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Your Book Activity - December 2016


Athena

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Also nearly done with Sweet Temptation by Lucy Diamond. This is my first book by this author and she's written some really great characters in this one. Lauren is a bit hard to get on with at first but am warming to her towards the end. This is going to be a high rating from me.

I've read The Beach Café novel and the Beach Café novellas all by Lucy Diamond and really liked those. It's good to hear a recommendation for another one of her novels :)

 

Enjoying all of them, and hopefully will have time for one more in December! This is the most reading I've done since August!

I'm happy for you that your reading is doing better than in the last few months :friends0:.

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Have you read anything else by Jane Austen? I have read two of her most popular novels and didn't like either. I am hoping I enjoy something of hers.

 

 

I've read Persuasion, which I wasn't too keen on either and also Jane Eyre, but that was a long long time ago and I can't really remember much about it. I do know I got a bit bored towards the end and struggled to finish it though. :D

 

I think perhaps I'm too impatient a reader for some of the classics. ;)

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I've read Persuasion, which I wasn't too keen on either and also Jane Eyre, but that was a long long time ago and I can't really remember much about it. I do know I got a bit bored towards the end and struggled to finish it though. :D

Jane Eyre is by Charlotte Brontë.

I don't get on too well with classics either (Jane Eyre is one I really liked though).

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Finished with Kafka for now. I've plowed through all of his works except The Trial, I left that for another time. With the exception of Metamorphosis, everything he wrote was kind of... average. His short stories are nothing special (not even the famous A Hunter Artist) and most of the time I barely saw any point in them at all. 

 

On another note, I've finally started reading The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. Intriguing premise and good writing (well translation I guess) and for some reason it always makes me want to keep on reading. There's all this mistery combined with every day trivialities that I find fascinating. After this I can see the movie at last since I've been avoiding it for more than five years now. 

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I read Jane Eyre around 10 years ago. I remember liking it but not loving it.

I love the classics but I think just because they are "classics" if you don't like or read them then "you don't know good literature"

I would rather give a 5 star to a badly written book that makes me happy/laugh/feel emotions than a well written book I find boring just because it's by a certain author or a classic. The only way I would give Jane Austen that I have read 5 or even 4 stars is just because everybody else has. That's just wrong.

 

Athena, I noticed you had read some Lucy Diamond :) glad you enjoyed them too. I'll be sad to let this book go but happy that it's another one I can put on my Read shelf.

 

Afterwards think I'll read The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens and Meet Me Under The Misletoe by Abby Clements for something Christmassy.

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After reading The Pillars of the Earth (a little over 1,000 pages) and World Without End (a little over 1,200 pages) and each in two to three weeks, I reckoned I'd be done with The Lord of the Rings before I knew it. Boy, was I wrong... I've been at this since September, though to be fair the first part took me two months. I usually never interrupt a series if I can avoid it, but after The Fellowship of the Ring, I needed a different book more than I needed air or coffee.

 

I'm on The Return of the King now and it's a bit better, but a lot of it probably has to do with knowing I'm almost through! I hope I'll re-read these books in a few years' time and find out what so many people love about it. As has been discussed before in this topic, LOTR is one of those classics that you have to have read and loved to be seen as a "true" reader by many people -- unfortunately.

 

In other news, I ordered Zadie Smith's Swing Time on November 27th and today, it finally arrived! I look forward to reading it, as I've enjoyed White Teeth immensely and liked NWOn Beauty was the one I've least enjoyed by Smith.

 

I also received an e-mail from the library that The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmão by Martha Batalha arrived. I'd ordered it months ago and had actually forgotten all about it!

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I would rather give a 5 star to a badly written book that makes me happy/laugh/feel emotions than a well written book I find boring just because it's by a certain author or a classic.

 

I'm a bit different with this. I sure wouldn't give five stars to a book that I find boring, but I also wouldn't give them to a book that made me feel emotion but that was badly written. Obviously I want my books to make me feel something, but how it's written is often important for me. Guess there has to be some kind of balance.

 

In any case, I've just hit 100 books for the year with half a month left to spare. Before my holiday in September I was 10 or 11 books behind schedule, so I'm rather pleased that I managed to hit my target with so much time left. Going to finally allow myself to sit down with The Old Curiosity Shop now - my final book for this year's Classics Challenge.

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After reading The Pillars of the Earth (a little over 1,000 pages) and World Without End (a little over 1,200 pages) and each in two to three weeks, I reckoned I'd be done with The Lord of the Rings before I knew it. Boy, was I wrong... I've been at this since September, though to be fair the first part took me two months. I usually never interrupt a series if I can avoid it, but after The Fellowship of the Ring, I needed a different book more than I needed air or coffee.

 

I'm on The Return of the King now and it's a bit better, but a lot of it probably has to do with knowing I'm almost through! I hope I'll re-read these books in a few years' time and find out what so many people love about it. As has been discussed before in this topic, LOTR is one of those classics that you have to have read and loved to be seen as a "true" reader by many people -- unfortunately

 

Alexander, you've got some pretty heavy books going on! I've enjoyed them all. I will say that LOTR's was more trying negates of all the battles. I had to put it down and come back to it but the wars never seemed to end! Follett is a masterful writer. I enjoy his work.

 

I'm currently reading a Midsdomer Murders book by Caroline Graham and A Week In Winter by Maeve Binchy.

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I'm glad to hear you liked Reamde (for some reason I keep mispelling it as Readme from time to time). I've got More Than This on my TBR, I look forward to hear what you think once you've finished it. I'm glad to hear it's readable. I've only read A Monster Calls by the author, so far. I loved that one, though, but from what I've heard More Than This is quite different.

 

I keep mispelling it as well. :D:doh:

 

More Than This is very good so far. I have the day off so I plan on getting through more of it today. I've read A Monster Calls and The Knife of Never Letting Go, both by Ness but I'd say this one is pretty different from those two.

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Finished my 70th book of the year today - joint highest annual total, so looking good on that front.  Unfortunately, it was not the greatest,  Beyond Black (Hilary Mantel) earning just two stars.  Mantel is a superb writer, but having tried a couple or her earlier books after being blown away by Wolf Hall, I've been somewhat underwhelmed by the novels as a whole.  I think I'll stick to Bring Up The Bodies and A Place of Greater Safety from here on.

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And I always mash my Brontes.  When it comes to anything Anne, Charlotte or the other one, I simply cannot brain.  :D

 

I'm still reading Murder for Christmas.  Not enjoying it quite as much as The Santa Klaus Murder, but it's ok.  It's similar in plot, and the "detective" protagonist is trying to be Hercule Poirot, but never mind.

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Nearly finished More Than This by Patrick Ness. It's gone downhill a bit for me. :dunno:

 

I went to the library this morning - first time in a long time - and finally borrowed 1Q84: Book 1 & 2 by Haruki Murakami. That should keep me busy over the holidays. :D I also borrowed The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing.

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Began my Christmas reading this weekend, kicking off with Angela Thirkhill's High Rising, started yesterday and finished this morning.  Definitely a book of its time (1930s), with a completely different set of social mores and attitudes to today, but, making room for that, a pleasantly light, humorous read.  Good for winding down!  Now on to J. Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White.  Am dipping in and out of David Crystal's Making A Point in between times.

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I've finished More Than This which was ultimately a big disappointment. Never mind...I'm now diving right into 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. :boogie:

That's such a shame :(. I look forward to read your review!

 

I hope 1Q84 will be good! I haven't read it yet but I look forward to hear / read your opinion.

 

I'm currently reading Abby Clements - Meet Me Under The Mistletoe. So far I'm enjoying this novel.

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Alexander, you've got some pretty heavy books going on! I've enjoyed them all. I will say that LOTR's was more trying negates of all the battles. I had to put it down and come back to it but the wars never seemed to end! Follett is a masterful writer. I enjoy his work.

 

I'm currently reading a Midsdomer Murders book by Caroline Graham and A Week In Winter by Maeve Binchy.

 

I stand corrected. Reading The Return of the King - I totally get it. I totally get why people love LOTR. Not all of it, but at least this part. I've only been through Helm's Deep and the Siege of Gondor so far, so the battles are okay for now. I do prefer those to the descriptions of the landscapes and mountain ranges and passages and such. There's so much information in those that it becomes hard to see in my mind's eye. I do feel with LOTR that these are books I have to drag myself through the hard parts, because if I put it down to come back to it later, it's even worse.

 

Follet is indeed a great writer, judging by the two works by him that I've read.

 

I didn't know there were Midsomer Murders books!

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Interesting discussion re LOTR.

 

I am planning on reading through The Hobbit and LOTR during my two-week travels starting tomorrow. I will be on a lot of plane journeys, trains and no doubt a lot of waiting time, and I was assuming that reading LOTR would offer some escape.

 

Is Tolkien's writing quite difficult to get into then?

 

I also have a couple of Pratchett's Discworld series lying around which I know for definite would offer a nice relaxing read, but I was hoping that I would finally be able to get through LOTR..

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Is Tolkien's writing quite difficult to get into then?

 

 

I'm no fan of fantasy, but absolutely loved LOTR which I found incredibly easy to get into.  Both times I've read, I've finished the three books in no more than four days.  I found The Hobbit OK, certainly an easy enough read, but rather too childish in style for my taste - and that was initially as a fourteen year old reader.  Not in the same league as LOTR.

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Finished reading The Woman in the Dunes last night. Excellent book imo. Now I will finally see the movie. 

 

It's written on the back of my book that it's a "kafkaesque" novel but I did not really see it that way. 

 

Oh and don't read this while you are at the beach. Or any place with lots of sand for that matter. 

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