Archive for The Road
about 100’s lists
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags 100 book lists, book list, book reviews, Douglas Adams, Fiodor Dostoïevski, First Dog on the Moon, he Guardian's Best Novels, John Steinbeck, library, mole, Terry Pratchett, The Guardian, The Road, webcomic on June 14, 2026 by xi'an
The Road [book review]
Posted in Statistics with tags BD, Cormac McCarthy, Dargaud, graphic novel, La Route, The Road on May 29, 2024 by xi'an
no country for old men [Cormac McCarthy]
Posted in Books with tags All the pretty horses, American literature, book cover, book review, Cormac McCarthy, no country for old men, The Road on June 19, 2023 by xi'an
the 101 favourite novels of Le Monde readers
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags Albert Camus, Alexandre Dumas, André Malraux, Barbey d'Aurevilly, book reviews, Céline, Charlotte Bronte, Cormac McCarthy, Don Quixote, Emile Zola, Faulkner, Fiodor Dostoïevski, Foundation, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, George Pérec, Graham Greene, Harry Potter, Haruki Murakami, Honoré de Balzac, Hyperion, Iain Pears, Jane Austen, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Steinbeck, Jules Verne, Kafka on the shore, Le Monde, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Marguerite Yourcenar, Maupassant, Memoirs of Hadrian, Nobel Prize, Spanish Civil War, Stendhal, Stephen Zweig, The Lord of the Rings, The Road, Umberto Eco, Victor Hugo on January 1, 2020 by xi'an
Le Monde called its readers to vote for their five favourite novels, with no major surprise in the results, except maybe Harry Potter coming up top. Before Voyage au bout de la nuit and (the predictable) A la recherche du temps perdu. And a complete unknown, Damasio’s La Horde du Contrevent, as 12th and first science fiction book. Above both the Foundation novels (16th). And Dune (32nd). And Hyperion Cantos (52). But no Jules Verne! In a sense, it reflects upon the French high school curriculum on literature that almost uniquely focus on French 19th and 20th books. (Missing also Abe, Conrad, Chandler, Dickens, Ishiguro, Joyce, Kawabata, Madame de Lafayette, Levi, Morante, Naipaul, Rabelais, Rushdie, Singer, and so many others…) Interestingly (or not), Sartre did not make it to the list, despite his literature 1953 Nobel Prize, maybe because so few read the (appalling) books of his chemins de la liberté trilogy.
I did send my vote in due time but cannot remember for certain all the five titles I chose except for Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (2nd), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (74th) and maybe Fedor Dostoievski’s Brothers Karamazov (24th). Maybe not as I may have included Barbey d’Aurevilly’s L’ensorcelée, Iain Pears’ An instance at the fingerpost, and Graham Greene’s The End of the affair, neither of which made it in the list. Here are some books from the list that would have made it to my own 101 list, although not necessarily as my first choice of titles for authors like Hugo (1793!) or Malraux (l’Espoir). (Warning: Amazon Associate links).
- Harry Potter
- Voyage au bout de la nuit
- One hundred years of solitude
- The Lord of the rings
- L’étranger
- Belle du seigneur
- Les misérables
- Mémoires d’Hadrien
- Pride and prejudices
- The unbearable lightness of being
- Foundation
- Crime and punishment
- Madame Bovary
- Le rouge et le noir
- The Brothers Karamazov
- La peste
- War and peace
- The grapes of wrath
- Les liaisons dangereuses
- Bel-Ami
- Anna Karenina
- The name of the rose
- Germinal
- To kill a mocking bird
- The three musketeers
- Kafka on the shore
- La vie mode d’emploi
- Lolita
- Wuthering heights
- Mort à crédit
- The picture of Dorian Gray
- Life and fate
- Chess story
- La chartreuse de Parme
- L’œuvre au noir
- The idiot
- L’assommoir
- The road
- Le père Goriot
- The trial
- Don Quixote
- Notre-Dame de Paris
- Illusions perdues
- The sound and the fury
- La condition humaine
the long way to a small angry planet [book review]
Posted in Statistics with tags ancillary justice, book review, bookstore, Cormac McCarthy, Ender's Game, London, science fiction, space opera, the long way to a small angry planet, The Road, tunneler on May 21, 2017 by xi'an
When leaving London last week, I went through the (very nice) bookstore in St Pancras International and saw this book by Becky Chambers. And bought it as I had read nice criticisms and liked both the title and the cover. I have been reading it at every free minute since then and eventually finished it last night. It is a very enjoyable novel, very homey despite it taking place mostly in interstellar space, as it goes through the personal stories of the members of a tunneller crew (tunnels meaning shortcuts between distant points in space, the astrophysics being a bit vague on how those are possible!). It is far from a masterpiece but the succession of scenes and characters is enjoyable enough to be enjoyable, with a final twist of a larger magnitude. Nothing profoundly innovative like Ancillary Justice [except for the openness about interspecies sex, this could have been written in the 50’s] or era-defining like Ender’s Game, or The Road, but a pleasant read by all means!
