Jonathan ’s Comments (group member since Apr 08, 2012)

Jonathan ’s comments from the *~Can't Stop Reading~* group.

This group has unfortunately not been able to be looked after by us as moderators...would anyone else care to mod? I no longer have the time for goodreads group work!

Shawna wrote: "11/22/63"

It got so close last month and I definitely want to read it at some point. But I also want to nominate: Holes

Nominate June 1001 books here!

Nominate normal June reads here

The Kite Runner is May's book of choice. Please enjoy!

This is our 1001 book read for May. Enjoy!

Poll is up: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Poll is up: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

I will be putting polls up by the 20th so get your votes in as soon as possible!

I will be putting up the polls by the 20th of April so please get your votes in as soon as possible!

I think having more than two would be a logistical challenge. So I'd have to narrow down and work out what of the other challenges would work best...

Miss.terri wrote: "Are we doing a 2014 reading challenge? I liked the Alphabet Challenge and would like to do that one again this year."

If I don't hear from any of the other members I will set up a 1001 Books challenge and an alphabet books challenge...

As it is now 2014 I feel (and have been approached by some members about this) that we require a new challenge for the group. As such I would like to ask whether anyone has any ideas that could possibly be used.

One idea I do have is to have two challenges and make one a 1001 Books Challenge. The other to be determined afterwards. This thread will only remain open for the next few days - so you are aware...

Then I've got at least 4 more I can read before the year's end. Let's get to triple figures!

That's The Plague read. According to my list I've read 95 now...currently also reading Don Quixote so should increase that to 96 by the end of the month.

It's a work of psychology and philosophy. Any film adaptation has never understood that. It's really in essence a reworking of themes found in Paradise Lost - about man and God and moral responsibility.

Finished The Hours, currently reading Celine's Journey to the End of Night.

Labyrinths and Mrs Dalloway have been ticked off.
Up to somewhere between 82 and 90...

700.The Counterfeiters – André Gide
701.The Trial – Franz Kafka
702.The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
703.The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
704.Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
705.The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
706.The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
707.We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
708.A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
709.The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
710.Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
711.Cane – Jean Toomer
712.Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
713.Amok – Stefan Zweig
714.The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
715.The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
716.Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
717.Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
718.The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
719.Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
720.The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
721.Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
722.Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
723.Ulysses – James Joyce
724.The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
725.Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
726.The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
727.Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
728.Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
729.Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
730.Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
731.The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
732.The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
733.Summer – Edith Wharton
734.Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
735.Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
736.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
737.Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
738.Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
739.The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
740.The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
741.Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
742.The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
743.The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
744.Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
745.Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
746.Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
747.Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
748.The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
749.Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
750.Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
751.The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
752.Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
753.Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
754.Howards End – E.M. Forster
755.Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
756.Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
757.Martin Eden – Jack London
758.Strait is the Gate – André Gide
759.Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
760.The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
761.A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
762.The Iron Heel – Jack London
763.The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
764.The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
765.Mother – Maxim Gorky
766.The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
767.The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
768.Young Törless – Robert Musil
769.The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
770.The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
771.Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
772.Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
773.Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
774.Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
775.The Golden Bowl – Henry James
776.The Ambassadors – Henry James
777.The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
778.The Immoralist – André Gide
779.The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
780.Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
781.The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
782.Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
783.Kim – Rudyard Kipling
784.Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
785.Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

1800s
786.Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
787.The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
788.The Awakening – Kate Chopin
789.The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
790.The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
791.The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
792.What Maisie Knew – Henry James
793.Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
794.Dracula – Bram Stoker
795.Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
796.The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
797.The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
798.Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
799.Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
800.The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
801.The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
802.Born in Exile – George Gissing
803.Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
804.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
805.News from Nowhere – William Morris
806.New Grub Street – George Gissing
807.Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
808.Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
809.The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
810.The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
811.La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
812.By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
813.Hunger – Knut Hamsun
814.The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
815.Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
816.Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
817.The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
818.The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
819.She – H. Rider Haggard
820.The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
821.The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
822.Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
823.King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
824.Germinal – Émile Zola
825.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
826.Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
827.Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
828.Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
829.The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
830.A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
831.Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
832.The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
833.The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
834.Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
835.Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
836.Nana – Émile Zola
837.The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
838.The Red Room – August Strindberg
839.Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
840.Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
841.Drunkard – Émile Zola
842.Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
843.Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
844.The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
845.The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
846.Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
847.The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
848.Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
849.In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
850.The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
851.Erewhon – Samuel Butler
852.Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
853.Middlemarch – George Eliot
854.Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
855.King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
856.He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
857.War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
858.Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
859.Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
860.Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
861.The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
862.The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
863.Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
864.Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
865.The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
866.Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
867.Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
868.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
869.Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
870.Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
871.Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
872.The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
873.Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
874.Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
875.Silas Marner – George Eliot
876.Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
877.On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
878.Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
879.The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
880.The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
881.The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
882.Max Havelaar – Multatuli
883.A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
884.Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
885.Adam Bede – George Eliot
886.Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
887.North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
888.Hard Times – Charles Dickens
889.Walden – Henry David Thoreau
890.Bleak House – Charles Dickens
891.Villette – Charlotte Brontë
892.Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
893.Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
894.The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
895.The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
896.Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
897.The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
898.David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
899.Shirley – Charlotte Brontë

Well I can't remember the novel well enough to address any of the questions fully save (7).

My major criticism is that the author, Scott Card, comes across as slightly patronising or maybe slightly telling. I sensed when I first read it that he had a lot of moralising to do (which his rather ironic considering his own views on anything) which came across a little patronising. I do agree that the children act in a way that doesn't feel real but rather...oddly contrived.