The Rules of Attraction. After Less Than Zero and American Psycho, I'm kind of disappointed.

A Farewell to Arms.

My first attempt at reading Hemingway, so I figured I'd start with one of his better-known works (and it's not so daunting length-wise either). So far, I find it utterly captivating. I think there's a certain mystique about WW I, because it hasn't been written about nearly as much as WW II. It helps that the novel doesn't focus too much on the details of the progression of the war, but rather draws from personal experiences. His writing style seems simplistic at first, but it has a way of sucking you into the world he so vividly describes. He makes you feel like you're there with him, in the trenches, chatting with your army buddies, scared out of your wits but trying to make the best of some of the worst situations imaginable. Absolutely horrifying stuff, but hard to put down because it reads easily and you want to know what happens next.

No, this is my first book by Thomas Mann. Yeah it's also written in very ponderous style and I find hard to concentrate. Read Dostoyevky's The Brothers Karamazov before that and it was a lot more interesting.

I can imagine. The Magic Mountain is very interesting as a, how to put it, character study of sorts, if the character would be considered a certain time and place... not sure it's good drama at all. Can't compare to Dostoyevsky from personal experience as I always had the fancy I should read Dostoyevsky in the original Russian. So no idea about how the prose compares... Still I imagine they make for a stark contrast as Dostoyevsky is considered one of the best ever at actual drama.

Looking deeper Dostoyevsky is kind of known for larger than life characters which are archetypes for the broader themes. I could say almost the same about the Magic Mountain. But whereas Dostoyevsky has the characters act and cause drama in very evident ways, with Mann it was more talk, think and little action, and the characters end up downplayed. Thematically appropriate sure, but well, not a lot of fun... Which come to think it was exactly what I remember feeling frustrated with, Mann's prose was probably good enough to get me to care about the characters, but they were so passive...

Whatever, hopefully you'll start getting more enjoyment from Faustus soon.

Oh, I am interested in that, will you let me know if it's good?

I'm about 1/3 of the way through it now, and can tell you so far it's well paced and well written. I'll update when I'm finished.

"Djibouti" by Elmore Leonard. Just started yesterday.

Thanks I will give it 100 pages and then decide if it's worth continuing :)

Finished My Idea of Fun yesterday. It was all right if one could look past the purple prose.
Started Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory this morning. It's one I've attempted to get through several times before. Hopefully this time...

Thanks, I look forward to hearing it. And sorry about the late reply, somehow the notification wasn't showing up for me.

I can see why you might be struggling with that one ...

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

starts really great... you can read first 26 pages here: http://www.nealstephenson.com/news/2015/04/13/seveneves-excerpt/

I really enjoyed that, and For Whom The Bell Tolls. Be careful what you read immediately afterwards, though. My sister-in-law gave me the first Hunger Games book just as I finished A Farewell to Arms. So I found it to be silly and utterly unconvincing. Perhaps I would have been more receptive had I waited a while before diving in.

Hunger Games is all right but one should not expect it to be a great work of literature. I liked the books well enough for what they are, but I consider them light reading - something I'd pick up to take my mind off things for a while, but not something that's going to have any impact on my life.

No worries. GOG's notification system is dodgy at best.

Finished it last night. It's a relatively short read, but well done. The author splits it into three narrative lines: the expedtion in 1959, the investigation in 1959 and later, and his own research and expedition in the present, and alternates back and forth between them. It may sound like that would be confusing and chaotic, but he pulls it off very well. I felt it was easy to follow.

After laying out the facts and the theories, he then goes through each of the proposed theories/possibilities and eliminates them all, leaving, once again, a mystery. But he delves into another possibility. At the end, the author narrates the expedition timeline (in a kind of third person diary fashion) up to and including the day/night of the disappearance with what he feels really happened. For what it's worth, I think he's right.

A book you can read through in a night or two, depending on how dedicated you are, and well worth the time, IMO.