221 replies to this topic

[Ravi_W]

The Stranger by: Albert Camus
A Streetcar Named Desire by: Tennessee Williams
and my favorite book I've ever read, even for my IB Lit HL class was East of Eden by: John Steinbeck

[coffeegirl]

The Book Thief (Marcus Zusak) was awesome! I just finished The Scarlet Letter, and it was pretty good as well...although i have to say i am looking forward to reading Pride adn Prejudice in my senior year!

[xXaliceinibwonderlandXx]

I didnt live the Stranger very much to be honest but we red Perfume by Suskund and it was amazing

[Access Denied]

Like water for Chocolate--> Amazing

[Matthew Sinclair]

Surprisingly, quite a few!

Camus - The Outsider (we also read it/discussed it/analysed it in French, L'Etranger)
Enchi - The Waiting Years (sad.  PATHOS! hahah)
Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera (I really liked this one!)
Flaubert - Madame Bovary (initially really boring/but I appreciate it more in retrospect)
Conrad - Heart of Darkness (am I the only one who got really scared when it was all foggy and they were getting attacked? haha)
Ibsen - A Doll's House (pretty good)
Williams - A Streetcar Named Desire (quite good)


So yeah, I enjoyed heaps We did 12 novels/plays etc and 4 poets - weren't so keen on the poets.  Especially Milton's Paradise Lost adksjfhakdjsfhajhsdfghsdfkjshdf WHY was that in our IOC? :'( (fortunately I didn't get it, I got Heart of Darkness!).  I also really didn't like Brian Keenan's Evil Cradling.  It was irritating

[iMedic]

The history boys by Alan Bennet is a hilarious play and loved reading/working on it. Didn't really like th others. I wish we could work on paulo coelho or bernard werber's books in class. They are by far the best authors along with John Grisham in my opinion

[ezra]

I liked 1984, Like Water for Chocolate, and to some extent, Kiss of the Spider Woman.

[vira.may]

azulverde:), on Oct 21, 2010 - 22:13, said:

I loved Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front", I fell in love with "The Wars" by Timothy Findley, love Jane Austin (too bad I wont get to read her books at all ) love and am looking forward to "The Stranger" by Camus.

What about you? what books do you need for IB that you absolutely want to read?

I absolutely hated The Wars!

However, I loved Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden and, most of all, Kafka's Metamorphosis!

(I love "All Quiet on the Western Front" as well, although we didn't read that for IB)

[Bishup]

Loved
Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Le petit prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and L'etranger by Albert Camus.
These books are awesome but then again I knew that since I chose them  

[Habee]

Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"...Absolutely perfect! Now one of my favourite books!

[Matthew Sinclair]

Habee, on Nov 12, 2010 - 19:20, said:

Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"...Absolutely perfect! Now one of my favourite books!

I think you just made a typo....


hahahaha jokes ughhh we had to do Godot as part of our final 4 plays for HL.  I found it absolutely horrible!! So hard to analyse compared to play's such as A Doll's House and Streetcar.  

What did you like about Godot?

[Daedalus]

Bishup, on Nov 12, 2010 - 08:17, said:

Loved
Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Le petit prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and L'etranger by Albert Camus.
These books are awesome but then again I knew that since I chose them  

I liked Le Petit Prince and L'Etranger but Perfume was strange. Can't say I enjoyed reading it.. what made you love it?

[Matthew Sinclair]

Daedalus, on Nov 12, 2010 - 21:03, said:

Bishup, on Nov 12, 2010 - 08:17, said:

Loved
Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Le petit prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and L'etranger by Albert Camus.
These books are awesome but then again I knew that since I chose them  

I liked Le Petit Prince and L'Etranger but Perfume was strange. Can't say I enjoyed reading it.. what made you love it?

L'etranger was really good! Both in French and English hahaha.  I think it was helped by the fact it only takes a few hours to read Also it's interesting =)


Le Petit Prince...wait I'm thinking of Le Petit Nicholas or something along those lines hahahahah my fail

[Bishup]

Quote

I liked Le Petit Prince and L'Etranger but Perfume was strange. Can't say I enjoyed reading it.. what made you love it?

I love the descriptions, the detailed list of ingredients and the descriptions of the smell. I love he almost piously creates the perfect perfume 'saphyre of the night' or whatever and cradles it as its baby. I love how Grenouille is weird and so exposed to every smell and how his obsession is almost as important for him as breathing. I love the settings. The parisian manky strees to the beautiful 'bushes' in Grace. I have actually been to Grace and it is one of the most beautiful places I have been so I kind of relate to the book. Even though it was written in German originally by a German author it opitimises everything that is french in the late 1700s beginning of 1800s. That book encapsulates a lot yet is still so wondrously focused on the powers of one character. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. I also chose it for my part 4 because I have the common element or theme is the reasons for murder, and the reason for murder is almost justified because of the beauty that he creates. It has marked me deeply and is probably one of the best books I'll ever read.

Sorry for my poor grammar and poor sentence structure. I'm absolutely knackered.

Edited by Bishup, Nov 12, 2010 - 21:52.

[Papercrane]

This far my favourites are The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood in English A2 and the book that I am currently reading for Finnish A1, Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe.

The Handmaid's Tale especially surprised me – I never thought that I would like a dystopian novel. I'm such an easily traumatized scaredy cat that I was a bit afraid to read it at first I ended up finding it fascinating instead of scary.

Naïve. Super is making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. How often do you get to read a feel-good story for school?

[Abdominal Procrastinator]

I found the An Ideal Husband really good, and then I went and read the other Oscar Wilde plays.

[AlonsoDT]

I really enjoyed reading El Túnel by Ernesto Sábato, and then I found out that it's part of a trilogy so once I'm done with IB I'll run to buy the other 2 books ! I also liked Bestiario by Julio Cortázar and Crónica de una muerte anunciada by Gabriel García Márquez.

[LeMaki]

"Candide" by Voltaire was hilarious. No one else really liked it, but I thought it was really good.

[Maljkovic]

Ariel Dorfman's "Death and the Maiden" was intriguing, to say the least. Certainly had some good debates in class over it.
Kafka's "Metamorphosis" just left me thinking that the man was crazy. "Like Water for Chocolate" was a pretty good read though.

I'm looking forward to "The Wars"by Timothy Findley, and we've just started "Hamlet" by Shakespeare but I already know it fairly well, and I like it.

I'm considering picking up "The Stranger" by Camus because i've seen it mentioned a couple times and i'm not sure if we'll study it...anyone think it's a good idea to do so?

[Habee]

Matthew Sinclair, on Nov 12, 2010 - 20:44, said:

I think you just made a typo....


hahahaha jokes ughhh we had to do Godot as part of our final 4 plays for HL.  I found it absolutely horrible!! So hard to analyse compared to play's such as A Doll's House and Streetcar.  

What did you like about Godot?

Oh well...The absurdity! And the symbolism behind it - you know, in the beginning you think it's all gibberish, but there's more than meets the eye!...

I liked A Doll's House, too. I'm doing my second WL on that...It's easier, yes, but Waiting for Godot is much more interesting! We have not started the Streetcar yet...Hmmm