Saturday, August 26, 2006

Book Talk

Tonight is not a night to catch up on my reviews, too late at night. So, I am going to talk about books in general.

An upcoming review is for A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. I read it last night at work, and I found it very engrossing. I am looking forward to reading the sequel, Rebel Angels, soon. It is a young adult book with a blend of history and fantasy. The sequel is marketed as historical. There are fantastic elements to it, though.

I completed the second book in Jack Whyte's Dream of Eagles series. It was wonderful. I am really enjoying this series so far. I have too many books on the go, or I would probably be reading book 3. I have heard that it slows down, but I am going to be wishful. I always start these series excited, and then they fizzle. It is like the authors get too comfortable and the writing suffers as a result. I hope this continues to attract my attention.

There are a few blogs that are planning to read more classics, they are setting themselves goals. I have a goal, but not classics. My goal is to read all of David Gemmell's novels by next year. I would say this year, but there are a lot of them and I have to track them all down first. I prefer the second hand approach. I will have the review up for the book I just read of his soon. Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow. I am a sucker for Troy and Arthur novels.

But, I will go along with the classics, too. By the end of the year, I have to read an Austen novel (considering I own all of them, they were a gift) and Rebecca by du Maurier. And, for Christmas, I am buying myself War and Peace because everyone is reading it and I have always wanted to. There, anything above that will be an added bonus. Heather made me think, though, I would also like to read Alcott. I have three of her novels, Little Women, Little Men, and The Eight Cousins. Okay, so reading one of them would be good too. I have read Little Women before. It was one of those books I read back when I was little, my first classic. I will see what happens. I read classics for university, of course, but always the obscure ones. (I am a big fan of The Scarlet Letter, though, which I read two years ago for school)

Anyways, everyone should pick one book that has been taunting them from their to read pile forever and read it by the end of the year. I did mine, I have had The Skystone by Jack Whyte forever, and now that I have finally read it, I loved it! I also have had The Historian for a while, and I am almost done that. It is such an accomplisment to have those done. I must look at my to read pile and see if there is something else that has been sitting there for too long and read it.

End of my ramblings. Will try and write a review tomorrow.

9 comments:

  1. Speaking of Little Women I am going to be joining the people over at Our Coffee Rings:

    http://www.ourcoffeerings.blogspot.com/

    for their September book reading and it looks very much like the selection will be Little Women.

    Rebecca is a great novel. I really enjoyed the 'discovery' of that book. I have since watched both the BBC film version (which is excellent) and the old Black and White version...in which a significant plot point is changed but other than that is very good.

    Great and Terrible Beauty is on my reading list. I have mixed feelings about The Historian. Dracula being my favorite novel I have never been too keen on books that revolve closely around that story. I hear both good things and bad about the book and have had close friends say that they really enjoyed it but didn't feel like the end was worth all the effort of reading the book. I'll be interested to know what you think.

    Have a great weekend.

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  2. My challenge classic that I've been meaning to read for ages is The Tale of Genji. And I did finally start it a couple of months ago. It's huge and other things have been pre-empting it so I can only hope to finish it by the end of the year. Good luck with yours.

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  3. Carl - I might have to look into joining in for that too. I will think about it. Thanks for the info!

    I am only halfway through The Historian. I got busy and didn't get as much read as I would have liked. It is my plan to finish it before the end of the month, though. I will let you know what I think.


    Tanabata - I have never actually heard of The Tale of Genji before. At least, not off the top of my head. Good luck with that.

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  4. I choose Les Miserables off my TBR pile to finish before 2007. I've avoided reading it for a while now, because the suck is over 1,000 pages. In fact it's *goes to look* 1,463 pages to be exact.

    My book goal for next year is kind of the same as yours. Except I'm doing all Stephen King books. I figure I'll have a shit load of nightmares after I get done with that goal.

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  5. Thanks. The Tale of Genji is a, or maybe I should say the, Japanese classic, written about 1000 years ago. And it's over 1100pages long. It's interesting though, it's just not a fast read.

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  6. Thanks for the comment you left on my blog. I now have a new blog to read too. :)

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  7. And new blogs to read are a great thing. :)

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  8. If you like adventures nothing like the classics such as:

    The Scarlet Pimpernel
    Prince of Foxes
    The Black Swan
    Scaramouche

    to get you started. I love War & Peace! one of my favorite books.

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  9. I was going to read The Scarlet Pimpernel, but the bookstore didn't have it and when I try to read online I get distracted...

    I have never even heard of the other three books. I am going to go look them up. :) I need to read more classics.

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