Hayley

The last reading log I started became quite neglected but this year I'm determined to make it more organised. Along with my actual reading! I always have so many plans of what I'm going to read during the Summer holidays and I think I've only read 2 of the books I had in mind! I'm being a very good this year though and trying to get a good head start on my course reading list (I think I'm going to need it!). So here it is... (I've split them into the sections we're studying them in to make it easier for me to see where I've gotten to on each one). (For the Modernism section of the course...) As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner Tender Is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald Dubliners - James Joyce Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka The Complete Fiction of Nella Larson: Passing, Quicksand, and the stories - Nella Larson Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf Selected Short Stories - Virginia Woolf (Also Poetry by W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Hilda Doolittle, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy and others but these haven't been specified yet) (For Popular Literary Genres...) Murder's in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, William Wilson and The Man in the Crowd - Edgar Allan Poe The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle Pudd'nhead Wilson, The Stolen White Elephant and A Double-Barrelled Detective Story - Mark Twain The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christi The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett The Conjure Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem - Rudolph Fisher The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov A Rage In Harlem - Chester Himes In Cold Blood - Truman Capote Total Recall - Sara Paretsky "Ghosts" (from The New York Trilogy) - Paul Auster (For Literature of the First World War...) Regeneration - Pat Barker The Forbidden Zone - Mary Borden A Month In the Country - L.J. Carr Howard's End - E.M. Forster Goodbye To All That - Robert Graves The Penguin Book of First World War Stories The Poems of Wilfred Owen - Ed. John Stallworthy The Annotated Collection of Poems - Edward Thomas The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (For Dissertation...) Dombey and Son - Charles Dickens Little Dorrit - " The Christmas Books - " The one's I've read so far this summer are in bold by the way

I love the theme from Dragonheart, and the theme for The Shire from Lord of the Rings. For not instrumental ones, I've always loved Go the Distance from the Disney version of Hercules, and the Phil Collins song You'll be in my heart they used for Tarzan. And On my way by Rusted Root which was used in Matilda

I'd never read anything by Virginia Woolf until a couple of weeks ago, now Mrs Dalloway and 'selected short stories' are on my reading list for uni. I have to admit, I'm struggling to get through Mrs Dalloway. I find the structure really odd. Everything flows together beautifully... but sometimes the flow goes on for so long that I have to go back to check who she's talking about. There's also been a few times where I've come across a sentence which sounds wonderfully arty but makes absolutely no sense to me; then I end up interrupting the story for myself by trying to work out what she means. I'm relieved you found Mrs Dalloway the most difficult so far, it gives me hope for the others! I completely agree with you on the characters though, particularly Septimus, I really want to find out what will happen with him, it's sort of keeping me going!

I'm a 90's kid and I love my books, so your not on your own What books do you like?

I don't think I could trust a review that had been paid for either, I think it does suggest that there's some pressure on the reviewer to put a positive spin on books that aren't very good. But I only ever really use this forum to look at book reviews, so I suppose I don't really have that problem

Yeah that's pretty much what I heard too Devi, I think they gave the game an ending where they could have had a big dlc to follow but oh well. At least the game was good Talking about endings, what are peoples thought's on the controversial Mass Effect 3 ending? I'm definitely one of the people who was seriously disappointed with it, to the point where I felt the game was a waste of money. I know there's a free dlc now that extends the ending, but apparently you have to replay the last 3 hours of the game for it to work, and it's not that much different, so I haven't bothered to get it so far!

I really only asked the question about the literary games to get the conversation started, feel free to talk about whatever games you like on here! Both the Batman games mentioned above I thought were brilliant. I really liked the Riddler challenges in them. Although I haven't heard very good things about the new DLC for Arkham City, has anybody played it? I did really like Fallout too, but I got a bit distracted and never finished it I think my problem is I start exploring random areas and doing side quests until I forget to actually do the main quest Skyrim is my favourite at the moment though, I prefer the fantasy genre, so it wins over Fallout for me (sorry bobblybear )

Miss Nothing - Pretty Reckless

I'm glad a couple of you mentioned the first Alice game, I've been wondering if I should try it, but I will now if it's really good I have a code for it which came with the game, but it was second hand so it might have been used, I'll just keep my fingers crossed! Nollaig, madness returns really does have amazing scenery doesn't it? Good idea to use it as a halloween costume! Someone must have spent ages designing all the game outfits for all the different areas of wonderland! Dante's Inferno I played a bit of, and I liked the mythological characters you could find, but apart from that I thought it was really repetitive. Really just a series of similar enemies followed by a boss. over and over again. Quite nice graphics though. I like that the Discworld game will be difficult, I prefer actually having to think to finish a game. I played Broken sword ages ago with my boyfriend, and recently they had the remastered edition for sale on steam. But when we downloaded it, there's now a glowing spot over everything you can look at and pick up, so it's stupidly easy, and there's no way to turn them off. I was very annoyed. There's nothing difficult about point and click games if the computer is going to tell you where to point and click Vodkafan, I'm not a big first person shooter fan either but you do get the occasional really good one. When you say you prefer board games where multiple people can play at once, what about games with online multiplayer? I'll assume you game on pc, since you mentioned the mods, so there's loads of mmorpg's available, have you ever tried one of these?

I love the Victorians too but I don't know much about the other eras! Did you want a non-fiction book or is fiction set in those times ok too? My sister reads quite a lot of historical fiction, so I can get her recommendations for you if fiction is any good Have you read any particularly good books on the Victorian period?

I've found books that were from school after I left, which should actually have been returned. It didn't intentionally keep them though, I just forgot about them! I have 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and a GCSE history book

I know that a few people at least on here play video games, and although there is a thread for favourite games, I thought it might be fun to have a more general discussion area. So... for a start, since we're all book lovers here, what about games with a literary theme? I know there's a pc game based on Terry Pratchett's discworld novels called 'discworld noir' (which I own but can't get to run... still waiting on boyfriend to fix it!) Today I tried 'Alice the madness returns' on xbox, which is based on Alice in wonderland, but has a freaky twist to it (at the beginning I thought a little too freaky but it got better). It's very good so far though, I love finding all the links to the book, it's very cleverly done. I also just found out that Terry Pratchett's daughter is behind writing the upcoming tomb raider game, which I already thought looked like it had a really interesting story line. Does anybody know of any more? And what do you think of books as games? (feel free to throw in any other game related topics by the way! )

I don't know, I was worried that it would feel different having been dictated rather than written , but I didn't think it did when I actually read it! By "flapped around", do you mean like, drifting from the main plot? I That's such a good way to put it, he really does have a knack of putting you in his characters minds. I really like Vimes too, I like the little sarcastic element he has. I loved the character of Willikins in Snuff too, some of his parts really made me laugh

I always expect a lot from Terry Pratchett's books and, after finishing this one, I can happily say I was not disappointed. As ever, it was witty, clever, thought provoking and gripping. Considering the serious themes of racial hatred and class power, there were also parts which made me laugh literally out loud. Has anybody else read this? If so, what did you think?

I think it really depends on the quality of the paper in the specific book your writing on, the thin writing Sharpie pens are the only ones I can think of that might work but if the papers thin I think it will probably show though a little no matter what you use. What about using a mechanical pencil for books with thin pages? Hope you find something

I agree that writing can be achieved by anybody with writing apparatus and a basic command of the English language. However, I also thinking that writing well requires the hard work and talent components. And I don't think Millhouse2011 would have joined a book club forum without a love of books, so... what books do you like?

Definitely David Copperfield and Oliver Twist. If you like Dickens then Hard Times is also really good. (I'm a bit of a Dickens fan, can you tell? ) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is another classic I really enjoyed, it's not very long either, so easy to fit in And what about Gulliver's Travels as well? Cannot WAIT to start my summer reading. Only two exams standing in my way!

What about Ian McEwan Atonement? Or maybe Stephen King's The Green Mile (almost made me cry twice!) and hi

I don't think UK censorship laws actually include books do they? I think if a book was particularly horrible (like how to make a bomb) book shops would probably refuse to sell it anyway, so I guess its like self-censorship. I'm pretty sure you can request to have a book removed from a public library if you think it's offensive, but they don't have to remove it.