Summer Reading 2008

Just plugging away...

2008-05-18T18:13:00.002-05:00

I think I'm on my eighth book at the moment? Let's see...

4. White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Smith is a good writer. Individually, her sentences are beautiful. For being her first novel, written when she was 24, it is impressive. However, it just did not hold my attention. The characters and the plot just did not do it for me. They were not likable, just obnoxious mostly. Does that make me racist? I don't know. I definitely prefer On Beauty to this one. If I didn't have to read it for school, then I probably never would have finished it because it was also very long. Oh well. I mean it was good, just not particularly interesting to me. That is all.

5. The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes - Various Authors
It's funny okay, McSweeney's can be quite funny. This is just the perfect book for an English major. I saw this book at a bookstore and realized that they had switched the covers so the back looked like the front and I knew I had to read it. The library didn't have it so I made them order it. And it definitely did not disappoint. Allow me to quote some excerpts.

Phrases on the Marquee at the Local Strip Club to Cater to a More Literate Crowd: "Our Girls Even Drive Oscar Wilde" and "Leaves of Ass".

Possible Titles for Sue Grafton Novels After She Runs out of Letters: "/ Is for Slash" and "F1 is for Help".

Okay there are a lot more funny ones but I am too lazy to type things out for no one to read. And I must admit that I did not read the sections that I knew I wouldn't get anyway, but the ones that I did get were quite funny.

6. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
I don't think this book really needs introduction. It was very quick and very good. Poor Sylvia Plath and all the other "crazy" people in the 50s. I wish she had written more fiction as I prefer novels to poetry. Then I watched the movie Sylvia which I have been meaning to watch for ages ( despite the fact that I do not like Gwyneth Paltrow or Daniel Craig) but have never felt like I could because I hadn't read The Bell Jar. That's some depressing shit right there though. But the movie had good knitted things and that's always a plus.

7. Wild Nights! - Joyce Carol Oates
I never really knew what to think of Joyce Carol Oates. I had always kind of put her in that "books my mother reads" category with Elizabeth Berg and Jodi Picoult. But we read one of her short stories in lit and it was decent, if completely creepy. And also, she's so prolific that I would just have no idea where to start. I don't feel like I can really like an author if I haven't read the majority of their work. She publishes like two books a year or something ridiculous like that. Anyway, I saw this book advertised somewhere and it looked intriguing, which it was. In the book, JCO reimagines the last days of five famous American authors. Except it's not really what you would expect because she completely removes the authors from their usual time and place. And she writes about that author in their particular style. Poe is a lighthouse keeper in South America and Emily Dickinson has become a robot thing and Mark Twain is pretty much a pedophile. It's all very odd, but very good. It never was too weird or too fanfic-y to read. Probably because it was JCO and she knows what she's doing. But I definitely recommend it if you are a fan of American lit. Well that wouldn't include Jesi, but she should read it anyway.

8. Lady Chatterley's Lover - D. H. Lawrence
Okay just started this one, but the intro/defense to the book was hilarious. Mostly because it would just be so unnecessary today. The author of the intro gives examples of what would be considered smut and compares it to excerpts from the book and how Lawrence means so much more than that. I am only thirty pages in, but it is good so far. Of course, so was Sons and Lovers at the beginning, it was only after hundreds pages of Paul hating on Miriam that I got annoyed. And the way they talk about sex in this book is just so, I don't know, quaint I guess. But I think Lawrence was doing a good thing, even if his book didn't get published til 1960 and even then people got upset about it.

Well off to a good start

2008-05-08T21:13:00.003-05:00

Hey I've only been off a week, but already I've read three books! Granted they were all on the shorter side, but still.

1. The History Boys - Alan Bennett
This is one of my favorite movies and so my roommate bought the play for me for my birthday. I don't know, I am not big on plays, personally. This one was good mostly to see the differences between the play and the movie, but I need prose. The delivery in the movie is so excellent that I just hear their voices when I read the play. This sounds so negative, but I did really like it.

2. Maurice - E. M. Forster
Another book that I have seen the movie of with my roommate. I highly recommend both. This book deals with homosexuality in early 20th century England and so it was not even published until the 1970s. But it is really quite excellent. I read A Passage to India in high school and never liked it that much, but I recently read Howards End and really enjoyed it so I decided to give Forster another go. I must not be a huge fan of imperialism, because I really like his other works. Howards End is about social class conflict in England and there is really nothing I like better. Forster deals with controversy very nicely I think. I really wanted to annotate this book, but I couldn't since it belonged to the library. Anyway, it is about one man's struggle to overcome his homosexuality in a time and society that definitely did not accept it. And it is beautiful, that is all.

3. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
Yeah this one has been on my list for a longgg time. I finally picked it up because I needed something to read on the train that was small enough to fit in my purse. Kate Chopin is awesome! I like that her stories are all about women finding themselves and ditching their husbands. Always a good topic. But the book is really beautiful and Edna is a really interesting character. Although I think that the end is not really a victory. It seems like more of a cop-out. I will not give it away, but the more I think about, the less satisfactory I find it.

4. White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Only 100 pages in. Will discuss more later.

Oh it is that time of year again.

2008-03-16T23:04:00.002-05:00

I return. It seems that around March and April I get anxious for the summer and I start doing anything that can be summer related, even though I overwhelmed with homework and that sort of thing. But yes, once again, it is time to start thinking about summer reading. As always I am inspired by professors to read some books that are usually related to one of my classes. This time they are:

Maurice - E. M. Forster
I didn't like Passage to India when I read it in high school, but I just read Howards End and it was excellent. I also watched the movie for this book and it was fantastically gay so how could I not.

On Beauty - Zadie Smith
This book is an homage to Howards End, except it is set in the present and focuses more on race instead of class. I have started it and it seems good so far, but there is no time for it now.

The Awakening - Kate Chopin
Read a short story or two by her last semester so I bought this one and a few other short stories at The Book Table. Except I already own it. Oops.

Lady Chatterly's Lover - D. H. Lawrence
Here's hoping this one is less whiney than Sons and Lovers. I can't handle too much repetition, but there's nothing like turn of the century "smut."

Don't worry, this list will grow. I have all sorts of books I have to read for London, as I will be spending the fall semester there. Mostly books by the Brontes, as I am doing a giant project on them and I've only read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

Wait I thought I had more

2007-06-28T22:39:00.000-05:00

Oh wait I remember now. I knew I had more than one book to blog about but I just could not remember and now I do.

Firstly, I finished Reading Lolita in Tehran. It picked up a bit, but still dragged the majority of the time. But enough.

Next was Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier. I like Tracy Chevalier, she writes nice historical fiction that is usually sad, which is usually my style. But this novel just totally fell short of what I normally expect. First of all, it really should be more marketed towards teenagers. The protagonist is twelve. And I mean, yes, there can be adult books about twelve year olds, but this is not one of them. It's like she just added little snippets of sex and language to make it inappropriate for younger people and I just do not think it worked. I was disappointed. And it also had that little title tie-in that Jesi hates so much. Some random paragraph about the fireworks that were "burning bright", which really had nothing to do with the story. I will say though that it did give a nice pictures of the lower class in 18th century London. But other than that, not much going for it. One of the first books I've read so far that I have not liked. Ah well, it is not like I wasted that much time on it.

After that I read The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld. I really enjoy her work. She also wrote Prep which I read in the library at DU when I locked myself out of my room. I think what she writes is very honest and believable. Nothing really ever works out for the main character. Their relationships are usually fucked up and never satisfying. And she's a really excellent writer... but she is just marketed completely wrong. Her covers are white and very chicklitish, nevermind the titles. The Man of My Dreams? I mean seriously. Any woman who picked it up hoping for a nice, light story is going to be pretty disappointed. Otherwise, most excellent.

Now I have started on Man Walks into a Room by Nicole Krauss. It is her first novel, I believe. It is about a woman whose husband disappears and when he returns he has amnesia and cannot remember her. It is really heartbreaking actually. Apparently Jesi's friend said it was not that good, but I beg to differ. I have not finished it yet but the writing is really quite good. Reminds me a lot of Jesi's writing actually. But so far it is really good. She does a good job at capturing what it would be like for the person with amnesia and their emotions, but also those of the people he knew.

I think that is all. I am on my tenth book for the month which is pretty good I must say. And I've got the new Anita Shreve and the new Ian McEwan on hold at the library so things are looking up.

Books books books.

2007-06-18T22:58:00.000-05:00

I went to Alaska on vacation last week. I got through about five books which is pretty good I think. Not as good as Jesi of course but you know. Here's the rundown.

1. Saturday by Ian McEwan
MUCH LOVE. McEwan is an awesome, awesome author. His imagery is beautiful and he really gets into his character's heads. Saturday is about the day in the life of one man in London. His day starts out routine and then gets more and more eventful and we learn all about his family. The protagonist is a neurosurgeon and so there is a lot of hospital/human body metaphor. Did you know they call it the "theatre"? Where they do surgery. Didn't know that. Anyway, phenomenal book, possibly the best I've read by McEwan, which isn't much. But it tops Atonement quite possibly.

2. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
I had read about 100 pages of this book before I left and it was a little slow going. Actually the whole thing was slow going, but that is just its nature. It is about a young woman in New England in the early twentieth century attempting to make her way into high society, basically trying marry rich. She is apparently absolutely beautiful and should have no problem getting a husband, but instead she makes friends with other people's husbands and doesn't marry the guy she loves because he isn't wealthy enough. All this leads to her decline to poverty, which is really beautifully portrayed. The problem I had with this book I think was that Wharton was a little too open and upfront about what she wanted to get across. Instead of letting her characters and their actions do the criticizing, she has them talk about what is wrong with things. It just seemed a little too obvious for me, but I don't know, I could be reading it wrong. But still, it definitely trumps Sister Carrie.

3. Enduring Love by Ian McEwan.
Second McEwan this trip. Probably ranks third out of the three I've read. This one is about a scientist husband and a professor wife who live in London. They have a great relationship and they love each other and you just know it's all going to crap soon. They witness a hot air balloon accident and one guy dies and this other guy who was there starts stalking the protagonist and develops this major major crush on him. And it's just creepy. And of course, the protagonist just cannot handle it and no one believes him and McEwan does a good job of making the reader think that perhaps he is the crazy one. Excellent stuff though. I need to read more.

4. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Won the Pulitzer I do believe. And it was good, just, I don't know. I never really got into it too much. Someone about Ondaatje's style turned me off. It was just hard to tell what was all going on a lot of the time. It switched around between characters a lot without clear transitions. But hey it won a Pulitzer right? I also watched the movie which was really sad. I cried a lot at the movie, but not the book. Mehhh.

5. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
It's about a hermaphrodite. She becomes a he. I really enjoyed it. I like the family history and how Eugenides would get into one generation of the story but still mix it back with the narrator's story. It was twisted enough to be interesting but not too gross. It was also interesting to get the Greek immigrant dynamic as well. I also liked the play on the title too. Oh and it won the Pulitzer too. If given a choice, I'd say read Middlesex, not the English Patient.

Since returning home, I have finished Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs. This is the book (and its series) that Bones the tv show is based on. Kind of confusing, but Kathy Reichs, who is an anthropologist, writes books about an anthropologist named Temperance Brennen, and in Bones, Temperance Brennen is the anthropologist who writes books about an anthropologist. It's like the show copies Reichs' life, not the books. But anyway, it's your basic mystery novel, but with a little more forensic anthropology thrown in. The Temperance Brennen of the book is a lot different than the one in the show. I stayed up one night to finish it, but that doesn't mean it was good. Just suspenseful.

Before I left I was reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, and now I am finishing it. It's gotten less interesting. She's stopped talking about her "bookclub" and now just talks about her life in and out of the university and during the war. It seems to have become less literary and more political, or rather, the author's ambivalence to politics. I am basically skimming which makes me sad.

Next on the list is Burning Bright, the latest from Tracy Chevalier.
HAPPY JESI?

Uhh...

2007-05-27T20:20:00.001-05:00

So I started House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. Got 100ish pages into it but I decided that I should read my library books and take my own books with me to Alaska. So I put it aside, even though it was a decent book. More of the whole early 20th century class issues. I like it though, the protagonist is a lot better than Sister Carrie. So instead I am reading Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler which is the sequel to Parable of the Sower which I read for Lit earlier in the semester. It is good, although I can't really say why. It's really critical of Christianity and organized religion and all these bad things keep happening and it's basically just really depressing. And because it's Memorial Day weekend I do not have to work so I have been doing a lot of reading which is nice.

Before starting Talents though I read the first chapter of Huck Finn and also fifty pages of Saturday by Ian McEwan. Huck Finn didn't thrill me (sorry Prof. Rohman), but McEwan is an amazing author. I absolutely love his prose.

I really need to decide which books to take on my Alaskan cruise which I am leaving for in less than a week!! Which books, but also how many. Does four sound like a good number? I'll be gone 12 days I think. I guess it depends on what books they are though. Saturday for sure, hum hum.
That is all for now, I just wanted to update because boy and I are sitting here intrawebbing it up.

Second book done! Also, I am pathetic.

2007-05-13T17:21:00.000-05:00

So I finished my second book a few days ago. Sister Carrie* by Theodore Dreiser. It was... okay. It was recommended by my American Lit professor when we were reading Main Street. I liked Main Street a lot. They are supposed to be sort of opposite each other, in Main Street, Carol Kennicott goes from the city to a small down and tries to culture them, whereas in Sister Carrie, Carrie is coming from a small town to the big city and getting "cultured". I say "cultured" because she really just becomes more materialistic. Carol actually cares about poetry and ideas and architecture, and Carrie just cares about money. I could definitely see why Main Street was more popular than Sister Carrie. The characters are so weak and unlikable in SC. Carol just moves from guy to guy, going to whoever can give her the best time and the most money. And she lives with all these guys without marrying them, which isn't so much an issue but just the fact that she is totally using them in the process. She is just too controlling to be naive as she seems. She "falls in love" with this guy who she uses for his money, but somehow she doesn't realize he's married? Uhhh no. I just did not like her. I don't think I'd recommend this book for anyone besides those interested in the genre. I kept reading and reading and wondering what else could possibly happen. Usually that is a good thing, but this time I just wanted it to end.

Now I am reading The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, who was apparently a child actor and five time winner of Jeopardy. Although what he acted in remains to be seen. Miss Jesi mentioned this book and I liked the title (great reason I know) and so I decided to check it out. It's been slow going. Only last night did I get to a point where I was reading without checking the page numbers to see how far I've gone. Part of the reason it's not so easy to get into is the fact that there are two narrators, both of whom are writing letters to someone. Epistolary is the word. The first narrator is the arrogant egyptologist who is writing to his fiance, the second is a private investigator doing research into this rich man's son. I think it only starts to pick up when the stories start to connect to one another. But it still isn't amazing or anything. Hopefully I can finish it in the next day or two.

I really am pathetic though because this is only my third book. I'm averaging like a book a week which is completely horrible. I only read at night because I have been working over 20 hours a week and that takes up a lot of time. And the rest of the time I am sleeping. I just need an afternoon or two alone on my hammock. I've also been redoing my room so that is taking up a lot of my time. But also now I am finished with the first season of Bones so less distractions!

And I don't know what my next book will be. I will have to think. It's time for another classic so we'll see.

* Blogger apparently doesn't have a handy little underline button so I am just going to skip it. Wah.

First book done!

2007-05-05T23:53:00.000-05:00

So I have been home two days and I have finished my first book of the summer. Looking for Alaska by John Green. I am in many kinds of love with John Green. And his book was good. I mean I think he is a good writer, but maybe it is just YA fiction that I have a problem with. This is the third book I've read about a kind of loser/shy kid who goes to boarding school and ends up making friends with crazy weird people and they get into these relationships that aren't really relationships and I don't know. I just do not find it to be believable. The other two books in question are Bloomability by Sharon Creech and Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (a girl). Bloomability I absolutely adore and will not say bad things about it except in this context. They are just pretty repetitive. And they're all about kids who wouldn't typically go to boarding school, or scholarship kids or something like that. It just bothers me. Still good though.

Today I read the first three pages of Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. Recommended reading by my American Lit professor. I would quote it, but it is downstairs. Perhaps later.

Also, I went to another booksale today. I picked up another dozen books or so. I think that I am developing a problem. I got some anthologies, one called Scribbling Women, which amused me. Nathanial Hawthorne said something about "that damned mob of scribbling women", complaining about America. I also got some Camus in French and a Booker prize winner and all sorts of fun books. I am thinking that I will have to open up a lifetime LibraryThing.com account to contain all these. I've already run out of room in my two existing accounts. Ridiculous!

2007-04-30T23:04:00.000-05:00

Update to the list. Only three days left until I am free to read whatever I want. Oh and it will be glorious.

Classics:

Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Whatever classics that I bought at a recent booksale but cannot remember now.

Contemporary:

Looking for Alaska - John Green
An Abundance of Katherines - John Green
Possession - A. S. Byatt
The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips

I recently discover brotherhood2.com. And it is the most amazing thing. I completely adore it. These two brothers, one is John Green (see above), have decided to have no textual communication, only videoblogs and the occasional phone call. And they are both really cool guys. They like Neil Gaiman, Toothpaste for Dinner, They Might be Giants, the Mountain Goats, and their wives, who like knitting. They are intelligent and witty and cute and nerdy and just all around the best. I've spent the last two days watching every video that they've made so far. so, check it out. www.brotherhood2.com

Also, I hate finals. Le fin.

More.

2007-04-16T20:49:00.000-05:00

So I have a couple more things to add to my list.

Classics:

Thoreau Reader
Emerson Reader
Anne Bronte

Contemporary:

Bronte biography?
Margaret Atwood, various.
The Parable of the Talents - Octavia Butler

I plan to read all these book outside on the hammock that I plan to get for my birthday. I also think I should be able to get wifi out there.

In the last week I have finished two books, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I definitely enjoyed the latter more than the former. Although Song of Solomon definitely was an interesting experience. It's really not my kind of book, but I really felt like things were coming together for me with this book. I've been taking this lit class, the American Novel, all semester and I really just have been struggling to understand the novels before the professor explains them to me. But I was able to really comprehend everything this time and I could recognize important passages before Rohman (the professor) explains them. It's just exciting and rewarding to feel like you've actually learned something at the end of the semester.

I just read the Parable of the Sower over the weekend and I really enjoyed it. It's a lot like a Handmaid's Tale in a way. Dystopian and whatnot. The main character "creates" her own religion called Earthseed in which "God is change". Just interesting ideas. And the assignment is going to fun, we have to compare modern news articles to events in the novel. So that's why the sequel is on the list. Actually Butler died recently which is kind of sad. She was kind of rare, a female African-American science fiction writer. Also, Kurt Vonnegut. In case you didn't know.

That is all for now. I am writing. Kind of. It is not easy.

Summer Reading 2007

2007-03-28T23:13:00.000-05:00

"Well, I'm back."

The time has come to start thinking about this summer's reading list. I am definitely going to be a little bit more lenient this year. Now that I am an English Lit major, I will be reading classics all day long, so I feel that I am justified in reading only what I want, not what I feel that I should.

The rules for this summer are as follows:

Alternate one classic with one contemporary book.
Don't hold back.
Get off the damned internet and stop watching tv shows on dvd.

So far the list is looking like this.

Classics:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Maggie, Girl of the Streets - Stephen Crane
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

Not Classics (yet):

Harry Potter, V VI VII
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
Man Walks Into a Room - Nicole Krauss

The classics are mostly books that my American Lit prof has made me feel like I should read. I am now an American Studies minor (possibly major), so I need to stock up on all that American lit you know.

2006-07-05T23:24:00.000-05:00

Well at least I updated this one more recently than my knitting blog.

I AM SO SLOW. Is basically all.

I finished In Cold Blood. Creepy, but good. I would read more Capote.

Book 7: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I'm only on book seven? This is so sad. I like Oscar Wilde, I've read something by him before. What was it? Oh yeah, The Importance of Being Earnest. Good, humorous stuff. I am really saying nothing too deep here am I. I am sorry, I am distracted by various frustrating things.

But side note, Walt Whitman was gay? My american lit teacher never told me that. I was just reading about Oscar Wilde and his gayness and then it went on to talk about Walt Whitman. Crazy. I guess you don't really think about people in history being gay when they don't come out and say it since I'm so used to it being open nowadays. But anyway.

I got some more books on cd to listen to when I'm going to my Grandma's house this weekend. The Turn of the Screw and The Scarlet Letter and more. We shall see. I am a terrible person for not reading more. And I've got to start The Brothers Karamazov.

Sigh

2006-06-20T22:15:00.000-05:00

I know, I know. It's been a long time. But I don't think a single person reads this so it doesn't matter that much. If you are reading, comment, I don't care who you are.

Book 5: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

This took me forever, sadly. Listening to it that is, reading it did not take long at all. But I guess I had graduation and everything. And my laptop is here which takes up my time at night. Eh heh. But I had gotten about halfway through it listening to it, and I took it with me to North Carolina and finished the other half during the two hour plane ride.

I liked it, I think. It reminded me of my boyfriend. He liked it. There were too many characters to keep straight. But the voices on the cd were fun. I liked Major Major Major Major. And the chaplain. And circular reasoning is always fun.

Book 6: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

I saw the movie Capote a while back and so I had to read In Cold Blood. Maybe not the best book to read before bed. But it definitely solidifies that I will never ever be living in the middle of nowhere. That is exactly why it creeps me out. People sneaking up in the middle of the night and shooting me and there's no one to hear the gunshots. But it really is like a nonfiction novel. I like it. I'm listening to this one as well, while knitting and such. This will probably be one of the last audio ones, seeing as how I don't think any of the other books on my list exist on cd at any of the libraries nearby.

I also brought Middlemarch with me on my trip to North Carolina but only got about ten pages into it. I wasn't in the mood for it at the time. Or now either, I don't know. It's been sitting in my purse for a while. We'll see.

So yeah. Now I won't feel guilty about not updating. But it's so pathetic that I'm only on my sixth book of the summer. It's practically July! Sigh.

Man.

2006-05-28T21:13:00.000-05:00

I've been so busy. I apologize. Graduation and everything. But I did get a lot of listening/reading done while knitting my sweater thing.

Book 3: My Antonia by Willa Cather
A very nice book. Kind of depressing, but beautiful. I actually watched the movie version and it really did it no justice. Jim was kind of cute though. Ha. Out of all the books I've read so far, it was probably my second favorite. Tess is first. Tess is much more dramatic and gothic and romantic and I like that. My Antonia is very American. The setting is described wonderfully and Jim's insight is interesting.

Book 4: On the Road by Jack Kerouac
I did not like this book very much, I will admit. Part of it might've been the narrator's voice on the cd book, but still. I suppose the Beat Movement just does not particularly appeal to me. And I was just so tired of hearing about Dean Moriarty. Sal seemed to idolize him, but I was just like, shutup. And I think the idea of traveling that much just made uncomfortable. Maybe a little roadtrip, but nothing longer than that. I guess I just couldn't relate to the characters in anyway. I have no desire to do drugs or listen to jazz or hitchhike. I'm not dissatisfied with my life. Perhaps I'm boring. Or else I just do not care of the west. I wonder if this book was set in Europe or the East if I would've liked it better.

I do think the stream of conciousness wrting works better when you're listening to it. But I loved this quote by Truman Capote about the fact that Kerouac wrote the whole thing in three weeks on one sheet of paper or whatever, "That's not writing at all - it's typing".

So this book is at the bottom of the list. I'm sure it was very influential for others, just not me.

Book 5: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
I'm only a couple chapters into this book. Listening to it again. It's crazy. I had an idea of what it was about, but not its tone before I started. I could definitely see why my boyfriend liked it. And the chapter on Major Major Major Major cracked me up. I just like saying that actually. More on this one later.

Second book: DONE

2006-05-16T22:22:00.000-05:00

Things are moving a little faster now. This listening and knitting thing is working out well. I finished my second book the other day and now I'm onto the third. And it's only Day 16. Aha.

Book 2: The Stranger by Albert Camus.

First off, it's Al-bear Camoo. Not Albert Camus. At least pronouncation wise. He's French. But so I was listening to it, and there are four disks, but then suddenly the book ended. And that threw me off. I need time to prepare for an ending though you know. But then it was okay because the fourth disk was an explanation of the book and existentialism and I really needed that. Life sucks yes, but don't kill yourself. I think existentialism is really just for slackers. Dori and Beckah and I talked about it at work. But yeah, interesting book.

Book 3 is My Antonia by Willa Cather. So far so good. I've read some other Willa Cather and she isn't bad. But I swear there are two different narrators. The guy's voice changes like every couple tracks. But yeah, that's all.

First book: DONE

2006-05-14T22:25:00.000-05:00

Well, twelve days into it, I've finished Tess of the D'urbervilles. So yeah.

Book 1: Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
I liked this book. It is my type of book. It is British and written in the nineteenth century and it is Victorian and overly dramatic. I like it when books are about emotions and relationships and not other things. This book can be put in the same catagory as Rebecca and Wuthering Heights. I like those.

And poor Tess you just feel so bad for her. And both of the guys are crap, but you switch between them, trying to decide which is the lesser of two evils.

And the ending was surprising, but not. Once it happened you could understand it.

And I don' thave much more to say right now because I want to go knit and listen to my next book which is...

Book 2: The Stranger by Albert Camus.

Oh yes and so I've decided while I've got this giant knitting project that I will listen to some of the books on cd even though I'm a faster reader.

I'm about a fourth of the way into this one. It reads like a diary, and an almost boring one at that. Maybe not boring, but his day to day life can be mundane, although he notices things in a different way. But I think I'm just about to get to the juicy stuff because I looked at the book itself in the library and the chapter I'm on talks about guns. Duhn duhn duhn. Also I wouldn't mind reading this in French, I think it would be fun.

Okay that is all for now.

Day 5. Sigh.

2006-05-06T00:57:00.000-05:00

Well, it's the end of day five. And it's not going so well. My first book was Tess of the D'urbervilles. It's a great book, but I should be two-thirds the way through my second book, not one hundred pages into the first. I think it will be better once school is all done. But still.

Tess is racy. But only in a way that 19th century literature can be. I am enjoying it though. More later. I should go read now.

Today is the day!

2006-05-01T22:31:00.000-05:00

So I had planned to start reading today. However, it is now very close to my bedtime and I really don't think I'll get much done. I think it may be a few days before I get into full swing. I've got to finish school and then it'll be okay that I sleep so late.

I still haven't even picked a first book. I collected all the books that I have in my room and put them in one place. There's about a dozen. I think there's more in the rest of the house though.

Also, a slight change has been made to the list. Instead of reading Crime and Punishment by some Russian guy whose last name I can't remember or spell, I am going to read the Brothers Karasmov because I will be reading that one for my honors seminar this fall at Dominican.

So yeah, I'm going to get off here and go read.

THE LIST

2006-03-22T22:21:00.000-06:00

This blog is going to document my Summer Reading List 2006. I've made up a list of forty books, classics, that I haven't read and that I feel I should before I start college in the fall. I'm not confident I can finish all forty, I'd be happy with twenty-five, but we'll see. I have a fairly empty summer so I should have a lot of time on my hands.

Bascially, I went through pages and pages of other people's top however many and made my selection from those. Obviously, I only chose books I haven't read. If you see something that is really important missing, let me know, but I probably read it already.

I plan to start in May sometime, at the end of school. If I start at the beginning of May, I'll have a good four months before college. That's ten books a month. Two and a half books a week. A book almost every three days. So I don't know. If you'll notice, all these books are heavy. Like blue whale heavy.

Okay I just looked up blue whale to make sure that was the right whale reference and those things are freaking huge. Baby ones gain 200 pounds every 24 hours. That's intense.

Anyway. Here's the list.

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale
Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey
Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange
Camus, Albert. The Stranger
Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood
Cather, Willa. My Antonia
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment
Eliot, George. Middlemarch
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury
Flaubert, Gustav. Madame Bovary
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms
Hugo, Victor. Les Miserbles
James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady
Joyce, James. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce, James. Ulysses
Kafka, Franz. The Trial
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind
More, Sir Thomas. Utopia
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita
Orwell, George. 1984
Orwell, George. Animal Farm
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar
Proust, Marcel. Swann's Way
Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Grey
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway

RULES:

1) Do not read more than two books at a time. You may only start a new book if you have finished a book.

2) If reading gets too heavy, reader may select a lighter book that is not from the list as long as the book is less than 300 pages and was written in the last decade.