I Read Therefore I Am discussion

This is a very long Long list http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...

There's some interesting looking books on here, I like the way the longlist is chosen - much more democratic and less 'establishment' - appeals to the closet Marxist in me lol!

Yes it's a good way to nominate entrants - I see The Testament of Mary has found it's way into the list ?

Yes it's had some really good reviews - I did kind of like it, it wasn't really bad but it just was kind of lukewarm - nothing I could get worked up about so I don't really get all the rave reviews and award nominations.

A very interesting list. Some I've read and some are on my TBR and some look very interesting. I agree its a much more democratic way of distributing awards and I bet it leads to some unusual winners. I'd love Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn to win something I thought it was one of the most original books I've read in years.

Several books that are on my TBR pile are in this list. I am a tad worried, though - of the four I've spotted that I've read (it's late and I haven't looked through it properly!), I was disappointed with all of them. A Death in the Family was self-indulgent, overly long and mostly unnecessary; A Possible Life was 5 reasonable short stories that someone tried to shoe-horn a theme into without any great success, making the whole package ultimately unsatisfactory; The Testament of Mary was a great concept that failed to realise its potential; and The Prisoner of Heaven, though better than its predecessor, was too casual in the way it tried to extricate the story from the mess of said predecessor.

Ouch, I have to say Toby's Room by Pat Barker was her poorest novel and may We Be Forgiven, which I read recently was a trial and so memorable that I can remember nothing about it except that the ending was better than the rest of the novel. There's no accounting for taste!

The Snow Child and The Orphan Master's Son were good, and The Fault in our Stars was ok but I really don't get the enthusiasm for The Hundred Year Old Man who climbed out of a Window an Disappeared - that was either really badly written or really badly translated!

I really enjoyed that one Laurel! I even recommended it to a few people.

Quite a few of these are either in my TBR mountain or to acquire list - but I've only read 3:
The Testament of Mary and A Possible Life - both of which were rather disappointing and The Care of Wooden Floors which I really enjoyed.

Hilary wrote: "I really enjoyed that one Laurel! I even recommended it to a few people."

Must just be me then - something about the writing really jarred but it could have been the translation. Glad you enjoyed it anyway, I liked the idea, it was funny, I just kept getting put off the story by the writing.

@ Laurel no it's not you Laurel, some of the people I recommended it to liked it, some hated it. Everyone's different, that what makes this group so interesting. We all seem to have different favourites and different opinions.

We will all agree on that at least ;)

Absolutely, it's so interesting to read other people's views on things - sometimes it makes you see things you hadn't picked up on. Art and literature are so subjective, you'll never get 100% agreement on anything - and that's what makes things interesting :)

A wise man* once said "there is no such thing as good or bad taste, it's just your taste, or mine"

*Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen, actually, who I love but others may not :)

I will just type 3 words: Mason & Dixon :0)

LOL!!!!!!

:)

Wry laughter!!

Knowing look

I finished the '100 year old man' a couple of months ago and I wasn't too keen on it either.

It was okay, it wasn't terrible but it reminded me of the tractors in the Ukrainian book (which I also wasn't keen on). I felt that it tried to be humorous in a naive kind of way that I didn't feel worked - at least not for me. (Not sure if I've explained that very well.)

I wasn't too keen on the Ukrainian Tractor book either.