Books I've read and what I think of them

Amazing book by an amazing author. Coupland's best book I've read so far (There is only one I haven't read : Shampoo Planet but I plan to in a very near future). Coupland can really depress me as he shows the lack of soul of the first generation educated without religion.

By the way, you can listen to Coupland himself read part of it on his homepage.

"Technology does not always equal progress." How true, my dear Coupland.

Tolkien's best known book. It is simply amazing. Worth reading the 1008 pages of it. In fact I had read it before, in Portuguese.

It was considered Best English Book of the 20th Century, and for a good reason too.

"All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost"

Wow! Incredible!

A collection of small episodes in the lives of some Scottish junkies. Everything feels real right down to the language which might be strange for the first ten pages or so but soon becomes addictive.

I taught the film was brilliant (which it is), then I read the book and now I find the film a bit of a disappointment.

I said I would read it, didn't I? Well the first time I saw it on sale, I immediately grabbed it.

It's a Coupland book. Very good. The story of an ambitious college student obsessed with his hair. It showed me how thin the line between success and failure is.

A gripping tale of the Holocaust.

Art Spiegelman uses mice to represent the Jew which run from the Nazi cats. It works perfectly and it is told magnificently. Has one big problem - it's too short!

It is incredible as the small little mice turn to life and move you as they run from the Nazi bastards. Don't tell kids how bad Hitler's ideals were, just let them read this, they'll get the idea.

The book that inspired Blade Runner. The plot is not the same and for once I find that the movie plot was richer than the book

MAUS, the sequel. Just as brilliant as the first, the story continues now in the concentration camps of Auschwitz.

It is the second time I read this book and for the second time I find it brilliant.

The author who came up with the term "Generation X" to describe those people born between 1961 and 1971. They are a lost generation in a world built by the generation before.

I saw the film and decided to buy the book (a lot of books in this list are the source of film-plots). I found Stephen King to write perfectly from a technical point of view but it lacks some feeling. I can see that a lot of people find it brilliant as it is indeed very exciting but it does not actually tell anything new.

It cheap, made-for-selling entertainment, good cheap, made-for-selling entertainment.

3/9/98 Update: I have added another star, just because of the times I think back to this book.

A classic.

It is brilliant. The plot is very interesting showing the greed and envy and ambition of men in politics. Also depicted is the Roman mentality, which Shakespeare knew a lot about.

The style is old fashioned but that can be a virtue.

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." The type of thing that could be on the back of a T-shirt!

I was already trying to read "The Good Man Of Sezuan" when a British kid staying with us, showed up with this one. At first I thought it would be a interesting book from the contents point of view but maybe not so well written.

I was very wrong, this is literature. The plot is incredible filled with original ideas and concepts.

The film should be coming soon and I just hope (maybe somewhat vainly) that the ideas are not terribly distorted.

Why must we send a scientist, why can't we send somebody, normal?
Hitler is the first sign of intelligent life on Earth Before jumping to any conclusions, read the book.

This is a classic which I think everyone has read. A for a very good reason: it is simple and sublime.

Another classic of modern literature. Just read it.

This book was originally called ANIMAL FARM : A Fairy Story (The title was changed as the publishers thought people might think it was a children story). It is not a children's book, is about an animal revolution in which (as so often happens with revolutions of people) the ideals which started it are soon forgotten and the greed of some takes over.

The most know sentence of this book is All Animals Are Equal. But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others, which is often quoted although the reference to the animals is mostly forgotten.
But there is also the marvellous "...God had given a tail to keep the flies off, but he would rather have no tail and no flies".

Two books in one day. And I did start both on the 15th. But there both under 100 pages so there not very long. Besides I got a hold of a couple of good books in a row for free, by borrowing them.

Back to the book. It is a satire of British society, and it is a lot of fun to read, full of sentences like:

It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind

Brilliant. Just loved the man's arrogance, like he says in the prologue:

You have to be superior to mankind. Superior in strength, greatness of soul - superior in disdain.

Oops, I haven't read much lately, have I? A book in a month. But it is actually two books: Alice In Wonderland AND Through the Looking Glass.

This is fantastic stuff. Maybe the best books I have ever read.

These being probably the most quoted books in British Literature, there are not many quotes I can add. But I loved when in the second book (Through the Looking Glass) the white knight is telling how he got stuck in his helmet:
White Knight: I was fast as lightning
Alice: But that's a different kind of fastness

Well, it is very good, but really not my style.

He was a caller of good mornings a shaker of hands, a man who knew all jokes yet lingered close to sadness...

Incredible. Wonderfully written.

I don't know how he did it, but Hemingway turned what could just be the most boring plot of English literature into a compelling tale of a man's fight against himself.

God, horrible. I had to read it for German class but detested it.

It does start pretty good, a portrait of the youth in 1933 in Germany, but it gets worse towards the end.

A name at a war memorial is the dream of their puberty

A book that needs no introduction. It has become part of our culture. Even its names (Big Brother, Newspeak) now taunt our collective dreams.

Freedom is the right to say that 2 + 2 = 4

It's starts a bit dull, but then just gets better and better and better...

The description of the inefficiency of Spanish warfare can sometimes be hilarious. (OK, that might be a bit of an exaggeration).

I know these are four books, but I'll consider them as one as they all form that trilogy in four parts that is the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy.

This is an unbelievably good book. I just raced through it.

The great yellow vogon ships hung in the sky the same way that bricks don't.

What should I say? Very good. Really well thought of the concept.

Another one of those books I had to read for school. God, why don't they just give us the classics at least they're good.

This is just a big rip-off of Catcher In The Rye.

He does say a lot of things which are quite correct. It just that the conclusions drawn could have a bit of more sanity.

The world seems to be going crazy.

The first hundred or so pages are a bit boring, but after that it is amazingly good.

But ever the Noldor feared most the treachery of their of kin.

It is really strange.

I think I'll have to read it again if I'm to understand it.

It is very good.

If only there was just that little bit more action and less waiting around it would be perfect.

Nietzsche, love it or loathe it, you cannot ignore his strong messages.

Nietzsche is almost powerful, especially when he says stuff like:

Noble men don't commit sin

I had to read it for school. I didn't think it was as bad as everybody else seemed to, but it does get boring sometimes.

The third book I finished today!

A parody on the American Elections based on Alice In Wonderland. Written in 1971, but still very funny.

Finished! I've been reading this one some October! It's only 600 pages, though.

I had to read for school and for once loved it.

It's one of those books you don't think too much off while reading them, but makes you long for more after you're finished.

Another book for school.

It's a pretty little novel.

Great another Douglas Adams book (he wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy). I grabbed the minute I saw it in a bookstore as these type of books are difficult to find in Lisbon.

A couple of hundred pages of mad humour, which just leave you on the floor laughing. Loved the Electric Monk bit (in fact I have been telling it to everyone I meet).

The sequel to the book above. I found this one a little better. Still the mad humour, the English nonsense and stuff which just makes you smile, like:

He had suddenly decided coolly, rationally, as a clear, straightforward decision rather than merely a feeble surrender to craving, that he would, after all, have a cigarette

Pretty OK.

A very disturbing book.

When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself, in his bed, turned into a monstrous insect.

It took me weeks to finish this book. Not because it is boring, on the contrary, it is so good you have to read a little bit a time. It's like a drug, a little at a time gets you high, too much and it kills you.

What do you want out of life?

I was somewhat of bored in this last bit of the holidays, so I started reading everything I could get my hands on. This was my sister's.

It's nice, but I find it too biblical.

Very good.

Brilliant!! This is just fucking brilliant! It just real good nonsense. I loved it. I want more! How can I tell you how great this book is? Well, I can't. You are just going to have to read it.

I envy you because you can still read it for the first time, while I have already read it.

Really nice book about a journalist in fachist Lisbon of the late 1930s.

Very smooth reading.

It's Tolkien and it's great. Magnificent tales even though most of them are in fact unfinished. If you enjoyed reading the Lord of The Rings and the especially the Silmarillion, then you must read this.

Magnificent. It is a collection of short stories by the author everybody considers should have received the Nobel Prize, but didn't.

These are tales of the absurd.

Only three stars for a Coupland book! Sorry folks, but I have to be true to myself and I didn't enjoy this half as much as I enjoyed his other work. However, this is very new stuff for the author very unlike his previous work. Some would say he matured, that he now has more than just hipness and a good grasp of his generation, that this is his first true work of art. I partly agree and realise that this is an experience for the author, but as such didn't achieve the same good results. I just hope that he puts it all together and starts to write some really good stuff. It might after some more great works that Girlfriend in a Coma be considered the book where his true abilities started to show.

By the same author of the Gin Tonic Tales some more absurd fiction.

This is a truly funny book. One about a simple English teacher and how he gets involved in an international conspiracy. Really farfetched and believable.

This is one author who just jokes about everything and everybody. None and nothing is spared.

Finished! It took me a very long time to read this one. I have been reading it on and off for months now. Not that it is bad, it is very good in fact. It's just not the type of book you get really involved and can't wait to know what happens next.

This is a trully wonderfull story and very well written.

Not a bad book at all, but somehow I expected more. Some of the jokes are very good, but on a lot of them I find myself reacting with not more than a smile and this is not the type of humour which exposes reality. It is either humour for the sake of it or the kind of intellectual humour which only intellectuals could enjoy.

This is great. Fantastic short stories.

A small poetry book, with drawings by the Author of Maus.

The text is nursery rhime poetry with a strong sexual theme. It works very well.

I bought this to see what this worldwide new craze was all about. I read it and understood. This is one great book. It might be that it is a children's story, but it does not treat children as stupid little people as they are sometimes dealt with. Even the prose is uncomplex but serious and honest.

Another Harry Potter book.

This is not fiction, but a biography of Field-Marshal Rommel, most known for leading the Nazi campaign in North Africa where he often defeated superior British troops.

I really loved this book. I found Irving's prose very enjoyable though I did not feel at any time, that he was romanticising the historic events for dramatic effect (though I could be wrong). Neither does he idolise Rommel, not does he attempt to expose him in any way.

There is also a nice balance between anedotical events (which one always enjoys reading) and hard facts (which one always need reading, to maintain balance).

Men have two major organs, the brain and the penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.