All entries for Friday 08 February 2008

1001 Books

BTW for those who are wondering why I'm mainly writing (rubbish reviews :D) about books: I found that excel spreadsheet on the internet that contains a list of 1001 books you should read before you die. That's THE challenge for me! After browsing through the list I discovered that sadly I, though having read quite a lot of books in my life already, only 14 of those were on the list. That was last autumn. Since then I try to read at least 20 pages every day for my own pleasure i.e. nothing study-related. The spreadsheet even calculates how many books you have to read a year to make it through the list within your lifetime. I have to read 17 a year. I'm on my 3rd one this year already and it's only the beginning of february :D. For everybody interested in the spreadsheet: I found it on that website:

 http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?page_id=42

: 08 Feb 2008 19:01 |  Tags: Book |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Tale Of Two Cities

So, yesterday I finally finished "A Tale Of Two Cities". The book took its time to convince me that it's a great read but it managed to do that after about 1/3 of it. I really got hooked up at the third part when Charles went to Paris. The whole Paris arc is just extremely thrilling. And Sydney's sacrifice in the end ... omg!!! Though I could already guess what his intentions were when he first appeared in the Paris arc. In secondary school we spent almost a whole year on the history of the French Revolution and though I knew how violent those times were it was quite scaring to read Dickens account of the Jacobiner dictatorship... La Sainte Guillotine eww.

On the back of the book it is claimed to be a "wonderful love story" and though that is true for the 3rd part of the book I was wondering while reading the first two parts when the story will be a love story because it wasn't then. All in all I enjoyed the book but it won't be my most favourite Dickens. However I recommend reading it.

After having put "A Tale Of Two Cities" aside I immediately started on "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte which was recommended to me by my flatmate Rachel who's studying English Literature. So far it's, well, interesting though I have my problems with her style of writing. I'm not a native English speaker so the parts of Josephs' speech are mainly beyond me. More about that book next time. :D

: 08 Feb 2008 18:48 |  Tags: Book Dickens |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem