Mila

Hellish week... I only had a little time to finish King's Misery. But now I have Atonement as a paperback and can continue reading it again! Of course, my tablet died when I only had King with me... I sooooo wanted to read Human Traces, but i had forgotten my book at friend's And I had lovely time with Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lamb's The Queen's English and only 1/3 of my Warriner's English Grammar and Composition I want to read something more interesting

I had to look in wiki for Moomins, to understand what were you talking about:) In Russia they are "Муми-тролли (Mumi-troll)". And I remember seeing them and reading, but sure don't remember the song. Because I saw USSR's stop motion animation about them. I liked both. Finished Julian Barnes' " The Sense of an Ending". I'm hoping to find time to read his "Arthur&George". Reading McEwan's "Atonement" and Sebastian Faulks' "Human Traces".

Yep, thanks I began Atonement, but found it a little hard, because there were so many new words for me! It’s great, but not for a Sunday, when I want to relax. So, of course, I read Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. I need to delete all his books, which I hadn’t read yet. Because when I'm feeling lazy, I go for his books. They are pleasure to read, but aren’t good for the quest to expand my vocabulary. Yeah, me too. And sometimes I can’t recognize words from their pronunciations, because I’m better at written than at spoken English. So I have the book that I already finished (Gaiman’s Good Omens – yeah, yeah, I love this author ). I try to listen it everywhere I can: while cooking, traveling, ironing, etc.

Finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Don't know what to read... Maybe Atonemet by McEwan...

I came across Kazuo Ishiguro, while searching for British authors. Noticing clearly Japanese surname within them, pique my interest. After finding that Ishiguro is British novelist of a Japanese origin, and his family moved to England in his childhood, I began looking for a book. “Never Let Me Go” was the first one that caught my eye. I didn’t read summary or reviews, I just saw that it’s a science fiction novel. It was enough. Now I already read my e-book, and while searching material for my review, found Amazon’s version of the summary: “From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day.” I was glad that I didn’t see it before reading. I didn’t have any expectations - especially these great expectations - so I was mildly annoyed, but not devastated at the end. Story told from Kathy’s view; from the first chapter to the last we saw everything through her eyes. Her childhood: very emotional and detailed; her adolescence: the time of the great quarrel; her adulthood: where everything came to the end. We learned how to live in private boarding school (very strange boarding school, studying questionable subjects, with interesting guardians and even more intriguing Madam); how to build our relationships at the Cottages (strange and questionable) and to prepare ourselves for future work (and we finally knew, what it is! Yep, strange, questionable and mind-blowing); how to live the rest of our lives (still strange from the normal perspective, but not questionable anymore and a little boring) and to find hope. Through the entire story we had this thin line of mystery, suspense – who were this children, why were they special, why did they do their work, where did they come from, what would be their future? Interesting and tempting? Not in the real life. Reading the book, especially first part, I was excited. Atmosphere brought to mind Chuck Palahniuk’s novel “Survivor”. You understood, that something wrong with all these children, that guardians and Madame not like them. I was waiting for the truth, for this climax. But author was uncovering reality from time to time; giving us enough hints, so culmination was mild and disappointing. After it I was hoping for bloodcurdling dystopia, like my beloved dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin “We”. I expected search for answers, struggle with real world, fight for the freedom, at least agony of their situation. Between all of these we had only first part – quest for the truth – and little bit about freedom - and not a whole freedom, but only a delay. The culmination was weak, like with all enthralling moments in this book. Ok, so maybe author didn’t want to write about outward things. Louis Menand in his article “Something about Kathy” pointed it out with great frankness: “…“Never Let Me Go” includes a carefully staged revelation scene, in which everything is, somewhat portentously, explained. It’s a little Hollywood, and the elucidation is purchased at too high a price. The scene pushes the novel over into science fiction, and this is not, at heart, where it seems to want to be. But where the novel does want to be is even less obvious than usual… Although his novels are self-consciously “set,” they are not historical novels, and the facts don’t seem to interest him very much. …in “Never Let Me Go,” even after the secrets have been revealed, there are still a lot of holes in the story. This is not because things are meant to be opaque; it’s because, apparently, ... science isn’t what the book is about.” So, how about human’s relationships - Ruth and Kathy’s friendship, somewhat of a love-triangle between Ruth, Tommy and Kathy? Did you think it was interesting to finally have expecting conversations? No. Before you knew it everything was already agreed upon, everybody happy/unhappy, lives went on. As you already could see, the main characters were Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. Tommy was the most alive figure. We observed him growing-up, evolving. And we saw how easily it was to crush great potential in a person. Ruth was rude imitation of Queen Bee – pure force, dominance, manipulation and nothing else. And Kathy, we couldn’t forget Kathy, our main protagonist, the first string! She was a sheep; nothing; bleak character, without hope of changing. I couldn’t love or sympathize with her, and I couldn’t hate or be irritated with Ruth, because I didn’t believe in them. They all had only one dimension, while humans had much more complex personality. Writing style was conversational, but while appropriated, Kathy’s thoughts were often going in this lengthy entangled pattern, where some details began another pattern of thoughts in a new direction. It was easy to forget the original line. At the end of the novel I was so tired of this. I was glad having e-book, because I could forget all about “Never Let Me Go”, just clicking DELETE. Disappointed, but not devastated, I could read “Survivor” by Chuck Palahniuk to feel alike from the others, “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin to struggle in dystopia, and “Harry Potter” by Joanne Rowling to think all about rights and wrongs of manipulating other’s childhood.

Finished On Writing by Stephen King yesterday. Listening to Gaiman's and Pratchett's Good Omens audiobook became so frustrated with the speed of reading that finished it by myself. Yeah, I kind of forgot about human's need to sleep Like always... Now I have Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and trying to find new audiobook. I really, really hope to find free time this Saturday or Sunday to write my thoughts about finished books.

What I already read: Pet Sematary, Stephen King Coin Locker Babies, Ryu Murakami Battle Royale, Koushun Takami Out, Natsuo Kirino War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri What I began reading at one time, but didn’t complete: The Castle, Franz Kafka The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Let’s begin with the last list. The Castle – it’s freaking depressing, like all Kafka’s works for me. Maybe I didn’t find the right book or something, but it isn’t my author. The Gulag Archipelago. Ok, firstly, it’s big. Secondly, it’s big book about very hard life. I read Solzhenitsyn’s In the First Circle. It’s about the same time, but with fewer details. I loved it. First list. Ryu Murakami and Koushun Takami are “quirky” authors. And yeah, I would add to this authors Poppy Z. Brite (I read three of her books), Clive Barker, and Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. I don’t understand what Out is doing in this list. It wasn’t tough, it wasn’t quirky. For me it was quite boring. You could read Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment – it would be tougher book. I like Pet Sematary, I re-read it several times. I wouldn’t say that this is a “tough” book. Divine Comedy is a treat. It’s a pleasure, it’s a marvelous book, and it’s always in my bookshelf. But yeah, I think it’s only for a selected group of people. Not many would find it interesting. War and Peace. In Russia you actually need to read this book for school. Many, many, many pupils just read short retelling and then lived happily ever after. I’m an avid reader. I re-read War and Peace 4 times. Enough said I think.

Thank you. My mother loves reading “classics” and my father is Sci-Fi’s fan. So when I was growing up, of course, these are the genres that I read most of the time. Thank you. No, I only read several books from Witch World. But I read summaries for both books and they are quite intriguing. I’m hoping to find them as audiobooks. I don’t have time to read something like that because it’s easy for me to understand and I need to work on my vocabulary. But I also need to brush up my pronunciation. So this is my way to combine something I love with something I need.

Nope, don't think so (125 books!!! I'm a little jelaous). Right now I have this loooong list with names like "Vocabulary, Reading, Writing, Listening for IELTS" and so on and so forth. But at this moment I'm reading Stephen King's "On writing", cause I'm lazy.))

I read both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I could say that I prefer The Hobbit. I love original Dune, but not Children of Dune and later books. At first I began reading King’s The Dark Tower series. And only after that I read The Shining, Pet Sematary, Bag of Bones, It and some others. I read only about half of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Dexter was quite fine to read before it began to be more mystery than crime. The last books that I read were by Neil Gaiman, and I really adore them. And I didn't write all Russian authors that I read, only more world-known ones!

Hello! My name is Mila and I’m from Russia. Right now I’m studying for English exams, which I hope to pass in the summer or next autumn. So, of course, I need practice not only in grammar but in writing also. And I was searching something more local, and then something more suitable for my exams. But it was quite boring. So I told myself to stop and think. “You are doing this exam for yourself, because you want to. Find something that you would like!” Yeah, and then it became obviously for me what I need to find. I love reading. When someone asks me what my hobby is I don’t even need to think. My answer is, “I read.” I read a lot. And my new search brought me there! I love reading classics (Charlotte Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Daniel Defoe, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy). From time to time I quite enjoy poetry (Paul-Marie Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, William Butler Yeats). I read a lot of sci-fi, fantasy, fiction, mystery, horror and etc. (Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, John Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Ursula Le Guin, Howard Lovecraft , Roger Zelazny, Christopher Stasheff, Robert Asprin, Gordon Dickson, Andre Norton, Joanne Rowling, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, Patrick Süskind, John Fowles, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, Neil Gaiman, Graham Joyce, Chuck Palahniuk, Dan Brown, Paulo Coelho). I’m not a big fan of crime fiction, but I read some more classics works (Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple by Agatha Christie), and some thrillers (Hannibal Lecter by Thomas Harris, Dexter by Jeff Lindsay). I hope to find there more friends with whom I can discuss all wonders of books!