pontalba

'Tis a shame, it is one of my favorites. But otoh, I know some love books by Saramago...Blindness, Seeing, and I can't bear them. Couldn't get past the first 30 something pages. Ok, that's two....lets see..... Don Quixote If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino Can't think of a 5th at the moment. I'll save it.

I voted Historical, Sci-Fi, and Adventure and Other... The sci-fi I like though is mainly of the Star Trek variety, and adventure would be spy stories or the like. You didn't have mysteries in the poll though, and I devour them like nothing! Also in the "other" catagory would fall choices that probably fall under "literature", like Vladimir Nabokov, or John Banville [who also writes mysteries and spy stories] or David Mitchell. I like both fictional and non-fiction historical though.

Usually I'm sitting in a chair in my office, so sideways with the book on my lap, legs crossed, left hand holding the book, but the right holding the pages down... If I put the book flat on the desk, one of the cats will lie on it, so no dice there.

I have found another spy/mysterious author. Well in all fairness I've been collecting his books for the last couple of years, and only last week read one....Alan Furst. I read his The Foreign Correspondent, he has the low-key style of John L

Possibly the most satisfying aspect of The Foreign Correspondent is the matter of fact, rather low key approach that Furst takes. This is a spy story without the chase scenes and the so called "glamour boys" that so proliferate the average, run of the mill spy stories we see flooding the market. Think LeCarr

Finished I am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto and was disappointed, it was flat and if the subject had not been from Louisiana [my home state] I probably would not have bothered to finish. Virginie Gautreau was the subject of John Singer Sargent's scandalous [at the time] painting of Madame X. This is a fictional bio of Gautreau and Diliberto's first attempt at a work of fiction. Maybe she'd have been better off sticking to non-fiction.

Finished Nabokov's Quartet, It's four short stories of Vladimir Nabokov in a novella sort of setting. Fantastic. If you can find it, buy it. The names of the four stories are: An Affair of Honor Lik The Vane Sisters The Visit to the Museum I just checked and all four are in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. The last one [The Visit to the Museum] is particularly interesting.

May -Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - 509 pages Interesting puzzle. Wonderful writing, even when you think a section coming up is not your cuppa, read on, in a few pages you'll be right to home. B) Highly recommended.

I rarely write in a good hardback, maybe only to mark a passage with a light slash at the end of a line I want to be able to find again. But soft-backs are a different ballgame. Yes. I underline passages that are relevant to whatever theme I am perceiving, or certain repetitions in theme, or repetitions in certain phrases...have to for any book discussion, I'd never find anything to write about if I didn't. B) I don't fold or corner pages ever though and when I do mark it is only with a pencil.......never a pen. I tried a highlighter once and just hated it. Light pencil is the only way for me. Only one time I have used those yellow sticky notes and it was so bulky and cumbersome, I was very uncomfortable with that way of doing it. Oh I also write my name inside the front cover and date aquired, and date read.

I cannot recommend Cloud Atlas highly enough. One of the reviews on the back of the book calls the novel a "series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes"...and it is true. It is totally circular in reasoning and thought and is one of those books that need a couple of rereads to really nail all the puzzle pieces down. I've had the book for a little over 2 years, and could kick myself for not reading it sooner! I could have done the rereading already big time! :)B) Oh well far better late than never. Read it with pencil in hand. Marking all the way.

I voted the 2, but have been known to have 3 or even more going at the time. Lots of times something like Cloud Atlas [my present read] is episodic in nature, and lends itself to interruption easily. But if I really want to plow through, I limit to one at the time.....mostly.

In a discussion on another forum, it was brought out that actually Calvino was [probably] making caricatures of popular 'story types', and that if the narrative is taken by itself, it is linear in fashion. Which I have to say makes sense to me, although it does not make me enjoy the book any more than I did to begin with. But I was glad of that explanation. It helped with perspective [for me]. It's all in stretching the little gray cells.

Regarding If On A Winter's Night A Traveler...I didn't care for this at all. I felt the entire time that the author was attempting to have a huge joke at the expense of the reader. In fact I only read 75% of the book, I am counting it in my list because I put 150% of the time in to read it. Finally couldn't stand it. I think Calvino is a talented writer though, and I am sure there is much merit, I am not one that appreciates it though.

Just a few weeks ago I found a lovely hardback copy at a Library Sale and bought it....when I'll get to it is another story....

LOL, yes...he is/was a new author to me, and I was so pleased that he lived up to expectations!

JANUARY 2007 My Dream of You by Nuala O'Faloain 4/5 Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham 4/5 The Lover by Marguerite Duras 5/5 The Great Modern Poets edited by Michael Schmidt 5/5 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 4/5 The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers by Lilian Jackson Braun 2/5 Not going to include the started but didn't finish.....[yet]. FEBRUARY The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen 5/5 Crucible: McCoy TOS by David R. George III 5/5 Cat Pay the Devil [Joe Grey mystery] 5/5 Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett -0/5 MARCH To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 5/5 Malevil by Robert Merle 5/5 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 2.5/5 How To Cook A Tart by Nina Killham 1/5 The Sea by John Banville 10/5 APRIL Curtain, Poirot's Last Case by Agatha Christie 5/5 Firmin Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage 5/5 A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous 6/5 An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears 4.5/5 The Woods by Harlan Coben 4.5/5 The King of Lies by John Hart 5/5 David Golder by Irene Nemirovsky 5/5 On Becoming A Novelist by John Gardner 5/5 Casino Royale by Ian Fleming 4/5 MAY Lover of Unreason by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev 3.5/5 Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household 4.5/5 If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino .01/5 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 7/5 Nabokov's Quartet by Vladimir Nabokov V/N I am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto 2.5/5 JUNE The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst 4/5 Rain Fall by Barry Eisler 3/5 The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 5/5 JULY Christine Falls by Benjamin Black [aka John Banville] 5/5 Escaping Reality by Geoff Nelder 3/5 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling 1/5 AUGUST Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 5/5 Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden 4.5/5 Pattern Recognition by William Gibson 5/5 Secret Asset by Stella Rimington 3.5/5 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner 5/5 South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami SEPTEMBER The Cleaner by Brett Battles A Stained White Radiance by James Lee Burke In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke OCTOBER American Islam by Paul M. Barrett 4/5 Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky 4/5 Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky 5/5 Irene Nemirovsky by Jonathan Weiss 3/5 The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell 5/5 Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi 4/5 Dead Heat by Dick Francis w. Felix Francis 5/5 The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll 4/5 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 5/5 NOVEMBER Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte 4/5 A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute 3.5/5 DECEMBER The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing 4/5 By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens 5/5 The World at Night by Alan Furst 5/5

muggle, Just from the synopsis, it looks awfully depressing to me, and another one he wrote...can't remember the name though..about the U.S./Mexican border? I think. Sounded bloody and mean to me.

Actually I've had both War and Peace and Anna Karenina in my TBR stack, and this morning pulled AK further up in the stack....maybe by next month, or June....I hope. Although who knows what book will distract me in the mean time.

Actually, I purchased two of Irving's yesterday at our monthly Library Sale. A Widow for One Year and The Hotel New Hampshire They are now "in the stack".

I've read 18 of them, and started and discarded 7 others without finishing. Something else, I wonder how I, Claudius can be in the top 100 and not Claudius the God.... :?:

April -- An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears 691 pages Interesting, twisty, must pay attention to characters placement. I was not as surprised at one of the twists at the end mostly because of having read so much of the period, but it was well presented. Recommended.

It is also turning into an excellent spy story. The politics of the era are fascinating, the Restoration Era....when Charles II came home. I did find especially the first story slow going, but if I'd realized the importance of it, I would have enjoyed it more. But it's making up for it fast and furious.

I'm halfway through Fingerpost, and if Jack Prescott isn't a nasty sort, I give up. Self-righteous to say the least! But I am enjoying to, and only wish I could devote more time at the same time to reading it. I'm almost through Prescott's section. Some of the "experimentation" in the first part was quite gruesome though.

Nici, you are doing a great job, it looks wonderful!

Our library doesn't charge to reserve a book, but I still rarely use it. Only if I am fairly certain I won't like a book that is scheduled for a reading thread have I done it. I guess I just hate giving back a book. Especially if I've enjoyed it a lot. Plus I write in my paperback books [in pencil!], and of course we can't do that with a Library book. So I voted for the occasional use.