The Good Books Thread/ATARnotes Book Club!

[Natasha.97]

A Series of Unfortunate Events was my first love, that I had read independently! Roald Dahl was my first love, but dad used to read them to me. I vividly remember reading The Witches, which is odd because I think I'd say my favourite is Matilda, but I can hardly remember reading that. I think I might need to come back to it!

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - I realllllly wanted to see this on stage in London but I could only get the ridiculous expensive tickets and that's just not in my budget! I definitely will read the book, I've heard too many good things not to!

I can't believe I forgot about Roald Dahl! Definitely a huge presence in my childhood

Definitely a must read! It's been an eye opener, and I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy it!
Note: I bought this book around 4 years ago at a book fair because my friend said it had swear words in it >< Admittedly, I also didn't fully understand and appreciate the novel until this year

[elysepopplewell]

I can't believe I forgot about Roald Dahl! Definitely a huge presence in my childhood

Definitely a must read! It's been an eye opener, and I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy it!
Note: I bought this book around 4 years ago at a book fair because my friend said it had swear words in it >< Admittedly, I also didn't fully understand and appreciate the novel until this year

Because it had swear words! Hahahaha.

The Tomorrow Series by John Marsden circled around my friends too because of a steamy scene. I actually read the whole series, though, and the Ellie Chronicles. Really great Australian writing

[K888]

The Tomorrow Series by John Marsden circled around my friends too because of a steamy scene. I actually read the whole series, though, and the Ellie Chronicles. Really great Australian writing

Ahh I read this in high school! Studied Tomorrow When the War Began in Year 8 English, decided to keep on reading. But I think I gave up a few books in haha. Stupidly read the first book in the Ellie Chronicles while reading the series, and just sort of lost interest from there because I sort of knew what happened in the long run or something.

Some series, I really don't mind the fact that there's heaps of books, but others - my interest just fades a few books in. Happened with the Cherub series, the Tomorrow series, and the Wardstone Chronicles (looking to get back into this last one though at the end of the year).

Has anyone read "Milk and Honey"? Trying to expand the types of books I read and was considering giving this a shot. Essays in Love is on the 'to read' list Elyse haha

Also would be interested in people's opinions of "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. I studied it for Context in English last year and wasn't a huge fan, but did find some decent parts. Thinking I'll re-read it now it's not for study purposes, and I reckon I might actually like it this time around haha

[peterpiper]

Ahh I read this in high school! Studied Tomorrow When the War Began in Year 8 English, decided to keep on reading. But I think I gave up a few books in haha. Stupidly read the first book in the Ellie Chronicles while reading the series, and just sort of lost interest from there because I sort of knew what happened in the long run or something.

Some series, I really don't mind the fact that there's heaps of books, but others - my interest just fades a few books in. Happened with the Cherub series, the Tomorrow series, and the Wardstone Chronicles (looking to get back into this last one though at the end of the year).

Has anyone read "Milk and Honey"? Trying to expand the types of books I read and was considering giving this a shot. Essays in Love is on the 'to read' list Elyse haha

Also would be interested in people's opinions of "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. I studied it for Context in English last year and wasn't a huge fan, but did find some decent parts. Thinking I'll re-read it now it's not for study purposes, and I reckon I might actually like it this time around haha

Didn't read 'Into the Wild', but I watched the movie. It wasn't good.

[lilyrosee]

If anyone likes dystopian novels read 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood, the TV series is also AMAZING!! In my opinion, the best TV series of 2017 

[Calebark]

If anyone likes dystopian novels read 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood, the TV series is also AMAZING!! In my opinion, the best TV series of 2017 

You may be interested in this thread

[lilyrosee]

You may be interested in this thread

Ahhh thank-you so much!

[appleandbee]

My favourite book is The Idiot by Dostoyevsky, although I love Notes from the Underground and Brothers Karamazov, also by him. He conveys the spectrum of human emotions and experience in a raw and unique way. I don't really have a specific genre, but I somewhat enjoy dystopian fiction (I enjoy tv shows like Orphan Black and Black Mirror more than sci-fi/dys fiction books through), creative non-fiction (especially historical fiction) and books set in exotic places (Central Asia and Latin America). I've been trying to read more modern fiction in the last few years.

Some other books I really like:

Classics: Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), The Plague (Albert Camus), Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), The Trial and The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka), A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway), Tale of two cities (Charles Dickens), Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

Historical Fiction (all written in the 21st Century): The Book Thief (Markus Zusak), All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr), Atonement (Ian Mcewan), Burial Rites (Hannah Kent), The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen), The Patriots (Sana Krasikov)

Modern Fiction: Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Harry Potter (J.K Rowling), Millennium Trilogy (Stieg Larsson), A Song of Fire and Ice (George R. R. Martin), The Boat (Nam Le), Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid), Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz),  Secret History and The Goldfinch (both by Donna Tartt), White Tiger (Aravind Adiga), The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

Non-fiction: Poor Economics (Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo), Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Piketty), Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman), Mao's Last Dancer (Li Cunxin), The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir), The History of Sexuality (Michel Foucault), Modern Romance: An Investigation (Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg), Bad Science and Bad Pharma (both by Ben Goldacre), Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche and anything else by him)

[elysepopplewell]

Ahh I read this in high school! Studied Tomorrow When the War Began in Year 8 English, decided to keep on reading. But I think I gave up a few books in haha. Stupidly read the first book in the Ellie Chronicles while reading the series, and just sort of lost interest from there because I sort of knew what happened in the long run or something.

Some series, I really don't mind the fact that there's heaps of books, but others - my interest just fades a few books in. Happened with the Cherub series, the Tomorrow series, and the Wardstone Chronicles (looking to get back into this last one though at the end of the year).

Has anyone read "Milk and Honey"? Trying to expand the types of books I read and was considering giving this a shot. Essays in Love is on the 'to read' list Elyse haha

Also would be interested in people's opinions of "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. I studied it for Context in English last year and wasn't a huge fan, but did find some decent parts. Thinking I'll re-read it now it's not for study purposes, and I reckon I might actually like it this time around haha

Okay. I have a lot to say about Milk and Honey. I'm about to write an instagram post about it (I give tiny book reviews and act like people care).

So basically - there's a lot of criticism for her work. She's sold over a million copies of Milk & Honey and it's been translated heaps. The criticism I see mostly is "she just writes sentences without punctuation and splits them up over a few lines and calls it poetry." Ok, so I won't lie - sometimes, true. Some pages I think are reasonably uninspiring. In saying this, I read the entire book back to front the other night and some pages actually stung a bit, I thought wow, that was deep, and then it's that more average stage, and then "shit, she just went there. How raw."

I think Rupi Kaur, based on what she puts on social media, is a wonderful soul. I do want to know more about her and her mind, she no doubt thinks a lot and she comes from a world very different to mine.

Some of the poems, though, are really great. I found this one particularly pertinent - maybe you know my thoughts on finding yourself before committing to a relationship, so this was timely (also the first time EVER that I've embedded an image in an AN post)



So, don't expect incredibly inspiring writing in terms of the manipulation of language and grammar. You'd probably find yourself unimpressed by that, but sometimes the ideas are nice, and, the language is nice.

I'm excited for her next book, it comes out in October and I've already pre-ordered it. I don't LOVE Milk and Honey but I enjoyed it, and occasionally I get it back off the shelf to thumb through again.

[elysepopplewell]

My favourite book is The Idiot by Dostoyevsky, although I love Notes from the Underground and Brothers Karamazov, also by him. He conveys the spectrum of human emotions and experience in a raw and unique way. I don't really have a specific genre, but I somewhat enjoy dystopian fiction (I enjoy tv shows like Orphan Black and Black Mirror more than sci-fi/dys fiction books through), creative non-fiction (especially historical fiction) and books set in exotic places (Central Asia and Latin America). I've been trying to read more modern fiction in the last few years.

Some other books I really like:

Classics: Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), The Plague (Albert Camus), Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez), Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), The Trial and The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka), A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway), Tale of two cities (Charles Dickens), Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde), Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

Historical Fiction (all written in the 21st Century): The Book Thief (Markus Zusak), All the Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr), Atonement (Ian Mcewan), Burial Rites (Hannah Kent), The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen), The Patriots (Sana Krasikov)

Modern Fiction: Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Harry Potter (J.K Rowling), Millennium Trilogy (Stieg Larsson), A Song of Fire and Ice (George R. R. Martin), The Boat (Nam Le), Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid), Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz),  Secret History and The Goldfinch (both by Donna Tartt), White Tiger (Aravind Adiga), The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

Non-fiction: Poor Economics (Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo), Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Piketty), Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman), Mao's Last Dancer (Li Cunxin), The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir), The History of Sexuality (Michel Foucault), Modern Romance: An Investigation (Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg), Bad Science and Bad Pharma (both by Ben Goldacre), Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche and anything else by him)

Goodness gracious you read a lot!

How do you usually go about reading? A little bit each day or are you a binger?

[geminii]

I love 1984 by George Orwell, I read it in two days while on a family holiday overseas. So beautiful, we were travelling across the country through India and the scenery was stunning, and I had the window open and was reading this book. Awesome!
I also loved Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I read that one in India too, in about a week or five days. The way she writes is beautiful!

Some of the books on my 'to read' list are:
- blueeyedboy, Joanne Harris (read this when I was younger, around 10 or 11, did not understand a word, now I realise it was a YA novel so I'm going to go back and properly read it!)
- Rule of Thoughts, James Dashner (I've read the first book, Eye Of Minds, now I want to read the second. This series is amazing!)
- Dangerous, Milo Yiannopoulos (all the controversy around this book intrigues me...Barnes & Noble have been purposely keeping this book 'out of stock' - despite it being the Amazon #1 bestseller - because they dislike the content.)
- No Campus For White Men, Scott Greer (sounds pretty interesting from the synopsis/blurb online!)

[heids]

I love so many books I don't know where to start haha.   

Some favourites in fiction would be:

- The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chboosky)
- Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
- Our Mutual Friend (Dickens)
- Madness: A Memoir (Kate Richards)
- Nonsense Novels (Stephen Leacock, 1800s parody humour)
- Psmith series (PG Wodehouse)


@Elyse: the only Liz Gilbert book I've read is Big Magic, and I found it brilliant - ubbbber encouraging and beautifully written.  I might look into EPL and related ones, though I'm not a short story person.

I really liked the Austen books, as well as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, etc... (can you tell I'm a classical literature nut??) I also kinda liked Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (read: crazy Russian guy) which is kinda weird and disturbing but very interesting. I'd really recommend 1984 as well and Ray Bradbury's short stories, especially Fahrenheit 451 which was *amazing*

Just listened to Jane Eyre again (twice in a row because I love it so much).  So good - so thoughtful and moving.  I'm also a classical literature nut - I like Dostoevsky and Austen and Tolstoy and Dickens and Gaskell and so on. 

My favourite book is The Idiot by Dostoyevsky, although I love Notes from the Underground and Brothers Karamazov, also by him.

I've read The Idiot and Brothers Karamazov; both solid books.

[elysepopplewell]

@Elyse: the only Liz Gilbert book I've read is Big Magic, and I found it brilliant - ubbbber encouraging and beautifully written.  I might look into EPL and related ones, though I'm not a short story person.

I have a copy of Big Magic but I'm yet to read it. I'll give it a shot!

[K888]

Elyse, I have ordered Essays in Love, purely because you speak so highly of it!

Will let you know when it arrives and I start reading it

Also decided to order Milk and Honey and give it a shot.

[heids]

Elyse, I have ordered Essays in Love, purely because you speak so highly of it!

Will let you know when it arrives and I start reading it

Also decided to order Milk and Honey and give it a shot.

I trust you're going to read Perks of Being a Wallflower first, or it'll be a betrayal of the deepest order