Challenge: 50 Books discussion

New year, New challenge. Here goes my first:
1) Los Días Del Venado by Liliana Bodoc
I was surprised to discover this author. She writes epic novels set in aboriginal America before the coming of Columbus, and dealing with their struggle against colonisation. Very interesting, worth giving a shot.

2) Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
Twisted, very twisted. I love stories dealing with writers and the writing process, so this one was very appealing to me from the first. I liked it a lot.

3) Age of Innocence, The by Edith Wharton
Lovely book. The characters are very complex, and they interact in a subtle way, full of understatements and pregnant silences. Yet this lack of communications makes unexpressed emotions all the more powerful, and Wharton's beautiful prose really brings the story to life.

Lindsey wrote: "thanks for your reviews, makes me want to read them now :)"

Glad to be helpful! (Sorry I didn't reply before, I was on holiday and not checking e-mail at all)

4) Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende
Good read, very well-written, but to me it was a little cliched. Now this might be due to the fact that I grew up in a post-dictatorship atmosphere in Argentina, and have seen so many films, heard so many stories and read so many books about the "disappeared" that they all have started to sound alike. Poor politically-aware boy meets rich-wellmeaning-but-sheltered girl and awakens her revolutionary instincts, I know I've seen that before. I think the most valuable part of the book is not the love story in the foreground, but the personal tragedies outlined in the background. Still I think it doesn't match "The House of Spirits" for originality and freshness.

5) The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Loved this one. Proulx's narrative style is quite unique. It takes a bit of getting used to it, but becomes very enjoyable and matches her character's personalities and setting very well. The story is just lovely.

6) Los Días de La Sombra by Liliana Bodoc
Sequel to my first book this year. Very nice.

7) O Crime do Padre Amaro by Eça de Queirós
I loved this novel about the corruption of the Church in XIX century Portugal. Characterization is brilliant, and the characters really come alive for the reader. The plot just keeps you going on and on.

8) On Beauty by Zadie Smith
At first I thought the topic (college life and intellectual feuds between academics) would not interest me, but I must say that the novel deals with much more than that: family, love, beliefs, desire, regret... There are many different characters, all of them very complex and interesting, and the book really keeps you going. Plus, Smith's style is delicious: funny, witty, ironic, insightful. Very enjoyable indeed.

Lauli wrote: " 8) On Beauty by Zadie Smith
At first I thought the topic (college life and intellectual feuds between academics) would not interest me, but I ..."

Lauli, have you read E.M Forster's A Passage to India? Apparently this book is Zadie's take on that novel. Even though I absolutely LOVE Zadie Smith, I've been holding off reading this until I've read the Forster book. If you've read it, did you find that the two were linked? If you haven't, did you find you kind of missed anything in the book?

Heather wrote: "Lauli wrote: " 8) On Beauty by Zadie Smith
At first I thought the topic (college life and intellectual feuds between academics) would not inte..."

Hi, Heather. Actually, I think the book by Forster which has intertext with On Beauty is Howard's End, not A Passage to India. I haven't read either, but I've seen the films, so I know more or less what the plots are about. As Forster in most of his novels, Smith tackles the issue of cultural clash between people from different backgrounds brought together by the circumstances. I have read Forster's "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and I can see where Smith might be paying homage to him in the sense that she uses a lot of humour and irony to describe characters, as Forster does. I think you could read On Beauty without having read Forster and enjoy it as well! I didn't particularly feel I was missing out on anything.

Lauli wrote: "Heather wrote: "Lauli wrote: " 8) On Beauty by Zadie Smith
At first I thought the topic (college life and intellectual feuds between academics)..."

ahh! I wish I had double-checked that fact before I went out and bought A Passage to India! Now I'll have to buy Howard's End :) It's good to hear it is a good stand-alone read, though, as I really love the way she writes and won't have to hold out any longer. Looking forward to seeing what you're reading in the future.

9) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
One word to define the book: page-turner. It really keeps you going, as the plot moves very fast, and several mysteries unravel themselves. Not sure that it's at great as everyone makes it out to be, but I found it quite enjoyable, especially the doppelgänger streak in the story.

10) The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Extremely interesting and moving. The story follows the struggle of a family of farmers in China to survive and prosper in adverse circumstances. What I particularly liked was the depiction of the plight of women in such traditional, patriarchal societies. They have to endure the unendurable, and yet remain faithful and strong, and become the invisible backbone of the family. I also enjoyed the very simple, fable-like narrative style. Reminded me of Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"

11) Los Días del Fuego by Liliana Bodoc
This is the third and last book in the saga by Liliana Bodoc. I was moved by it in a much stronger way than the previous two. But then again the same thing happened to me with the final episode in the Lord of the Rings saga. These books by Bodoc are beautifully written, very poetic and melancholy. I wonder if they are available in English. They should be.

12) The Trial by Franz Kafka
I found this book extremely twisted. I actually felt uncomfortable and suffocated at certain points. But I consider that an asset on Kafka's part, since I think he is aiming to reveal how bureaucracy and impersonality in the running of the state lead to people feeling utterly confused, displaced and discarded. It reminded me of one of my favourite films, "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam. Very interesting read.

13) Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf is a writer who makes me envious. I just wish one of her wonderful sentences could come out of my head and not hers. "Orlando" is exquisitely written, very poetic, witty and reflexive. I love the way she handles time, making the story develop over three hundred years and making the history surrounding us all the time much more visible. Plus, different from other books by Woolf, the plot really keeps you going, as events and characters fly through the pages.

14) The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Well-written, but I must confess I'm not much of an animal person, so the story did not particularly interest me. Just ok.

15) Platero and I. by Juan Ramón Jiménez
Again, animals are not quite my cup of tea, and Platero happens to be a donkey. However, Jiménez uses Platero as an addressee to whom he talks about the magic he finds in simple, everyday things, such as a water well, a valley in the springtime, the pleasure of eating ripe fruit off the trees. Thus, the author displays a poetic gift for noticing that which usually goes unnoticed, and that is in my opinion the book's main asset.

16) Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
This book was ok, it deals basically with a civil war that took place in my homeland in the mid nineteenth century and one of its leading figures. I liked the parts written like a novel, but there's a large part of the book which is actually an essay, and I found this a bit droning.

17) Demian by Hermann Hesse
I liked this one. All the books I've read by Hesse are very spiritual and onyric (I'm not sure that's the spelling in English!), and this one is no exception. He takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery which is very enriching.

18) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Absolutely fascinating! The story completely grasped me, to the extent that I was sorry to finish the book despite the 540 pages it took me. There is a great surprising twist at the end which made me want to start the book over to pick up the leads Atwood throws here and there.

Lauli wrote: " 18) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Absolutely fascinating! The story completely grasped me, to the extent that I was sorry t..."

I am 63 pages into this book. Glad to see your post..I will forge ahead and keep on reading. Find it interesting but a little slow to start.

19) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
It started off really well, and the ending left me speechless, but boy, did I struggle in the middle. I think the problem is that Melville digresses too much. I would just cut out all the chapters about whales and whaling and just focus on the story of the Pequod, which is actually fascinating, and reminded me a lot of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

20) No habrá más penas ni olvido by Osvaldo Soriano
I really like Soriano's writing style. It is close to Hemingway's or Carver's, very simple, almost journalistic, and full of very interesting dialogue. He stages small-scale situations which mirror the situation of Argentina as a whole at any given time, in this case, the confrontation between left-wing and right-wing Peronists. A great book.

21) El fin de la historia by Liliana Heker
I found this book very interesting. It deals with the writing process itself as a way of coming to terms with certain aspects of the past and giving them a sense of closure, even if there was no closure as such. It reminded me of "Atonement" somehow, since the narrator is struggling with a sense of guilt for her best friend who is one of the "disappeared" during the military dictatorship of 1976 in Argentina. Interesting twist at the end too.

22) The Nun by Denis Diderot
I hate it when men in the XVIII century took it upon themselves to write using a female voice. Hated that about Cleland's "Fanny Hill" and somewhat annoys me about this one too. It boils down to: nunneries suck, and beware of lesbian mother superiors.

23) The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
Loved this book. It is a very honest and insightful depiction of the struggle of three generations to juggle love and marriage with their own identity. It has high points and low points, but the writing is exquisite, so poetic and musical, and there are points where I could completely identify with the characters' feelings and inner questions. Very good in all.

24) The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe
Not my favourite work by Poe, not nearly as good as his short stories, but I found it quite entertaining, and also unusual for Poe, since it tells a sea adventure. Reminded me of Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". It could do without some minute descriptions of latitudes and longitudes and of navigation, but all in all, three stars.

25) Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Pérez Galdós
I struggled quite a lot with this one. My edition is divided into two books, and I had to take a breath in between. But the second part was much more enjoyable than the first, and in the end I really got caught up in the story. I just wish Spanish writers were less wordy.

26) Zona de Clivaje by Liliana Heker
This book is wonderful. I am sorry that it hasn't been translated into English. It's about a woman trying to find her identity and come to terms with the end of a long life-altering relationship. Very insightful and moving, and Heker's prose is witty, touching and uplifting.

27) Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
I love Jane Austen's books as a rule, but I must say this one wasn't a favourite with me. She had got very moralising when she was writing it, as it seems, and the heroes of the story are dull, prudish, boring characters. I liked the "villains", or morally deviate characters much better. Still, it's always a pleasure to read Austen as regards her style and her wonderful wit, so still worth reading to me.

28) The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
A bit depressing, lots of death, agony and suffering, but it's quite short, which makes it more bearable. It's a brilliant psychological portrait of a man facing the fact that he has to die and trying to come to terms with his life.

29) A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Really liked this book! I had read "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and I loved the witticisms and the depiction of culture clash. This book is less amusing, but also deeper in its analysis of interaction between different barriers and the insurmountable barriers that can separate people, be they political, social, racial or idiosyncratic. Very interesting indeed.

30) La region mas transparente/ Where the Air is Clear by Carlos Fuentes
It's the first book I've read by Fuentes, and I'm in love with his prose which is pregnant with poetry at the same time. In this book he uses a wide sample of characters from different social classes to show Mexican society in the City of Mexico in the 1950s, and the consequences of the Mexican Revolution which had taken place years earlier. I found it fascinating.

31) The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
I'd had this book on my shelves for about four years and never got down to reading it, so I'm glad I've finally done it. It is a very complex novel, with ambiguous characters who are not easy to grasp, as is usually the case with James. I must say I enjoyed more his nouvelles, since they seem to be much more cohesive and crafted. But there are passages in "Portrait" which are just exquisite, and the denouement rushed me through the last 100 pages.

32) El vuelo de la reina (The Flight of the Queen) by Tomás Eloy Martínez
A very intriguing novel and a well-written thriller about the power of the media in my country and the omnipotent elite of tycoons who run them. Very interesting.

33) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
I enjoyed this book about a woman deciding to leave her husband in the mid-nineteenth century. I've written a review of the book, but the bottom-line is I liked the topic, but not so much the treatment Anne Brontë gave it. She moralizes too much for my taste. I would have liked her to let the reader draw his own conclusions and judge characters rather than feed a moral message. But the book is very well-written and kept me going.

34) Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot
I loved this one. I'd read other books by Diderot which I hadn't enjoyed so much, but this novel was witty, amusing, startling at times, and very modern. Diderot mixes different novelistic conventions and makes use of narrative techniques such as the narrator addressing the reader and the unveiling of the fictionality of the story, which are connected to modern movements such as postmodernism. Just brilliant.

35) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Absolutely fan tas tic! I'm in awe. Lost for words. Just great.

36) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
One of the loveliest, saddest novels I've ever read. I felt so sorry for that family as I was reading it! Definitely should be read during a positive time in one's life. It could seriously enhance a pre-existing depression. But leaving the sadness aside, the book is so beautifully written, Steinbeck's prose so carefully crafted, that it's worth every minute!

37) Pedro Paramo: El Llano En Llamas (Pedro Páramo; The Burning Plain) by Juan Rulfo
I'm still processing my impressions on this book. It was not my favourite read of the year, but I found it contained some very powerful bits. The idea of these characters stuck on a dry, deserted village in the middle of nowhere, where they are forced to roam even after death, reliving their past experiences, is quite striking. I think Rulfo depicted the "burning plain" as a sort of purgatory to which the characters have no escape. Very interesting, but depressing as well.

38) Pozo, El - Los Adioses by Juan Carlos Onetti
Two interesting nouvelles in a melancholy tone, about people revisiting their past to come to terms with their present. Liked Onetti's style very much.

39) Past Caring ? by Juan Carlos Onetti
While I acknowledge the impeccable construction and undeniable literary value of this novel, the topic didn't quite draw me in. I had the same problem with The Shipyard, and found that both novels were very similar. Just ok.

40) Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
I was very moved and amused by this book. Also amazed at how witty and intelligent Iris Murdoch was. Some fragments of the novels are simply hilarious, while others are very deep and melancholy.

41) A Sus Plantas Rendido Un León (To their Feet Submits a Lion) by Osvaldo Soriano
A wonderful satire of diplomatic novels in the Graham Greene / Joseph Conrad style. Found myself laughing out loud.

42) The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
I deeply admire Sterne's ahead-of-the-time style and narrative voice. Similarly to Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist, this is a subverted novel, a parody of a genre that was as yet still coming into existence. At times I found it deliciously hilarious, but sometimes the million digressions made it difficult for me to get into the book, and I lost attention. So I'd say this is a novel which I can theoretically and aesthetically admire, but not the kind of story that will stick with me for years to come.

43) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
I just can't get enough of Faulkner. He writes so beautifully, and with such great sensitivity! This book blew me away.

Lauli wrote: " 43) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
I just can't get enough of Faulkner. He writes so beautifully, and with such great sensitivity! ..."

Me too. I bought an old album off of EBay recently of him reading from The Sound & The Fury on one side and from Light In August on the other. There is audio online of him reading from As I Lay Dying. Listening to his voice reading his words made me want to spend hours talking to him about writing and the South.

I thought As I Lay Dying was quite funny in its misery.

I would say it's more pathetic than funny. I mean, it's the kind of humor that you use to prevent yourself from crying. I will look up the audio you mention, I love listening to the voices of authors. Thanks for the tip!