I saw this quote by C.S. Lewis and thought it was funny, I've read TON's of books, and I've had quite a few that I read and tried to like, but just couldn't handle it.

We can never know that a piece of writing is bad unless we have begun by trying to read it as if it were very good and ended by discovering that we were paying the author an undeserved compliment.

- Clive Staple Lewis from "An Experiment in Criticism"

Agatha Christie insane? I doubt it. H.P. Lovecraft on the otherhand, quite possibly.

What about Ernest Hemingway? "The Old Man & The Sea." odd...

I recently completed Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, which was one of my childhood favorites, and am about to start Kidnapped. Scottish authors for the win!

I recently completed Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, which was one of my childhood favorites, and am about to start Kidnapped. Scottish authors for the win!

I love Stevenson! I've read Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde long ago. Surprisingly I haven't gotten to Kidnapped yet, though I have read the first 6 chapters.

~Riella

I certainly wouldn't call Ernest Hemingway insane, but he did have a lot of mental issues. He was incredibly hard on himself as a writer and, like a lot of writers from that period of time, he carried a lot of baggage from WWI. He suffered from depression, among other things, for most of his adult life and ended up committing suicide. It's a really sad story.

I just finished Paradise Lost.

@ Reepicheep775: Oh, I'm planning on reading Paradise Lost soon. Did you like it?

I'm currently reading The Scarlet Pimpernel. This is the second time I have read it, the first time was two years ago. It's every bit as good as it was the last time I read it.

SnowAngel

I just finished "Second Time Around" by Nancy Moser. Very good read. It was about 3 people that had a chance to go back into there lives for one week. When the week was up, they had a choice between coming back to the present, or stay back in the past. Pretty good, I didn't end exactly as I'd hoped though. Odd thing was, Nancy Moser is a Christian author, the book was published by a Christian company, yet it had very little spirituality in it. Hm... o well, good book anyway.

F.Y.I: I didn't know until after I started it, but it's a sequel, and since I didn't have the first book, I read it anyway. If you choose to read it without the first book, you won't miss anything vital, you won't be confused about anything, it's pretty self-explanatory.

I finished The Series of Unfortunate Events last night - only my second read through, and I loved them as much as I did before. The last books are so thrilling - the plot gets so deep, you have even more things to be confused about, and you really get to know the characters. I love it.
Now what to read . .

I just finished The Hound of the Baskervilles last night. It was my first Holmes book. I really, really, really enjoyed it. That's possibly an understatement. The criminal was not who I suspected. Initially,

I enjoyed how clean everything was. Holmes and Watson's suspicions of people kind of worried me the book might not be very enjoyable or clean, but it definitely was. It was an excelleng book.
Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle's writing style is just superb. He puts everything so expressively and poetically, but it's so to-the-point. I don't exactly want to imitate him, but I hope one day I can be come as concise a writer as he was.

Next to finish is Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I've started. It is interesting.
Really, since I've started and not finished them both, I should be reading either A Tale of Two Cities or The Man Who Was Thursday, but I really want to read UTC, so I'm postponing those.

You're reading a whole lot of excellent books, Bella!! I really enjoy all the Sherlock Holmes books/stories (though I like Father Brown better. ), and of course ToTC, and TMWWT.

I've been reading D.M. Cornish's trilogy the Monster Blood Tattoo. Hilariously the title of the series had to be changed to The Foundling's Tale for the American market as it was deemed too dark (not paying out Americans, I just find it funny). Cornish is a local author (a South Australian - awesome!) and a Christian (even more awesome). Thankfully, he's also a quality writer and his faith breathes naturally through the pages. There are three books - Foundling, Lamplighter and Factotum. I finished the second book about a week ago and am now on the third and final book.

The Monster Blood Tattoo series is set in an intriguing part Dickens/part Full Metal Alchemist-type world. It's fantasy/sci-fi but so grounded in reality that it's almost historical fiction with a few strange creatures and technologies. The story is slow-paced but character-rich. Cornish is an excellent worldbuilder but he has a habit of making up words and this often makes for a difficult read. Thankfully he provides a glossary but it rivals even Tolkien's!
Check them out if you want something different and a bit of challenge.

Thank you, W4J. I'll check out Dymocks for this author, next time I'm there. Lately I have been catching up with my Rosemary Sutcliff collection as my copy of the Silver Branch, which I took to UK and back, has fallen to bits and is now past redemption. I now have a combined edition of the Eagle trilogy.

Though I don't find the tale as gripping as I really should, I have also been checking out Dewey the library cat and its sequel. Dewey was a lovely animal, I know, and very well named. It's just that there are so many other books I want to read as well. Also a number of other wonderful cats I'd like to know about. Did you guess I love cats?

No worries, Wagga. Actually, your local library might even have the Monster Blood Tattoo books. Check it out first. Hope you get your hands on them. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Has anybody here read Maus at all? I've read the first book, and it's amazing. For those of you who don't know about it, the comic tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew that survived the Holocaust. The story has two different settings:Vladek's pre-war life in Poland and what happened when World War 2 came, and Vladek's later life in New York City, telling the story to his son, who actually wrote both books in the series, Art Spiegalman. The characters are portrayed as animals. The Germans are portrayed as cats, the Jewish population as mice(maus is actually German for "mouse ), and the Polish population is portrayed as pigs.

Both books have won many awards, and I think the books deserve them 100%. There is so much emotion and tragedy, and hope and survival. I still have trouble understanding a few parts, but I still think this is a great book. Just a warning though. There is a bit of graphic stuff, not in a bloody sense, but the description may upset some. There is also a bit of language used at times, but I would recommend reading it strongly.