Whatcha reading???

[JOJ650s]

I am not reading right now,
but I have read/heard some great books not to log ago...:
Black, Red, (never did get to White yet.)
Sir Gibbie, The Shepherd's Castle, and The Hobbit.

Great storys they all are,
but Sir, Gibbie and The shepherd's castle, start slow.

I knew the story of the Hobbit along time ago, just have not read the book for some time.

[TripExistence]

Still haven't finished The Shining, that book is sitting in my suitcase, waiting for me to cautiously pick it up again (before I scream).

Recently read a couple of other books:

Every Man for Himself - So, ten short stories about 'being a guy.' k cool. Only about two of them were worth reading.
The Opposite of Music - Janet Ruth Young: Interesting, well-written, but not gripping
and
I Am the Cheese - Robert Cormier: Good book, if not a little depressing. It's a shame I read Shutter Island first because this similar book came yeears before..

[Chozon1]

Someday, I'ma have to read The Shining. The last book that was hyped as scary was good...but not scary.

Piercing the Darkness.

It's never been as good as This Present Darkness to me...probably because I dislike the intensely realistic portrayal of politics and the ACLU.

[TripExistence]

Yeah, The Shining is pretty well written, enough to be pretty scary. Although I think I already know the ended, so I'm kind of dreading getting to that horrible conclusion.

For some reason, I always liked Piercing the Darkness better, and I'm not sure why. I'll probably have to read them again at some point.

I forgot to mention that I just started reading Fat Kid Rules the World by K. L. Going, already I can tell that it's going to be an interesting ride.

[Orodrist]

Just read Fahrenheit 451. I thought it was awesome. I won't call it the best writing ever, but I liked it.

[ccgr]

I had to read that book in school

[Chozon1]

*singsong voice* I didn't. I read Jane Eyre.

>_>

Still Piercing the Darkness. I actually like it loads better once you get far into it. I 'spose the opening chapters rub me wrong, somehow.

Good book.

[Deepfreeze32]

*singsong voice* I didn't. I read Jane Eyre.

>_>

And I didn't have to read either of those. I read 1984 and Lord of the Flies.


Anyway, I'm still plugging away at A Game of Thrones, and I recently picked up an H.P. Lovecraft collection and Stephen King's memior, On Writing.

[TripExistence]

I read 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and dozens of other books..

Finished Fat Kid Rules the World, good read if you're into YA fiction. About to start on Robert Cormier's In the Middle of the Night.

[ccgr]

read 1984 and Lord of the Flies in school too, Scarlet Letter, Tom Sawyer, Hamlet were all required too. Teachers don't like it when you say that Hamlet is the story of a little pig.

[Chozon1]

Teachers might not...but other students do.

I haven't read any of those books. Benefit of home school was my mum let me pick what books I wanted. Jane Eyre, Pride and Predjudice, The Bronze Bow, Carry on Mr. Bowditch...I read them.

Some sort of Christian adventure romance. The name is immaterial, as it follows a rather cliche plot.

And yet I'm still enjoying it quite a bit.

[TripExistence]

I guess this doesn't really count as what I'm reading, but I've stopped at a couple of bookstores over the last week or so and have picked up a few things that I plan to read as soon as I'm done with my current reading load.

Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson (Have read it three times already. Had to buy it.)
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
The Stranger - Albert Camus
The Plague - " " (I didn't like The Stranger in high school, but I absolutely loved The Fall last semester, so here's to hoping my tastes have changed)
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger - Never read it, it seemed like my kind of book.

[TripExistence]

Geez, does anybody else have a summer reading list or something?

Last check-in I was reading In the Middle of the Night by Robert Cormier. I lied. I haven't even started.

I do have the most beautiful and heartbreaking reason why I haven't: I decided to read Benjamin Alire Saenz's Last Night I Sang to the Monster instead. One of the most poignant novels I've ever read.

Nowadays, whenever I read the word 'poignant' I think cheesy and trite. This story does have an expected happy ending, but you don't even care because the protagonist is so tortured and so hurting. He's one of the most real people I've met. And despite his journey being entirely different than mine, I was still able to identity with his anguish and confusion.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It's graphic at points (mostly the language), and sometimes emotionally difficult to read, but the entire novel is absolutely worth it.

Drew, I think you would really like it.

[Orodrist]

I've been reading, just not posting.

Today, I just bought a copy of Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric. I ended up reading the bulk of Poetics sitting in the mall waiting for my cousin and aunts to finish shopping. People were staring at me.

Also bought Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Read that on the ride home. Now I remember why I don't read detective novels much.

Aside from that, I bought a Henry James collection, a Kafka collection, and Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. The checkout lady stared at me.

It seems literacy in rural North Dakota is an anomaly.

[ohnolookout]

Casually reading Scalzi's 'Old Man War' trilogy. Awesome stuff.

I also read 'The Forever War' a couple months back, much of which 'Old Man War' is based off of. The Forever War is much more brutal but I still like it a bunch.

Jesus Among Other Gods - Ravi Zacharias

Fantastic book. At first I thought it would either be a rebuttal towards universalism/pluralism or just a comparison of Christianity and other religions, but it's so much more. Not only does it prove the uniqueness of Christianity and how it's the only way, it gives great insight towards the culture of Jesus' time and how just a few sentences He spoke meant volumes. This uniqueness is compared towards the other major religions of the world - Hinduism, Judaism, and Buddhism as well as the modern popularity of secular humanism and how these ultimately fall short and contradict themselves.

A read I'd recommend to anyone.