Of course. It's the 50-book challenge, not the 50-SciFi-or-Fantasy-book challenge.
Tim Send a noteboard - 02/01/2010 12:14:59 AM
I ended up reading 52 books in 2009, though The Original of Laura should hardly count as a book, even when Dmitri Nabokov's introduction is included. You can see my list in my profile if you're curious. I resolved that in 2010 I am not going to even try to read 50 books. My goal will only be 20 as I expect the year will be very busy for work and I'm mulling over the idea of mastering another language (and I really mean "mastering", not just studying), which would take away from reading time significantly. I'm thinking Tibetan, or Akkadian, or maybe just an easy language from the Romance family that I already know (like Portuguese or French), though "mastering" the latter requires a lot of work on slang and stylistics. Any thoughts on which to pick?
Rebekah got The Original of Laura for Christmas. I'll probably read it someday, but there's probably no point until I've read something else of his, like Pale Fire.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J.K. Rowling
I counted that book last year. I think it's about as valid to list as The Original of Laura - I had finished it in under an hour. Still, I loved the way it looked (I got the fun version with the skull on the cover in the big book-shaped bo.
A book is a book is a book. Sure, it's short, but I read longer ones too. I wouldn't have considered that I'd done it properly if I'd read all or mostly one-hour or two-hour books, but I had to allow myself a few.
(Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov)
I think Lolita is one of the best books I have ever read, and certainly one of the best I've read in English. It's just wonderful prose writing.
I bought it in, um, 2002 I think, and got about a third of the way in before getting distracted and forgetting about it. I'd been meaning to give it another go for ages. I'm glad I did.
Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
I couldn't get into Zelazny. I have the whole Amber series but just couldn't bring myself to go back to it after having read about 50 pages.
Lord of Light is awesome. Confusing at first, but when you work it out, it's well worth it. And it's really short. I've not read Amber, but I don't think it's like that at all – Lord of Light could only ever have been a stand-alone.
Night Watch – Sergei Lukyanenko
It's the best of the series. I'm 2/3 of the way through the next book (Day Watch) and just can't bring myself to finish it for 2 years now.
I was distinctly unimpressed, and probably won't bother with the rest of them. However, I think this is probably the fault of the poor English translation. I'm sure it's much better in Russian, but unfortunately I can't read it.
The Eye in the Pyramid – Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
I loved the Illuminatus trilogy. Damn fnords are everywhere, though. Apply these comments to the later books in the series listed.
The end was hilarious. Hail Eris!
A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr
A short, fun but dated book.
Yeah, you can really tell when it was written. But it's thoughtful. I thought it was fun that he put the Wandering Jew into a post-apocalyptic future, and I have a worrying feeling that, if we did almost destroy the world like that, the Catholic Church really would refuse to die.
Baudolino – Umberto Eco
Of all the Eco books I've read this is the one I liked the least. It started out well and then just made a turn to the absurd. I liked the whole idea of a lying main character but at the point where it stopped being a stretching of history and started parroting the more bizarre stories of Marco Polo et al., I just lost interest. I think Eco has some fascination with the grotesque. I certainly don't.
I thought it was fun, but I did find it a bit weird how the book started out fairly firmly moored to reality, but then came adrift and floated out into (copied) fantasy. I'm more used to books establishing their required level of suspension-of-disbelief early on, and sticking to it.
Contract Law in Scotland – Hector MacQueen and Joe Thomson
No, seriously, you aren't counting a book on contract law, are you? If so, why???
Because it's a book, I read it in its entirety, and it took me a week to read. I certainly didn't have time to read anything else in the week before my Contract exam. Why shouldn't I count it? My studying cuts into my other reading enough as it is – I can't count most of it as I don't tend to read academic books from cover to cover, just the chapters I need for the assignment.
Foucault's Pendulum – Umberto Eco
Of all the Eco books I've read this is the one I liked the most. It was wonderful, it was well-researched and I found myself wondering whether Eco hadn't really stumbled upon something and was signalling to the reader that there was a big conspiracy, but doing it through fiction.
I found it all a bit much, to be honest. And too slow. I think my favourite Eco is probably The Name of the Rose (the only one I've read that's not on this list).
Vigilantibus non dormientibus jura subveniunt.
—Nous disons en allemand : le guerre, le mort, le lune, alors que 'soleil' et 'amour' sont du sexe féminin : la soleil, la amour. La vie est neutre.
—La vie ? Neutre ? C'est très joli, et surtout très logique.
—Nous disons en allemand : le guerre, le mort, le lune, alors que 'soleil' et 'amour' sont du sexe féminin : la soleil, la amour. La vie est neutre.
—La vie ? Neutre ? C'est très joli, et surtout très logique.
50-book challenge complete!
31/12/2009 10:02:42 PM
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What did you think of Three Men on a Boat? One of the more underrated comedies out there, IMO. *NM*
01/01/2010 12:02:36 AM
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I think Jerome K Jerome was brilliant, and wish there were more like him.
01/01/2010 11:21:07 AM
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Good job, Tim!
01/01/2010 01:09:20 AM
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Not only that: my current read is Matter, the last Culture novel.
01/01/2010 11:16:34 AM
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Me too.
01/01/2010 11:53:57 AM
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You counted a book about contract law???
01/01/2010 04:16:53 PM
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fnords!!!!!
01/01/2010 07:29:09 PM
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by the way
01/01/2010 07:30:04 PM
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Three. If they were originally published separately, the fact that someone collected them into...
01/01/2010 11:55:22 PM
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The Night Watch series just got progressively worse. I liked all of them, though. *NM*
01/01/2010 10:18:15 PM
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Of course. It's the 50-book challenge, not the 50-SciFi-or-Fantasy-book challenge.
02/01/2010 12:14:59 AM
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I would never have considered case books "books" for purposes of the 50-book challenge.
02/01/2010 05:41:02 PM
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It's a textbook, not a case book.
02/01/2010 08:43:42 PM
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I think even books we called textbooks were essentially case books.
03/01/2010 05:42:45 PM
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Re: You counted a book about contract law???
04/01/2010 10:30:24 AM
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We both speak Spanish already.
04/01/2010 02:00:06 PM
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Do you really figure...
05/01/2010 01:57:54 AM
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I don't think it would take less time than for Portuguese or French, but...
05/01/2010 04:53:27 AM
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I think you should teach her Koine before French
05/01/2010 04:01:44 AM
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If I could convince my wife, I would
05/01/2010 04:57:05 AM
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There's always Amharic, I suppose
05/01/2010 07:32:50 AM
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For some reason I always want to read that word as though it were in Gaelic
05/01/2010 01:49:44 PM
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Well, at least it's not Klingon!
05/01/2010 11:30:48 PM
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I have a cursory knowledge of Old Persian and a smattering of Gatha Avestan...why do you ask?
07/01/2010 06:09:20 AM
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Oh, come on. Finnish is all kinds of awesome.
05/01/2010 05:01:16 PM
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I know the word "omenapiraaka" means "apple pie" - I went to the Helsinki McDonald's.
07/01/2010 06:10:49 AM
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Since 50 and a half seems to be quite a popular number this year, here are mine.
01/01/2010 04:38:09 PM
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I think I managed, too. However, after that, my reading just... ceased.
01/01/2010 06:02:16 PM
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What did you think of Foucault's Pendulum?
02/01/2010 08:42:02 PM
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Because I'm not American.
03/01/2010 05:50:36 AM
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Yes, but you lot have lost so much more...
03/01/2010 06:03:38 AM
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Is the subjunctive any more alive in America than in Britain?
03/01/2010 06:23:09 AM
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Not in any meaningful sense. I suppose there are some irregularities which could be subjunctive...
03/01/2010 09:54:46 AM
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Would y'all ( ) say it's the same situation as with French (and I think Spanish)?
05/01/2010 02:05:59 AM
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Not exactly
05/01/2010 04:00:04 AM
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All I know about French is what's in Louisiana, and it's just completely incomprehensible.
06/01/2010 08:20:53 AM
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Aaah.
03/01/2010 09:04:45 AM
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I should have mentioned...
03/01/2010 11:39:27 PM
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Illuminatus! is so great. I finished the trilogy last year, I think.
05/01/2010 06:58:14 AM
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If this will be your first Eco, I definitely recommend The Name of the Rose rather than FP. *NM*
05/01/2010 11:13:07 AM
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I finished with 90 books.
09/01/2010 09:45:29 PM
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