Brian.

2014 was a poor year for me with regards to my reading. For a large part of the year I was studying having started a degree course in 2013. This took up far more time than I had anticipated and I didn't really feel like reading during my down time. After taking account of a lot of different things, two being time required and cost, I decided to shelve the study and work on some other things instead going into 2015. For the first time in a long time I feel like I have direction and a plan to my life and even if it doesn't work out as planned there are only positives to come from it. It should take 12 - 18 months for things to come together, a large part of this being downsizing everything and that ties into my reading plans for 2015.

The TBR lists below are what I have as physical books on my bookshelves. It's my intention that these make up the main part of my reading this year. I don't plan on buying any more physical books unless absolutely necessary and will opt for ebooks instead. An other alternative is to make use of my local library as I have in the past. I have loads of ebooks on my TBR but I haven't listed them as I really don't want to go through them.

I have thought a lot about whether I want a target this year or not and I'm still not sure. For ease, I'm going to plump for 50 books or 20,000 pages as I have in previous years but it's not a hard and fast target. There are a few other things that I want to get done this year and they are;

Finally finish The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. I have attempted to read this 3 times in past and never finished it. I haven't been able to come up with a reason for this as I enjoyed reading it during the times I attempted it.
Read at least one big book. I'm think of something like Atlas Shrugged or War & Peace.
Knock off another 10 - 15 books off of the '1001 Books' list.
Knock at least 5 books off of my 'Round the World' challenge.

December 22, 2014

I have finished Peace is Every Step :smile:

I feel like I need some fiction up next so it might be time for The Bell Jar.

December 21, 2014

:harhar:

I read a bit more of Peace is Every Step this afternoon and have also read about 25% of Smarter Investing (3rd Ed) by Tim Hales. Smarter Investing has already taught me more in a few hours than I have managed to learn all year about investing and investment products. I've been thinking about what my aims for 2015 are going to be so I'll be creating the thread in the coming week or so. I really look forward to the start of the year as it always feels like a fresh start.

December 20, 2014

I'm about halfway through Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh. I've got a feeling that I have read this book before but never recorded it, I'm pretty certain that I'll have finished it by tomorrow.

December 8, 2014

I had started to read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin but after about 20% of the way through it I don't seem to be in the mood for it so I am going to put it aside and grab something else.

December 8, 2014

Caught Machine Head at the Roundhouse in Camden last night. A really good show with a very varied setlist despite having just released a new album. They also did a Pantera jam session in memory of Dimebag who was murdered 10 years ago today. Darkness Within were the support act and they impressed as well. They really hit the ground running and got the audience nicely warmed up for the main act.

December 8, 2014

Well I completely blew my attempts to join the readathon. I've had a rough few days and basically spent the weekend on the sofa doing very little.

December 3, 2014

Being back at work isn't conducive with reading loads

I have made a start on We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, the book that apparently Orwell took inspiration from for 1984.

December 3, 2014

Thievery Corporation - Lebanese Blonde

December 1, 2014

Personally, I reckon Huck Finn is the better of the two books, so hope you enjoy it too.

In his introduction to Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain talks about the story being partly for boys and girls, but by 1905 he was very clear that neither Tom Sawyer nor Huck Finn were children's books, and were aimed exclusively at adults. Of the two, TS is more child friendly. Personally, I would not classify either as 'children's books', particularly given the language used, as the context needs to be fully understood.

BTW, it's not so much older English, as an attempt to reflect the language and speech pattern of the southern states. I found HF took some getting used to, but found myself soon enjoying the rhythms and overall experience.

I noticed that Huck Finn is in the '1001 books' list and Tom Sawyer isn't so it stands to reason that Huck Finn is the better book. I think you sum up the language and tone of the book perfectly as it's not so much old language but appropriate to the time and place. Another thing I forgot to mention in my review is that a common derogatory term for black men is used at times, but as with all books I find this doesn't bother me as long as it is reflective of the time and in this case it is. If anything Twain is quite forward thinking with the way Tom Sawyer talks about people who the adults tended to look down on at the time.

November 30, 2014

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Synopsis
From the famous episodes of the whitewashed fence and the ordeal in the cave to the trial of Injun Joe, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is redolent of life in the Mississippi River towns in which Twain spent his own youth. A somber undercurrent flows through the high humor and unabashed nostalgia of the novel, however, for beneath the innocence of childhood lie the inequities of adult reality—base emotions and superstitions, murder and revenge, starvation and slavery. In his introduction, noted Twain scholar John Seelye considers Twain’s impact on American letters and discusses the balance between humorous escapades and serious concern that is found in much of Twain’s writing.
(taken from Goodreads)

My Thoughts

I've had this on my TBR for a while and bought is simply because it's a book that almost everyone has heard of even if they are not readers. As is usually the case for me, I hadn't planned on it being my next book but once I had finished my previous book it jumped off the bookcase to me. I wasn't sure what to expect as this is the first Twain I've read but I didn't expect it to be a hard read as I was aware that it is typically associated with younger readers.

I really enjoyed this book and I wouldn't say that it is suited to only younger readers. There was enough of interest to keep me occupied and the humour is spot on. It's a bit like some of the episodes of The Simpsons where certain jokes will make everyone laugh and certain things will only be picked up by adults. The characters of both Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were great and I am very glad that I have the Huck Finn book on my TBR as well for later. Some of the old world language was a little tricky to grasp, especially certain American colloquialisms but if anything, they only added to the charm of the book.

I'm very happy that I chose this to read and I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it before.

4/5 (I really liked it).

November 30, 2014

Quiet afternoon at work so I've finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and I've nothing else to read with me. :icon_oops:

November 30, 2014

I realised this morning that I am not working on Sunday, happy days

November 30, 2014

When I had the app I had an iphone but I've got a feeling that it may have been removed from the app store due to copyright issues and I've been unable to find an android version.

November 29, 2014

I am out on Friday and working on Sunday but I should be able to join in this time. I don't have any books to read planned but I seem to be working through a lot of modern classics at the moment.

November 29, 2014

I have the app and keep a manual list, so if you're sad I'm not sure what I am Brian!

I've now read 48 books from the combined list of 1305. i wanted to have read 50 by the end of 2014, but not sure if I will squeeze another two in before the end of the year now.

I had the app on my old phone but since I have switched from apple to android I haven't checked to see if it's available or not.

November 28, 2014

I just updated my spreadsheet (yes, it's a bit sad) and I have now read 47 of the books on the list. This what I've managed to read so far.

1 - Justine - Marquis de Sade

2 - Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

3 - Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Jules Verne

4 - Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

5 - Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne

6 - The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy

7 - Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

8 - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

9 - The Thirty-Nine Steps - John Buchan

10 - Siddhartha - Herman Hesse

11 - All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

12 - Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

13 - Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood

14 - Animal Farm - George Orwell

15 - Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

16 - I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

17 - The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

18 - Foundation - Isaac Asimov

19 - The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

20 - Casino Royale - Ian Fleming

21 - Junkie - William S. Burroughs

22 - Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

23 - On the Road - Jack Kerouac

24 - Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote

25 - Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

26 - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

27 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Phillip K. Dick

28 - Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

29 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

30 - Almost Transparent Blue - Ryu Murakami

31 - Broken April - Ismail Kadare

32 - Money - Martin Amis

33 - Empire of the Sun - J.G. Ballard

34 - The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

35 - White Noise - Don DeLillo

36 - The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

37 - Stone Junction - Jim Dodge

38 - American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

39 - Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell

40 - The Reader - Bernhard Schlink

41 - Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho

42 - Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee

43 - Fear and Trembling - Amelie Nothomb

44 - Snow - Orhan Pamuk

45 - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

46 - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

47 - The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

November 28, 2014

I've decided the next book of my TBR is The Adventure of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. It's the first of any Twain's books I have read and I'm a little surprised that I didn't read it as a child.

November 28, 2014

Untouchables sounds like a very interesting book and rather fitting given the recent scandals?

November 28, 2014

Oh my, that's a lot of books. You do read quite quickly so I'm sure you'll be through them in no time.

November 28, 2014

Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami

Synopsis
Almost Transparent Blue is a brutal tale of lost youth in a Japanese port town close to an American military base. Murakami's image-intensive narrative paints a portrait of a group of friends locked in a destructive cycle of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. The novel is all but plotless, but the raw and often violent prose takes us on a rollercoaster ride through reality and hallucination, highs and lows, in which the characters and their experiences come vividly to life. Trapped in passivity, they gain neither passion nor pleasure from their adventures. Yet out of the alienation, boredom and underlying rage and grief emerges a strangely quiet and almost equally shocking beauty. Ryu Murakami's first novel, Almost Transparent Blue won the coveted Akutagawa literary prize and became an instant bestseller. Representing a sharp and conscious turning away from the introspective trend of postwar Japanese literature, it polarized critics and public alike and soon attracted international attention as an alternative view of modern Japan
(taken from Goodreads)

My Thoughts

This short novella (126 pages) has been floating around the book reading part of my head for a few years. I am not sure where I first hear about it, but I suspect it's from a list of cult books or novellas that you 'must read'. The synopsis intrigued me as I like books with a bit of an edge and books about the fringes of society. It also turns out that this book can be pretty hard to find for what I would regard as a reasonable price. Fortunately a relative saw it on my wishlist about a year or so ago and bought it for me and it has been teasing me ever since. I reached this odd state of mind where I wanted to read it but I didn't want it to be read yet (if that makes any sense). Eventually this got too much and I decided that it would be my next book come what may.

I don't even know where to start with this review having finished the book, my head is swimming and I feel partially stunned and numb. I guess I should say that, number one - this book has no plot, and number two - it is very graphic. I think it would be wise to warn any potential readers that there is constant drug use, group sex (gay, straight, you name it, even including with a foot) and violence throughout the book. I don't think I have read anything so graphic since I read Justine by Marquis de Sade. I guess I was hoping for something more along the lines of Junky by William S. Burroughs and ended up getting something more akin to Bret Easton Ellis (who's books I hate). The writing is a chaotic mess and it was a book I really had to concentrate on just to get a grasp of what was going on. I was left feeling disappointed once I had finished as I had built the book up to be something which it is not.

However.

The chaos kind of works and i assume being left feeling disorientated is the point. I can't say that I enjoyed the book but I was left feeling as though I had just come out of haze of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll and if that was Murakami's aim, then mission accomplished. This book just wasn't for me but I can appreciate some of the merit within it and I just wouldn't feel right giving it 1/5 and for this reason I give it 2/5.

2/5 (It was ok).

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