This sparks another question. Taking the thread another direction.Originally Posted by inudesu
What books have you attempted repeatedly and never made it through?
The Good Earth
The Grapes of Wrath
A Tale of Two Cities
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This sparks another question. Taking the thread another direction.
What books have you attempted repeatedly and never made it through?
The Good Earth
The Grapes of Wrath
A Tale of Two Cities
Bob will say The Sun Also Rises.
The payoff on 2/3 of those you listed make them worth powering through to the end. The Good Earth is really good, but there isn't like a big resolution or anything like what you get in the other 2. If you didn't like the first part, it's not going to change much other than maybe if you get more invested in the characters.
I've been working on the copy of the Iliad on my bookshelf for years. Made some good progress this year, but there is just always something better to read near to hand.
I bet there are others on my shelf that I've picked up a dozen times and never actually make it through. I'll have to think about it.
Good Earth was another HS English assignment (11th grade, I think). Had to finish it, but it never felt like a chore.
Grapes of Wrath, though, that was like chewing bubble gum that lost its flavor half an hour ago. .
Just seeing "Tale of Two Cities" always brings to mind the Python bookshop sketch.
I cheated and took the test for all three from multiple summaries. I’ll go a step further with The Grapes of Wrath. It’s like chewing a frozen piece of gum still in the wrapper.
that's dikkens with two k's, the well-known dutch author
at the time i read it, i thought tale of two cities was the best book i had ever read. after some separation from the immediate effect of the book, i would still put it in my top 3 for sure.
as for my list, i only tried the sun also rises once, thank you very much. but my list would include
don quixote
five past midnight in bhopal
the republic
this reminds me of my freshman literature class, in which i wrote an essay on An American Tragedy based solely on classroom discussion and managed a B.
So I finally finished A Distant Mirror (no thanks to that sneaky Nintendo the kids got for Christmas) and it was really good. Highly recommend (if you like history, if not - maybe nope).
The author won a Pulitzer for a different book about the beginning of WWI which apparently helped us all avoid disaster during the Cuban Missile Crises (the book is about how leaders sort of blundered into WWI and Kennedy was influenced to the point of trying to be careful not to escalate things into an unwanted war by making the same poor decisions that led to WWI). It looks interesting, might try to pick it up if our library has it (once I've cleared the backlog that built up while I tried to wrap this one up).
Currently working on a kids Fantasy book about dragons that my middle kid is super into and almost done with the Planet Hulk graphic novel (or the graphic novel collected version) that Thor Ragnarok was partly based on. Up next a (thankfully much shorter) novel by the author of Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell called Piranesi. Supposed to be good, we'll see.
Just finished Ken Follett's Column of Fire. It's book three of the Kingsbridge series that started with Pillars of the Earth. Basically, Follett takes a century and tells a story around a local city (Kingsbridge) while interacting with what was going on in history. Pillars relates to the events around the sinking of the White Ship and the death of Henry I's only son. World Without End is set around the Wars of the Roses. Column of Fire deals with Elizabethan England and the struggles between Protestants and Catholics.
I read Pillars 10 years ago when I was in England and loved it. Really good book. Just found Column of Fire this fall. Finally got to reading it this month. It's almost as good as Pillars of the Earth. It's a bit more interested in the historical story than in local events than the other two. The key hero of the story is a guy who ends up working for Elizabeth -- the story focuses more around his adventures than around local events. Still, when he sets his mind to it, Follett is a great story teller.
I will say that as he's gotten older, he seems to be getting more interested in sex. He's not graphic, but at times he's a bit juvenile in his interests (kind of like Heinlein was)
I've heard good things about Pillars. Considered picking it up several times.
Piranesi was very good. Highly recommend. It's short, almost a novella, especially when compared to Jonathan Strange. Go look for it, it's worth it.
Planet Hulk also pretty good. Fun.
The middle-grade book is fine. I'm not really the target audience here, but I see why he likes it.
Lots of genre stuff on the bedside stack. I'll mix in a little non-fiction I think (gotta eat your veggies) but I'm looking forward to a lot of plot-driven SF/F/Spy/Mystery for a spell.
ok i have a couple of audible credits that i need to use before i cancel. any recommendations?
going to use one of my credits for this (can't go wrong with "bobiverse")
but i have two more, and i'm not going to go for the sequels until i know i like the first.
I'd read the first one then decide if you want to go another way. I just finished the Starfisher's Trilogy by Glen Cook. An odd one. I really liked the first book. Thought it was excellent and it might actually stand on its own if you just choose to let it. The other two books I thought were much weaker, especially book 2.
I liked Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. That had some interesting twists on a more or less hard SF story. There's a sequel, but it's not a necessary one and it's only partially connected anyway.
RIP Larry McMurtry
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