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May. 5th, 2005 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelseagirlI was intrigued by the latest book meme, and since everyone is saying "Well, nobody passed the baton along to me but I'm answering it anyway," likewise.
Prose or Poetry?
Prose. I admire a good lyric, and adore an epic, but essentially, I'm lazy.
Book(s) you're reading now:
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey (I'm not a big heroic fantasy person, but so many people on my flist have mentioned it that I got curious)
Last book you've read:
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Luis Zafon
Next book you're going to buy/read:
Today I did my last Strand run of the semester, and I bought:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, tr. Edith Grossman (finally in paperback where there was a chance I could heft it!)
In Ruins by Christopher Woodward (a meditation on . . . ruins, which my friend Rachel raved about and has been on my to-get list ever since)
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield (there was an article on her in the latest New Yorker, and it sounded fun)
also, not at the Strand
Murder of Angels by Caitlin R. Kiernan (the one horror writer who really clicks for me)
Book you've read the most times:
The Lord of the Rings, the Sherlock Holmes novels, Middlemarch by George Eliot.
But the winner is Alice in Wonderland, since I've read it *and* had it read to me as a child, as an adult for fun, as a scholar for my dissertation, and as a lecturer for my class.
Longest book you've read:
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queenofthorns, The Power Broker (Robert Caro) and A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth) are probably the largest single-volume books, but if In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past counts as one novel, as Proust intended it to be, that's my longest. I've read it twice, but only in English translation.
Book you've read in the shortest time (relative to the number of pages):
In a *good* way, Suzanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which occupied much of Labor Day weekend last year. I meant to savor it, but couldn't put it down. In a "will this ever end" way, Dan Simmon's Hyperion.
One book you wanted to read that disappointed you:
Falling Angel by Tracy Chevalier (the problem with reading historical novels set in my period of academic focus is that things seem obvious and forced or trite to me that wouldn't to someone who's not a Professional Victorianist.)
Have you read books in a language different from yours?
Some French, but nothing all the way through since undergrad. I do, however, *purchase* novels in French; the question is will the pages turn unreadably yellow and brittle before I actually read them?
Writer you've read the most books from:
Charles Dickens; Agatha Christie (my grandmother passed them along to me -- probably 50 or 60 in all, but I last read a Christie *maybe* in high school, probably in junior high).
Some books you like (not necessarily your faves):
Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
A.S. Byatt, Possession
Kevin Baker, Paradise Alley
Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun series
John Crowley, Aegypt, Love & Sleep, Demonomania
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station, The Scar
Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice, Persuasion
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda
Anthony Trollope, Parliamentary novels
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, No Name
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey
Henry James, The Awkward Age
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse
better stop now . . .
3 books you don't like:
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (waaaay overrated)
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (aged poorly)
John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra (which was probably a very *good* book, because it left me feeling sick)
Prose or Poetry?
Prose. I admire a good lyric, and adore an epic, but essentially, I'm lazy.
Book(s) you're reading now:
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey (I'm not a big heroic fantasy person, but so many people on my flist have mentioned it that I got curious)
Last book you've read:
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Luis Zafon
Next book you're going to buy/read:
Today I did my last Strand run of the semester, and I bought:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, tr. Edith Grossman (finally in paperback where there was a chance I could heft it!)
In Ruins by Christopher Woodward (a meditation on . . . ruins, which my friend Rachel raved about and has been on my to-get list ever since)
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield (there was an article on her in the latest New Yorker, and it sounded fun)
also, not at the Strand
Murder of Angels by Caitlin R. Kiernan (the one horror writer who really clicks for me)
Book you've read the most times:
The Lord of the Rings, the Sherlock Holmes novels, Middlemarch by George Eliot.
But the winner is Alice in Wonderland, since I've read it *and* had it read to me as a child, as an adult for fun, as a scholar for my dissertation, and as a lecturer for my class.
Longest book you've read:
Like
queenofthorns, The Power Broker (Robert Caro) and A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth) are probably the largest single-volume books, but if In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past counts as one novel, as Proust intended it to be, that's my longest. I've read it twice, but only in English translation.Book you've read in the shortest time (relative to the number of pages):
In a *good* way, Suzanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which occupied much of Labor Day weekend last year. I meant to savor it, but couldn't put it down. In a "will this ever end" way, Dan Simmon's Hyperion.
One book you wanted to read that disappointed you:
Falling Angel by Tracy Chevalier (the problem with reading historical novels set in my period of academic focus is that things seem obvious and forced or trite to me that wouldn't to someone who's not a Professional Victorianist.)
Have you read books in a language different from yours?
Some French, but nothing all the way through since undergrad. I do, however, *purchase* novels in French; the question is will the pages turn unreadably yellow and brittle before I actually read them?
Writer you've read the most books from:
Charles Dickens; Agatha Christie (my grandmother passed them along to me -- probably 50 or 60 in all, but I last read a Christie *maybe* in high school, probably in junior high).
Some books you like (not necessarily your faves):
Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
A.S. Byatt, Possession
Kevin Baker, Paradise Alley
Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun series
John Crowley, Aegypt, Love & Sleep, Demonomania
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station, The Scar
Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice, Persuasion
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda
Anthony Trollope, Parliamentary novels
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, No Name
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey
Henry James, The Awkward Age
Virginia Woolf, The Waves, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse
better stop now . . .
3 books you don't like:
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (waaaay overrated)
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (aged poorly)
John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra (which was probably a very *good* book, because it left me feeling sick)
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Date: 2005-05-05 08:49 pm (UTC)Oh, I didn't like that much either - and I think it's mostly because it was much weaker than Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I loved ;) Now I want to read the other one of hers, the "unicorn" somethingorother one!
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Date: 2005-05-05 08:56 pm (UTC)I'll probably read Girl with a Pearl Earring at some point, since it's not likely to press my buttons in the same way. ;-)
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Date: 2005-05-08 09:09 pm (UTC)I keep meaning to read Trollope -- I have a copy of The Warden around here somewhere, as well as a collection of the Palliser novels. But he's so prolific, one really doesn't quite know where to start. And I need to pull my Wilkie Collins novels out of the garage (where all the paperbacks that I purchased prior to five years ago are) for a reread.
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Date: 2005-05-11 02:38 pm (UTC)I always tell people (at least people who don't mind loooong books) to start with The Way We Live Now because it's a standalone, it's got amazing subplots, including the fall of a financial empire, and it's particularly cynical for Trollope -- in a good way.
Trollope at his worst has characters obsessing endlessly. Orley Farm, which I'm writing about in my diss, has this fault, though it's also a fascinating look at the legal system. I could not get through one of the final Barchester novels because of this idiot character who kept obsessing about the Unworthy Man Who Dumped Her and turning down the much better and nicer and handsomer man who loved her. Yet she was amazingly popular in the 19th c.