So because FanSee's been doing it forever...

[gaeln]

I decided I'd do her Read Fifty Books in a Year Challenge foor my current mission101 and frankly, so far I'm not doing very well having only read 11 terrific books, when I should have read around 20 or so terrific books to meet my goal by November 1, 2016. Hurumph :(

Still,what's read is read.

1_The Aspirin Age: 1919 to 1941 Edited by Isabel Leighton_short

Comments

[fansee]

Ho, ho, ho, I love reading about your reading! Your thoughtful approach is so different from my rather haphazard method.

I too have read The Hobbit and the Fellowship trilogy. I read The Hobbit in 1948 or 49, when I was about 10 or 11, and liked it but was not swept away. No doubt a lot went over my head. Then, about ten years later, I read the trilogy and only really enjoyed the first book. The next two books bored and appalled me; I did not 'get' them.

Around 2000, just before the movies started coming out, my Dunnett group did an on-line reread, and this time I got them. However, the timing was off. I could appreciate the scholarship and brilliance behind them, but in my 60s I was not swept away into the sort of obsession I'm capable of.

I've also read, several times but not recently, The Left Hand of Darkness and (I think) everything by Neal Stephenson except Anathem. Oh yes, and I read Neverwhere but should read it again as I can't recall much about it

[gaeln]

Movies probably next week :)

I am so glad we have so much overlap. I also was just a little sad because I am dominated by sci-fi/ fantasy whilst, it seems to me, you're a bit more of a mystery gal. Correct me if I misspeak. For me the Tolkein books were first encountered in my mid-teens and struck home immediately and, apparently, forever. Of the rest, all will probably, no will definately, be reread again. I once thought rereading was a waste, so many books, so little time, but not anymore. So much more is understood the second time around.

[gaeln]

Also, Anathem is dense, very dense and is the main reason why I've only racked up 11 books so far. Otherwise, I've only read his Cryptonamicon. Can you recommend another you especially liked?

[fansee]

If you want to dedicate a large portion of your life to reading Stephenson, I loved his Baroque Trilogy: Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. Each is, I would guess, about 600 pages long. On a slightly lighter note, I also loved Snow Crash whose protagonist is named...wait for it!...Hiro Protagonist.

Stephenson is something of an acquired taste. FanSee

[gaeln]

On myto read list. Thanks.

[fansee]

I used to read far more SF and then, maybe twenty years ago, I began to find it more and more difficult to find 'hard' SF: space travel and alien life forms. Fantasy began to interest me less and less, and I stopped keeping up with the field. I got out of the habit. Now I definitely read more mystery genre: police procedurals as well as plain, old whodunits.

I have always been a rereader, both because how much I get out of rereads and because sometimes I need the comfort of knowing how it's all going to come out.

Looking forward to the movies! FanSee

[gaeln]

That was my impression.

I just google up top ten-twenty-fifty hard sci-fi and read them. As we speak, I'm reading another from C. J. Cherryh, who you rec-ed to me a while bck, her Downbelow Station: The Company Wars. My only problem with all this is that so few of the really good books are standalones, are instead mainly seriously long series. I imagine when you've expended that much time, gone to that much trouble creating a whole new world/universe-system, you'd want to populate it with as many stories as you can. Only seems fair :)