Finished Voice Carried My Family and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James today. I found Voice Carried My Family rather disappointing, some of those poems I really like, but most I either didn't understand or just don't care for. The Turn of the Screw is a fun little gothic horror story, and I usually find Henry James boring as all hell, but that was basically alright. I enjoyed my time with it anyway. I can't help but feel this might be an end of the line of great or good books for 2015. But we shall see I guess. Edit: Also read the play Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, a combination of the A and B text. It was amazing, among my favourite plays now, so I think I spoke too soon.
I'm reading a bunch of different things right now. Fiction: A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin (Second ASoIaF read-through) The World of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling (I missed these when they were at the peak of their popularity) Prodigy by Marie Lu Non-Fiction: The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham Value Investing by various authors I like to keep a long list of reading material. For my fiction I like to keep it varied in genre (Although right now it's only Fantasy and Young Adult). For my non-fiction reading I like to pick a subject and read multiple books on it at a time. Absorb a bunch of knowledge on the subject at once then move on to another topic of interest.
Robert Frost A Collection of Essays edited by James M. Cox and a load of scholarship on Walt Whitman.It's research. ^.^
Funny you mention Walt Whitman since I just finished an episode of Breaking Bad (Something like my sixth watch-through), and the episode had several Walt Whitman references. The coincidences of life.
I keep hearing Breaking Bad is good. I should really get around to watching it. I'm writing a paper of Whitman, though, comparing Whitman and Allen Ginsberg. There is a lot to get through!
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I finished the first book within the book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm happy to say it met and exceeded my lofty expectations. I'm now onto The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Try Fledgling as well. You really can't go wrong with Butler. And if you haven't read Parable of the Sower...well, that's a great book.
Just picked up a slim volume of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's Rashomon and Other Stories. My brain is a little fried from reading 19th century classics and this will be a nice break. Plus, I have seen the movie. =)
Awwyeah, Hitchhiker's Guide! Now I suddenly regret that I left my copy in a locker on a train station far away. That stuff is pure gold. I'm reading Hundarna i Riga (The Dogs of Riga) by Henning Mankell. And grunting a lot because my copy has these horrifying covers. But the book itself is good, the case itself is intriguing. Two dead fellows in expensive suits float up to the Swedish coast in a lifeboat. And something hints towards the Soviet Union... And I've suddenly developed a huge fondness to realistic literature. It's somehow nice to read about people whose problems are actually similar to mine (no, I don't mean dead bodies), I have little in common with teenagers saving the world and getting a dang hot boyfriend amidst of it all. (Well, I have nothing against YA novels in general and I think many of them are really important and have some great themes but I'm just not at all into teenage romances that seem to be such a huge thing nowadays.) But oh vey, if only the covers were a bit more eye-pleasing....
The only good thing I can say about HHGTTG is that the books are slightly better than the movie. And Marvin, I like him.
I'm currently reading 'Sea Glass' by Anita Shreve. I did try and read this a couple of months ago, but couldn't get into it. So I have decided to try again.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I like the book so far, the writing is good, but I think unnecesary info dumps happen every once in a while.
Starting on Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey." Wish I had read this as a teen or even in my early 20s, because I'm not finding the subject matter (snagging a boyfriend) all that interesting. I'm going through this list of short classic reads, if you guys on the forum are interested. It's a nice guideline for people with limited time to read.
Currently reading Legend by David Gemmell, although it`s a genre that I don`t always get on with this is good.
A friend at work (he`s into computer games on an epic level, and not a little fantasy) recommended him and he seems to be a good read so far. He also recommended China Mieville, so I might try him next. I`ve read Nick Harkaway and like him. I kind of read a lot of different genres.
Mieville is also good, though his work tends to be strange. Quite different from someone like Gemmell, but worth reading in my view.
I will never understand Jane Austen. I mean I get the popularity, even though it isn't my thing, but the fact her novels are widely considered"greats" is beyond me.
You need to be willing to read them carefully, and have your tongue very much in your cheek. Her books are full of wit, but it's the blink and you miss it sort - and frankly isn't really all that funny either. I'm still reading criticism on Whitman, Ginsberg and Frost, mostly Frost's biography at the minute, but I'm also taking a good break I feel I deserve from all that and reading Mao's Little Red Book and some Poe short stories. ^.^
The more time passes between myself and Mansfield Park, the more I realize it's a really good novel. Austin doesn't have the moodiness of the Bronte sisters, who are often held as better than her because they are more 'serious'.
Really? The ending, the fellah just settling for Fanny because there is no-one better around? I have a memory of her dividing the cast into those who enter a locked gate and those who don't, and it eliciting a physical response in me as if I was being beaten around the head with a hammer while someone screamed "metaphor".
