Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Books Read 2006

Updated 31 December 2006

3 comments:

Imani said...

Well, you put my 2006 list to shame. :p What did you think of Moveable Feast? I started it once but did not make it past the first chapter. The quality of writing suffered in comparison to his other novels. I could only identify a few sentences that sounded like Hemingway to me.

I think I gave it away or lost it. I am left bewildered by my reaction because it seems as if everyone else loved it immensely. Maybe it was a bad day.

Anonymous said...

I think I can put 2006 down as "The Year I Did More Yoga, Read More, And My Social Life Was Sent Out to Pasture."

I've only read "Old Man and the Sea" - a loooong time ago. I picked up "Moveable Feast" because I was enchanted by the Lost Generation period, and Hemingway was one of the members of this romantic group of writers.

Well, I didn't love it, but I did find something to enjoy.

There was some good lines, mainly when Papa wrote about being a writer. His portrait of Getrude Stein and the other writers was unkind, the quality of the writing seemed commonplace to me. (Any Hemingway fans out there?)

There was a sense of a time and place, a time that encouraged writers and experimentation, a beautiful nostalgia. That was what I was looking for, and I got that.

Imani said...

Ahhh, in that light I can understand your reaction. I bought it solely with the expectation of getting that lingual Hemingway experience. But, like you said, most of the writing was commonplace. It really threw me for a loop and I had to share some of it with a friend, who had also read a lot of Hemingway, to see if he shared my bewilderment. He did.

I've read Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms. I find his depiction of intimate relationships highly questionable, and thought he flopped his attempt at distinguishing Spanish from English as a language and an idea in Bell. But he has few rivals when he's using language to paint a scene or convey a story. (So, obviously, Sun Also Rises is my favourite.)

I have Old Man and the Sea in my mile high TBR pile.