Donna Tartt - Donna Tartt Questions
Question #1:
my will-be highschool gave me a list of about 60 books to choose from for our summer reading. i narrowed it down to eleven, but i can't really pick. i want to make a good first impression on my teachers with out totally crapping myself trying to understand it. haha. if any of you have read one or more of the books below, please tell me whether you liked it or hated it or whatever. thanks in advance! :]
1. Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
2. Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks
3. Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut
4. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
5. Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
6. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
7. At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
8. Regeneration - Pat Barker
9. Go Tell It On the Mountain - James Baldwin
10. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
11. Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh
Question #2:
i need help finding the genre of these books (genre as in fantasy, realistic fiction, mystery, historical fiction, science fiction, and so on)
hand of evil by J.A. jance
one day at a time by danielle steel
the choice by nicholas sparks
true believe by nicholas sparks
the lucky one by nicholas sparks
the little friend by donna tartt
moments of grace by neale donald walsh
thank you sooo much in advance (:
Question #3:
I am a 49 year-old Chicagoan living in Prague, Czech Republic. Now that summer is coming up, I'd like to take some books to the pool and on trips.
I like books on politics, novels, and Sci Fi (especially the old-fashioned ones that might seem quaint today. I had even thought about buying some of the old, pulp Sci Fi magazines.)
I just bought the two following books:
1) "The Little Friend" by donna Tartt
2) "The Town That Forgot How to Breathe" by Kenneth J. Harvey
What books can you recommend? I enjoy books that really create a sense of time and place (which is why I sometimes like B-grade movies like Criss Cross; the richly evocative fictional world the characters create made the movie memorable).
What books can you suggest? For each book, please provide a one or two sentence description.
Question #4:
Mine would be:
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brooker
No fond return of love by Barbara Pym
Heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad
Secret history by Donna Tartt
Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen
Addy, don't follow your logic there and Little house in the big woods is autobiography not a novel.
Question #5:
For anyone who has read Haruki Murakami or Donna Tartt in particular, but also Ian McEwan, did you enjoy their books? If so, can you recommend anything else?
I'm an English lit major and some of my favorite books of all time are The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, The Secret History, and Enduring Love. Would love some good recommendations..
Question #6:
I thought this book was AMAZING. I love to read but I've yet to fid a book that was remotely close to The Secret History. It was so interesting and haunting. Every time I try to find similar books people always suggest Dan Brown or other very commercial books. I want an offbeat, interesting book like this. Any suggestions? I would really appreciate it thanks!
Question #7:
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Look through the list and tell me how many of these books you've read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazu Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
I know some of them don't make sense (Hamlet, plus Works of Shakespeare) and that many great books are missing (Dan Brown, but no Zora Neale Hurston?!). This is just from a meme I read in facebook. I don't even know if it's accurate, I just thought it would be fun!
And no, watching the movie doesn't count. :P
Question #8:
I need a new book, but I haven't found anything appealing lately. I love George Orwell, I've read most of the classics; -although my favorite novel would have to be The Secret History by Donna Tartt... Not so much the thriller aspect but the Greek history and culture that was intertwined with it.
Any suggestions?
And I swear to god, if anybody mentions Twilight I will drive myself off a cliff.
Question #9:
Did you like it?
Yes or no?
why?
Who killed Harriets brother?
Question #10:
Secret History by Donna Tartt
Question #11:
Sorry to sound haughty in my question; I just don't feel like wading through lists of Dark Towers recommendations etc.
So, I'm looking for some recommendations for a good book to read :) Primarily, I like a book that is well written. This would (and I'm sorry to be so controversial again) exclude authors like Stephen King, Wilbur Smith, and fair number of Oprah's classics, although some of them aren't bad. I don't mind a long book, although I have not really previously enjoyed very slow classics like Middlemarch by George Elliot. I like many contemporary authors too. Here is a list of some of my all-time favorite books to give you an idea of what to recommend:
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
Jane Eyre
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakmi
On the Road by Kerouac
Slaughter-house 5 (just because it made me laugh so much)
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Death in Venice and other stuff by Thomas Mann
Cool beans; I know that was a bit of a long-winded description, but would be great to get some good recommendations. Thanks!
Of the suggestions below, I have read The Great Gatsby a couple of times; read Catch 22; and A Good Earth. Pearl S. Buck is a brilliant author. Will look into the other suggestions. Thanks guys!
Question #12:
Question #13:
And why couldn't you finish it?
The last book I couldn't finish was "the Little Friend" by Donna Tartt. I loved her "The Secret Histroy" but was bored and annoyed with this book.
Question #14:
What did you think of it and in particular the ending?
Question #15:
did you like it ?
did you not like it ?
Question #16:
I had to read The Secret History and I have to analyze it for my Interpreting Literature class and I am not sure what I should say about it. Like what topic should I write on??
Question #17:
I have recently joined ReaditSwapit.com - a website where you list books you no longer want, and other people offer to swap with you from their list.
I listed a hardback copy of 'The Almost Moon' by Alice Sebold, and have had loads of people request to swap.
The following is a list of books I like the look of from their lists, but I need help making a choice!
What would you choose, have you read any of these and what do you think of them?
I generally like descriptive, intelligent books; recently I enjoyed The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The List-
The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
The Tenderness of Wolves
by Stef Penney
The Woodlanders
by Thomas Hardy
The Glass Palace
by Amitav Ghosh
Salt and Saffron
by Kamila Shamsie
Resistance
by Anita Shreve
The Little Friend
by Donna Tartt
Darkness Visible
by William Golding
Arthur and George
by Julian Barnes
to be continue
Human Traces
by Sebastian Faulks
Brownstones
by Edwidge Danticat
Vernon God Little
by DBC Pierre
Love in the Days of Rage
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Charlotte Gray
by Sebastian Faulks
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
by Bill Bryson
Mrs Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
Sea Glass
by Anita Shreve
By the Sea
by Abdulrazak Gurnah
The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
The Nice and the Good
by Iris Murdoch
Oscar and Lucinda
by Peter Carey
Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
The Interpretation of Murder
by Jed Rubenfeld
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
by Peter Hoeg
Question #18:
Has anyone read 'The House At Midnight' by Lucie Whitehouse?
Yet again, this is a novel that reviewers said was on a par with the stunning 'The Secret History' by Donna Tartt.
But it's nowhere near as good!!! It's contrived, superficial, and melodramatic - anyone else agree?
And has anyone actually found a novel that IS on a par with Donna Tartt's?
Question #19:
if you have , have you ever come across othere books by other authors which are similiar in the writing style or just as good?
Question #20:
THE BOOK THAT REALY CHANGED THE WAY I THINK ORE MAYBE ONLEY OPENED THIS SIDE OF ME IS-THE SECRET HISTORY BY DONNA TARTT AND THE MOVIE I THINK...WELL I DONT KNOW
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