h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I like LOTR I just cannot read it. Catch22 took a couple of times for me to get through it. Of course I was 13 the first time I read it.

I have to stand up for Captain Correlli here. I read it in about a day (I was in airports and on trains a lot mind) and loved it. The ending is a tad flat, but some of the desciption of the island and some of the incidental characters are great. Carlos, the big, gay, Italian. Bunnios the British spy who can only speak ancient Greek, the two old farmers (whose names escape me) who are always arguing about politics, but are always there for each other. And just the island, its light, colour and life. I really want to visit now.

Catch -22 is Great The follow up "Closing Time", isn't.

I'm one of a legion of people who couldn't finish Catch 22 - i really didn't care enough for the characters.

I started nick hornby's high fidelity last week - great film and the book was going great, then i remembered that in the film there was a happy estranged couple getting back together ending and i'm jut not in the kinda place to appreciate that - so i put the book aside till such a time i can stomach it. true test of whether i've been cured of this forlornness is if i can finish the book!

Someone mentioned McCaffrey. I have to say that I don't mind the books she's written herself, so much, it's the collaborations. I know this is a bit uncharitable, but it seems almost as if she knows she hasn't got long and wants to churn through all her ideas before she goes!

1t took me (counts on f1ngers) 14 years to read Portrat of a Lady. Even took a course at unversty 1n order to force myself to read 1t, and ddn't. And frankly 1t was not worth 1t. Dredful female.

Other books: Moby dick (1n sp1te of a most amusng lecture on ths book, lfe is too short), Farenhe1t 451 (most redcolous premse ever 1nvented. Don't tell me 1t 1s supposed to be a parody, w1se, 1t a1n't), Catch 22 (too knowing), Jude the Obscure (too depressing. H1s poetry s good though: short, concentrated bursts of dspar are fne).

Never read Mcbeath (though never started 1t). Can 1 w1n?

Books 1'm glad 1 read. Most Russ1an wr1ters, actually. Not half as gloomy as everyone says, though 1sobel Archer has a r1val 1n female 1rr1tat1ngnes 1n Anna K. Sons and Lovers, though ! hated everyone 1n the book w1thout except1ons. Even the b1t characters.

Sorry ! seem to have no "eyes" today.

I like Catch 22. I did lose interest in Morag the fireman half-way through Farenheit 451 though..

One a related side note, does anyone know in which work Soylent ("My god, it's people!") Green appears? I know there was a film made of it, but I would love to try and read it, but book searchs on Amazon bring me no closer to finding it...

I read Farenheit 451 and personally loved it. I did think it seemed to drag on.

Ctahc 22 is still on "pause" with me because I don't have enough energy to read another chapter since understanding it means reading it three times over.

Of course, one chapter into George Orwell's 1989, I quit because it was too boring and long. I plan to attempt it again sometime, once I finally finish Catch 22.

1989 - duntcha mean 1984? Oh now that's a fantastic book! It's all coming back to me...

"It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen...."

Oh yes!

IMHO drop Catch 22 and get on with 1984, it's not half as tough to read but had a much more personal effect on me. Enjoy, anyways....

Clive

I did mean 1984. But it's Thursday, so I have an excuse for my slip-up.

I'm going to finish Catch 22 since I happen to own it (thanks dad!), but 1984 I got from the library.

Ah! Fairy snuff

and...ahem..."Thing", if you please...

Withnails and I by Richard e grant.
worth picking up to read his experience of doing the film but worth returning to the library very quickly afterwards if you want to avoid pages of tedium.
Anything by Michael Moorcock, think he might have been on too many drugs!

I don't believe catch 22 is appearing hear, tho I can understan lotr being included tho I managed it straight after the hobbit due to a bout of flu that floored me for a fortnight.

Z.

I must join the list of those who never finished Catch-22, it was amusing, but not amusing enough (plus I only wanted yossarians POV, not everybody elses)

I have to say A Clockwork Orange. It didn't age very well and for a young person like me it just screamed early-60s, when it was supposed to be futuristic. Never finished it either.

Lord of the Rings, Catch 22 and Anna Karenina (loved War and Peace though!)

Am currently struggling through Accordion Crimes by Proulx. Not enjoying it. Feel obliged to keep going as it was given to me by someone I'm making an effort to be nice to, even though I don't want to)

Couldn't read the book version of Dangerous Liasons either.

--violagirl

The three novels by Robert Harris. The first two Fatherland and Enigma are great but the last one Archangel is now where near as involving and is a lot more hard to read and the concluding chapters were a dissapointment. Still finished it though....

There are people waxing lyrical about War and Peace ... all I can say is the only reasons I battled through it were:

a) I was in India and the guy I was travelling with took something dodgy and wouldn't let me leave the room we were staying in incase he got lynched (freaked the 4k out of me) - two days
b) On leaving said hotel I then had to end spend another 2 1/2 days on a train with him ...

By the end of this episode I was three quarters of the way through and figured I might as well keep going.

As a result I'm afraid it's going on the Roses.

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky on the other hand is fab - gutted that I left it at my parents home and have had to read 6 books in the mean time ...

Always had a desire to read the Satanic Verses as well as Mein Kampf just to see what was going through that moustachioed fruit cakes head. On a similar vein, have just finished Stalingrad and WOW!

Soylent Green comes from a Harry Harrison book "Make Room, Make Room" which I sadly have not read. Farenheit 451, I did finish, but I often wonder why. Getting past the inital premise was not a problem, it is the happy ending that really cheeses me off. "And all the bad people were nuked and we lived happily ever after"

What I found particularly amusing at school was that we never did a book which hadn't been made into a film. There was a reason for this......

now you mention it ... I don't think we did any books that didn't have film versions. Never thought of that before. I think in one case we actually just watched the film instead (end of school year, teacher couldn't be bothered I guess).

Personally I ALWAYS prefer the book version

God yes. Except when I hate them both equally .