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Jäsen: Caroline_McElwee

Kirjasto3,824 kirjaa — katso kirjasto

Arvostelut54 arvostelua — katso arvostelut

Pilvetavainsanapilvi, tekijäpilvi

AvainsanatNovel (1,473), R (1,098), UK (820), US (617), biography (590), autobiography (348), poems (326), poetry (290), literary biography (256), writing (248) — kaikki avainsanat

RyhmätArabic, North African and Middle Eastern Literature, Atwoodians, Dutch writing in English - An appreciation, Folio Society devotees, Hornbeam Reading Group, Literature of Georgia (Sakartvelo), Reading Globally, Slightly Foxed - An appreciation, The Great Gatsby, The Red Room — näytä kaikki ryhmät , Writer-readers

LempikirjailijatPeter Ackroyd, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Karen Armstrong, Elizabeth Von Arnim, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, James Baldwin, John Banville, Pat Barker, Simone De Beauvoir, Dirk Bogarde, William Boyd, Ray Bradbury, A.S. Byatt, George Gordon Byron, Baron Byron, Italo Calvino, Albert Camus, J.L. Carr, Anne Carson, Raymond Carver, Bruce Chatwin, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Michael Cunningham, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Isak Dinesen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Mark Doty, Carol Ann Duffy, Helen Dunmore, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Penelope Fitzgerald, Janet Frame, Northrop Frye, Tess Gallagher, Maggie Gee, Andre Gide, Graham Greene, Helene Hanff, Richard Holmes, Janette Turner Hospital, Khaled Hosseini, Fergal Keane, John Keats, Primo Levi, Penelope Lively, Mary S. Lovell, Bernard MacLaverty, Osip Mandelshtam, Henning Mankell, Sandor Marai, Philip Marsden, Andre Maurois, Ian McEwan, Patrick Mcgrath, Anne Michaels, Marcel Moring, Toni Morrison, Pablo Neruda, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Ondaatje, John Pilger, Annie Proulx, Rainer Maria Rilke, Joseph Roth, Philip Roth, Jeffrey Sachs, Jonathan Sacks, Lorna Sage, May Sarton, Bernard Schlink, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sam Shepard, Carol Shields, Anita Shreve, Marin Sorescu, John Steinbeck, William Styron, Elizabeth Taylor, Lisa St. Aubin de Teran, Dalai Lama (His Holiness the), Claire Tomalin, Rose Tremain, Jane Urquhart, Salley Vickers, Alice Walker, Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams, Landford Wilson, Jeanette Winterson, Jan Wolkers, Virginia Woolf (Yhteiset suosikit)

SuosikkikirjakaupatLondon Review Bookshop

Tietoja minusta Currently reading:
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde [Re-read]
SOLITUDE by Anthony Storr [Re-Read]
LETTERS FROM A STOIC by Seneca
CULTURAL AMNESIA by Clive James
COMPLETE POEMS by Michael Longley
READING MICHAEL LONGLEY by Fran Brearton
WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte

Next (maybe!)
THE PAINTED VEIL by Somerset Maugham
THE MIDDLE AGE OF MRS ELIOT by Angus Wilson
MY GRANDMOTHERS AND I by Diana Holman-Hunt
INDEPENDENT PEOPLE by Halldor Laxness
ORIENTALISM by Edward Said

For Study, re-reading:
THE ASSAULT by Harry Mulisch
SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky

Slow Burn's and Dipping

THE WHISPERERS by Orlando Figes; WHERE I'VE BEEN, WHERE I AM GOING (Essays) by Joyce Carol Oates; THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by William James; WALTHER RATHENEAU: His life and work by Harry Kessler; A SULTRY MONTH by Alethea Hayter; MODERN MAN IN SEARCH OF A SOUL BY C.G. Jung; GOING DUTCH by Lisa Jardine; THE HOUSE OF 7 GABLES by Nathanial Hawthorne; LETTERS of TED HUGHES; THE MIDDLE SEA: A History of the Mediteranean; Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea: Selected Poems; LETTERS OF VINCENT VAN GOGH. Vol 1; ESSAYS by Montagne Vol 1; THE BIBLE (New Cambridge paragraph bible with Apocrypha: King James Version 2005, Folio edition 2008.

I'm a compulsive reader and an obsessive book buyer - new or secondhand doesn't matter. I do use the library, but often end up having to add a copy of the good ones to my own library.

I bought this little picture in a junk shop many years ago, I am guessing it is from a 1920s/1930s illustration in a magazine. Perhaps earlier.

I want to begin every book as soon as I get it, and have far too many I am dipping into. I achieved reading 'War and Peace' this year, which I got 2/3rds through twice in my 20s, but never finished. I did love the characters, but felt ultimately that I would have liked much of the discourse on history in a separate volume of essays, which I'd probably return to more often then.

Read 2008:
The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd (05/01/08)****
The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas (06/01/08)***1/2 [Norwegian]
Dr Johnson's Doorknob by Liz Workman (13/01/08)***1/2
Love by Toni Morrison (20/01/08)***1/2 [American][a re-read]
The Silent Sin by Anja Sicking(27/01/08)*** [Dutch]
In the Wake by Per Petterson (01/02/08) ***1/2 [Norwegian]
My Tango with Barbara Strozzi by Russell Hoban (03/02/08)***
Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale (16/02/08)***1/2
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (26/02/08)****1/2 [Russian]
Can any mother help me? by Jenna Bailey (02/03/08) ***1/2
The Years by Virginia Woolf (08/03/08)***1/2
Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliffe (20/03/08)***
Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir by Marge Piercy (24/03/08) *** [L]
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (06/04/08)***1/2
In Europe by Geert Mak (15/04/08)****
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje (18/04/08)***** [5th reading and it still holds up]
The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates 1973-1982 by Joyce Carol Oates (23/04/08)****
The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel (27/04/08)****
Miracles of my Life (an autobiography) by J G Ballard (04/05/08)***1/2
Two Women by Harry Mulisch (05/05/08)**1/2
Sea Change by Jorie Graham (05/05/08)***1/2
The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse (15/05/08)***1/2
Speaking of Books: The Best Things Ever Said About Books and Book Collecting by Rob Kaplan (18/05/08)***
A Pelican in the Wilderness: hermits, solitaries and recluses by Isabel Colegate (21/05/08)***
Kingdom Come by J G Ballard (25/05/08)***
Deafening by Frances Itany (30/05/08)***1/2
The Collector of Worlds by Ilya Troyanov (08/06/08) ***
The Suspiscions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (13/06/08) ***
Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings by Elizabeth Eger and others (13/06/08) ***1/2
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (15/06/08) ****
Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley (22/06/08)***
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley (23/06/08)***
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (28/06/08)***
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink [re-read] (29/06/08) ****
Cabin at Singing river by Chris Czajkowski (30/06/08)***1/2
The Hat by Selima Hill (03/07/08)***
The Writers Desk by Jill Krementz (04/07/08)***1/2

Read 2007:
Everything I Ever Learned about Change by Lesley Garner (01/01/07)***
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (02/01/07)***** [5th or 6th reading]
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (05/01/07)***** [3rd or 4th reading]
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (08/01/07)***1/2
Black Girl/White Girl by Joyce Carol Oates (12/01/07)**1/2
Minaret by Leila Abouleila (14/01/07)**1/2
Close Up: An actor telling tales by John Fraser(18/01/07)****
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (21/01/07)*** [3rd Reading]
Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett (26/01/07)***1/2
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Girl by Grayson Perry (27/01/07)***
Only Say the Word by Niall Williams (29/01/07)***
Dickens by Peter Ackroyd (18/02/07)****
The Caliph’s House by Tahir Shah (21/02/07)***
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers (03/03/07)**1/2
Keeping the World Away by Margaret Forster (09/03/07)***1/2
The Yacoubian House by Alaa Al Aswany (16/03/07)***
Alice Walker – A Life by Evelyn C White (19/03/07)***
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (21/03/07)***** [4th reading]
The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton (25/03/07)***1/2 [2nd reading]
The Sea-Grass Tree by Rosamond Lehman (29/03/07)**1/2
Madam de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford (02/04/07)***1/2
The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld (09/04/07)***
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (09/04/07)****
The View from Here: Life at Seventy by Joan Bakewell (10/04/07) ***
Passionate Minds by David Bodanis (14/04/07) ***
Body Surfing by Anita Shreve (15/04/07)***
Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles (18/04/07)***
Middlemarch by George Eliot (01/05/07)****
This Side of Paradise by F Scott Fitzgerald (07/05/07)*** [3rd reading]
The Beautiful and the Damned by F Scott Fitzgerald (14/05/07)***1/2
All Those Moments by Rutger Hauer (14/05/07)***1/2
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (18/05/07)***** [20something reading - stopped counting]
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt (19/05/07)***
Greene on Capri by Shirley Hazzard (21/05/07)***
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene (26/05/07)***
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (29/05/07)****
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (02/06/07)****
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (05/06/07)**1/2
This Book will Save your Life by A.M Homes (10/06/07)***
The Road Home by Rose Tremain (15/06/07)***1/2
Dear Ghosts, by Tess Gallagher (16/06/07)****1/2
84 Charing Cross Road (with The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street)[4th reading] by Helene Hanff (16/06/07) *****
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (20/06/07) ***
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman (23/06/07)***
The Bodhgaya Interviews by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (24/06/07) *** [4th reading]
Life Class by Pat Barker (02/07/07) ***1/2
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson (10/07/07) ****
The Wrecked, Blessed body of Shelton Lefleur by John Gregory Brown (13/07/07) ***1/2
The Sea House by Esther Freud (22/07/07) ***
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski(29/07/07) ***
The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski(30/07/07)***
An Interrupted Life: the Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 by Etty Hillesum (03/08/07)*****
Part of the Pattern, memoirs of a wife at Westminster by Edna Healey (07/08/07)***
Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy (12/08/07)***1/2
Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly (14/08/07) ****
Fair Play by Tove Jansson (15/08/07)****1/2
Remembering Light And Stone by Deirdre Madden **** (18/08/07)
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (17/08/07) ***1/2
The Long Afternoon by Giles Waterfield (19/08/07)***
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (26/08/07)**1/2
No! I Don't Want To Join A Bookclub (27/08/07)**1/2
Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor (31/08/07)***
My Cleaner by Maggie Gee (01/09/07)***1/2
Reading In Bed by Sue Gee (05/09/07)**1/2
Atonement by Ian McEwan (09/09/07)***1/2
Pilgrim At Tinker Creak by Annie Dillard (11/09/07)****
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (12/09/07) **1/2
The Newton Letter by John Banville (13/09/07)**** [4th reading]
Desperate Characters by Paula Fox (13/09/07)***
The Reindeer People by Piers Vitebsky (22/09/07)****
The Cottagers by Marshall N Klimasewiski (27/09/07)***
Travels In The Scriptorium by Paul Auster (28/09/07)**1/2
Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood (31/09/07)***
When Was The Last Time You Saw Your Father by Blake Morrison (07/10/07)***
Fire In The Blood by Irene Nemirovsky (08/10/07)***1/2
Astrid And Veronika by Linda Olsson (11/10/07)*** but flawed
Fruits Of The Earth by Andre Gide (13/10/07)*** [2nd reading]
The Dream Room by Marcel Moring (14/10/07)***
The Door by Margaret Atwood (14/10/07)***
Le Bal by Irene Nemirovsky (16/10/07)****
Q's Legacy by Helene Hanff (20/10/07)*** [2nd reading]
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (25/10/07)***
The Pomegranates of Kandahar by Sarah Maguire (28/10/07)***
Flight by Kathi A (not published yet)(02/11/07)***1/2
Where three trees meet by Salley Vickers (03/11/07)***
The Best of Oprah's 'What I know for sure' (10/11/07)***1/2
Northrop Frye in Conversation (18/11/07)****
Daniel Deronda (28/11/07)**1/2
True Pleasures - a memoir of Women in Paris by Lucinda Holdforth (09/12/07)***1/2
Gents by Warwick Collins (09/12/07) ***
French Women Don't get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano (19/12/07)***
Ecstasy by Louis Couperus (19/12/07)****1/2
The File by Timothy Garton Ash (borrowed) (21/12/07)***
On Art and Artists by Rodin (26/12/07)****
The Yellow-lighted bookshop by Lewis Buzbee (26/12/07)***
The Last Station by Jay Parini (29/12/07)***1/2
The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez-Reverte (30/12/07)****
The Gathering by Anne Enright (31/12/07) ****
Lizzie Borden in Love by Julliana Baggott (31/12/07) ***1/2
+ 12 back issues of 'Slightly Foxed'

I can't DO 'Top Ten Favourite books' but here are some special ones:

The novels I’ve read the most (the Gatsby 20+ times and the rest 1 to 3+)

1. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
2. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
3. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
4. Beloved by Toni Morrison
5. The Railway Children by E Nesbit
6. Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
7. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
8. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
9. Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker
10. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
11. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
12. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
13. A Month in the Country by J L Carr
14. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
15. Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
16. On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
17. In Custody by Anita Desai
18. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
19. Miss Garnett's Angel by Salley Vickers
20. The Newton Letter by John Banville
21. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
22. Middlemarch by George Eliot

Novels I've read once that I KNOW I'll read again:

The Time of our Singing by Richard Powers
Credo by Melvyn Bragg
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
[list in progress...]

Autobiography & Biography

1. A Rage to Live: Life of Sir Richard and Isabel Burton by Mary S Lovell
2. Letters of Vincent Van Gogh by Vincent Van Gogh
3. A Postillion Struck by Lightening by Dirk Bogarde
4. Plant Dreaming Deep by May Sarton
5. Woman in the Mist by Farley Mowat
6. Out of Africa by Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen)
7. Chronicles One by Bob Dylan
8. The Bronski House by Philip Marsden
9. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
10. A View of Delft: Vermeer Then and Now by Anthony Bailey
11. What am I doing here? by Bruce Chatwin (essays)
12. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
13. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
14. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
15. Pilgrim at Tinker Creak by Annie Dillard
16. Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

Non-Fiction

1. The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations by Jonathan Sacks
2. Happiness: A Handbook for Living by the Dalai Lama
3. The Soul of Money by Lynn Twist
4. The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime by Jeffrey Sachs
5. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Poetry

1. Rilke: Selected poems – Raine Maria Rilke
2. Elemental Odes (Odas Elementale) – Pablo Neruda
3. My Alexandria by Mark Doty
4. Waste Land by T S Eliot
5. Dear Ghosts, by Tess Gallagher
6. The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

SHAKESPEARE of course - for me it is the TRAGEDIES, especially HAMLET!

I've now challenged myself to read The Bible from cover to cover including the Apochrypha, and will follow it with some biblical history and the Gnostic Gospels (but all that is a project for several years). I've read other spiritual books, but only dipped into the Bible very rarely. I don't follow one faith but have a spiritual side that I like to nourish from time to time. And you can't have a discussion about religion if you haven't read the books - and there is a lively God discussion going on at the moment (Hitchins/Armstrong/Dawkins to name but only a few).

I'm also going to begin cataloguing my CDs and DVDs on
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/CJM_...

Tietoja kirjastostani I am about two-thirds through putting my collection on LibraryThing, but it will be a while before I add more, as I have to move things to get at the remaining ones, double stacked,in a small London apartment - it's going to take a while to catalogue them.

Ratings

***** (Can't live without these and probably read several times)
**** (Excellent read, highly recommended, maybe read more than once)
*** (Definately recommended, good read)
** (Disappointing)
* (Really didn't like)
and all the halves appropriately, I like the halves, as often my feeling is between two goal posts, especially between 3-4 and 4-5! At least should I ever downsize my library the list of those that are definately staying will be easy to pull (once my catalogue is complete).

In TAGS the year on its own is the year purchased (starting this year 2007). 'R2007' for example is the year read, and is only my reading from my own collection! DIPPING means I dip in and out, so many art and poetry books get dipped into rather than read from cover to cover, so never appear read!

Jäsenyys LibraryThing Early Reviewers ("varhaiset kirja-arvostelijat")

SijaintiLondon

Käyttäjätilin tyyppijulkinen, elinaikainen

YhteysuutisetYhteysuutiset

URL:t http://www.librarything.com/profile/Caroline_McElwee (profiili)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Caroline_McElwee (kirjasto)

RekisteröitymispäiväFeb 21, 2007