Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. I got a fabulous translation with beautiful illustrations from the library. It's a very short book, and reminded me quite a bit of some of the Arabian Nights tales. Very nice.

Lazarillo de Tormes. To really appreciate this, you would need to be able to read the Spanish, as there is a lot of untranslatable wordplay (as my edition kindly pointed out!). It's still interesting (and short!), as this really is starting to feel like...well, if not a novel, at least a novella, unlike so many of these early works.

3 stars

Finished North and South, which is also my first book by Elizabeth Gaskell. I really enjoyed it and I look forward to reading more of her books. I highly recommend it.

Nicola wrote: "The 39 Steps - this was absolutely ridiculous! I can see why so many people think it's rubbish; the plot was thinner than an anorexic stick insect and the book was riddled with people..."

I just finished this last night-gave it 4 stars and I really enjoyed it. It's wild how people can read the same book so differently :)

I just finished Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, a lovely quick read.

Ellinor wrote: "I just finished Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, a lovely quick read."

Just put a hold on it at my library :)

Just finished Heart of Darkness. Finally. Meh. I just couldn't get all that into it.

Solaris I really liked the start and premise of the book – a possibly alive and maybe conscious ocean.... but later a lot of pseudo-science come into the picture. I really did not like that the book ties to “explain” what is going on with a “science” that may sound right to some people using a lot of fine words but is completely nonsense. The climax being the main character Kelvin (a psychologist by education) spend an hour with some neutrino field equations and further develop them. In one hour! Still some of the main ideas are very good, so even-though some of the long descriptive parts where rather boring, I will give it four stars.

J wrote: "Solaris I really liked the start and premise of the book – a possibly alive and maybe conscious ocean.... but later a lot of pseudo-science come into the picture. I really did not like..."

That seems a bit of a bizarre book to make the list. I'll keep an eye out for it. There isn't all that much sci-fi on there.

Nicola wrote: "There isn't all that much sci-fi on there. "

True. And most of the sci-fi book tend to be older.

Combining the ”Guardian 1000” list with the 1001-list and then taking only the sci-fi and fantasy section I get this (sorry about the missing caps, the lists went through a program):

Asimov foundation
Atwood the blind assassin
Ballard crash
Ballard the drowned world
Banks the wasp factory
Beckford vathek
Bulgakov the master and margarita
Burgess a clockwork orange
Burroughs naked lunch
Butler erewhon
Carter nights at the circus
Carter the passion of new eve
Danielewski house of leaves
Dick do androids dream of electric sheep?
Faber under the skin
Fowles the magus
Gibson neuromancer
Golding lord of the flies
Hawthorne the house of the seven gables
Heinlein stranger in a strange land
Hesse the glass bead game
Hogg the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner
Huxley brave new world
Ishiguro the unconsoled
James the turn of the screw
Kafka the trial
King the shining
Lem solaris
Lewis the monk
Maturin melmoth the wanderer
Mccabe the butcher boy
Morris news from nowhere
Morrison beloved
Murakami the wind-up bird chronicle
O'brien the third policeman
Orwell nineteen eighty-four
Peake titus groan
Rabelais gargantua and pantagruel
Radcliffe the mysteries of udolpho
Saint-exupery the little prince
Self how the dead live
Shelley frankenstein
Stoker dracula
Tolkien the hobbit
Tolkien the lord of the rings
Walpole the castle of otranto
Wells the time machine
Wells the war of the worlds
Woolf orlando
Wyndham day of the triffids
Wyndham the midwich cuckoos
Zamyatin we

There seem to be a tendency in totalitarian states with at least three books.

Huxley : brave new world
Orwell: nineteen eighty-four
Zamyatin: We

I personally liked these:

Asimov: foundation
Dick: do androids dream of electric sheep?
Wells: the time machine
Wyndham: day of the triffids

I just finished On the Road by Kerouac. 1950's American literature has always grated on me, and this book did nothing to improve my opinion. Just glad I don't need to read it again!

This month I've finished The Day of the Triffids, which I found a lot of fun and The Age of Innocence which I also enjoyed.

Day of the Triffids one of my favorites!

Diane wrote: "Finished Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company by Multatuli. Poorly translated into English. Perhaps it is better in Dutch."

I thought it was great in Dutch!

Bart wrote: "Diane wrote: "Finished Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company by Multatuli. Poorly translated into English. Perhaps it is better in Dutch..."

I am sure it is great in Dutch. Hopefully a better translation will be made.

I finished She by H. Rider Haggard. I liked it better than I anticipated, despite the Victorian misogynist and racial attitudes of the era. I really don't think it should be a list book. I was surprised to find out that it was one of the best selling books of all time.

Bart wrote: "Diane wrote: "Finished Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company by Multatuli. Poorly translated into English. Perhaps it is better in Dutch..."

I thought it was great in Dutch too. Such a shame that there are so many books with bad translations!

Finished To Kill a Mockingbird!! It was wonderful! How I spent so much time without reading it.. I would never know. :)

Kennie wrote: "Finished To Kill a Mockingbird!! It was wonderful! How I spent so much time without reading it.. I would never know. :)"

That's what I thought when I read it :-)

Kennie wrote: "Finished To Kill a Mockingbird!! It was wonderful! How I spent so much time without reading it.. I would never know. :)"

It's one of my all time favorite books. I read it in school, and it's one of the few list books that I reread every few years. The movie was on the other night and that's wonderful, too.

Just finished Infinite Jest. Loved the trip! Such a wide range of emotions evoked while reading this. Loved the varied writing styles and crazy characters. Definitely a 5 star rating and a book that will be put on my "to reread" shelf.

The Unfortunate Traveller: Or, the Life of Jack Wilton--for such a short book, this took me quite a while. The old-style English (and constant flipping to the glossary) and episodic writing made it slow going for me. 3 stars in the end, but glad to be done!

This weekend I finished Agnes Grey, a nice and easy read which got me to 40 books out of the 1305.

Laura Jean wrote: "Just joined this group today. Glad to be here.

Finished The Age of Innocence Saturday for another online book group. My first Edith Wharton and I enjoyed it tremendously..."

Welcome Laura :-)

I just finished The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. It was pretty twisted but I couldn't put it down!

Infinite Jest - what a rush!

5 very bright and glowing stars.

Enduring Love

Interesting story, but McEwan's writing is what impressed me most.

Last night I finished The Art of Fielding, the final of the 2012 additions. I really enjoyed it and it was a quick read despite its length.

Finished Tarka the Otter. Beautiful language and descriptions but all in all quite boring.

Finished The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski. Excellent book, especially if you like lots of interconnected characters (I do!).

Dree wrote: "Finished The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski. Excellent book, especially if you like lots of interconnected characters (I do!)."

This was a 5-star read for me.

I finished The Siege of Krishnapur. For those of you who might be looking at both the 1001 and Bloom's Canon, this is a twofer.

I feel as if my review were inadequate. This is not a book one can "enjoy" but, instead, one experiences.

Just finished Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

(I'm not sure I agree that this is a book I need to read before I die.)

American Pastoral - This book was one of the longest and most digressive allegories I have ever read. Fantastic for learning about Newark/New Jersey around the time of the riots and the Vietnam War.

Wonderful story if a trifle long in parts.

3 1/2 stars

Kirsten wrote: "Just finished Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

(I'm not sure I agree..."

I agree with your lack of agreement.

I think many people do...

I just finished 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami I was very excited to start this book off the list. The description seemed really obscure and abstract and I purposefully did not research too much into it so I wouldn't get any preconceived notions about it. I definitely enjoyed the book, I thought Murakami's writing style was very seamless and descriptions were effortless, I was 400 pages in and barely felt like I read that much. I was still completely guessing on where the story was going until the very end and I think that had something to do with the description on the book itself. It stated a form of dystopian society, so for most of the book I was continually thinking "when is the shit going to hit the fan?". Maybe it's because we have become to used to the world ending story arch's that this is where I naturally go, but I will say that it made me think maybe the world ending isn't distopia... maybe it's the individuals who see it.

Anyway's I still found this book very enjoyable, and I look forward to reading Murakami's other works on the list!

Treasure Island- Robert Louis Stevenson, due to university studies and work it took me far longer to read than I anticipated! Giving it 3 stars as a lot of the naval and marine terms passed me by but the story itself was very good.

Freya wrote: "I just finished On the Road by Kerouac. 1950's American literature has always grated on me, and this book did nothing to improve my opinion. Just glad I don't need to read it again!"

I couldn't agree more ...you still hear it referred to all the time but I found it tortuous...perhaps most of the world has just grown up since the 50's.

Freya wrote: "I just finished On the Road by Kerouac. 1950's American literature has always grated on me, and this book did nothing to improve my opinion. Just glad I don't need to read it again!"

J wrote: "Nicola wrote: "There isn't all that much sci-fi on there. "

True. And most of the sci-fi book tend to be older.

Combining the ”Guardian 1000” list with the 1001-list and then taking only the sci-..."

I also found On The Road dull. I wonder if men prefer it to women in general?
I hear he wrote the whole thing without stopping. I wonder if he then edited it?

Katie wrote: "I also found On The Road dull. I wonder if men prefer it to women in general?
I hear he wrote the whole thing without stopping. I wonder if he then edited it?"

I would say without doubt (that more men than women like it).

I thought it was utter pants myself. I am most definitely not the target audience for that book!

Just finished The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Keeks wrote: "I'm definitely outside that male demographic. I read it in my early twenties and loved it. Read it on a trip to Cape Breton and thought it was thoroughly entertaining. It's possible if I reread it ..."

The other demographic is the young or the traveller, the longing for the freedom of the open road type.

I was certainly in that catagory many years past but I still think the abhorrent behaviour of the men would have repulsed me past enjoyment. Maybe not though; I've re-read a few books from my youth at an older age and been pretty astounded at myself at what I let slide past mostly unnoticed :-)

The bits that dealt with the travel around the US I enjoyed; the authors reaction on first seeing the Mississippi etc But as the book progressed I just saw the repeated and frenetic crossing of the country as a sad indictment of the paucity of their characters. In the end it doesn't matter how much looking for paradise you do if you are too corrupt in your soul to appreciate it when you find it.

The worst part is it's not a work of fiction (whatever the category says) so I couldn't blow off my repugnance for their actions as easily as I normally would.

But that was just what I got out of it :-)

This weekend I finished A Kestrel for a Knave. I'm a bit biased. On the one hand I liked the story and really felt with Billy. On the other hand I didn't like the style at all. 3 stars.

I just finished The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Was short and sweet, I read this in a couple hours at work (I work over nights so I get lots of time to read... muuhahahahaa) I found it a very easy read and wonderfully descriptive without being to in your face. Definitely recommend it!

I today finished Pride and Prejudice, and yes, I was probably the only one here who hadn't read it yet.

Despite its' age, I found it easy to read and surprisingly relevant.

Finished A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. This was a re-read for me, so no adding to my total, but I'm so glad to have re-visited an old favorite!

I really enjoy reading the comments on here. I join with those who did NOT love On the Road. I think I read The Call of the Wild when I was about 12, so it's time for a re-read. Pride and Prejudice is probably my favorite book, and I also loved A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I just finishedThe House of Mirth for a graduate class. It is the first from Wharton that I have read. I enjoyed it.

I just finished The Water Babies. I can see why it is on the children's books list but not why it is on the adult list.

I finished Of Mice and Men. I liked it. :)