Further Recommendations

Two more lists have come in.

Matthew suggested:
* Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
* To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
* The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
* Atomised by Michelle Houellebecq
* Life of Pi by Yann Martel
* Vernon Goodlittle by DBC Pierre
* True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
* Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Toby suggested:
* His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
* The Accidental Buddhist by Dinty Moore
* Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

These lists of recommendations are starting to make me think of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller... in which books are classified as follows:

- Books You've Read
- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You've Been Planning to Read For Ages
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working On At The Moment
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
and (my favourite)
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too.*

On reflection, that last was the real impetus for this little project. There are so many books I feel I've semi-read, having listened to friends and family rave about them over the years. And here's my chance to reshelve some titles from the last to the first category.

Better get on with it, then.

xoxo

*This is not the full list but you get the drift, yeah?

Nice one, Tamara.

So J just texted me asking if I could pick a new book for her to grab at lunchtime, as she's in for Jury Duty and has almost finished The Fran Lebowitz Reader.  I suggested Maximum City by Suketu Mehta or, if she couldn't find that one, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  I haven't read either myself, so it was just luck of the draw.  We'll see what comes of it.

You'll note that I've changed our header per J's last post (LOVE).  I also want to note Anthony's remark about the need for 'a book club for sophisticated ladies of a certain disposition'.  I suspect that might find its way into the header at some point as well.

In other news, I'm enjoying Guns, Germs and Steel heaps more now that I'm into the section about human evolution and diseases and their contribution to the whole mess.  I like my life sciences, what can I say.  It's good, though, because I no longer despair of finishing the damn thing.  I will get there, and I'll even enjoy it.  More to follow.

XOXO

You Guessed it: More Recommendations

Tamara suggested:
* Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
* The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
* The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
* Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and then ...
* The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Tam's summation of the first was "trashy but with a literary bent" which I heartily endorse as the LitGirls' new tag-line.

A review of The Fran Lebowitz Reader will follow in a day or two, promise.

xoxo

Still more recommendations

Sorry, but I kept forgetting to post this.  Uncle Mr Bill (thanks!) sent through the following:

* The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

* Incident at Twenty-Mile by Trevanian (a Western!)

* A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I'm getting antsy to be finished with Guns, Germs and Steel and move on to whatever comes next.  I'm not sure if we've explained this to you-all yet, but J and I decided that the easiest way to split up the books would be for us to switch off picking books for ourselves and picking books for each other, so since I chose Guns for myself, J will pick my next book for me.  (And because there are enough books on here that neither of us knows, this will end up being more random than it seems at first glance.)  I'm hoping for something a bit more plot-heavy than this one has been, and that's not something I'd normally say, so I must be struggling with it even more than I'd realised.

XOXO

Interim Review: Guns, Germs and Steel

So.  This book has been much more of a struggle for me than I'd expected.  I enjoy science writing as a rule, and I don't need it to be especially pop-sciencey to enjoy it: I generally find that the facts are interesting enough on their own to sustain me without a lot of dressing-up.  But you still need to be able to tell a story if you want to keep my interest for 457 pages, or even 7 pages, and I'm not convinced that Diamond can do that.

Well, no, that's a bit too harsh.  I think he probably can tell a story, but in this book it feels more like he's tried to write a book-length journal submission.  I'm having trouble working out quite what doesn't work for me about his style: it's not that it's dry, exactly, nor is the density of it really a problem for me (though it is seriously dense); and it's bugging me, because I feel like I should like it more.  I'm certainly learning a lot, and about things that interest me, so why can't I get into it as much as I'd like?  (For those who don't know, it's an examination of why certain cultures ended up so much more technologically advanced than others, and the repercussions of that advancement on other aspects of human history.  It's comprehensive and honest, and goes a long way toward putting a nail in the coffin of those 'some races are just better' arguments that make me long to punch people squarely in the balls.)

That all having been said, I should note that I'm finding it much easier going now that I'm a good ways into it, but I shouldn't have to get almost halfway into a text like this before it grabs me.  Tim said that he'd started it a few times and never got far, and I now understand why; were I not reading it for Lit Girls, I suspect that I would have chucked it aside by now.  And that would have been a shame, because there is a lot worth reading in it: it's one of those books that answers questions you hadn't realised you wanted to ask by filling in blanks you hadn't realised were empty.  And Diamond has done most of his work (his 'real job' is as a biologist studying bird evolution) in the South Pacific, so he has a great deal of knowledge about the history of this part of the world, and that makes it more interesting to me: having grown up in the U.S., I didn't even get the tiny amount of education about this history that Australian students get.  But... I don't know, I still don't love it.  And the people I know who like it are really passionate about it, so I feel like I must be missing something.

Anyway.  I'll post again when I've finished it, and we'll see how I feel then.  Cross fingers it will continue to improve.

XOXO

Yet More Recommendations

They're coming in thick and fast now.

Paul suggested:
* The Master and Margarita or Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
* The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
* Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Melanie suggested:
* A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
* Almost French by Sarah Turnbull
* Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
* Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
* A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Lynn suggested:
* Bliss by Peter Carey
* The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
* Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

I have to say, there are many goodies there I've not read so I'm keen to get them on my list.

Keep 'em coming, people. This is fab!

xoxo

Off and Reading

A quick post to let you know I've started my first project; it's Elena's offering - The Fran Lebowitz Reader. My review post will follow when I've actually, you know, read it.

But, based on the number of pages E has folded over - her time-tested method of marking particular pages that have something she wants to return to, read again, share with friends - it's going to be a great read!

Kisses,
J