Tag: Reading

Monthly Review – December 2012

Posted December 31, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Monthly Reading / 0 Comments

Now that 2012 has come to close, I find myself not reflecting on my year of reading but eagerly anticipating the books I get to read next year. All my reflections of 2012 seemed to have taken place in November. So now I want the Literary Exploration reading challenge to begin.

But as this is the end of December, let me quickly cover the important events of this month. Literary Exploration decided to read a travel/road trip book for the month; the book picked was the beat novel On the Road. This book had a lot of mixed reactions; even people thinking their own travel diaries would be more interesting. I’m now very concerned about what has happened when my wife goes travelling For me I thought it was an enjoyable look at the beat generation and their ideals. Check out the conversations on Goodreads to find out what people said about this book.

A reminder that in January we will be reading Shadow of the Wind; I love this book and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the discussions will be like. I still haven’t decided if I want to reread it yet or wait till the series has finished before rereading it in its entirety. Either way, I look forward to hearing people’s thoughts.

As for my personal reading, I focused on reading non-fiction this month; well I started off that way but I got distracted. I’ve read some great books this month including; By the Book, a Readers Guide to Life which was a fascinating look at the author’s reading journey. Also I tried some dirty realism with Factotum by Charles Bukowski, a raw and gritty semi autobiographical novel which I highly recommend. What were your highlights of this month? Did you read anything great?

Monthly Reading

By the Book, A Reader’s Guide to Life by Ramona Koval
Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin
Factotum by Charles Bukowski
Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Through the Window by Julian Barnes
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Introducing The 2013 Literary Exploration Reading Challenge

Posted December 15, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 52 Comments

As the year starts to come to a close, we readers start to think about what we would like to read next year and for some of us, we look for the reading challenge that excites us the most. As most people know, Literary Exploration tries to explore all different genres in the hope to become a well-rounded reader and even discover something new. So in 2013 we would like to challenge you to explore further.

Instead of increasing the book club to two books a month we decided we wanted people to read what they wanted to read; but we also want people to explore. So we are challenging everyone to dedicate either 12, 24 or 36 books that you would normally read to different genres. We have compiled a list which hopefully will give you a chance to explore literature a little deeper.

It’s real simple; below you will see an easy (12 books), hard (24 books) or insane (36 books) challenge. Each genre links to the Goodreads genre page if you need some suggestions on what to read. We want you to have some fun and explore; hopefully you might find a new genre that peaks your interest. To sign up either join the Literary Exploration book club on Goodreads and talk about your progress with others involved or for the bloggers out there, if you want to add it as part of your blogging experience simply let us know with a link (to your Literary Exploration Challenge page) in the comments below so our readers can see how you are going.

This is the first year doing this and if all goes well we might expand and make it a yearly challenge. If we do decide to do this on a yearly basis and you feel that there are some genres are either too heavily focused on or not mentioned at all, please let me know. The idea of this challenge is to have a well-balanced list of genres and not focusing on one genre more than any others.

Good luck all who decide to join in. I personally am going to go for the 36 book, insane challenge and I’m really looking forward to it. While there are some genres I’m not looking forward to reading, it’s all part of being a literary explorer. What could be wrong with that?

My Experience with the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die List

Posted October 27, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 29 Comments

One of my favourite bookish podcasts is The Readers; if you haven’t heard it before go and subscribe, it offers random book-based banter which has been both enjoyable to listen to and offers some interesting ideas for future blog posts. This post is inspired by the latest episode about the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list.

With the newly revised book being released earlier this month, I thought I would share my experience with this list. As most people know I was never much of a reader, I think I read about one or two books a year. In 2009 something clicked in my head (thanks to Craig Schuftan) and I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on. But I had a problem; I really didn’t know where to start. I found plenty of books that looked interesting but I wasn’t sure if they would fulfil my yearning.

So with no idea of what my literary tastes were and not knowing what books would be required reading. I turned to a “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list which I found while searching books that were considered required reading for everyone. The thing I loved about this book was the fact that it was a combination of old and new books ranging from all different genres. This helped start my literary journey and find a real joy in being a literary explorer.

While I don’t read many books from the list now, I discovered the types of books and genres I really like and what hasn’t worked for me. Personally I would love to read every book on the list but as I discovered there are now four different editions. Do you read the entire list from one edition or combine the lot and read every book ever mentioned? I’ve come to the conclusion I would rather use the list as a guide in addition to discovering new books on my own accord as well.

I will always hold this list close to my heart because it did nurture my newly formed love of reading but it also helped my pretentious level as a book critic. I wish the publisher released a list of the books that have been removed from the new edition, I know there was a spread sheet that had the first three lists on it, so you can see which ones disappeared from each update and tick off all the books you’ve read but sadly that was taken down for copyright violations. The publisher should look into something similar as I’m sure there are people out there that are willing to pay a small fee to have access to all the lists for referencing.

As a point of reference since beginning my reading journey back in 2009, I’ve now read over 400 books and seventy six of them were from the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list. The list is still a point of reference for me when I feel like I’m not reading books that are literary enough. While the list covers most genres and offers an interesting perspective on your reading life, it never really felt like it was full of highly literary novels. For me it was just a way to explore and cover the essentials in reading. Here are ten books from the ones I’ve read that I loved and highly recommend;

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Perfume by Patrick Süskind
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

7 Deadly Sins of Reading

Posted June 23, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Random / 0 Comments

So blog tagging is annoying and I don’t normally participate in them, but I saw this post from Jae over at Book Nympho where she just pretty much told everyone to participate. I thought this would be a nice follow up to my confession of a reader post, so I’m going to join in. I’d like to encourage others to participate too as I’d be interested in reading their answers.

7 Deadly Sins of Reading

GREED: What is your most inexpensive book?
Obviously that would be a free book, but do ARC’s count? My latest ARC received would be The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. But if you aren’t talk about advance reader copies of books the last free book I received was the new 24hr book Willow Pattern, which I’ve read but not planning to review on my blog so I might as well talk about it a little here. I thought it was an interesting social experiment but was it great literature? No, it was not. It’s amazing that a book can be written, edited and published in just 24 hours. It is interesting how the nine authors worked together but this really isn’t one voice and the story didn’t really flow well from author to author.

WRATH: What author do you have a love/hate relationship with?
I don’t think I really have a love/hate relationship with any author. Probably the closest would be my feelings towards China Miéville; I love what he does for literature but I keep hoping he will write another book that I will like. I love The City & The City but haven’t read anything else of his that even compares.

GLUTTONY: What book have you deliciously devoured over and over with no shame whatsoever?
That’s easy, I have a gluttonous feeling towards Frankenstein and most of my readers know this. I own multiple copies of this book and have already shared my thoughts on re-reading recently.

SLOTH: What book have you neglected reading due to laziness?
I’ve always wanted to read Finnegans Wake by James Joyce because that will make me look cool, right? I think it sounds like a weird and interesting book but I’m too lazy to put the time and effort into reading it, I think that’s why many people haven’t read it. I also want to read Ulysses but that isn’t really a priority.

PRIDE: What book do you most talk about in order to sound like a very intellectual reader?
I don’t do that; let’s talk Russian writers shall we? I really think Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was quite brilliant but I do prefer the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Notes from Underground may be a great starting point for Dostoyevsky but you really should read Crime and Punishment. Ok maybe I do, do that.

LUST: What attributes do you find most attractive in male or female characters?
I love the smart, witty characters in books. Maybe that is slightly nerdy of me but I think they are just the most interesting characters to read. I also love the inner torment of a character but that is not really an attractive feature. But ultimate fictional crush would be Alaska, she was so cool and I was so heart broken when she died.

ENVY: What books would you most like to receive as a gift?
I do need more copies of Frankenstein; I would love some nice leather-bound, cloth bound or maybe a first edition of this book. They would look so pretty on my book shelf.

So there we have it, more confessions. I would love for people to either do a post similar and link me it or let me know what their reading sins are in the comments.

My Thoughts on Re-Reading

Posted June 13, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 0 Comments

I’m not sure how I feel about re-reading books; as a book lover I have to face the facts that I’m never going to read all the books I want to read. So why would I waste time re-reading a book? Sometimes there are books with so many layers that you need to re-read them just to explore the plot and the themes deeper and sometimes it’s just a matter of comfort. For the past three years I’ve been re-reading Frankenstein ever year; simply because I love this book and yet there is still so much in the book to discover. This year I haven’t felt the need to re-read it, yet. So I’ve been questioning the idea of ‘to re-read or not to re-read?’

There are some books I still would like to re-read; The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut come to mind but sometimes I think there are too many books worth reading to go back to a book. I know there will always be books I will want to re-read and some I will read again but I’m not sure how I feel about the whole concept. I’ve never understood the idea of people completing a book then going back to the same book again straight away. Having said that, I often try to read in a different genre or style after a reading a book because I worry I would get bored with an author or genre if I fully entrench myself. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on re-reading.

ArmchairBEA 2012: Introduction

Posted June 4, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in ArmchairBEA / 0 Comments

Most book bloggers or book lovers in America would know about the BEA that will be happening over the next week. BEA is the Book Expo of America, held in New York, and a Book Blogger Convention is run alongside it as a way to get book bloggers to meet as well. While us poor Australian book bloggers don’t have this kind of opportunity we can still participate with Armchair BEA. This is a virtual conference for people that can’t make it to BEA. Over the next few days I will be joining in with this event and their daily blog post topic suggestions.

Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging?

My name is Michael, I’m a new bibliophile and new to book blogging; but not new to blogging. In 2009 I started reading and I’ve never stopped, I started my cultural blog as a way to blog about topics that interest me and what I’ve learned about those topics. I generally blog about Art, Culture, Literature and Philosophy over at Knowledge Lost. I started Literary Exploration as a way to share everything I want to share about books without flooding my other blog.

What are you currently reading, or what is your favourite book you have read so far in 2012?

Currently I’m reading All That I Am by Anna Funder, Railsea by China Miéville and Love in the Years of Lunacy by Mandy Sayer which is a bit of a cross section of genres; Literary Fiction, YA and Romance. The best book I’ve read in 2012 would have to be Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway; it was just a thrilling read and a nice example of Genre and Literary styles working well together to make a book that is the best of both worlds.

Where do you see your blog in five years?

In five years I’m hoping to still be blogging about books. I hope the readership continues to grow and I want to continue producing great and fresh content. I’m enjoying the momentum I’ve currently got for this blog and I hope I will still have it in five years. Also I hope to have a better theme.

Which is your favourite post that you have written that you want everyone to read?

My favourite post would have to be my Confessions of a Reader post, in which I reveal all my bookish sins to the world. I think it was a great idea for a post and hope everyone reads it.

Have your reading tastes changed since you started blogging? How?

I think my tastes will continue to evolve. I try to explore all types of genres and literary styles (as the blog name suggests) and I hope to continue to do so. I have noticed I’ve been picking up books that I would have never considered reading and have been trying to read new release books as well. I like the idea of exploring old and new books and I hope my readers enjoy it also.

ArmchairBEA is a virtual convention for book blogger who can’t attend Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention. Banner by Nina of Nina Reads and button by Sarah of Puss Reboots

Reading Cycles

Posted June 3, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature / 0 Comments

Have you ever noticed that you read in cycles? I have; I’ve found that I tend to get entrenched with an author at times but most of the time it with genres. While I like to say I read anything and everything, I know this is not true. I do find it interesting to look over my reading history and see just how it progresses.

I’ve said it before and most people already know that I only started reading in the middle of 2009 and while it was a slow start I gradually got better and better at reading that now I’m aiming for 100 books a year. While I would like to talk about reading challenges sometime in the future, for now I want to look at my reading cycle. I call it a cycle because I know that eventually I will go back to these genres and immerse myself with them again and again.

While I often just read on a whim, when I do an overall look at my reading habits the cycle looks like this;

Classics – My reading started with Frankenstein and I read a lot of classics as a way to catch up on the book I’ve missed out on. At the same time I was also trying to catch up on the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsey.
1001 Books to Read Before You Die – when I discovered this list of books, I set out to read books from this list as a good way to try out genres and styles with the knowledge that the books must be good because they made the 1001 list.
Sci-Fi – I’m not sure why I moved onto Sci-Fi, but there were so many books that looked interesting in this genre that it felt like the natural progression.
Mystery – I have a love for the macabre and crime that it wasn’t much of a surprise that I begin reading a lot of books in this genre.
Hard-Boiled/Noir – I finally found the style and genre in the mystery/crime genre that I like the most. Hard-Boiled and Noir will always have a special place in my heart. I love the era and the style of these novels.
YA – I started trying out YA because of this blog post about What is Wrong with Dark YA Novels and during the time I found my favourite YA author John Green, which meant I needed to read all of his novels (still have one to read) plus other novels that are supposedly similar to his writing style.
Literary Fiction – I often wonder if this was a result of my book blog or just because I wanted to read something with a little more literary merit after reading so much YA. But now it feels like I’m reading so many literary novels.

I don’t know where my reading will go from here but feel free to make a prediction. I’m happy to let my reading take me where ever it wants to go. I’m happy with where it has taken me so far. I would love to know if other people have reading cycles and what they are.

Monthly Review – May 2012

Posted May 31, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Monthly Reading / 0 Comments

What a great month we have had here at Literary Exploration. The site was officially launched on the 1st and we have been releasing a new post every one to two days. I really hope we can keep up this momentum and I’ve been working hard to get more and more content on the site for your enjoyment. You might have noticed some older books being reviewed on the site as well as some new releases and ARCs. I hope you are enjoying the mixture of old and new as well as the different genres because we plan to read books and put up content of all types of books. We are proud to have a guest post up already as well as two books that I’m hoping people will enjoy when they are released in June.

On the forums on Goodreads we have been reading the classic detective novel; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. This was the first time I’ve ever read this book and I’m still trying to work out why it took me so long to read it. Next month we will be reading another classic novel, when we read the Victorian novel; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I hope you can join in the discussions on Goodreads and have your say on what books we will read in the future.

My reading has been going really well this month, from trying out my first book in the popular Harry Hole series, to the laughs of the weird things customers say in bookstores. Highlights for me included the Russian classic Crime and Punishment which may be a massive book; it was just a beautiful crime novel and a real joy to read. Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan which will be released on the 26th of June is an exciting follow up to The Last Werewolf; it’s dark, gritty, over sexed and I highly recommend it. As well as Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell and Drive by James Sallis which are both great crime novels.

May’s Books

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø
Problems With a Girl & a Unicorn by Nick Earls
A Brewing Storm by Richard Castle
The Red House by Mark Haddon
The Mountain by Drusilla Modjeska
Final Crossing by Carter Wilson
The Fix by Nick Earls
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald
For the Win by Cory Doctorow
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Drive by James Sallis
Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops by Jen Campbell
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Question Tuesday: Have you Read a Book that has Insisted You Keep Turning Over the Page?

Posted May 29, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Question Tuesday / 0 Comments

I’ve never actually read a book in one sitting; this is because I’m a very slow reader and have a busy life. I still think there are a few books that make me want to keep reading. I’m talking about the books that keep calling to me in the night while I’m trying to sleep, the books that occupy my thoughts and I can’t wait to get back to the book and continue reading. There have been so many books like this, these are books that I want to always talk about and my poor wife is probably sick of hearing about but I think I might need to accompany this post with another blog post: Top 5 Page Turners.