Mat’s Comments (group member since Oct 07, 2009)

Mat’s comments from the personal challenges group.

Done, and exactly 1 year...so glad I finished it up w/ All the Pretty Horses......great read.

This is going to be close.

No problem. For starters, I really dig this whole "challenge" idea. It's given me a reason to expand on material I wouldn't normally touch. The only real "challenge" up to this point was getting through Moby Dick, which slowed my pace tremendously.

As far as finding titles, the main source up to this point has been found on the massive amount of work located in the Free Public Domain. This means a lot of these were read in e-book form. It's convenient, but there's something I miss about holding a book, turning pages, etc. For deciding what to read, I simply found authors whose birth - death dates would give me an idea on publication dates, and went from there. The only other source I've used for finding titles is the GoodReads "best of" decade lists.

I won't touch on all of them but I'll give a quick run down on a few.

I enjoyed "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories" and in particular "Rip Van Winkle". It's an entertaining collection of short stories and personal essays.

"Confessions of an English Opium Eater" is an interesting narrative on the use, side effects, and accessibility of opium. The writing was wonderful, De Quincey has a great "style" and amazing use of vocabulary. This was so much more than just basic descriptive events of opium use.

"Poor Folk" was one of the only true disappointments for me. Having enjoyed and been so impressed with Dostoevsky's "Brothers" I was really looking forward to this. This strange collection of letters between two strange characters just never got me interested.

"Moby-Dick" was something I've always wanted to read. There are very interesting portions but the level of detail goes beyond what I could find enjoyable. I could see how the descriptive nature would be mind blowing to a young midwestern kid living on a farm back in 1860 who couldn't dream of understanding the ocean, let alone the massiveness of a creature that makes the oceans home. The story starts with a great relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg, but once aboard the Pequod the relationship all but disappears.

I'll give some more updates along the way.

too bad i'm too old for this one, awesome collaboration.
Wrestlemania Challenge!

yes, that's the plan. i should have mentioned that.

my challenge is to read something from each decade starting w/ 1800 and ending w/ 1990, in one year. updates to follow.

** EDIT I'm going to continue with this challenge and make my way back as far as possible. The original challenge began w/ 1800. (8/12/2010) **

1780 - Travels In England In 1782 - Charles Moritz (currently reading)
1790 - Songs of Innocence And of Experience - William Blake (read)

** 1800 - 1990 Done As Challenge 10/8/09 - 10/8/10 **

1800 - Fugitive Pieces - George Byron (read)
1810 - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories - Washington Irving (read)
1820 - Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey (read)
1830 - Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (read)
1840 - Poor Folk - Fyodor Dostoevsky (read)
1850 - Moby-Dick: or, The Whale - Herman Melville (read)
1860 - Fathers and Sons - Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (read)
1870 - The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy (read)
1880 - The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy (read)
1890 - The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells (read)
1900 - The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle (read)
1910 - Greenmantle - John Buchan (read)
1920 - The Trial - Franz Kafka (read)
1930 - At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft (read)
1940 - Kingsblood Royal - Sinclair Lewis (read)
1950 - The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (read)
1960 - Ubik - Philip K. Dick (read)
1970 - Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion (read)
1980 - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho (read)
1990 - All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy (read)