Kylie
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Posts posted by Kylie
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I'm going to Panarottis for dinner with a group of girls. Pizza, pasta etc. Yum! Looking forward to it.
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Of those titles you listed, Andy, I've only read The Trial, and I have to agree that it's not very dystopian.
I think some people may have gotten 'dystopian' confused with 'sci-fi' or other such genres when they were adding books to the list (not referring to The Trial of course).
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Eucalyptus by Murray Bail
The modern Australian fairy-tale. A farmer in the Australian outback has a beautiful daughter, and she has many suitors. He decides she can marry the man who can name all the species of eucalyptus on his farm. Strange, and light, and kind of wonderful and romantic. Very out of the normal.
This book came very, very close into being made into a movie a few years ago. It was going to star Nicole Kidman, Geoffrey Rush and Russell Crowe, and everything was set up (sets built etc) and ready to go and then suddenly there were conflicts with the script or something and the project was abandoned and everyone went home. Pity.
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Welcome aboard my dystopic friend! This is also my favourite genre and I find this Wikipedia list indispensable! I've set myself a small challenge to read 5 dystopian novels this year; so far I've only read I am Legend by Richard Matheson - it's in Wikipedia's list, but I don't think it's such a dystopian novel. Still, it's a very good read.
Parts of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas are dystopian in nature. Ayn Rand has written a couple, although I've only read Anthem, which is a short novella.
A Clockwork Orange is one of my favourite reads. Anthony Burgess also wrote another one called 1985. It's partly a collection of essays regarding George Orwell's 1984, and partly a dystopian story of what society might be like in 1985 (it's not a sequel though). I believe this book is out of print but I recently tracked a copy down on ebay and can't wait to read it!
I have a lot of dystopians on my TBR pile but obviously I can't comment as to their merit. However, some others I've heard about include Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes, The Long Walk and The Running Man, both by Richard Bachman, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and Z for Zachariah by Robert C O'Brien (aimed at younger readers).
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I've finally decided on another good challenge to do...reading books that have been banned at one time or another.
The issue of book censorship is something that's close to my heart so I think this will be a worthwhile challenge. I'm going to base my choices on a list I found at a Canadian public library's website (here's the pdf file).
I've updated this post with the new challenge details. It seems I have quite a lot of banned books on my TBR pile already!
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Wow Poppy, they're lovely! Looks like you live in a beautiful spot
(Why am I not surprised? Is there a part of NZ that's not breathtakingly beautiful?) -
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
I also love the first sentence of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, which begins "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" (I won't post the whole quote because it goes on for quite a bit!)
And although this is a thread for first lines, I just can't help posting the best ever last line of a book, again from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. I don't think I have ever been so moved by a line in a book. I was bawling
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
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Went to Chili's last night for dinner. Very nice, but HUGE meals. I wish sometimes that they would give you an option of a half-size serve! I had monterey chicken (grilled chicken topped with BBQ sauce, bacon, cheese and tomato) with a side of mashed potato and fries. Yum!
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That's an admirable goal Gelfling! How many have you read so far?
I love looking at those lists to see how I compare. There are quite a few on that list that I've read and many more that I have on my TBR pile. I probably wouldn't aim to read all 200 myself, only because I couldn't be bothered tracking down the books that I've never heard of when I have others on my TBR pile waiting to be read. But I may change my mind about that one day.
Best of luck to you and keep us updated on your progress!
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Gelfling and look no further!
I don't have many people to talk to in 'real life' about books so I love this forum! You'll fit right in!
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Matt!
You won't have to fear about waiting a long time for responses here! It's a busy little forum (strange really...you'd think we'd be too busy reading to be posting!)
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Nine more books added to the teetering TBR pile today!
Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
Albert Camus: The Outsider
Albert Camus: The Plague
Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany's
Cervantes: Don Quixote
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings
John Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
Patrick Suskind: Perfume
Lynne Truss: The Lynne Truss Treasury (With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, Tennyson's Gift, Going Loco, Making the Cat Laugh)
In Cold Blood is going very slowly, although I'm loving every minute of it. Unfortunately I've had a lot on lately and as a result I've been so tired I could barely read a few sentences without falling asleep. Things are looking up a bit now so I'm hoping to get much more reading done in the next few days.
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I love chips and chocolate but have been quite healthy at work lately. I usually have a banana for morning tea, but this week I've switched to yummy red apples.
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I've heard good things about Motley Crue's autobiography. Even though I'm not interested in their music, I'd love to read it. Our staff library recently got a copy of it which I keep eyeing off
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Hello and welcome Lucy! I spend far too much time here and not enough time reading but I'm having a great time!
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Nice review, Echo. I have this on my TBR pile along with The Glass Bead Game and something else by Hermann Hesse (the name escapes me at the moment).
I was enjoying your review until you compared it to The Alchemist. Ack! One of my least favourite books of all time! But if the writing is, as you say, 'intelligent and evocative', then I shouldn't have a problem with it, as the writing style was one of my major gripes with The Alchemist.
Looking forward to reading it!
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I bought the following books recently:
Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game
Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Matthew Pearl: The Poe Shadow
Marisha Pessl: Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Peter Temple: The Broken Shore
Hunter S Thompson: Hell's Angels
And I added a few more books to my wish list:
Lois Lowry: The Giver
Lois Lowry: Number the Stars
Jacqueline Susann: The Valley of the Dolls
Oh dear!
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Ooh too much information for those of us with it on Mt TBR!!
Yes indeed! Please remember to use spoilers because not all of us have read it yet! (Maybe I don't need to now.)
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That's what I was wondering, Oblomov. Don't leave us hanging Kitty! Give us some hope that these things happen in real life
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Yum! That's one of my very favourite meals, Icecream! Any leftovers?
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Hello and
Rainie! -
Yeah...have you not seen the movie with Mandy Moore?
No I haven't. I have seen The Notebook though. One of the saddest movies ever!
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"A Walk to Remember" is by far my favorite. I easily related to the high school aged characters.
I have this one on my TBR pile. Is it sad like his others?
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Imogen!
I've heard a few good things about Diana Wynne Jones. I must look into her books one of these days.
Kylie's Literary Adventures in 2008
in Past Book Logs
Posted
Thanks for the offer Icecream! I've seen a copy of it in our staff library at work so I might just borrow that when I get around to it. Goodness knows I should start borrowing books instead of buying more!
Thanks anyway! 