What books do you want to read?

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What books do you plan to read in the future, some day when you get around to it, when you have infinite time for leisure? Or just what books do you want to read next, when you're done reading what you're reading now?

Me:
That whole big Marcel Proust brouhaha A Recherche de Temps Perdu (pardon garbled French) or whatever. I read like half a page of it in the bookstore yesterday, it seems hot.
I'm really enjoying this Italo Calvino book I'm reading right now (If on a winter's night a traveler), so I'd like to read a bunch of other stuff by him. Any recommendations?
All of those Flannery O'Conner stories.

These are all things I could probably find used, so I guess I have some shopping to do.

― NA (Nick A.), Monday, 29 September 2003 12:19 (twenty-two years ago)

T E Lawrence - The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Robert Conquest - The Great Terror
Thomas Friedman - From Beirut to Jerusalem

― freedom dupont, Monday, 29 September 2003 12:25 (twenty-two years ago)

I started reading Das Parfüm (Süskind) and Ulysses (Joyce) recently and gave up both in favor of His Dark Materials. Will try again soon-ish, they looked interesting.

Also Viginia Woolf's oeuvre has been emphatically recommended to me. I'll look into that, er, next year.

― Herbstmute (Wintermute), Monday, 29 September 2003 12:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm looking forward to Mediterranean Winter by Robert D. Kaplan, which should be published sometime early next year.

I also would LOVE to read Kaplan's Empire Wilderness, because he talks about U.S.-Mexico relations in that book, and because I was a bit disturbed (hah! understatement of the century) yet intrigued by a future scenario he mentioned in an essay from around that time period, and I want to read more of his reasoning to see whether I could agree with it or find reasons to disagree.

I'd also actually want to get started on the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy, after hearing so much about it over the course of the last several years. I never read those books when I was younger (too much time spent with Beverly Cleary and Robert Cormier -- even when I was younger I was predictable) and I'm curious now. *shrug* What the heck -- lots of reasonable adults are reading the Harry Potter books, so I figure I won't be a total weirdo for reading something possibly aimed at a younger demographic.

― Legendary Nothingness (Dee the Lurker), Monday, 29 September 2003 12:38 (twenty-two years ago)

all the books that i bought in boston, or got offa ebay, but haven't read yet.

includes The Man Who Was Thursday, Death & Life of American Cities, Starship Titanic, a History of Narrative Film, etc.

― Kingfish (Kingfish), Monday, 29 September 2003 12:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Dee, I don't think the LOTR books were "aimed at a younger demographic" per se, except for maybe The Hobbit. I think it's just that dorky teenage boys claimed them for their own and that's what the perception became. But I don't think Tolkein was like "OK, I need to write something to distract pimply geeks from masturbating for a couple of hours." But don't take it from me, I never got past The Hobbit. I'm not sure why, because I did D&D and all that other dorky teenage boy stuff, but I never got into the Tolkein stuff.

― NA (Nick A.), Monday, 29 September 2003 13:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Loads -I've got 200+ sitting upstairs waiting now. A Dance To The Music Of Time would be the biggest, but I'm still missing a volume or two.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 29 September 2003 20:49 (twenty-two years ago)

The next Donald Antrim.

― adaml (adaml), Monday, 29 September 2003 20:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Anything by Dickens.
Ditto for the Bronte sisters.
A bio. of Indira Ghandi.
Quicksilver
An Instance of the Fingerpost
Perdido Street Station
Underworld
And any/all of the 1000+ unread books that I have sunning themselves on my 'I need to read these next' bookcases.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 00:57 (twenty-two years ago)

NA, "If on a winter's night a traveler" is probably my favorite, but you should try "Invisible Cities" too.

Wintermute, "Ulysses" gets a whole lot more fun after the first three chapters, i.e. as soon as Leopold Bloom shows up.

Me, I just read the first 75 pages of "The Count of Monte Cristo," and can't wait to get to the rest. But first I must WRITE about 75 pages.

― Douglas (Douglas), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 01:01 (twenty-two years ago)

two weeks pass...

A second vote for "Invisible Cities," and an agreement that Bloom's ordinary humanity's what makes "Ulysses" tolerable. (Stephen's kind of a pain-in-the-ass throughout.)

I wanna read Shirley Hazzard's new book, "The Great Fire." (Anyone here ever read "The Transit of Venus?" It's a masterpiece, for my money the best English language novel of the last 50 years. No, really...)

― M Specktor (M Specktor), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 15:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I read the first 150 pages of Proust's big long story about being mama's boy.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Anna Karenina = overrated or no? I've been reading almost exclusively contemporary American/British fiction and need a change.

― quincie, Tuesday, 14 October 2003 16:42 (twenty-two years ago)

''Me, I just read the first 75 pages of "The Count of Monte Cristo," and can't wait to get to the rest. But first I must WRITE about 75 pages.''

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I read the first 150 pages of Proust's big long story about being mama's boy.

Best summary EVAR!

― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I stopped Proust after abt 100 pages (for a similar kind of reason) but I've just been reading Walter benjamin's essay on him (its in the 'Illuminations' collection) and I'll probably have another go.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I got stuck in the first 100 pages of The Guermantes Way. Which is better than my first attempt, where I got Swann's Way stolen from me (not while reading it). I was only about 50 pages deep then. I figure that try #3 will take me all the way, I guess.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:21 (twenty-two years ago)

It's not much of a read, but any kindly ILXors can buy me this for Christmas or Chanukah.

― adaml (adaml), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I want to read Swann's Way. I want to read that ginormous new Neil Stephenson thang. But I bought Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities by Calvino and Labyrinths by Borges at a yard sale for $.25 each, so I've got those first.

― NA (Nick A.), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:23 (twenty-two years ago)

It's not much of a read, but any kindly ILXors can buy me this for Christmas or Chanukah.

Adaml, shows you how behind I am: never knew Wenders had photog books out (though obviously, it makes sense he does). If I could buy it for you, I would.

Prayer is supposed to work, I'm told.

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Some days I wish I could just flip a switch and understand another language as well as I do English, for a weekend or so; I want to read Cervantes and Rabelais in the original, cause the issue of puns and translation has been bugging me since I first read them in translation.

― Tep (ktepi), Sunday, 19 October 2003 16:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Best Cervantes translation is Samuel Putnam's (I believe it's from 1949, and it isn't terribly easy to come by, although Modern Library used to have it readily available). Hands-down great, except for the snotty introduction wherein he essentially gives a history of how all the prior translations were completely a suckfest, and that his is the only valid one. This is also constantly re-asserted within the footnotes, where he makes jabs at how a previous translator would have translated that passage. But he is right, his translation is indeed solid as a rock.

As for Rabelais, I have heard lots of gushing about Donald Frame's translation, although I have never read it.

And John M. Cohen apparently runs a very close second place in the case of both of these authors, too.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Sunday, 19 October 2003 16:23 (twenty-two years ago)

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