Sunday, June 15, 2008

A Quick Blog for the Day

Feeling a little unwell this morning so I stole this idea from Niece Shannon (http://www.halfsoledboots.blogspot.com/) as a way to get a blog done and have some fun at the same time. I read constantly and try to vary my reading. Though right now I'm on a 'disability jag' having finished Lottery (about a man with an intellectual disability who wins the state lottery) and begun Edgar Sawtelle (about a man who is mute and raises dogs) with October waiting (about a guy disabled by polio). I was asked by a woman in Butler to list the books done by the disability book club at Vita, so now seems to be the time, we've done Speed of Dark, Diving Bell and Butterfly, Too Big To Miss and are now doing The Girls. I've been lazy and not listed author's names, if you really want to find one and need a name, let me know.

Also want to mention, to those interested in disability fiction that my favourite literary character with a disability is Matthew Shardlake who stars in a series of murder mysteries set in King Henry the VIII's court. I've read all the books in the series and a new one, Revelation, has just come out and is in hardcover. I'm willing myself to wait until it's in soft cover, I will probably fail. My favourite disability book of all time is probably Precious Bane but Thread of Grace is pretty close to the top as well. Currently on order from Amazon is Accidents of Nature about a summer 'crip camp'. The disability book I'd most like to read is Skallagrigg but it's out of print (if you have it and want to swap books, I'd be thrilled.)

Well, this was meant to be a non blog day, cause I'm feeling a little unwell - so here goes ...

These are the 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. I've read the bold ones, I've put a question mark beside the one's I've never heard of and an exclamation mark beside the book if I loved it. Shannon mentioned that she never before felt such an urge to lie while doing the task - I too wanted to claim to have read some of the below, but what the heck, you already know the worst of me ....

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Anna Karenina

!Crime and Punishment

Catch-22

?One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wuthering Heights

The Silmarillion

Life of Pi: a novel

The Name of the Rose

Don Quixote

Moby Dick

Ulysses

!Madame Bovary

The Odyssey

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Eyre

The Tale of Two Cities

The Brothers Karamazov

?Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

War and Peace

Vanity Fair

The Time Traveler’s Wife

The Iliad

Emma

The Blind Assassin

!The Kite Runner

?Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations

American Gods

?A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlesex

!Quicksilver

Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales

The Historian: a novel

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Love in the Time of Cholera

Brave New World

The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum

Middlemarch

!Frankenstein

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

A Clockwork Orange

Anansi Boys

!The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath

The Poisonwood Bible: a novel

1984

Angels & Demons

The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)

The Satanic Verses

Sense and Sensibility

!The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mansfield Park

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

?To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Oliver Twist

Gulliver’s Travels

Les Misérables

The Corrections

?The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

!The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Dune

The Prince

The Sound and the Fury

Angela’s Ashes : a memoir

The God of Small Things

A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present

Cryptonomicon

Neverwhere

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Dubliners

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Beloved

Slaughterhouse-five

The Scarlet Letter

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The Mists of Avalon

Oryx and Crake : a novel

?Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

!Cloud Atlas

?The Confusion

Lolita

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

The Catcher in the Rye

On the Road

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

The Aeneid

Watership Down

?Gravity’s Rainbow

The Hobbit

In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

White Teeth

Treasure Island

David Copperfield

The Three Musketeers

11 comments:

  1. Interesting. Feel better soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Feel better soon Dave.

    I've read many of those books, as the 'classics' were required reading in high school. Not that I can remember the details of many of those.

    Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a book I had started many times but never finished and when I finally was in the mood to really read it, found that I didn't want to put it down.

    Memoirs of a Geisha drew me in quickly.

    Wicked I absolutely love~ Gregory Maguire gave the characters such depth that it has become a favorite of mine, and I have since read his other books.

    When I saw the exclamation point next to 'The Portrait of Dorian Gray' I smiled big~ that has long been a favorite of mine~ since I was a child! I have the works of Oscar Wilde, ballads, plays & children's stories (fabulous children's stories!!!). Often when people tell me I look too young to have adult children, I tell them I have a portrait in my attic. Most people look at me like they have no clue what I mean. Though I was in the lottery line for Wicked on Broadway a few months ago, and someone told me how young I looked, and I mentioned the portrait. The young lady I was talking to said, "Ah, Portrait of Dorian Gray! You're funny!" and I was tickled someone got it! Her mom didn't, but this young woman did.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Feel better soon Dave!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rest up and feel better. I noted that you didn't have Beloved in bold. It's very dark but excellent book, one of my favorites.

    Anyone looking for an inspirational read might want to check out Man's Search for Meaning-It affirmed everything I believe about how to live.

    Take care.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Didn't you say that someone is coming from the UK to do a workshop at Vita? I got my copy from the UK and it looks like it is available . . .
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Skallagrigg-William-Horwood/dp/0140072063
    Hope you feel better soon!
    Susan Ludwig

    ReplyDelete
  6. Fab~ I mentioned that book several months ago & Dave said it was also a favorite. I think it's one of the two books I've bought so many copies of, since most of the time when I lend it out, it never comes back to me, so I buy a new copy. I believe I'm on my 6th copy of it.

    The other book I have had to buy multiple copies of is "Illusion~ adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" by Richard Bach. Lent ones never made it back to me either.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Dave:

    I am a day late so I know that you are feeling better and glad to hear it!

    Have you ever read A Prayer for Owen Meanie by John Irving? It is one of my favourite books and one of the major characters has a disability.

    The Girls is an amazing read - enjoy!

    take care
    Colleen

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