But The English Patient? Urgh. I enjoyed the first 40 pages, and then I started to bog down. I read a further 70 pages or so, and then just couldn’t force myself one. word. further. I quite enjoyed the movie though – usually the reverse of my experience!

Which is only to say that, as you said, people’s taste in books is idiosyncratic. When two people, whose opinions I respect, have completely opposite responses to a book, it makes me even more curious about it!

Keep in mind I’m a bit of a philistine; I go more for story and characters than for language. Snow Falling on Cedars, which I have just enough artistic sense to recognize as very well-written, was mostly a big yawn to me. I skipped over most of the lovely poetic description, looking for the action. Horse Heaven, by Jane Smiley, on the other hand, I loved. On the other other hand, A Thousand Acres, also by Jane Smiley, is an excellent book, very well-written, but I would rate it with a Meh because it left a sour taste in my mouth, metaphorically. Go figure. Also, the rating–as with any rating system–lacks nuance.

I’m one of those people who think Ulysses is a truly great novel, but I’ll admit I’ve never started and finished it (though I’ve probably read all of it, or very nearly so, in pieces). It’s really taxing to read.

Things do happen in Anna K., but like all the literature of the time and place, there’s so much description, it’s a slog to find the action. And BOY do I agree about the names! I read The Brothers Karamazov a couple of years ago, and I had to keep a paper next to me for the first 300 pages, on which I listed each character and all the names Dostoyevsky uses for him.

I loved Time Traveller’s Wife (but it’s love-or-hate, from what I hear). Also The Red Tent, The Kite Runner, and The English Patient (much better than the movie).

You didn’t like The Handmaid’s Tale? I just ordered it because I’ve heard so much about it, I want to be able to discuss it. And it sounded intriguing. Now I’m second guessing the order. Oh well, it certainly won’t be the last book that disappoints me.

This was great fun! Thanks.

You’d remember Time Traveller’s Wife if you’d read it, I think. It’s the one that’s astonishing in its structure – the narrator is plagued by a bizarre medical condition that has him leaping hither and yon through time, and gradually the mystery of his own appearance in his wife’s life, and subsequent disappearance, is revealed. I can’t imagine how the author kept it straight! I’m envisioning really complex flow charts and lots of sticky notes.

Re: Anna K: You quit thirty pages from the end?? I’m long past finishing a book just because I started it – but thirty pages from the end? Wow.