellow was the closest to a bad Huxley I've read. Possibly because I read it so hot on the heels of TBL. The segments detailing the imagined history of Crome were fantastic short stories, and a highlight in a rather paltry novel.
Mrs. Eliot was the most enjoyable Wilson I've read, especially when it was about the titular character. She felt the freshest, the rest were familiar from his other books. I wonder if he ever met a European woman he liked, he always insults them pretty dreadfully. The review on the back of the book from the Telegraph is weirdly proud that a man should write a woman so well.
Ultramarine is a lot like Melville's Redbarn but with the over-arching sense of order ripped out. This is the second Lowry I've read and I was just as baffled by Under the Volcano. An overeducated man likes a drink, and dislikes everything else. Very good but somehow leaves me a bit cold.
The short stories were a bad buy: somehow I manage to overlook that they were duel-text for students of German. 80 pages of simple stories in simple language. Still, I bought it, read it, and I'm posting it here. I actually enjoyed Antigone and the Garden Dwarf by Gerd Gaiser.
The Packard was a great trove of anecdotes (ever heard the one about the house wife, the cake mix, and the egg?), and the original of a couple of concerned essays I've read, but I actually found it a bit of a drag. So much of it is quoting ad pablum, and you can guess the ending of most stories before they began. He also reserves all judgement about the scientific legitimacy of this madness until the final chapter, where he raises a gentle eyebrow at it. It also gave a citation to a quotation I've heard a few times: "children are living breathing records of what we tell them every day" which was apparently said by Herb Sheldon. Finally I'd say it was good fun seeing someone refer to "the cancer scare" bedeviling the tobacco industry.
The Maigret was the first Simeon I've read, I'd put him on the same pegging as le Carr�. It was made all the sweeter as the book was something I'd just picked up as part of a cheap advertisement for a gallery opening.
I should have read In Cold Blood before watching Capote which rather foregrounded the author's possibly questionable sympathy for one of his subjects. Not that it's possible to not notice the favouritism but it still coloured my reading. The first Capote I've read, awfully beautiful style.

Mr. Squishy fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Feb 27, 2014

# ¿ Feb 27, 2014 18:49

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

Fairly doubtful that I'll read anything more this month, so
23 The Europeans by Henry James
24 Free Fall by William Golding
25 This is Not a Novel by David Markson
26 Morte D'Urban by J. F. Powers
27 The Queen of Spades and Other Stories (The Negro of Peter the Great, Dubrovsky and The Captain's Daughter) by Alexander Pushkin as translated by Rosemary Edmonds.
28 Under Wester Eyes by Joseph Corad

♀ 1/20
Σ 28/60

The Europeans was a slight but fun James book which hammers home the message of the upright, true, if boring Americans clashing against the devious, perverted, interested Europeans. From my survey of James (this and Roderick Hudson) this seems to be an id�e fix. He does not seem to be my author
Free Fall is a deliberately destructured novel. A dissatisified ~~writer~~ painter recalls his early life, war experience, then early life again to try and pin down why it's all so poo poo. It didn't grab me, to be honest, but makes Golding's nobel prize make a little more sense then before, when the only novel I had read of his was The Lord of the Flies in school.
The Markson is true to its name. What happened when you boil down Wittgenstiens Mistress even further, a list of facts about authors and painters of dubious veracity arrange as to convey (which a few facts about Markson himself) the writer's mental state. It took me an hour to read and taught me how Gaddis died, so I can't complain.
The Powers is just a perfectly turned comic novel, with a couple of heavy hits on America and catholicism in general. The former is the dominant image in my mind though. He really knows how to write a fun book. Not an author I have read, or even heard much of before. Goodreads tipped me off to him, and for that I suppose I should be grateful.
The Pushkin was fun but trashy. I suspect the translator might be at fault for that, or the fact that this collection starts off with two unfinished works. The first is like an early Turner. Just a few washes of sentiment and you have to bring your own expectations to derive the lay of the land. They are fun to read though, especially the ones that were actually finished.
Under Western Eyes is a strangely broken-backed book. Dangling sentences are picked up 200 pages later, and absolutely nothing happens. Still he managed to wrestle them into such a point. The last few chapters are strongly affecting, as stark and saddening as anything else in Conrad's oeuvre
I read much less this month, and spent a lot of it reading nothing at all. And none of what I eventually did read was written by a woman. Ah well, there's time yet, I suppose.
As to the notion of having a pre-arranged schedule of what to read, I find that laughable. Derisive, you could say my attitude to such a system would be. I just pick one from the multitude of piles which litter my flat.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2014 00:07

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Come join us in the slough of despond.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2014 16:40

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

29 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
30 Nostromo bu Joseph Conrad
31 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert as translated by Alan Russel
32 A Woman's Life by Guy de Maupassant as translasted by H.N.P Sloman
33 The Ascent of F6 by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
34 The Aspern Papers and Other Stories (The Real Thing, The Papers) by Henry James
35 Washington Square by Henry James
36 The Blithedale Romance by Nathanial Hawthorne
37 What Maisie Knew by Henry James
38 La B�te Humaine by �mile Zola as translated by Leonard Tancock

♀ 2/20
Σ 38/60

The Wharton is a novella that's apparently a common set-text in school. It's a well executed one note tale of gothic sadness. Pretty good, pretty far away from the other Wharton I've been putting off reading. Also it's by a woman!! I've not given up on my sub-goal.
I've talked about Nostromo, it's good, odd.
Madame Bovary is very good, there are a handful of metaphors in there which alone could make a book.
I really shouldn't have read the Maupassant straight after, as Flaubert really puts him to shame. It's still good. Also there's one chapter where he hands over the book to Jack London and there are 3 brutal killings and a dog called "Murder".
The F6 was actually bundled with another Auden/Isherwood play, On the Frontier, but left me so cold that I didn't think I'd bother. Maybe it'd be good on the stage, with the Britten music.
I read a lot of James this month, all of them on the short side. I prefer these to the larger books that I just flounder in. The Aspern Papers is quite a nice collection, all of the stories fixed on the way to treat other people as complicated by the demands of art. The editor in the title story is a brilliant creep.
Washington Square was rather Conradian. Very shallow characterization and baffling actions carried forth with total sterness, and also there's a bit where they brush against life's hidden brutality.
Maisie was just an exhausting display of the most intricate sentences riddled with constant irony. A small child with no concept of sex has to negotiate a confusing kaleidescope of affairs and tenuous marriages which dictate the lives of the just awful adults who take care of her.
The Hawthorne was alright. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone though.
The Zola was mental. Bloody, savage sex and death setting off descriptions of the life working for the railway and satire of the legal system. Is this what Zola's like?

# ¿ Apr 29, 2014 10:44

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Fellwenner posted:

I'm dead impressed you managed to clear it in just a month. It took me much longer, and I actually posted it in the "books you didn't finish" thread at once point. Are you going to keep on? Next chronologically is Carpenter's Gothic, his "attempt to reach the man in the airport."

# ¿ May 1, 2014 09:38

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

He's reading samizdat and doesn't want to get the author into hot water.

# ¿ May 16, 2014 00:49

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Well, now I'm imagining the worst, like a book of Zelda concept art or summat.

# ¿ May 16, 2014 02:16

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

39 The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard. This was a play that I've been feeling guilty about not reading ever since school, it was alright. Clever. I mean, not mind-blowing.
40 Rembradnt's Hat and Other Stories (The Silver Crown; Man in the Drawer; The Letter; In Retirement; Notes from a Lady at a Dinner Party; My Son the Murderer; Talking Horse) by Bernard Malamud. A slender volume with a lot of short-short stories. Seems to be a transitional point in Malamud's style (I'd guess, not having read any of him). Talking Horse is miles away from, say, In Retirement. Of the bunch I'd pick the titular story and My Son, but overall, I wasn't that thrilled.
41 Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov as translated by David Magarshack. Not sure if I read the Magarshack translation, I've already lent my copy out so I can't check. Anyway whoever it was did a fine job, what a likable book. Manages to wring out some real despair and a sense of importance out of really quite a boring life.
42 Illness as a Metaphor and Aids and its Metaphors by Susan Sontag. I wasn't massively impressed with this to be honest. The first story is some fairly obvious remarks on the idea of cancer versus tuberculosis, the second a criticism of militarism as filtered down to pharmaceutical copy and news reports.
43 The Wrong Set and Other Stories (Fresh Air Fiend; Union Reuinion; Saturnalia; Realpolitk; A Story of Historical Interest; Crazy Crowd; A Visit in Bad Taste; Raspberry Jam; A Significant Experience; Mother's Sense of Fun; Et Donna Ferentes) by Angus Wilson. A series of character portraits, few longer than 10 pages. Young Wilson at his satiric best. Strawberry Jam is perhaps my pick, an unexpected burst of horror like a plunge through thin ice.
44 Billy Bud, Sailor and Other Stories (Bartleby; Cock-A-Doodle Doo!; The Encantedas; The Bell-Tower; Benito Cereno; John Marr; Daniel Orme by Herman Mellville. 3 of these aren't really stories but sketches to be developed. Mellville wrote some good poo poo, is my humble opinion. I didn't like The Bell-Tower, felt to me like an overwritten Poe story, but Bartleby, Cock-A-Doodle and Benito are all fantastic.
45 The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad. The first bad Conrad I've read, I think, and well-forgotton by the academics. His prose was stiff and lifeless, occasionally crippled with laboured, obvious metaphors in the place of dialogue. Near the end there's a great bit where a frustrated suitor attempts to force his way in to his beloved's bedroom, a lively blend of humour and horro, but I'd probably just advise you to skip to that.
46 Daisy Miller and Other Stories (Pandora; The Patagonia; Four Meetings by Henry James Early stuff about youthful spritely America coming against the rocks of cultured, cynical old Europe. The contrast between Daisy Miller and its strange sequel was interesting. Four Meetings is probably my favourite, in its efficiency.
47 Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol as translated by David Magarshack Another Russian, another Magarshack, who I think is really good. The first book is masterful, what remains of the second is less so.
48 The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. The first Hardy I've read, shamefully. From a brief look at The Return of the Native, Casterbridge seems to have kept the poetry relatively constrained. I think the plot, a tangled mess of shifting relations and affections, was really well carried off in all its complexity. Also less depressing than I've been lead to expect.
49 Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino. Less of a book more of a setting for various dazzling literary parodies and, for some reason, lists. Who cares if it's good, which this is.
50 Indian Summer by William Dean Howell. Not really my bag at all. I read it mostly for historical interest.

♀ 4/20
Σ 50/60

Hahaha I'm really not meeting that subgoal.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2014 00:12

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

glowing-fish posted:

Why would you make your first entry to an author a collection of scraps intended for completists rather that one of their good books?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2014 09:43

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

51 Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man by Thomas Mann, as translated by Denver Lindley. The first Mann I've read, and another incomplete story. I've not looked into it so it might be designed that way but I suspect that he just died before he could finish it. In the first half it mostly plays on the irony of giving us the self-justifying and -congratulating memoirs of a thief and a lier, but later on that falls away as it really seems that he does do no harm, and it becomes more an ethical meditation and also an exploration of doubleness. The writing is always entertaining, but sometimes it feels that Mann is just showing off his research.
52 The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever. This was alright, I guess. Fairly breezy. It's interseting how it seems to mostly explore feminine selfishness.
53 New Grub Street by George Gissing. I really enjoyed this one. A book about the business of writing, and how there's no money in it. It's constant refrain of the importance of wealth reminded me a lot of Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, although here it is both a lot subtler and also more nihilistic.
54 Adeline Mowbray by Amelia Opie. A fictionalized telling of the unmarried relationship of Mary Wollstonecroft and William Goodwin, and how bloody difficult is was the be an unmarried woman in the early 19th century. The descriptions of men's insulting and threatening behaviour is actually fairly scary. Didactic on the surface (the heroine recants her past behaviour on her deathbed) it handles the issue incredibly well.
55 The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald. I don't really see the point of this book. It's a small novella set in pre-revolution Russia written by an English woman in the 1990s. The setting has been so written a lot of the book feels like an echo of the various actual Russians. The vague storyline just seems to be about how confusing life can be. Possibly the setting was picked because Fitzgerald really wanted to use unsealing the windows for spring as a metaphor for love in later life. Maybe if it was a bit longer and more of the characters felt fleshed out.
56 Plagiarism and Originality by Alexander Lindey. Continuing my slow tour through the source books of William Gaddis. You can see a few of the anecdotes in The Recognitions but A Frolic of His Own is the one that is in real debt. The panicked, irrational plagiarism suit detailed in that novel is taken straight from Lindey's description of various cases. As for the book itself, it's very entertaining, which never uses 1 anecdote to illustrate a point when 10 could do. It's accessible enough that I feel that I understand plagiarism law. Of course, I imagine it's severly out of date, though I only noticed when he was talking about the length of time a work can be copyrighted for.
57 Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev as translated by Richard Freeborn. Enjoyable collection of stories, a highlight being the pathetic descriptions of landscape. Apparently what differentiates a sketch from a short story is that the former doesn't need to have an end. The translation is fairly annoying. The serfs are given the accents of various British counties, and a dwarfish holy man is distinctly Irish. Also this translation overuses "literally", though that might be Turgenev's fault.
58 Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford. Accompanied by a ludicrously anachronistic introduction which insists that, although at first glance a lightweight summer read, it is a serious exploration of mortality, love and Britishness, and if you can't see that then you must be an oik fighting the class war. I guess I can see his point, but I just don't find the majority of the book funny (though I did enjoy whenever the Radletts showed up). The most striking thing for me is that there's a full-fledged peadophile on the loose who everyone just views as a bit of a joke. Times change, I guess. It's so loosely structured that I actually found it difficult to guess the plot.
59 Mario and the Magician and Other Stories (A Man and his Dog, Disorder and Early Sorrow, The Transposed Heads, The Tables of Law The Black Swan by Thomas Mann as translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter. The second Mann I've ever read. He can waffle on a bit, can't he? The Transposed Heads is odd: a hundred digested ethnological reports dressing up a dirty joke. My favourite of all is The Black Swann, where a post-menopausal woman finds love again as told through 5 or so super-long discussions with her nerd daughter.
60 Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw. Shaw is obviously not the playwright for me. I just found this impossibly smug and stagey, I couldn't even appreciate the use of St. Joan to talk about the arrangement between god and man.
61 One Day More by Joseph Conrad. A not great play but I liked it a great deal more than the Shaw. A young woman tends to the need of two demented old men, ignores the fresh breeze of a sexually-agressive young man, regrets it almost instantly. There are a few interesting things in there.

♀ 7/20
Σ 61/60

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 13:05

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

You've already won mate your life's sorted.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 17:39

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

62 A Perfect Spyby John leCarr�. One of his more literary efforts, in that it's a long roman a clef biography with a smidgen of spys chasing themselves around to keep his audience awake. He's very good a the plastic, and does somehow manage to make a thriller proustian, but I'm not sure if it's biography is his fort�.
63 The Inheritors by Ford Maddox Ford and Joseph Conrad. I've reviewed this in the other thread, but I'll restate here that I liked it. Some beautiful passages.
64 The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad. At this point I'd discovered Gutenberg and a kindle and had started reading a few minute novellas, this one included. The copy-right notice might have been longer. Anyway it's a classic but not my favourite of his that I've read. Apparently someone wrote a version of this set on a space-ship which might be worth tracking down for laughs.
65 Tales of Hoffmanby E.T.A. Hoffman as translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Early surrealist stuff, a collection of dreamlike fairy-tales, all of which are like nothing but themselves, but which resemblance is very marked. I got bored in the middle and shelved it for a month until the rest made them fresh again. They are very goods in ones or twos though.
66 The Man who was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. I mean it's fun and all, but I don't see why C'est Moi's lost his dang mind over it. Now don't get me wrong, it is fun.
67 The Alter of the Deadby Henry James. Another very short story. Not the best James I'v read.
68 The Recognitions by William Gaddis. A re-read. Wyatt annoyed me a lot more this time around. Whenever he showed up you knew you were going to get a meaningful conversation or possibly an undigested bit of reference material. Possibly because he is a deliberatly unreal, saintly character. The rest remain fantastically strong though, the writing's beautiful, and the party scenes are just as funny a second time around.
69 A Reader's Guide to the Recognitions by Steven Moore. Now I know all the references in The Recognitions, and have had a few of the trickier bits glossed for me.
70 Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster. The awful British upper-middle-class tangle with the barbarous yet human Italians. Forster's writing is precise, and his intelligence covers a lot of issues with a lot more acuity than my crude summary would indicate.
71 Prufrock, Poems, The Hollow Men, & Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. I don't really know how to talk about poetry but I really like Eliot.
72 The Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot. Most of the plays I read really rub me the wrong way. Here you have, basically, a poem of his transliterated into a play, but where he is a great writer of poetry, his characters and dialogue leave a lot to be desired. An unhappy couple and the unhappy people they are having affairs with have their lives put straight two interfering friends and a mad priest/psychiatrist. The killer evidence of how bad this play is that Eliot fails to see the humour in a white person in the colonies being killed and eaten, a joke recognized by Waugh, Celine, hell, anyone. We're meant to have our faith rocked by it here.
73 Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen as translated by Peter Watts. Now that's an epic prose poem. I skipped clear over the explanatory notes naming and shaming the subjects of satire, so I'm probably going to re-read this soon. The soul of Norway goes through life constantly loving up. At one point he runs head-first into a rock, it's great.
74 The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. There are some beautiful parts in this. The break at the end of chapter 2 where Marlow struggles to express what Kurtz meant to him, now that's some good writing.

♀ 7/20
Σ 74/60

# ¿ Jul 31, 2014 23:03

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

75 The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. Since I've been recommending it so much I figured I'd reread it. It's still good.
76 Dreadful Pleasures: An Anatomy of Modern Horror by James B. Twitchell. Some basic freudian interpretations of the appeal of the major Universal monsters. You've heard it all before; Dracula is the incestuous, sexually alluring father etc etc). Good overview of the history of these figures, from their pre-history in penny dreadfuls, the hazards that caused Universal to cement them, notable iterations from the cannibalistic horror boom, and some half-right speculations about the then-future now-past. It's a bit off that he restricts himself entirely to English and American films, I'm not sure how you can form an opinion of 70s slashers without some awareness of the Italians.
77 Flowers for the Judge by Marjory Allingham. Murder Mystery set in small publishing. Seemed a bit brisk. Good ending.
78 Dispatches by Michael Herr. Interesting. Basically just a soup of vietnam for 200 pages. Obviously a cornerstone in forming our impressions of the war.
79 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. A good short story with a fantastic tumour. It's also still good.
♀ 8/20
Σ 79/60
]Obviously been having a difficult month reading. I've been flipping across numerous books, but still. I guess I've just been nervous.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2014 10:38

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

screenwritersblues posted:

It was both.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2014 23:42

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

80 The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carr�. The post Tinker Tailor Smiley has to piece together the service he exploded by revealing its corruption. He tried his best but it goes wrong, mostly because of those bastard Americans, as you'd expect from a le Carr�. About a hundred pages too long for my interest.
81 The Outcast of the Island by Joseph Conrad. drat, what an ending. I don't care about all these arab pirates, but they take up a relatively small place in the book.
82 Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. Makes a lot more sense on second reading.

♀ 8/20
Σ 82/60

Obviously the Conrad thing continues. It's the only thing I can stomach reading at this point. I'm currently reading Secret Agent again.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2014 15:00

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

I've stopped keeping a tally of this on Goodreads so let's see what I can remember

83 My Sisters Keeper by Jodi Picoult. It is impossible to overstate how poo poo this book is. The viewpoint is shared by numerous characters which does nothing but highlight how every character speaks in the same trashy way which is both badly- and over-written. An interesting legal thought experiment if you can ignore everything else about it.
84 Conrad and Women by Susan Jones. A good critical book on how Conrad was actually a feminist.
85 Victory by Joseph Conrad. Another one that made a lot more sense to me on second reading.
86 Chance by Joseph Conrad. First reading for this one. Perhaps it suffers from a surfeit of distancing devices, like a chinese boxes obscuring the central core. I'm on my second reading of it now so I'll let you know that it made a lot more sense next month.
87 The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist as translated by Marlaine Delargy. The cover blurbs promises a book for fans of Orwell and Huxley, which of course translates to a dystopian book aimed squarely at being taught in schools. Old artistic people are coralled in a very humane abatoir to be salvaged for parts. A nice springy novella stretched out for no reason, though I guess maybe conveying a sense of deep boredom is germane. Maybe if the writing could sustain itself...
88 The Romance of a Shop by Mary Levy. Women entering the hard world of the workplace. Dont worry, they all manage to marry by the end of it.
89 The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. I got bored halfway through of this like 15 years ago so I read it backwards to meet myself in the middle (and then continued to the beginning/end). Another good gothic novella padded with insufferable Oscar Wilde dinner-party scenes in the hope that one of the drives in the story will be lost in the noise.
90 Votes for Women by Elizabeth Robbins. A hardcore suffrage activist producing a hardcore bit of agit-prop. Most interesting to me is the third act where the play goes INSANE. The first and final acts are drawing room-type melodrama with a very very obvious suffrage edge, but they're separated by a chasm where the play tries it damndest to recreate a suffrage rally on the streets. Any sort of narrative goes out the window while you're harangued by a fictional Pankhurst about the vote.
91 Diana of Dobsons by Cicely Hamilton. Another play about the new woman. Shop-girl escapes and shatters the preconcieved notions of the landed elite by calling them decorative.
92 Chains by Elizabeth Baker. Yet another play. Talking about women's lib in the guise of talking about men going to Australia to work a farm.
93 Rutherford and Son by Githa Sowerby. Ditto. This one's fun though.
94 Machinal by Sophie Treadwell. The final play this month about bloody women. This one's really good and fun and I liked it.
95 Combined and Uneven Apocalypse by Evan Calder Williams. A political bit of film-criticism proposing the new genre of "salvagepunk". I picked this up after a beautiful article he wrote on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and he's still very strong on there. Perhaps a bit less interesting is his Marxism but hey, that's his concern. The prose style can be gratingly chummy at times, and the books is appealingly copy-edited.

♀ 16/20
Σ 95/60

I guess you can figure out which Uni I'm going to and which modules I'm doing if you want. Looks like my women quota has got a shot in the arm though.

Mr. Squishy fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Oct 30, 2014

# ¿ Oct 29, 2014 12:04

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Supporting hard-working lude manufacturers is one of the least bad things Belfort did.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2014 17:12

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

I've stopped keeping track so let's see

96 The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.
97 Journey's End by R.C. Sherrif. It's Journey's End. Good play, perhaps a bit conservative in form.
98 Northern Star by Stewart Parker. In which a marginalized war-hero of... one of the early Irish wars for independence narrates his way through several pastiches of Irish authors, time collapsing as he poses perilously with his neck in a noose.
99 Oh What A Lovely War by the Theatre Workshop. I can't stand farce. I hate it a lot. This, Accidental Death of an Italian Anarchist... others. Just can't stand it.
100 Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. Yet more stuff about the difficult question of Irish nationhood. You can't really get a sense of if you like a play when you're just reading it. Wonder if I like this one.
101 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I guess it's clever enough but is it really top-drawer? Well, there are some elements about it that are good.
102 A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell. Seemed kind of aimless.

♀ 16/20
Σ 102/60

I'm reading pretty much exclusively for my uni course and playing an awful lot of X-Com in a panicked funk. I might have reread some Conrad, and quite a few chapters from critical books. Will I read four more women-authored books by year's end? Who can say, I don't care.

Mr. Squishy fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 15, 2014

# ¿ Dec 1, 2014 19:40

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

I mean, if you want to?

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 00:03

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

I don't see how human nature has anything to do with an Orca assaulting a merwoman.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2014 15:45

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 16:38

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Mr. Squishy posted:

Let's see
103 Lost in the Funhouse by Roland Barth. Pretty fun, pretty irritating.
104 The Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo as translated by Beryl de Zote. This was pretty fun too.
105 The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stohl. Just a poorly-written thriller of a system's manager in the 1980s tracking a hacker. It was a quick read, and it's pretty cute having email explained to me.

♀ 16/20
Σ 105/60

# ¿ Dec 29, 2014 19:59

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Reading challenge 2014: I've read 99 books but GRRM ain't one