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Andrea's intended reads for 2008


~Andrea~

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This year I will aim for 20 books (since I didn't quite reach my target of 25 last year. I am also in the first quarter of The Stand so that's an instant handicap.)

 

I will try not to be too prescriptive or put myself under too much pressure.

 

Absolute must reads for 2008:

 

The Virgin Suicides - J Egenides (tick)

E11even terrible months - R L Royle (tick)

The ghost writer - John Harwood (tick)

Guards Guards - Terry Pratchett (tick)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (tick)

 

Hooray all ticked!!

 

Other TBR bookshelf:

 

Minnette Walters - The shape of snakes

Minnette Walters - Acid Row

PD James - A Certain Justice

Wilkie Collins The Woman in White

Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales (modern translation)

From the Holy Mountain - William Dalrymple

Thomas Hardy Far from the madding crowd

Joanna Trollope - The men and the girls

Justin Cartwright - The promise of happiness

Damaged - Cathy Glass

James Herbert - Haunted

Othello

The Merchant of Venice

King Lear

Julius Caesar

Twelfth night

A Winter's tale

Lucy's monster - R L Royle

Misery - Stephen King

Pet Sematary - Stephen King

The face - Dean Koontz

Dark rivers of the heart - Dean Koontz

ShadowFire - Dean Koontz

Strange Places, Questionable People - John Simpson

Man and Boy - Tony Parsons

Logic - A very short introduction

Informal Logic

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle

The Power and the Glory - Grahame Greene

Star Gazing - Linda Gillard

Any way you want me - Lucy Diamond

Marley and Me - John Grogan

The Five people you meet in heaven - Mitch Albom

 

Wish list:

 

The Testament of Gideon Mack

A spot of bother - Mark Haddon

James Herbert - The Secret of Crickley Hall

Walking Ollie - Stephen Foster

The House on the Strand - Daphne Du Maurier

The Secret Garden

Superstition - David Ambrose

LOTR - Tolkein

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

Something Wicked this way comes - Ray Bradbury

The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury

The Time Travellers Wife

The book of lost things - John Connelly

Chocky - John Wyndham

The Kraken awakes - John Wyndham

Winnie the Pooh - (complete short stories and poems) A. A. Milne

Rumble Fish - Susan Hinton

Dirk Gently's Holistic detective agency - Douglas Adams (reread)

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Stuck in neutral - Terry Trueman

The Oyster House Siege - Jay Rayner

Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah

IT - Stephen King

The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean Auel

Orthodoxy - G K Chesterton

Weaveworld - Clive Barker

A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle

The five people you meet in heaven - Mitch Albom

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

For One More Day - Mitch Albom

Boy A - Jonathan Trigell

The Third Man & The Fallen Idol - Grahame Greene

Footprints in the sand - Sarah Challis

Emotional Geology - Linda Gillard

The Heaven Tree - Edith Pargeter

The Haunting of Toby Jugg - Dennis Wheatley

Just Courage - Gary Haugen (IJM)

Savages - Shirley Conran

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith

 

Authors to try:

 

Phillip K Dick

Anthony Horowitz

David Baddiel

Anne Tyler

Kelley Armstrong

Raven Hart

Tess Gerritson

Sam Hayes

Jonathon Coe

John Updike

 

2008 Reading:

 

The Stand - Stephen King (10/10 07 - 10/02/08)

Life of Pi - Yann Martel (8/10 05/01/08 - 12/01/08)

Great Expectations (audio, abridged) - Charles Dickens (7/10 15/01/08 - 01/02/08)

Guards Guards - Terry Pratchett (5/10 10/02/08 - 01/03/08)

Eats Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss (10/10 01/03/08 - 02/03/08)

 

The Virgin suicides - J Eugenides (7/10 03/03/08 - 21/03/08)

On Writing - Stephen King (9/10 15/03/08 - 25/03/08)

Love Rules - Freya North (Unfinished 26/03/08 - 30/03/08)

Fear Nothing - Dean Koontz (8/10 30/03/08 - 15/04/08)

Shakespeare - Bill Bryson (8/10 15/04/08 - 23/04/08)

 

Divine Nobodies - Jim Palmer (7/10 21/04/08 - 01/06/08)

The Ghost Writer - John Harwood (10/10 24/04/08 - 17/05/08))

Carrie - Stephen King (9/10 19/05/08 - 30/05/08)

Short Cuts - Ray Carver (19/05 - )

The Jungle Book (book 1) - Rudyard Kipling (5/10 31/05/08 - 13/06/08)

 

The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom (9/10 08/06/08 - 24/06/08)

Dinner with Mugabe - Heidi Holland (9/10 14/06/08 - 17/07/08)

Out of the Silent Planet - C S Lewis (8/10 25/06/08 - 06/07/08)

Bridget Jones, Edge of Reason - Helen Fielding (7/10 08/07/08 - 04/08/08)

African History: A very short Introduction - OUP (18/07/08 - 23/08/08)

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J K Rowling (9/10 23/07/08 - 21/08/08)

How to talk to a widower - Jonathon Tropper (unfinished - 12/08/08 - 15/08/08)

The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham (8/10 18/08/08 - 31/08/08)

Entertaining Angels - Joanna Bell (01/08/08 - unfinished)

Eleven Terrible Months - R L Royle (7/10 03/09/08 - 28/09/08)

 

Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie (6/10 12/09/08 - 20/09/08)

The Mind of God - Paul Davis (28/09/08 - 30/11/08)

This Sweet Sickness - Patricia Highsmith (10/10 30/09/08 - 14/10/08)

Persuasion - Jane Austen (7/10 15/10/08 - 19/11/08)

Over You - Lucy Diamond (20/11/08 - 16/12/08)

 

-----to be carried forward to

Informal Logic - (03/12/08 - )

Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (17/12/08 - )

Edited by ~Andrea~
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Well The Stand is absolutely riveting!! I can hardly bare to put it down. I'm just under half way and feel I am rushing to finish so that I can get stuck into the Life of Pi for Jan's reading circle. So I have decided to take a little break from The Stand to start Life of Pi so that I can get back to The Stand and fully concentrate on it and savour every moment :lol:.

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Finished Life of Pi, and enjoyed it (8/10), although maybe because I took it fairly simply at face value. Any deep symbolic meanings (beyond the obvious) may have been lost on me but I will comment on the reading circle thread.

 

So now back to the wonderful The Stand :lol::)

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Started Great Expectations the other day on audio (it takes me ages to get through audio books)

 

The Stand is riveting at the moment.

The women from 'the zoo' have just escaped and Stu and Fran have just got together, unaware that Harold knows. Harold is now 'helping' Stu with the rocket launchers.

:)

 

Fantastic stuff!

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Thoroughly enjoying Great Expectations on audio, read by Hugh Laurie. It's a bit of a cheat because it's abridged, (I assume, as it's only 3 hours) but I did start reading Great Expectations once and gave up half way through :welcome:. I think there's very little chance I would have another stab at reading it so this is an easy way to get some completion.

 

It's very well read by Hugh Laurie. He really brings out the humour in the book. Most of the voices he does for the characters are great, but some of the London ones do tend to sound a bit Australian :006:. And the voice of Estella sounds like an old woman. But I am definitely glad I bought this set of audio books. I'm loading them all up on my PC and will play them on my mp3 player. Can't wait!

 

The Stand is still tripping along nicely. I'm on page 764. I wonder if I'm ever going to finish it :lol:

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Stand is really good at the moment. I've just got to the bit where

Kojak has turned up in the free zone. I just loved reading a chapter written from a dog's point of view.

 

 

Haven't listened to Great Expectations for ages. I must really finish it off. I'm so slow with audio books ;)

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Glad you enjoyed The Stand - it's one of my all-time favourites. :readingtwo:

 

Hope you enjoy Guards! Guards! as much - Pratchett is one of my very few "keeper" authors - I have all the Discworld books on my permanent shelves as I do tend to reread them.

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Hmm I'm not overly enjoying Guards Guards. I will persevere though. I just wanted to try some of his later work since it's supposed to be better. Yes i know this is one of his early books but it's the first of a series i wanted to try. Maybe i should have gone with the Moist Van Lipwig one.

 

Oh well, I'm only 50 pages in. Maybe it will pick up.

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Well this is picking up a little. I think my problem is I like some characters and not others. I find the secret society of brothers very irritating. The city watch characters are better, but the beginning of the book is weighted in favour of the former.

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I picked up Conversations with God this week which I bought on impulse from Amazon. What a disappointment. Serves me right for buying without researching properly. I'm sorry but I thought it was nonsense. Sorry but I just don't buy it and feel like an idiot for wasting my money. I read 70 odd pages and just can't stomach any more.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's taking me soooo long to read this Terry Pratchett. I hadn't been enjoying it, I think I wasn't finding the characters very well drawn. The book isn't badly written and even makes me laugh but I was finding it difficult to picture what was going on and picture the characters. I was 2/3 in and very close to giving up. Last night however it picked up. I really enjoyed the bit where

 

The dragon is king and has his privy counsellors to the palace for dinner.

 

Less than a hundred pages to go now so hopefully I will enjoy the rest of it and pick up a bit of speed.

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Phew finally finished Guards! Guards! It was OK. I'm still set on reading a later work of TP but this one didn't blow me away. It was readable but not greatly engaging. It picked up towards the end but the characters did not interest me hugely. There were some very good bits, but overall I found the quality a bit patchy and the same with the humour; sometimes it made me laugh, sometimes it just irritated me. 5/10

 

Almost finished the excellent Eats shoots and leaves. Now does that require a comma?

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Finished Eats, Shoots and Leaves, an excellent, interesting and funny book that really brings the dusty subject of punctuation playfully to life. I found this short book a very entertaining read and learned stuff too :lol:, not just about usage, but also about the history of punctuation. Great stuff. 10/10.

 

Next up: The Virgin Suicides Jeffery Eugenides.

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