Challenge: 50 Books discussion

Following is what i've read so far in 2008...

1. The Road Cormac McCarthy
2. Replay Ken Grimwood
3. Oryx & Crake Margaret Atwood
4. The Alienist Caleb Carr
5. Feast of Love Charles Baxter
6. The Emperor's Children Claire Messud
7. Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What To Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab.
8. The Glass Castle

9. We Were the Mulvaneys

I see you just finished We Were The Mulvaneys. Have you read many by this author. I have read several and always liked her novels, but since I've been involved in goodreads and shelfari I've read some pretty disparaging thoughts about Joyce Carol Oates as a writer. What do you think? I liked the Mulvaney's, but it is far from my favorite of her novels.

Also I wanted to recommend another mystery to you:
The Waterworks by E. L. Doctorow. I loved that one as much as The Alienist.

Judith

thx for the recommendation. i will pick up the waterworks for sure. yes, i enjoyed mulvaneys. i thought she was a bit wordy at times...probably 100 pages were unnecessary in my humble opinion, but she did an incredible job of painting the portrait of a family ***SPOILER*** in decline... it's actually my first novel by her!! would you please recommend my second??

9. We Were the Mulvaneys Joyce Carol Oates
10. Run Ann Patchett

Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favorite authors. I must own 50+ of her books (which is a drop in the bucket). Her books really run the literary gamut (gothic romance, stories of Middle America, literary macabre, juvenile fiction, historical fiction, and a slew of short stories), so it depends on what kinds of books you like to read.

If you found 'Mulvaneys' a bit wordy, and maybe you want to travel off that beaten path, you should try Zombie by Oates. It is a very short fast-paced read (less than 200 pages) about a killer, written from the killer's perspective.

Also, try Them (which won the National Book Award), a novel about the violence in America...or Blonde (which a lot of people loved), a novel about Marilyn Monroe.

I look forward to seeing what else you read this year. Please let me know what you thought of Oryx and Crake. It is sitting on my shelf, begging to be read. :-) Charity

wow. i'm quite impresssed chastity. by you AND joyce carol oates. i know she's professor of creative writing at yale or something and all that...but 50+ ?? i had no idea. ok. am gonna add Zombie right away, because i have a soft-spot for that genre (that sounds horrible, but you know what i mean!!).

ok. i just checked your bookshelf, and found we had 8% of our books read in common (we can raise that percentage), but 83% (or something up there) common recommendations on those books...pretty good! i'm gonna make sure you're on my friends list.

oryx and crake. wow. well....do you like margaret (like i know her)...do you like margaret atwood? i've only read 2 of her novels (handmaid's tale and oryx). handmaid's tale was much more direct, more beautiful description and language, and much earlier in her career, so perhaps reflective of a younger person writing about human weakness. oryx was a bit stylized for me...a bit abstract...though i completely appreciated it and, on the whole, must recommend it. do you enjoy post-apocalyptic literature? have you read mccarthy's the road? completely different...am just wondering. so take it off the shelf and enjoy! if i'm not mistaken, it was a 3 star for me (i may have reviewed...can't remember).

goodbye for now!

kyle

Yes, some would say she is the 'literary equivalent' of Danielle Steele...the woman puts out a book or two a year and edits almost as many. :-)

You have inspired me to reread a lot of her books. I also have several of her newer works that I've put off far too long. Perhaps I will have a summer of JCO?

I will definitely give Oryx & Crake a shot. It seems to be different from Atwood's other works, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I have a few of her books unread and I plan to get to most, if not all, this year, also.

Kyle and Charity:

I liked The Mystery of Winterthurn and Because It is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart best of the Oates books I have read. Sorry, Charity, but I hated Zombie. I did enjoy Blonde and plan to read the two by her that are on the 1001 Books to Read Before You
Die List. She is very versatile and prolific, as you said in your post, Charity.

adding those 2 to my growing to-read...thx

When I read The Handmaid's Tale several years back in college, my prof asked how I liked it. I told her it gave me really strong, weird, violent nightmares, and she told me that was common. I did a write-up of one of the dreams to give her an idea of what was going on, and she thought it was genius, which shocked me. Those nightmares went on for quite awhile. Any of you have a similar experience?

No. But it did make me give the bible a long hard look!

9. The Time Traveller's Wife
10. On Chesil Beach

Kyle, I loved the Time Traveler's Wife-what did you think of it?

11. Infidel Ayaan Hirsi Ali

12. Jim The Boy Tony Earley

13. The Innocent Man John Grisham
14. Body & Soul Frank Conroy