Himself
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Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Uggghh. I did not really enjoy this. The prose was, in my opinion, awful, especially in comparison to what I am and have been reading. The story was trite, though that is because it forms the basis for virtually all pirate stories that followed. One can tell that it was written as a children's novel; I definitely would have enjoyed it much more had I read it 5+ years ago.
2/5
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Thanks for the reassurances, folks.
I've spent hours working on them - I could have read an entire book in that time!
Yeah, that's part of what motivated me to just form my list as I went, rather than attempting to thoroughly organize anything.
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I finished Treasure Island and began Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
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Excellent reading list you have there, Himself.
Your reviews are great as well. I'm going to enjoy reading them throughout next year.
Thanks! I have made the decision to start jotting down notes on whatever book I am reading, so the reviews should be getting more substantial and thought through for the coming books.
After looking at your 2011 thread, I'm a little embarrassed about the total lack of consistent or coherent order present in my reading list.
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My favourite is Onegin, by Pushkin. Unfortunately, it is a wee bit too long to simply copy and paste, so here's a link to legally download it: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23997
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Here goes my first attempt at reviewing:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
The thought which was in my mind in perpetuity while making my way through this roman à clef was "These guy are totally bat-shhhhhhh insane." Thompson's prose is far from prosaic; It is as riveting and absorbing as anything I have read. My main problem with this book lies more in its form than anything else, its gonzo journalistic nature made it feel like it dragged. Writing that, though, I begin to feel that that is more because of my frame of reference and its aberrant nature, more than an actual flaw with the novel. An excellent foray into the culture of his era and the nature of the drug community: I certainly recommend it to anyone who has not read it.
5/5
Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer
I love Foer's fiction writing, so going into this I was worried that his humorous style would not transfer well. Luckily, not even half a page into the book, my fears were assuaged. Foer skilfully weaves in parables and anecdotes from his life and research, while not once straying from, what I would call, effective and objective journalism. Reading this soon after first witness the wonders that are David Wallace's journalistic forays, especially Consider the Lobster, the book shines a little less brightly that it would have otherwise.
It is refreshing to read a thoroughly thought through argument that is also extremely well presented. At no point did any conclusions that Foer posited seem rushed or unsubstantiated. After reading this, I would be extremely disappointed in myself were I not to - at the very least - cease eating factory farmed, and fast, food.
4/5
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TBR, both pile and ethereal
1. Adams, Douglas – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
2. Adams, Douglas – Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
3. Aquinas, Saint Thomas – Summa Theologica
4. Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics
5. Aristotle – Politics
6. Aristotle – The Poetics
7. Asimov, Isaac – Forward the Foundation
8. Asimov, Isaac – Foundation
9. Asimov, Isaac – Foundation and Earth
10. Asimov, Isaac – Foundation and Empire
11. Asimov, Isaac – Foundation’s Edge
12. Asimov, Isaac – Prelude to Foundation
13. Asimov, Isaac – Second Foundation
14. Asimov, Isaac – Youth
15. Aurelius, Emperor Marcus – Meditations
16. Austen, Jane –The Complete Works
17. Auster, Paul – Invisible
18. Auster, Paul – The New York Trilogy
19. Ayer, A. J. – Language, Truth and Logic
20. Bacon, Francis – Essays
21. Blake, William – Poems
22. Blake, William – Songs of Innocence and Experience
23. Borges, Jorge Luis – Labyrinths
24. Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451
25. Bradbury, Ray – Something Wicked This Way Comes
26. Bradbury, Ray – The Illustrated Man
27. Bronte, Emily – Wuthering Heights
28. Brooks, Max – The Zombie Survival Guide
29. Brooks, Max – World War Z
30. Bulgakov, Mikhail – The Master and Margarita
31. Burgess, Anthony – A Clockwork Orange
32. Byron, George Gordon – Don Juan
33. Camus, Albert – The Plague
34. Carroll, Lewis – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
35. Carroll, Lewis – The Game of Logic
36. Carroll, Lewis – The Hunting of the Snark
37. Carroll, Lewis – Through the Looking-Glass
38. Carson, Kevin – Organization Theory
39. Carver, Raymond – Beginners
40. Cervantes, Miguel de – Don Quixote
41. Chabon, Michael – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
42. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich – Uncle Vanya
43. Child, Lee – Killing Floor
44. Chodorov, Frank – The Rise and Fall of Society
45. Cicero, Marcus Tullius – Letters
46. Cicero, Marcus Tullius – Treatises on Friendship and Old Age
47. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
48. Conrad, Joseph – Lord Jim
49. Conrad, Joseph – Notes on Life and Letters
50. Conrad, Joseph – Under Western Eyes
51. Darwin, Charles – On the Origin of Species
52. Dawkins, Richard – The God Delusion
53. Dawkins, Richard – The Greatest Show on Earth
54. Dawkins, Richard – The Selfish Gene
55. Defoe, Daniel – Robinson Crusoe
56. Descartes, Rene – A Discourse on Method
57. Diamond, Jared – Guns, Germs and Steel
58. Dickens, Charles – The Complete Works
59. Doctorow, Cory – For the Win
60. Dostoevsky, Fyodor – Notes from Underground
61. Dostoevsky, Fyodor – The Brothers Karamazov
62. Dostoevsky, Fyodor – The Idiot
63. Dumas, Alexander – The Count of Monte Cristo
64. Dumas, Alexander – The Three Musketeers
65. Eco, Umberto – Foucault’s Pendulum
66. Eco, Umberto – On Beauty
67. Eliot, George – Middlemarch
68. Eliot, T. S. – The Waste Land
69. Faulkner, William – The Sound and the Fury
70. Feyerabend, Paul – Against Method
71. Feynman, Richard – Six Easy Pieces
72. Feynman, Richard – Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman
73. Flaubert, Gustave – Madame Bovary
74. Flaubert, Gustave – Sentimental Education
75. Flaubert, Gustave – The Temptation of St. Antony
76. Forster, E. M. – A Room with a View
77. Forster, E. M. – Where Angels Fear to Tread
78. Frankl, Viktor E. – Man’s Search for Meaning
79. Franklin, Benjamin – The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
80. Franzen, Jonathan – Freedom
81. Gallico, Paul – The Snow Goose
82. Genette, Gerard – Narrative Discourse
83. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von – Faust
84. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von – The Sorrows of Young Werther
85. Gogol, Nikolai – Dead Souls
86. Gogol, Nikolai – The Collected Tales
87. Gould, Stephen Jay – The Mismeasure of Man
88. Harding, Paul – The Tinkers
89. Hardy, Thomas – Tess of the d’Urbervilles
90. Hawthorne, Nathaniel – The Scarlet Letter
91. Hayek, F. A. – The Road to Serfdom
92. Heller, Joseph – Catch-22
93. Hemingway, Ernest – A Farewell to Arms
94. Hemingway, Ernest – The Old Man and the Sea
95. Hemingway, Ernest – The Sun Also Rises
96. Hitchens, Christopher – God Is Not Great
97. Hitchens, Christopher – Hitch-22
98. Hitchens, Christopher – The Portable Atheist
99. Hobbes, Thomas – Leviathan
100. Hofstadter, Douglas – I Am a Strange Loops
101. Hoppe, Hans Hermann – Democracy
102. Hugo, Victor – Les Miserables
103. Hume, David – An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
104. Huxley, Alduous – Point Counter Point
105. Irving, Washington – The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow
106. Ishiguro, Kazuo – Never Let Me Go
107. Jacobson, Howard – The Finkler Question
108. Jevons, William Stanley – Elementary Lessons in Logic Deductive and Inductive
109. Jordan, Robert – The Eye of the World
110. Joyce, James – Dubliners
111. Joyce, James – Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
112. Joyce, James – Ulysses
113. Kafka, Franz – The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
114. Kafka, Franz – The Trial
115. Kant, Immanuel – The Metaphysical Element
116. Keats, John – Endymion
117. Keats, John – Lamia
118. Kerouac, Jack – On the Road
119. Keyes, Daniel – Flowers for Algernon
120. Kierkegaard, Soren – Fear and Trembling
121. Kierkegaard, Soren – The Sickness unto Death
122. King, Stephen – Insomnia
123. King, Stephen – It
124. King, Stephen – The Stand
125. Klingberg, Torkel – The Overflowing Brain
126. Knowles, Sir James – The Legends of King Arthur
127. Lewis, Michael – The Big Short
128. Locke, John – Conduct of the Understanding
129. London, Jack – The People of the Abyss
130. London, Jack – White Fang
131. Lovecraft, H. P. – Against the World, Against Life
132. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia – One Hundred Years of Solitude
133. Maugham, W. Somerset – Of Human Bondage
134. McCarthy, Cormac – Blood Meridian
135. McCarthy, Cormac – The Road
136. McEwan, Ian – Atonement
137. Melville, Herman – Moby Dick
138. Mill, John Stuart – On Liberty
139. Miller, Henry – Tropic of Cancer
140. Mises, Ludwig von – Human Action
141. Mises, Ludwig von – The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
142. Mitchell, Margaret – Gone With the Wind
143. Montaigne, Michel de – On Solitude
144. More, Thomas – Utopia
145. Nabokov, Vladimir – Lolita
146. Nietzsche, Freidrich – Ecce Homo
147. Orwell, George – Why I Write
148. Palahniuk, Chuck – Pygmy
149. Pascal, Blaise – Pensees
150. Paton, Alan – Cry, the Beloved Country
151. Pinker, Stephen – The Blank Slate
152. Poe, Edgar Allan – The Complete Works
153. Pound, Ezra – Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
154. Powell, Padgett – The Interrogative Mood
155. Proust, Marcel – Swann’s Way
156. Pynchon, Thomas – Gravity’s Rainbow
157. Pynchon, Thomas – The Crying of Lot 49
158. Pynchon, Thomas – V.
159. Racine, Jean Baptise – Phaedra
160. Roth, Philip – American Pastoral
161. Roth, Philip – Portnoy’s Complaint
162. Roth, Philip – The Human Stain
163. Rothbard, Murray N. – Man, Economy, and State
164. Roussea, Jean-Jacques – The social Contract
165. Russell, Bertrand – History of Western Philosophy
166. Sagan, Carl – Contact
167. Sagan, Carl – Cosmos
168. Sagan, Carl – Pale Blue Dot
169. Sagan, Carl – The Demon-Haunted World
170. Schopenhauer, Arthur – Essays on Human Nature
171. Schopenhauer, Arthur – On the Suffering of the World
172. Seslick, Dr Dale – Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary
173. Shakespeare, William – The Complete Works
174. Shaw, Bernard – Pygmalion
175. Shea, Ammon – Reading the Oxford English Dictionary
176. Shea, Ammon – Satisdiction
177. Sheldrake, Rupert – Morphic Resonance
178. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft – Frankenstein
179. Sinclair, Upton – The Jungle
180. Smith, Adam – The Wealth of Nations
181. Spinoza – Ethics
182. Stephenson, Neal – Snow Crash
183. Stevenson, Robert Louis – Treasure Island
184. Stoker, Bram – Dracula
185. Stowe, Harriet Beecher – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
186. Swift, Jonathan – Gulliver’s Travels
187. Tacitus, Caius Cornelius – The Histories
188. Thackeray, William Makepeace – Vanity Fair
189. Thompson, Hunter S. – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
190. Thoreau, Henry David –Civil Disobedience
191. Thoreau, Henry David – Walden
192. Thoreau, Henry David – Walking
193. Tolstoy, Leo – Anna Karenina
194. Tolstoy, Leo – The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories
195. Tolstoy, Leo – War and Peace
196. Trollope, Anthony – Barchester Towers
197. Trollope, Anthony – Doctor Thorne
198. Trollope, Anthony – The Warden
199. Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
200. Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
201. Twain, Mark – The Prince and the Pauper
202. Twain, Mark – What is Man? and Other Essays
203. Verne, Jules – A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
204. Verne, Jules – Around the World in 80 Days
205. Verne, Jules – Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
206. Vinci, Leonardo da – Notebooks
207. Virgil – The Aeneid
208. Voltaire – Candide
209. Vonnegut, Kurt – Breakfast of Champions
210. Vonnegut, Kurt – Cat’s Cradle
211. Vonnegut, Kurt – Slaughterhouse-Five
212. Wells, H. G. – The Invisible Man
213. Wells, H. G. – The Time Machine
214. Wells, H. G. – The War of the Worlds
215. Whitman, Walt – Leaves of Grass
216. Wilde, Oscar – The Picture of Dorian Gray
217. Wilson, Robert Anton – The Illuminatus! Trilogy
218. Woolf, Virginia – To the Lighthouse
219. Yalom, Irvin D. – The Schopenhauer Cure
220. Yalom, Irvin D. – When Nietzsche Wept
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SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
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1. Age (<18, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55+)
<18 (16)
2. Gender
Male
3. What do you read on a daily basis? (blogs, newspapers, books, etc.)
Reddit, some blogs, telegraph, and books
4. How often do you read for fun in a week?
Daily
5. What time of day do you like to read?
Evening
6. Where do you read?
Bed, bath, at my desk
7. How many books have you read in the last 6 months?
~25
8. What type/genre do you enjoy reading most?
Philosophy, classics, "philosophical" fiction
9. Why do you read? (entertainment, relaxation, learning, etc.)
Erudition and escapism, mostly
10. What barriers prevent you from reading more?
School, cunctation, me
11. Do you think reading for fun is important?
Yes, primarily because it tends to force one to think, which is an activity I think many need to partake in more frequently
12. Do you fold page corners or use a bookmark?
Both. I will usually bookmark to keep my place, but dogear for interesting passages, vocabulary, and whatnot
13. Do you prefer to read to music or in silence?
Silence, I am too easily distracted
14. Do you discuss books with your friends?
Not really
15. Do you borrow books from the library?
Occasionally, but I prefer to own the book
16. Do you borrow/loan books from/to friends?
Very rarely, only when I am forcing someone to read something.
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I finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and have begun Treasure Island
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I thoroughly enjoyed Haruki Murakami's collection The Elephant Vanishes. It is certainly an interesting take on the, I suppose, banalities of existence.
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Thanks for the welcomes everyone. I hope you're all having a great Christmas.
Welcome to the BCF.
Is it generally thought-provoking fiction you are drawn to, or is there room in your reading list for philosophical texts as well?
I go through phases. I was, for a while, almost exclusively reading philosophy, but I have recently moved back into fiction.
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I have long been a lover of trivia, so naturally I tend towards non-fiction, especially philosophical works. I have, however, found myself having more of a propinquity towards fiction. Perhaps it is because I have recently begun to more acknowledge and understand the philosophical underpinnings of much of what I read.
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I am a huge fan of Stephen Fry, and, having watched his Christmas Cracker the other day, have become increasingly interested in his story. Good to hear his memoirs are well written enough to more than justify that curiosity.
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Currently Reading:
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Read:
December, 2010
1. Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson 5/5
2. Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer 4/5
3. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson 2/5
4. Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl 5/5
5. Dirk gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams 4/5
6. The Time Machine, H. G. Wells 3/5
7. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut 4/5
January, 2011
1. Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne 3/5
2. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy 4/5
3. Point Omega, Don Delillo 4/5
4. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy 3/5
5. Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth 5/5
6. King Lear, William Shakepeare 5/5
7. Contact, Carl Sagan 3/5
8. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 5/5
9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro 4/5
February, 2011
1. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
2. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
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Greetings,
I am Himself. I am 16 years old and from London. I consider myself to be an avid reader, but have been getting off track with regard to keeping up with all the things I actually want to read.
I love reading as much for its ability to provoke thought as I do for the stories it tells. This dictates much of choice of books.
Well, that's all, for now.
A new first line of current book
in General Book Discussions
Posted
"THIS BOOK DOES NOT CLAIM to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again."
Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl