WorrellW's 75 Book Challenge

I'm going to try to read 75 books by my LT anniversary of 17 Aug 2009.

1) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
2) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
3) Looking for Alaska by Peter Jenkins
4) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Welcome! Looks like a good list so far.

Thanks. I'm just trying to figure out how to use library thing. I came originally for the ability to keep track of what I've read but I am more interested in the recommendation features.

Let me know if there's anything you want help with...We tend to recommend things to each other as we go in this group.

If you liked Jane Eyre, you may like Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. It's a comic mystery/fantasy with lots of references to classic literature.

Thanks. I'll give it a try. Right now it's Wuthering Heights but I don't really have a next one. Thanks for the recommend.

welcome. I hope you like it here. We are a friendly, well-read bunch.

Welcome to the 75'ers......you'll find this an active and very well read group. I am constantly overwhelmed by the great titles these folks choose and my list of books to look for and read has grown exponentially over the last weeks.

You'll also find us an inquisitive group. We aren't satisfied with just your list. You'll get lots of questions. Like: How did you find the Tolstoy? I haven't yet tackled the ones in my library. Was it your first Tolstoy? Was it your first read of War and Peace? It's on my list to read but don't know when I'll get to it.

Jane Eyre is one of my favorites; an early read for me when I was in high school. Just this year I read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Ryhs which is a new take on the Eyre story, looking at her benefactor and his family before they migrated back to England. A very interesting character study of characters that were already in the reading conciousness.

May I second Wide Sargasso Sea and Jean Rhys in general? I was a bit disappointed by Jane Eyre when I first read it and this gave the book a whole new depth for me (although this was also aided by growing up - I first read Jane Eyre when I was 9 or 10 and I think some of it was a bit lost on me). Jean Rhys is a master at describing women falling to pieces though, so you may want to have something cheerful as a followup!

Welcome! Always great to have someone new on board. Be prepared for questions, comments, etc. We are a pretty chatty group.

Just looking through the responses and the profiles, I'd say you're a very well read group. This is my first opportunity to read many things that have escaped me over the years. It seems I'm in a string of audiobooks as I've been traveling a bit and love to hear certain readers. I couldn't get past page 1 of A Tale of Two Cities until I heard a lovely recording recently.
I loved the character of Jane Eyre-much more so than Catherine Wuthering Heights. Even Anna Karenina was preferable despite being able to turn her back on her children for her life with her lover. I guess I really just need a main character who seems to be affecting her own destiny-Catherine seemed such a victim!
This was my first (and last) read of War and Peace. It was a bit cumbersome for me.

Thanks for the recommendation The Eyre Affair. It was very fun book! It started a little slowly but, once rolling, it pulled me in. I thought it was an interesting premise that Rochester could act outside the script because Jane was elsewhere or that the book just ended once Jane was kidnapped since it had been in the first person. I'm not usually a fantasy reader but this was one definitely worth the read!

Great! Glad you liked it. Now for the other four Thursday Next books...8^}

It also threw a different light on Jane being the master of her own fate. Rochester fares much better in The Eyre Affair than he did in the original. Constantly protecting his lady fair from distress!

I am going to be Thursday Next when I grow up so I can step in and out of books like she does. What a concept!

I have to say that the cover art of Wide Sargasso Sea does nothing to recommend the book to me. It looks more like a Harlequin novel than a character study. I'll give it a go after your comments and the second from flissp. Funny how important the cover art can be.

Wide Sargasso Sea was not like anything I expected. Although looking back over your comments, I can see I should have. The idea of the characters were there but, of course, not there in the same sense. The woman described here is so much more complex and sympathetic than the evil specter described by Ms Bronte. It makes Jane seem like the interloper and Rochester the monster.
Jean Rhys must have had a troubled life herself.

The edition I read had some historical information about Ryhs and suggested the same thing. Apparently some of her other novels are more autobiographical in nature.

Okay, how did I ever read anything with understanding without reading Jane Eyre. It's everywhere I look now. Mr. Rochester references are ubiquitous! Did I always just skip over these allusions without knowing to what they referred?

I didn't love The Guernsey Literary and Paotato Peel Pie Society like so many people did. It wasn't a bad read but I didn't have to put aside everything else just to be able to read it. I've enjoyed the classics but thought I needed a break from 19th century social scenes. I am enjoying Love in the Time of Cholera but don't have a huge library of books waiting for me that really excite me. I always feel so rich when there is a stack nearby and so panicky when the so-so books are all that's on my shelf.

Then you should have stopped by my house after Maine. :-)

I agree. You sound like you are so flush with things to read! I'm jealous. I also missed my hold at the library on keeping watch. So, I do have at least one or two in the queue.

aaaacchhhhh! Tess of the D'Ubervilles was one of the most depressing books I've ever read. It kept going from bad to worse all for 5 days of happiness? By the end, I wanted to be in Tess's place and have someone raise a black flag for me! I've either got to find an upbeat book or get started on anti-depressants!

Welcome to the group!

Oh, sounds like your reaction to Wide Sargasso Sea was similar to mine, although I liked the novel for itself. However, I found it annoying to see how Rhys bent history to make it fit her purposes for Jane Eyre. On the other hand, I liked the writing enough that I will read more of her work.

Do you like any particular genre or author more than another? And what types of books are you willing to try out? There's lots and LOTS of recommendations from this group.

I've been reading a lot of classics recently but am ready for something a little different. I always have a book and then something audio going simultaneously. I can't read while I walk the dogs or do the dishes! I'll try anything. I like dramas, mysteries, some fantasy (Lord of the Rings plus The Hobbit being 4 of the 6 books I've ever read twice. I don't really care for romance in the Danielle Steele genre. Science Fiction isn't really my thing either. And chick lit is not for me, either. I'd love to find something on audiobooks especially since those seem to be harder to find. But a good book recommendation is most welcome!

One of my recent faves - Mainspring by Jay Lake. It's a fantasy set in a world where the universe runs by spring powered clockworks, including the Earth orbiting the Sun. But the Earth's mainspring is running down and needs to be wound. Then an angel appears to an apprentice clockmaker with a message from God...

I saw that book when I was looking to sample some steampunk, but a couple reviews indicated it fizzled before the end. Did you find it so?

I thought the ending was better than the beginning. I wasn't all that impressed until he got on the airship, then the story took off for me. I'm planning to read the sequel when I get a chance.

If you want some suggestions on steampunk, check out my challenge thread around message 140 for some discussion of Steampunk. Several of the others in the group got interested in the genre based on that one.

Well, perhaps I'll pick it up, then. Thanks.

What is Steampunk?
Is it a genre?

From wikipedia -

"Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers; these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or a presumption of functionality."

I had already read Perdido Street Station which I guess falls into that category and The Anubis Gates is on actually next on my TBR pile when I finish the book I'm reading now.

Mainspring by Jay Lake. That was completely different. I really enjoyed it, struggled with who were the good guys and who were the bad guys (just like I do every day), liked the story of the humble apprentice taking on Brass Christ-size challenges to repair the world, and appreciated the premise that only God could create something as perfect as a clockwork to run the world. I loved Master Bodean in the beginning with his sad nod to owning the truth but remaining caught in his life's loyalties which sent Hethor on his way. I found it interesting that Hethor's "powers" came to him slowly in an ability to understand the language of Creation people and then the word of God but, why was he granted Christ-like power at the end to make a meadow of poppies for him and his disciples to walk through and then to raise the dead in the forms of Arellya and William of Ghent? I guess Lake felt if you are giving a Brass Christ-size charge to someone, you need to give him Christ-like powers. But he grows into them as needed, is not created with them originally. Except the ability which is apparently his solitary gift, to hear the sound of Creation.

Hi. I saw the Bronte books on your list and wondered if you'd seen this one: Heathcliff: The Return to Wuthering Heights. It's a natural 'sequel' and incorporates the Bronte sisters as characters.

I thought 75 books would be a cakewalk. I really thought I read easily that many in one year. Not so.

Hang in there! The year is only half over.