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Angury's Reading & Writing Log 2018


Angury

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Angury's Reading & Writing Log 2018

 

Currently reading: Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett



Books Read in 2018

January

  • If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (3/5)

  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (2/5)

 

May

  • Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann (4/5)

 

June

  • The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (3/5)
  • Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov (4/5)

 

July

  • Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann (4/5)
  • Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (4/5)

 

August

  • For Two Thousand Years by Mihail Sebastian (2/5)
  • The Fountain Head by Ayn Rand (2/5)

 

September

  • A Heart so White by Javier Marias (3/5)
  • A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac by Edward Shorter (3/5)
  • Indian Philosophy: Volume 2 by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (4/5)

 

October

  • The Graduate by Charles Webb (2/5)
  • The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West (3/5)
  • The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (3/5)

 

November

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (4/5)
  • Life after Life by Kate Atkinson (4/5)
  • A Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak (3/5)
  • Moby Dick by Herman Melville (4/5)

 

December

  • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (3/5)
  • White Noise by Don DeLillo (3/5)
  • The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (4/5)
  • Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett (3/5)
  • Man at Arms by Terry Pratchett (4/5)
Edited by Angury
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To-Read

Fiction
• Abe, Kobo - The Woman in the Dunes
• Bukowski, Charles - Tales of Ordinary Madness
• Bulgakov, Mikhail - The Master and Margarita
• Byatt, A.S. - Possession

• Calvino, Italo - If One Winter's Night a Traveller

• Camus, Albert - The Plague
• Catton, Eleanor - The Luminaries
• Christensen, Kate - The Epicure's Lament

 Eliot, George - Daniel Deronda
• Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Demons

• Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - The Gambler and A Nasty Business
• Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - The Idiot
• Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying

• Gide, Andre - The Immoralist
• Hall, Sarah - Daughters of the North
• Hall, Sarah - Haweswater

• Hardy, Thomas - The Return of the Native
• Hesse, Herman - Journey to the East
• Hesse, Herman - Narcissus and Goldmund
• Hesse, Herman - The Glass Bead Game

• Jelinek, Elfriede - Greed

• Johnson, Denis - Train Dreams
• Kavenna, Joanna - Come to the Edge
• Lish, Atticus - Life is with People
 Morrison, Toni - The Bluest Eye
• Nabokov, Vladimir - Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
• Nabokov, Vladimir - Pale Fire

• Nutting, Alissa - Tampa

• Quincey, Thomas de - Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

• Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
• Sartre, Jean-Paul - The Age of Reason
• Singh, Khushwant - Train to Pakistan
• Thackeray, William Makepeace - Vanity Fair
• Thomas, Michael Ford - Suicide Notes
• Zweig, Stefan - The Royal Game


Medicine, Psychology & Anthropology
• Bateson, Gregory - Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology
• Brewer, John D. - The Public Value of the Social Sciences: An Interpretive Essay
• Cantacuzino, Marnia - The Forgiveness Project
• Carel, Havi - Health, Illness and Disease: Philosophical Essays
• Cooper, Rachel - Psychiatry and Philosophy of Science
• Diamond, John - C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too
• Gifford, Fred - Philosophy of Medicine
• Kahneman, Daniel - Thinking, Fast and Slow

• Kleinman, Arthur - The Illness Narratives: suffering, healing and the human condition
• Kleinman, Arthur - Rethinking Psychiatry: from cultural category to personal experience
• Laing, Ronald D. - Wisdom, Madness and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist 1927-57
• Levi-Strauss, Claude - Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture
• Mishler, Elliot G. - The Discourse of Medicine: Dialectics of Medical Interviews
• Ofri, Danielle - What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
• Osler, William - A Way of Life: An Address to Yale Students, Sunday Evening, April 20, 1913
• Perry, Sarah - Every Cradle is a Grave: Rethinking the Ethics of Birth and Suicide
• Phillips, Adam - On Kindness
• Reynolds, Richard - On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays
• Selzer, Richard - Letters to a Young Doctor
• Sigerist, Henry E. - Medicine and Human Welfare (Terry Lectures)

• Skultans, Vieda and Cox, John - Anthropological Approaches to Psychological Medicine 
• Sontag, Susan - Illness as Metaphor
• Storr, Anthony - The Integrity of the Personality
• Svenaeus, Fredrik - The Hermeneutics of Medicine and the Phenomenology of Health: Steps Towards a Philosophy of Medical Practice
• Tallis, Raymond - The Black Mirror: Looking at Life through Death
• Woolf, Virginia - On Being Ill


Philosophy
• Alain de Botton - Status Anxiety

• Aristotle - The Art of Rhetoric
• Aurelius, Marcus - Meditations
• Burton, Neel - Plato: Letters to my Son
• Dewey, John - How We Think
• Jaspers, Karl - Philosophy of Existence

• Kierkegaard, Soren - The Concept of Anxiety
• Merton, Thomas - Thoughts in Solitude

• Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli - Indian Philosophy Volume II
• Russell, Bertrand - The Analysis of Mind
• Tallis, Raymond - In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Literature & Writing
• Prose, Francine - Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
• Eagleton, Terry - How to Read Literature
• Eagleton, Terry - Literary Theory: An Introduction
• Huxley, Aldous - Literature and Science
• Midgley, Mary - Science and Poetry
• Thomas, Francis-Noel - Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose

Other
• Atkinson, Charles Francis - Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development

• Bevan, Aneurin - In Place of Fear
• Debord, Guy - The Society of the Spectacle
• Orwell, George - Down and Out in Paris and London
• Rosseau, Jean-Jacques - Confessions
• Tolstoy, Leo - What is Art?

Edited by Angury
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Writing Log

 

Current Projects

  • 1st Novel (Chapter 6)
  • 2nd 'Draft' Novel (Chapter 2)

 

Goals

  • Aim to write for at least fifteen minutes each day.

 

Progress

  • November
    Chapter 5 completed; to re-review.
Edited by Angury
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I love a squeaky clean new thread. I can't believe it's 2018 already.

 

Back in 2017 I created my first ever Reading Diary on this forum and I found it immensely useful. Not only was it fascinating to see what books I had read and what I had thought about them (boy did that bring some nostalgia) but it also gave me an overarching view of the direction of my reading interests. 

 

I've decided to continue my Reading Log into the next year, but this time with an added Writing Log. My aim is to write everyday, and I hope documenting the word count on this thread will give me some motivation.

 

At present I am working on a fictional novel, which I have no aims to publish - it is purely an opportunity to flex my writing muscles. However, now and then I enjoy writing essays & articles which I will document in this log.

 

Bring on 2018!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I was so thrilled to hear that the forum was coming back. This is probably one of the few forums that I check regularly and feel like I'm part of a community. :)

 

I updated my log to include the books I have read in the past year; there was a bit of a gap at the start of the year when I was a bit busy with my job, but I've made up for that in the past few months.

 

I'll write a few reviews of the books I've read more recently in the next couple of days.

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26 minutes ago, Athena said:

Hi Angury, good to see you :)! How've you been?

 

 

Hi Athena!

 

I've been good thanks. Since this forum has been up and running again I've found increased motivation to read more and get back to writing again. It's so nice to be back. :)

 

What about yourself? How's your reading going?

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Oooh I see you read A Bridge of Clay this month, really interested to see what you thought of that! I loved The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger  but this one sounds quite different. 

 

I also added The Luminaries to my 'to read' list recently :)  

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19 hours ago, Angury said:

Hi Athena!

 

I've been good thanks. Since this forum has been up and running again I've found increased motivation to read more and get back to writing again. It's so nice to be back. :)

 

What about yourself? How's your reading going?

 

I'm glad you've been good :). I'm good too thanks :)! I've been quite busy in October/November, so my reading has slowed down somewhat. But that's okay. I'm hoping it'll pick back up for the rest of November and December.

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On 11/19/2018 at 5:29 PM, Hayley said:

Oooh I see you read A Bridge of Clay this month, really interested to see what you thought of that! I loved The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger  but this one sounds quite different. 

 

To be honest, I didn't enjoy A Bridge of Clay as much as the other two books you mentioned. That's not to say it's not good - and it seems to have received a lot of excellent reviews. Zusak is without question a fantastic storyteller and the novel will grip you. I would recommend it. :) 

 

 

I just finished reading Moby Dick last night. It's not as difficult as people make it out to be. It is very well written, almost like poetry in the sections where he describes the whale. I know a lot of people complain that it feels like one is reading an Encylopedia about whales rather than a novel, but I really didn't get that feeling at all. The chapters on the anatomy of the whale don't read as dry textbooks - they are filled with beautiful metaphors and imagery, and these chapters very much integrate with the flow of the novel. 

 

I'm now about to read Don Quixote. I tend to go through episodes of wanting to read big novels, and Don Quixote stood out to me because of how famous it seems to be and the positive comments it attracts. Quite looking forward to it.

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Great review! Moby Dick is one of my "didn't finish" books, but your review has made me want to give it another try! I'll also be interested to see your review of Don Quixote.  It's another book on my "read it one day" list, but the size of it has out me off so far.

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I really struggled with Moby Dick. It wasn't the whale descriptions that I found difficult to get through though, it was the explanations of the techniques of whaling. I actually can't really remember the descriptions of the anatomy of whales, I am also tempted to give it another try now!

 

I hope you enjoy Don Quixote, I'll be interested to see if you think it lives up to it's fame! 

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On 26/11/2018 at 11:45 AM, Angury said:

 

I just finished reading Moby Dick last night. It's not as difficult as people make it out to be. It is very well written, almost like poetry in the sections where he describes the whale.....

 

Succinct (you're better at that than Melville!), and great, review!  Completely concurs with my feelings (which is probably why I think it's great!).  I was surprised at how much easier a read it was than I had anticipated, but I do find a lot of the 19th century classics a lot more readable than is often suggested - maybe it's a case of getting one's inner ear in tune to the language?. It's certainly one of my 6-star (favourites) books. 

 

 

Quote

I'm now about to read Don Quixote. I tend to go through episodes of wanting to read big novels, and Don Quixote stood out to me because of how famous it seems to be and the positive comments it attracts. Quite looking forward to it.

 

I started listening to this as an audiobook in the days I commuted, but it took so long I lost the plot a bit, and so decided to revert to my normally preferred method of actually reading!  I've not done that yet, although I've dipped into it, so I'm already looking forward to your comments!  Which translation are you using?  I've tried a couple, and have plumped for Edith Grossman's - which has had excellent reviews in terms of its faithfulness, whilst balancing the needs of most modern readers with the older language.

Edited by willoyd
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On 11/26/2018 at 12:51 PM, ian said:

Great review! Moby Dick is one of my "didn't finish" books, but your review has made me want to give it another try! I'll also be interested to see your review of Don Quixote.  It's another book on my "read it one day" list, but the size of it has out me off so far.

 

Do you remember what made you put it down unfinished? I'm curious to hear other peoples' thoughts on the novel as I feel like mine are a bit too positive. :P 

 

I'm enjoying Don Quixote so far. It's fun to read, great plot and a nice way to relax. Plus, you look clever reading a big book!

 

On 11/28/2018 at 5:48 PM, Hayley said:

I really struggled with Moby Dick. It wasn't the whale descriptions that I found difficult to get through though, it was the explanations of the techniques of whaling. I actually can't really remember the descriptions of the anatomy of whales, I am also tempted to give it another try now!

 

I hope you enjoy Don Quixote, I'll be interested to see if you think it lives up to it's fame! 

 

Please do give it another try! 

 

Yes, I was also tempted by the fame around Don Quixote. It's interesting how my perception about a book changes when it's well known and reputable. If Don Quixote were just any old book, I probably wouldn't read it as it's not my kind of thing. But constantly on Top 10 Books lists and rave reviews? Yes please! :P 

 

On 11/29/2018 at 8:42 AM, willoyd said:

 

Succinct (you're better at that than Melville!), and great, review!  Completely concurs with my feelings (which is probably why I think it's great!).  I was surprised at how much easier a read it was than I had anticipated, but I do find a lot of the 19th century classics a lot more readable than is often suggested - maybe it's a case of getting one's inner ear in tune to the language?. It's certainly one of my 6-star (favourites) books. 

 

 

 

I started listening to this as an audiobook in the days I commuted, but it took so long I lost the plot a bit, and so decided to revert to my normally preferred method of actually reading!  I've not done that yet, although I've dipped into it, so I'm already looking forward to your comments!  Which translation are you using?  I've tried a couple, and have plumped for Edith Grossman's - which has had excellent reviews in terms of its faithfulness, whilst balancing the needs of most modern readers with the older language.

 

Thanks Willoyd, that's lovely to hear. :) 

 

I agree with you, I often find older books easier and more enjoyable to read. I love the richness of the writing and it makes me feel like I'm reading art. 

 

I'm using the translation by John Rutherford. I must admit, I've never been that focused on certain translations of booked, I just tend to go for the one with the nicest cover. :P I think the only novel I became concerned over accurate translation was In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Now there's a 6-star book!

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1 hour ago, Angury said:

 I think the only novel I became concerned over accurate translation was In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Now there's a 6-star book!

 

Interesting - something's always put me off tackling it.  Not quite sure what, as length doesn't bother me.  Maybe just reputations?  Again, that doesn't usually, but there's something about it that's meant I've never even tried.  Something to think about!

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