Reading Tab

just finished citse of the red night by william burroughs (good book but confusing)
just started don quixote by cervantes (been funny so far)

I read quite a lot of

IB Chemistry A
Electronic Structure and properties of solids
Lent Term 2006
Free Electron Theory
Lectures 1-4 Richard Lambert

Good stuff, follwed by the excellent sequel, 'Lectures 5-7'.


As for books, I tend to read about half of one and then get bored, I think there are 4 books that I've read half of in the past several months, I'll finish Crime and Punishment sometime, because that was pretty good, and maybe The Art of War. I tend to just use reading for academic purposes though, when I want to relax it's film time, other wise I'd be on bookforums.com

I recently finsished:

The Princess Bride
V for Vendetta
The Walking Dead: Volume 2: Miles Behind Us

and im currently reading Identity Crisis and The Boy in the Striped Pjamas.

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Pumpkins scream in the DEAD of night!

I don't know why I continue to give Anne Rice a chance. I picked up her new book, Christ The Lord: Out of Egypt, at a used book store for $6, and though I'm at 80 something pages in, it's basically boring. This is the last straw. I know she's writing about a different subject matter - Jesus Christ, as a child, in first person - but she constantly focuses on boring stories. Boring for me, at least. I'm trapped in a boring job with nothing to do all day. This book - this Jesus Christ book - is not my savior. I think I need to run to the bookstore and grab something else! Urgh!

try a Jonathan Foer.

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We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.

Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

I'm upset to see that there was Heart of Darkness bashing and I wasn't around to stop it.


Anyway, I'm reading the Bible right now.

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You're not hopeless...

Dante's The Inferno
Voltaire's Candide
Swift's "A Modest Proposal"

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Horror's Not Dead
Latest Movie Review(s): Too lazy to keep this up to date. New reviews every week.

Just read that. It's...something else.

also: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

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"Like all dreamers, Steven mistook disenchantment for truth."

a propos interesting read,
there's this:

http://www.angryharry.com/esFeminismandNazism.htm

Reading Of Mice and Men for English class; I love it. However, I'll end up using SparkNotes to answer the questions since it's so close to the end of the year and I don't feel like thinking.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

I just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Kinda slow starting but i stuck with it. it turns out to be an incredibly intriguing book with amazing imagery. Though one problem i have with it is that sometimes it felt like he was writing for the book especially so that it could be made into a tv show or film - it felt so easily translatable. Amazing book - dark and gothic, plenty of sex and violence too.


PS - I studied mice and men for GCSE when i was 15, so boring but pretty easy when it comes to exams cause its not that complex. One key is to always have notes on the minor characters and the themes within the text. You'll do loads of notes on the main characters thinking the other ones wont show up but somehow they always do.

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Undercoverlovers 100 REDUX

yep, one of the best reads i had back in 2003

I'm currently reading The Stranger by Albert Camus, and this book seems to be a source of inspiration for the band : The Cure. A sentence from the book reads: "I didn't much relish the task and soon dried up and started smoking, staring at the sea." Staring at the Sea is the title of a singles compilation the band released a while back. The major turning point in the book occurs when the narrator kills an arab. "Killing an Arab" is the title of a song on their debut album: Boys Don't Cry. I wonder if I'll find more reference points as I keep reading...I never knew The Cure was literary. I thought they left that to The Smiths

Great book, which contains one of my favorite passages of all time:

"The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath. It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire. My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times at the door of unhappiness."

Anyways, just read Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, as well as Darwin's Origin of the Species and Descent of Man.

It's Brilliant how Camus decided to divide the book into two parts with part one ending there and part two beginning.

I'm not sure quoting The Stranger makes The Cure literary. I mean, I read The Stranger in high school....

Still, I suppose it's better than quoting, say, current sports figures.

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Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

So did I. As well as Hamlet, does that make either work any less literary just because it's read at an earlier age?

No, I was saying that I didn't think a few references from a single book makes a group "literary." Didn't mean to start a fight or anything -- was just wondering if their using a few Camus quotes was all that impressive, really. Interesting yes, and pleasantly so, but not overly impressive.

Fair Enough. And yes, as a whole the book isn't anything outstanding, but it has some peak moments.