Search results

I doubt you'll be raining on anyone's parade. No one seems to be taking this list too seriously. Sure, it's amusing to see how many books we've read off the list, but apart from crazies, I doubt anyone will be making it a life mission to complete it.

As a comics lover, I always feel joy when a newcomer stumbles into the medium, finds a good comic book and loses whatever prejudices he had. I've never read Age of Bronze, but I've read the good reviews. In looking for quality comics, just follow a basic rule: stay away from Marvel and DC...

Perhaps it's romantic as in Romanticism?

I love 1984, but some aspects have dated badly. Hm, I'll rephrase that: some aspects were dated back then and only lingered till now because of popular ignorance. I can't imagine Newspeak with a straight face anymore after studying Chomsky. All that language-shapes-reality mysticism was in vogue...

From the list I've read: 8 The Plot Against America – Philip Roth 25 The Double – José Saramago 37 The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster 57 Ignorance – Milan Kundera 62 The Human Stain – Philip Roth 99 American Pastoral – Philip Roth 114 Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth 137 Operation...

Oh, every once in a while I love rereading the third part of [I]1984:[I] the terrifying, mind-blowing Room 101 conversations between Winston and O'Brien are some of the finest pieces of literature I've ever read in my life.

I'm trying to build a list of novels about real-life writers. So far I've come up with: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, José Saramago (Fernando Pessoa) Immortality, Milan Kundera (Goethe) The Master of St. Petersburg, J.M. Coetzee (Dostoevsky) Lotte in Weimar, Thomas Mann (Goethe)...

Wuthering Heights is pure magic, one of the few genuinely Romantic novels ever written. To quote Rossetti, "The action is laid in hell, only it seems places and people have English names there." It's a timeless place populated with grotesque characters, impossible relationships, where even...

You're obviously complaining about a pretty narrow aspect of fantasy; but since high fantasy is most of the fantasy that America consumes, it's no wonder you think it represents the entire genre. High fantasy has been dead to me ever since I figured Tolkien wasn't worth the time and effort I...

I'd recommend the short-stories by Saki.

I agree a writer should strive to astonish the reader with truths that have been obvious all along but have remained unimagined or unworded. Like this beautiful sentence I found in William Beckford's Vathek: His pride arrived at its height when, having ascended for the first time the eleven...

Stewart's The Invention of Morel review made me feel it was time I gave the book a try, and I didn't regret it.

Mide would be Jorge Luis Borges: he was the first writer whose work I consciously decided to follow and whose life I wanted to know more about. I now own almost everything he wrote, including his works in collaboration. I'm only missing his Libro del cielo y del infierno and the prologues he...

Well, The Sandman was 75 issues, so Gaiman should be forgiven for struggling in the first ones. He gets progressively, with the third volume showing his knack for short stories and the fourth, the long Season of Mists storyline, being one of the high points of the series.

Not really, it's just the first volume :) There are 9 more afterwards.

Perhaps Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe.

A few recommendations: Steven Pinker for neuroscience/linguistics/evolutionary psychology John Gribbin for almost any science topic Alan Weisman for environment/polution

This is a horrible advice and you shouldn't pay attention to it, SeoulMan :D Every reader of The Sandman knows that the first two volumes in the series aren't a good start for a beginner; in fact Gaiman was still finding his voice in the first 7 seven issues. You should start with the volumes...

After enjoying A Plan for Escape very much, I decided to try this other novel by Casares, and, like the previous one, I finished reading it in one day, enthralled with every new page by the beautiful prose and mysterious ideas of this writer. There are quite a lot of similarities between the...

Absolutely, the Duke is using humor in that situation to deal with the betrayal. But I wouldn't say he was in an uncontrollable situation. In his peaceful proposal to Casanova is underlined the notion that he could have had the lover killed with impunity. Truly machiavellian is how he engendered...