4 posts tagged “reading”

since I read a book that scared me so badly I couldn't sleep.

I stated Stephen King's Duma Key last night around 9 p.m.; about midway through I realized I had to try to sleep soon and started scanning through the second half of the book because I knew I wasn't going to sleep until the ghost had been laid to rest, so to speak.

Hmph.

I should know there's no skimming with books like that. By 3:30 I was almost finished, but at the most tense part, when ... flicker, flicker, off - the power went out.

Two problems. One, I was already scared almost out of my mind. Two, I had to finish that damn book. Stumbled around until I found a flashlight to read the last 10 or so pages, which, of course, involve a flashlight in a remarkably creepy way. Good, now that's done.

But I have no alarm clock and the juice on my cell phone is too far gone for me to rely on using it as an alarm in the morning. Opened the blinds thinking the morning sun would surely wake me up on time and tried to sleep, but no dice.

Finally the power came back on around 4:15. I had to reset my alarm but apparently did it wrong, because it failed to go off this morning and I was late for work.

Nice one, Stephen! Nice one! I don't think you've creeped me out like this since, oh, Pet Semetary? And how you managed to get the power to go out right at that moment ...

I decided earlier this year to do that internet meme thing and read and record 50 books this year. I intended it as something I'm going to do with my Vox blog, but in effect ... I'm already almost half the way to completing a New Year's Resolution! (Which might mean I need to amend that resolution to 100 books. We've still got a month to go in the first quarter, people!)

I'm stealing this from thereshegoes ... who says"I took this meme from typewriter who got it from Lightchaser etc."

Instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you have read a bit from but never finished, italicize the ones you might/want to read in the future, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10-foot pole, and do not do anything to the ones you’ve never heard of. And I'm adding my own twist -- bold and italics for things you want to read again or have already read more than once. And bold with strike through for things you've read but kinda wish you hadn't. And lighter gray for ones you've heard of but don't really have any specific plans to read, although if it was there you might -- sorta noncommittal, really.

Warning: If you copy and paste this list, you won't be able to change the formatting much. You can add new formatting but you can't take away the old; if something is italics, it's going to stay that way unless you retype it. At least that's what is happening for me ...

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride And Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
   
4. Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkein)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkein)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkein)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
    
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (C Brontë)
    
21. The Hobbitt (Tolkein)
    
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Alcott)
    
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (E Brontë)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis)
    
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
    
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
    
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
    
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38.  I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
    
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Mitch Albom)
    
45. Gift & Award Bible NIV (Various)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
    
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
    
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
    
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (McCullough)
    
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
    
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
    
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brahares)
67. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
    
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Burnett)
    
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (Irving)
    
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen) 
86. Watership Down (Adams)
    
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
    
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Ludlum)
    
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Bearing in mind I have an MA in English Lit, is anyone surprised?

I just finished reading Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, and now I have a new Top Ten favorite! With the exception of Jonathan Strange & Mr  Norrell, it's the best book I've read in many years. It's meaty somehow - a book to really sink your teeth into. Like something the Brontës would have written, except faster paced. And there's all sorts of unreliable narrators, so even when you're finished you're not sure what happened. I want, no I need, more books like this!

There is also an exquisite accompanying website.

I've also just finished John Berendt's The City of Falling Angels, a non-fiction work about the fiery destruction of Venice's historic La Fenice Opera House and its eventual reconstruction. The book started out strong, and the individual vignettes were often incredibly interesting, but the last chapter dragged on and on. I did, however, wind up spending most of the morning searching Flickr for photos of Venice and LaFenice (pronounced feh-NEE-cheh). Beautiful place, although I didn't really find photos of the theater before the fire, which was what I really hoped for.

What I'm currently reading (not arranged well on the page - sorry, can't figure out how to fix 'em)