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On Twilight.
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![]() I saw Twilight the movie due to my boyfreind's love of drive ins. I slept through most of it, but I awoke during the prom sequence. I was dazzled by the sparkling fairy lights.
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This space for rent Last edited by beelzebubbles; 06-Aug-2009 at 00:02. |
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The ice in her drink melts quicker than everyone else's. |
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When I find the time I will definitely read Left Behind. It sounds so yummy.
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I had no idea what Left Behind was before reading this thread but now I am glad I found out. Judging from the 'plot introduction' on wiki it seems quite unbelievable. We should start a thread for craptastic books!
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The ice in her drink melts quicker than everyone else's. |
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Hi all,
Here's my list - novels for the most part. I also read a lot of poetry, but often find that individual poems work better than the books they are collected in. I have also taken the liberty of collapsing the work of two of my favorite children's authors into single entries. In no particular order: The Famished Road – Ben Okri Millroy the Magician – Paul Theroux Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino Maqroll; Three Novellas – Álvaro Mutis The Tin Drum – Gunter Grass The Flounder – Gunter Grass Cat and Mouse – Gunter Grass The Ice Shirt – William T. Vollman The Pillars of Eternity – Barrington J. Bayley The Paradox Men – Charles L. Harness Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov Shame – Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children– Salman Rushdie The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie The White Hotel – D.M. Thomas An Elemental Thing – Eliot Weinberger The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Italy – Dino Buzzati The Conversations – Harry Mathews The Devil is Dead – R.A. Lafferty The Rediscovery of Man – Cordwainer Smith The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck Collected Poems – Vasko Popa Collected Poems – Ted Hughes The Storyteller – Mario Vargas Llosa The Island of the Day Before – Umberto Eco Glass, Irony, and God – Anne Carson My Life in the Bush of Ghosts – Amos Tutuola the Moomin books – Tove Jannson Ten Nights of Dream – Natsuke Soseki The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea – Yukio Mishima Tattoo – Earl Thompson The Star Diaries – Stanlisaw Lem Ararat – D.M. Thomas Eating Pavalova – D.M. Thomas China Men – Maxine Hong Kingston My Secret History – Paul Theroux The Songlines – Bruce Chatwin The Viceroy of Ouidah – Bruce Chatwin Austerlich – W.G. Sebald Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee the Uncle books – J. P. Martin A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien Justine – Lawrence Durrell Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury Son of Man – Augusto Roa Bastos Before Night Falls – Renaldo Arenas Labyrinths – Jorge Luis Borges Greybeard – Brian Aldiss Last edited by Refus de Sejour; 05-Apr-2010 at 04:05. Reason: typo: "the pour mouth" (!) |
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Heh, I was expecting someone to pick up on the dearth of female authors - but you're right. Most of my reading is 20th Century - I have read earlier (Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Dickens, Gogol, Swift, Aloysius Bertrand, Comte de Lautréamont, de Sade, Conrad) - but none of them quite make my top 50. Now if it were a top 100. . .
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[QUOTE=Refus de Sejour;59476]Hi all,
Tattoo – Earl Thompson I've recently seen a couple of positive comments about Thompson's earlier novel - A Garden of Sand. I was thinking of ordering a copy of that book, but before I do, I'd be curious to hear what you liked about Tattoo. Maybe I'll change my mind and order that novel instead. |
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Stevie - interesting question. I first read Tattoo in my early teens, and I confess that the original attraction was the many extremely explicit and lengthy sex scenes scattered throughout it. In later years I reread the book and realised there was much more to it than that; Thompson is a vivid storyteller, skilled at creatiing convincing characters through dialogue, and the way the protagonist matures throughout the book is very moving. The writing isn't flashly, but it's beautifully solid and workmanlike.
I haven't read any of his other works though, so can't compare. I do believe that "Garden of Sand" is the precursor to "Tattoo," so maybe you're right in ordering that first. |
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Sleeping Beauty - Ross MacDonald
Pierre, or the Ambiguities - Herman Melville Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M Cain The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles The Secret History - Donna Tarrt The Little Drummer Girl - John Le Carre Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky The Sorrows of Young Werther - Johann von Goethe Endless Love - Scott Spencer Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon V. by Thomas Pynchon That Awful Mess on the Via Merlana - Carlo Emilio Gadda (my avatar) Alien Hearts - Guy de Maupassant The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster Burr - Gore Vidal 2666 - Roberto Bolano The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser Death Comes For The Archbishop - Willa Cather Bleak House - Charles Dickens Middlemarch - George Eliot The Eighth Day - Thornton Wilder Rabbit Redux - John Updike The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever Letting Go by Philip Roth A Flag For Sunrise - Robert Stone A Passage to India - E. M. Forster Guerillas - V.S. Naipul The White Hotel - D. M. Thomas Deliverance - James Dickey At Play in the Fields of the Lord - Peter Matthiesson Asylum - Patrick McGrath The Book of Daniel - E. L. Doctorow The End of the Road - John Barth Something Happened - Joseph Heller The Ginger Man - J.P.Donleavy Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev Nostromo - Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald For Whom The Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway |
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I have a hard time making lists, but here's my attempt. It's in no particular order and I made sure not to pick more that 2 books by one author just to give other authors a place on the list:
Confederacy of Dunces ~ John Kennedy Toole A Prayer For Owen Meany ~ John Irving Infinite Jest ~ David Foster Wallace Farewell Waltz ~ Milan Kundera The Joke ~ Milan Kundera One Hundred Years of Solitude ~ Gabriel García Márquez The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy ~ Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul ~ Douglas Adams Neverwhere ~ Neil Gaiman Good Omens ~ Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett Mort ~ Terry Pratchett The Last Continent ~ Terry Pratchett Forsyte Saga ~ John Galsworthy Of Human Bondage ~ W. Somerset Maugham The Silmarillion ~ J.R.R. Tolkien He Knew He Was Right ~ Anthony Trollope Phineas Redux ~ Anthony Trollope Handful of Dust ~ Evelyn Waugh The Rat ~ Günter Grass The Tin Drum ~ Günter Grass Magic Mountain ~ Thomas Mann As Man Grows Older ~ Italo Svevo The Possessed ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky Generations of Winter ~ Vassily Aksyonov Life and Fate ~ Vassily Grossman Oblomov ~ Ivan Goncharov And Quiet Flows the Don ~ Mikhail Sholokhov Cancer Ward ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn War and Peace ~ Leo Tolstoy Fathers and Sons ~ Ivan Turgenev On The Eve ~ Ivan Turgenev The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin ~ Vladimir Voinovich Monumental Propaganda ~ Vladimir Voinovich Master and Margarita ~ Mikhail Bulgakov The White Guard ~ Mikhail Bulgakov The Case of Comrade Tulayev ~ Victor Serge We ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin Independent People ~ Halldór Laxness World Light ~ Halldór Laxness Njal's Saga Volsunga Saga Song of the Red Ruby ~ Agnar Mykle Giants in the Earth ~ O. E. Rølvaag The Dwarf ~ Pär Lagerkvist Jerusalem ~ Selma Lagerlöf Gösta Berling's Saga ~ Selma Lagerlöf Lewi's Journey ~ Per Olov Enquist Doctor Glass ~ Hjalmer Söderberg Darkness at Noon ~ Arthur Koestler |
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Someone should start a D. M. Thomas thread (can't find one using the search function, though I'm not sure how reliable that is)! I'll do it later on today if I get a chance. Waxwing, Sif; I find reading these lists a bittersweet experience; it's good to see familiar titles appearing, but it also reminds me how limited my own reading is. . .
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I haven't nearly read enough to make a list of 50 favourite books (50 is a lot, in my book
), but that won't stop me from making a nice list of my favourite books, does it? I just won't reach 50.One of my favourite authors is Naguib Mahfouz and his Arabian Nights and Days is the best novel I've read, with Wedding Song coming a close second. I read Respected Sir as well, but while it is very good, it wasn't as enjoyable. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of my favourite, if not my favourite novel. Maybe I read it at just the right moment in my life, maybe it just is exceptionally good, but this novel hit me like a sledgehammer. Somewhat painful, but at least it made itself noticed, did it not? Belcampo's Verhalen (Stories)is very good as well. None of the short stories in this collection leaves as deep an imprint on the mind as, say, the novel mentioned above, but most of them had me chuckling and I generally like their fable-like structure. Philip en de anderen (Philip and the others), a 1954 short novel by Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom is quite simply a beautiful story. Although not nearly my favourite work of fiction, it was worth the read. I've read two works by the notorious critic, poet, playwright and novelist (in that order) Gerrit Komrij and I must crown him my favourite Dutch writer with quite a distance. Verwoest Arcadië (Arcadia Destroyed) and Het Chemisch Huwelijk (The Chemical Marriage) are excellent works. The first is a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, while the second is a play based on one of Goethe's novels. Basically, the skill showed by Lionel Messi with a ball at his feet ("How the hell did he do that?!") is more or less the skill Gerrit Komrij shows with the metaphorical pen (I assume he has a computer. He must have. He blogs). He's a word magician. One can't miss Shakespeare of course, and his plays The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth are my favourites. I've read a few others by him, but wasn't particularly enthralled by them. Hamlet was somewhat of a disappointment. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde on the other hand, is simply magnificent. I'm sure that if Wilde wrote a dictionary, I'd still read it from cover to cover within a week. Lord Henry Wotton is simply hilarious and, as we all know, more often than not quote-worthy. I bought his Complete Works a couple of days ago, so his plays won't be left unread for too long either. And then there is his poetry. Oh goody. I read The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence a very long time ago, but I remember it being rather good. Same goes for Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, George Orwell's Nineteen eighty-four, Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Golding's Lord of the Flies, Burgess' A Clockwork Orange and Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, although I remember it not being quite as good as I'd hoped. I also read The Bone People, by Keri Hulme, which I thought was quite fantastic. I found it quite unique in its pace, which could be considered very slow, but when I think about it, I feel it's actually a more true-to-life pace. It's a novel you've got to take your time for. Life of Pi by Canadian Yann Martel is my standard answer when asks me for a book suggestion. It's not the height of literature, but it's very difficult to dislike and rather easy to fall in love with. I've read Une saison en Enfer (A season in Hell) and Illuminations (Illuminations) by Arthur Rimbaud and don't believe I have anything to say about either. Just trust me when I say that you've really got to read them. Le Mur (The Wall) is another French work I particularly like. The two stories about marriage confused me, but maybe I'm just not old enough to understand either. The other three stories, especially the eponymous one, are simply very good. I know some people hate him, but I happen to think Sartre is a good writer. Not the best out there, but very good nonetheless. Franz Kafka is my hero. I've read all his fiction and loved it all. Some more than others, but I loved them all. For the completeness of this list's sake: The Trial, Amerika, The Castle, The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, The Stoker, The Judgment,A Hunger Artist and Other Stories and Unpublished Stories. In a completely different area of literature: The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Much better than Decameron, The Canterbury Tales or other, similar works of the time. I've yet to see how it compares to Milton's Paradise Lost, since I haven't read that yet. And last but not least, my favourite short story: The trail of your blood in the snow by Gabriel García Márquez. Pick it up. If you love it, you won't regret it, if you don't love it (which is considerably less likely), you'll only have wasted an hour of your time at most, which is a lose that can be coped with, is it not? So, how far did I get? 34, not bad.
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and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years. - Marcel Proust |
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Thought most plays were too short so there's no Williams, Shakespeare, or Godot
The Trial--Franz Kafka The Tunnel--William H. Gass The Western Canon--Harold Bloom The Theatre and Its Double--Antonin Artaud Angels in America--Tony Kushner The Complete Poems of Hart Crane The Corrections--Jonathan Franzen One Hundred Years of Solitude--Gabriel Garcia Marquez Vineland--Thomas Pynchon Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me--Richard Farina Collected Poems--James Merrill Collected Poems--W.H. Auden Three Poems--John Ashbery War and Peace--Leo Tolstoy Invisible Man--Ralph Ellison Doctor Zhivago--Boris Pasternak At the Mountains of Madness--H.P. Lovecraft The Orchards of Syon--Geoffrey Hill Lost in the Funhouse--John Barth Native Son--Richard Wright The Moviegoer--Walker Percy Frankenstein--Mary Shelley Don Quixote--Miguel de Cervantes The Waste Land--T.S. Eliot Light in August--William Faulkner New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001--Czeslaw Milosz The Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens East of Eden--John Steinbeck 2666--Roberto Bolano The Art of the Novel--Milan Kundera The Duino Elegies--Rainer Maria Rilke Winesburg, Ohio--Sherwood Anderson The Lover--Marguerite Duras The Stranger--Albert Camus A Farewell to Arms--Ernest Hemingway A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius--Dave Eggers Leaves of Grass--Walt Whitman Swann's Way--Marcel Proust Hunger--Knut Hamsun Catch-22--Joseph Heller Orlando--Virgina Woolf Pale Fire--Vladimir Nabokov The Heart is a Lonely Hunter--Carson McCullers The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems--Tomas Transtromer A Clockwork Orange--Anthony Burgess The Red Badge of Courage--Stephen Crane The Magus--John Fowles Autobiography of Red--Anne Carson The Eighth Day--Thornton Wilder Last edited by JTolle; 12-May-2010 at 06:09. |
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