landevale

Hmm.. good question! I obviously can't speak for others, but my own marginalia tend to be quick references to certain themes that keep popping up in a particular book or references to things that I am interested in across various books. Mostly, I make my notes so that it is easier to find things later. (I think this mostly stems from writing more than a few English papers these last few years! ) But some of my notes are more extensive and contain some analytical insights that come to me while I'm reading. Since they are usually written while in the process of reading the book for the first time, I tend to be pretty self-conscious about them. ("What if the later portion of the book ends up making my marginal note really dumb? Or what if it's just a dumb note in the first place?" etc.) So that would be why I don't really like to lend out books that I have heavily annotated. I also get uncomfortable sharing a book with someone in class if they have forgotten their own copy. That said, I once lent a couple of VERY heavily annotated books to my mom, and she really seemed to appreciate the attention my notes drew to some things.

That book is amazing! I love it too, and so I just had to get it for my nephew when he was born. As for my own first book-related memory, I think it would probably be reading Green Eggs and Ham with my mom back when I was first starting to learn to read. We read that one over and over! (It probably helped that I basically had it memorized...) Question: Can anyone distinctly remember NOT being able to read at all? I'm trying to remember a time when I looked at a string of letters and said to myself, "What the heck ARE those things?!" but I really can't. I think that's probably normal though.

What a nice image! If that's the case, then no sadness at all about not getting to everything I've wanted to read! My personal philosophy, though, is that there are ALWAYS going to be more books that I want to read, simply because so many amazing stories have been written that it's impossible to get to them all. So I have accepted the fact that even if I read non-stop from now until I die, there will still be plenty of things I might wish I had gotten to. But I don't plan on having regrets on my deathbed; if I am thinking about books at that time (and hopefully I'll be thinking about more important things like my family and friends!), I hope that I will be thinking about the books that I HAVE read and enjoyed, rather than the ones that I have NOT.

I keep the vast majority of the books I buy, although that makes for really heavy boxes whenever I have to move. Usually I only weed my library when it comes close to moving day, and then it's only the books that I know I'll absolutely, positively never want to read that I get rid of. I always try to sell them, though. Gotta finance my book habit somehow! I will admit, though, that I often buy books and then prompty return them. I think I buy on impulse a lot, and only later do I realize that it would be a better idea to check the book out from the library. Anyone else do this?

Since I tend to make a lot of notes in my books, I'm generally more careful about who I lend them to. I don't want just anyone reading my marginalia, and I also want to make sure I don't lose my carefully annotated books! That said, I generally don't care what people do to my books when I lend them out, as long as they don't come back destroyed. No one has dared adding their own marginalia, although I would be delighted if someone did so someday! (Maybe I just don't give them enough room in the margins because my own notes crowd the page! )

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy I love this first sentence!!

Often it's two for me: one that I'm finding it a bit hard to slog through, and one that I just couldn't resist in the meantime. Or sometimes it's more just because of the natural demands of school.

Great idea for a thread lexie! This would be great information right before the time for New Year's resolutions come around. The challenge I was thinking of setting for myself was the 999 Challenge: 9 books in 9 categories in 2009. (The categories I am currently playing around with using for myself are New-to-me Authors, New-to-me Book by a Favorite Author, Books in Translation, Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror, Non-Fiction, Graphic Novel/Manga, Classics, YA/Children's Lit, and Award-Winning/Prize-Winning. These are subject to change though--especially the last two. Gotta iron this out a little more before 2009 rolls around.)

I just finished reading Twilight to see what all the hype was about. I think the plot was interesting and gripping, but for me the writing style just wasn't engaging enough. I felt like the unnecessary details and repetitious banter/descriptions of the characters got rather tedious after a while. But it was a nice, entertaining, easy read nevertheless. (It made fantastic airport reading. )

I finished reading this book a few days ago, and while I found it very disturbing, I also really liked it. I guess I am one of the rare ones not to have been assigned this book in high school, so perhaps my appreciation of this book is untainted by my high school curriculum. I have to admit, though, that parts of this book I could only read in short doses. I get nervous and anxious fairly easily, and so the second half of this book was sometimes hard for me to read.

I think my favorite from this year would probably be The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It's just so beautifully written and has such a powerful message! I realized something from thinking about what my answer to this question would be. I think that in 2008 I didn't allow books to "speak to my soul" as much as I would have liked. I approached them more intellectually than personally, and so I had a hard time thinking about which book I would choose as the one which impacted me the most (rather than just being my favorite). (I know that's not exactly what this thread is about, but that's where my musings took me.) I think I would like to start thinking more about what life lessons I can take from the books that I am reading, in addition to reading for all of the more intellectual elements. So here's to a New Year's resolution to read more deeply for personal meaning!

Thanks! I hope you have a safe trip back home too! And hopefully you've been able to make it out to the library now that things have calmed down a bit. I know I would have gone stir-crazy if I hadn't been able to get to the bookstore yesterday. Hope you're still enjoying Quo Vadis. I just looked it up, and it sounds interesting!

I think my library reflects my studies, mostly. I have a lot of language/linguistics books from undergrad, and a LOT of medieval literature and critical theory from my brief stint as a graduate student in English. I also have a shelf devoted to fantasy, and another shelf devoted to classics throughout the ages (with a few contemporary favorites thrown in for good measure). I don't know if this counts as eclectic or not. Probably not too much. I do plan on reading more widely in 2009, so maybe my library will become more eclectic with time..

I've always been one to create lists of books I'm planning to read, but the list changes so often and grows so much that it's hard to keep track of sometimes. For 2009, I'm hoping to read some of the 20th century classics that I somehow missed, as well as some well-known contemporary authors with whom I am yet unfamiliar. I've been getting a lot of ideas from this forum, too! I'm going to try to read at least one book per week so that I can get to more of the books I've always been wanting to read as well as those I've just recently discovered. (The silver lining to my recent unemployment is that this goal is now a lot more manageable! )

Ah, I'm in Western Washington for the holidays too, and you're right, this snow is really starting to affect my reading! I'm down to the last book that I brought with me, and I really, really want to go to the library or bookstore soon!! Good luck to you!

Just finished Lord of the Flies, and I have to agree with those who have labelled this as a "disturbing book." The rapid degeneration of those boys was startling to watch, and it's almost creepy how much some of the episodes mirror common nightmares. It does make me wonder, though, what the book would have been like if it had been about a group of stranded adults, rather than stranded children. By writing about children, Golding was about to get at the primitive savagery that we are all born with, and I think it is that which makes the book so powerful. But maybe it is just my wishful thinking that the story would have turned out differently if it were about adults. Or perhaps is it the fact that this is a question which the book doesn't answer which makes it all the more disturbing because it leaves that possibility open.

2008 was an absolutely crazy year for me, so I didn't end up reading as much as I would have liked. There were several stand-outs, though, from the books I did get to: God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy (one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Separate Peace by John Knowles Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda My goal for 2009 is 52 books--one per week. Keeping my fingers crossed!!

I'll second that one! It gives a whole new meaning to the words "based on."

I just finished this book. I was looking for something comforting and pleasant to read on a long flight, and this book fit the bill perfectly. As a few others have mentioned in this thread, it is not an intellectually demanding book, by any means, but I found it to be relaxing and soothing. I particularly liked the idea of the interconnectivity of lives. All in all, though, I'm not sure this would be a book I would choose to read if I weren't especially looking for something fluffy and undemanding. Now I'm moving on to Lord of the Flies, so that I can promptly disturb myself again and undo the soothing work that The Five People You Meet in Heaven did. haha

Yes, I've been meaning to read The Mists of Avalon for years now! I'll add it to my To Be Read list. I also adore The Once and Future King by T.H. White and would highly recommend it. White does a fantastic job of including bits and pieces of so many of the legends; although he bases the story mostly on Malory, he includes references to even some very lesser known texts. It truly is amazing. And I think he does a great job of showing how even this very old legend still has resonance today. The book reverberates with the concerns of the late 1930s through the 1950s, when the book was finally published in its entirety.

The thing about these legends is that you are basically only going to find adaptations, since the "authentic" legend is buried so deep in history. If you are looking for a very complete and mainstream version, I would recommend Sir Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur. Unless you are very adept at reading Middle English, though, I would find it in a modernized version. In its entirety, it is very, very long, however, and I have never been able to finish it (despite being assigned it for class on two separate occasions!). Eugene Vinaver edited a book called King Arthur and His Knights: Selected Tales by Sir Thomas Malory, which only contains the most well-known and influential tales. I highly recommend that. (And don't worry; it's in modern English!)

I've generally had no choice in the matter; I've had to go straight from one book to another because of school. Ideally, however, I love to sit and reflect for a bit in between books. My favorite thing to do, actually, is to marathon read the last portion of the book so that I am completely immersed in it. Then I'll just sit and revel in the fact that I still feel a part of that world. I first did that with The Lord of the Rings, and my reverie lasted until I turned on the radio, at which time it was shattered completely. I cherish that time after finally closing a great book, and I don't like to impose on it by immediately picking up a new book if I can help it.

I think that unfortunately people do lie about the books they have read. I had one English professor who actually encouraged this explicitly. She said that there are certain books which no English major should admit not having read before, if only to save face. In my humble opinion, that practice creates pompous liars though. On a separate note, there's a scene in David Lodge's Changing Places where one of the main characters starts a game called Humiliation. In this game, players take turns naming a book they have NOT read, but which they think almost everyone else in the group HAS read. Points are scored for each person who has read the book. The winner, therefore, is the person who admits never having read the most popular/canonical book. What a nice change of pace from the attitude of my English professor!

The Satanic Verses is the one that caused all of the controversy. I would read that one. It's certainly not the easiest book to read, but it's very rewarding, in my opinion.

Yes, Oryx and Crake! That was the first book I thought of when I read the first post in this thread. Not exactly nuclear aftermath, but a similar idea, and a fantastic story to boot! You might also consider The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. It also is not exactly nuclear aftermath, but I think you'll see why I would put it in this category if you read it all the way through.