amychen
New Member
“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”
Posts: 47 
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Post by amychen on Dec 21, 2013 6:37:13 GMT
BFFs!
We're supposed to "have a conversation on the forum about what you're reading over the break."
Might I suggest also sharing some favorite quotes?
I don't have a lot of "reading time" so I've been reading poetry from:
The Open Door (Poetry magazine's centennial anthology) and
Scandalabra by Derrick C. Brown.
There's a very different feel between the two, so they balance out quite well. I prefer Brown's book better than the Poetry magazine anthology for the following reasons:
This:
From "Full Metal Necklaces"
This:
From "Meatloaf"
...MEATLOAF.
And this:
From "Beauty Mark of the Beast at Mach Six"
(this, by the way, is not a rarity. If you are uncomfortable with sexual references this might not be the book for you.)
So if any of you are strapped for time, I suggest reading some poetry. If you aren't strapped for time, I also recommend reading poetry.
Some poets I recommend:
Similar to Derrick C. Brown:
Buddy Wakefield
Andrea Gibson
Carson Cistulli
Not similar to Derrick C. Brown:
Sylvia Plath
Tennessee Williams (Yes, he writes poetry)
I LOVE YOU ALL
HAVE WONDERFUL WINTER BREAKS
PLEASE POST ON THIS THREAD SO I DON'T FEEL LONELY.
Happy Holidays!
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Post by hannahlewman on Dec 23, 2013 20:13:28 GMT
After Shane's presentation on Tom Robbins last year, I decided to see what all of the hype was about. I'm only like eight months late, too. I just started reading "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," and I am loving it. Robbins is so witty and every single sentence seems to have some clever reference to pop culture or history, and every time I catch one of the reference I feel so smart even though I'm probably missing like 99% of the humor. Anyway, it's been a while since I've had time to read what I want to read and Robbins is proving a worthwhile author to spend my time on.
Anyone else read an Robbins? Shane, want to pipe in?
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Post by keelycorrigan on Dec 24, 2013 0:18:00 GMT
Do not be mistaken: I am a 17 year old who will most likely spend the break watching Supernatural reruns, writing college essays, and avoiding familial responsibilities. But, that being said, I am trying to make headway on a novel that I have been reading (on and off) since Thanksgiving. It is called "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harback and I picked it up because it came highly recommended by one of my favorite authors. It still feels foreign in my hand because I am not very far into its 500 pages, but what I have read has been surprisingly engaging. I am really trying not to fall into a gendered view of this very-masculine tale of baseball and college exploits, and it--so far-- has not forced me to take such a view. My favorite passage so far has been this:
" There are 3 stages: Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being... Do not confuse the first and third stages. Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few," (Harbach 16).
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Post by haleyjensen on Dec 24, 2013 4:41:34 GMT
Last night as I was babysitting, I started off my winter break reading with a few "children's" stories. (We call them children's stories, but I love them just as much now as I did when I was younger!) Myself, the two kids and I sat on the couch with a couple books and a penguin blanket. Erin, the older of the two siblings, was wearing an elf hat. We started off by reading The Mitten, by Jan Brett. If you never read it as a child, read it now! It definitely would have been on my masterworks of literature list as an eight year old. We also read The Santa Bears, which is not as well known of a book, but still a favorite of mine. (Spoiler alert- it's about two polar bears that help Santa get out of his workshop when he gets snowed in.) After two books, it was time for the kids to go to bed, but one of the kids ran to her room, grabbed a book, and refused to go to bed until we read it. When I saw that she had grabbed A Pocket for Corduroy, by Don Freeman, of course I gave in and we read one more book. Halfway through the story each of the kids decided that they wanted to take turns reading, instead of having me read to them. It was so awesome to see that books can still hold the attention of children for a long period of time. Over the rest of the break I plan on continuing to make my way through The Chronicles of Narnia series, and getting my hands on a copy of Dance, Dance, Dance. Lastly, I hope to start A Land of Sheltered Promise by Jane Kirkpatrick. (If you can't tell, I was that kid in elementary school that had about seven library books in my backpack on a regular basis. I enjoy reading different kinds of literature depending on my mood). Kirkpatrick's book is about the piece of property in Antelope, Oregon that was inhabited by the rashneesh cult, then bought by the Washington family and turned into a YoungLife Camp. I'm pumped to read this because I've been to this camp before and I'm excited to have a historical awareness of the campsite when I go again this June.
This quote isn't from a book I'm reading, but nonetheless I think it's relevant. "You can't find a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me." -CS Lewis
Regardless of what you're reading, I recommend hot chocolate and fuzzy socks for your optimal reading experience. |
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Post by garygates on Dec 24, 2013 18:48:52 GMT
I don't really read classics or incredibly deep works in my free time because I feel like I read enough of these works during school and like a little variation in my free time. My away-from-school books have been as of recent of what I would call the comedy/satire/semi-dystopian genre. This genre that I just made up on the spot contains books that comically pursue the 'everything that can go wrong will go wrong' idea, and satirize many different kinds of people in doing so. If you're at all interested in this genre I have some books you could check out. They're easy reads and for entertainment-purposes only. Please don't try to analyze them, it's not worth your time.
My first and maybe favorite book is Dave Barry's "Tricky Business." And no, it does not feature Tom Cruise in his underwear. It's quite vulgar and quite entertaining. I highly recommend it.
Another Dave Barry novel that has been made into a movie is "Big Trouble," which you may or May not have heard of. It takes a similar genre approach and is uproariously entertaining.
My most recent Dave Barry read was "Insane City," which was not quite as we'll done as the other two but still a quality easy read.
A book that is a little less comical than the Dave Barry triplet but makes up for it in a quality plot with some deception and mystery is Elmore Leonard's "Rum Punch," which was remade into Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown." The book was a lot better than the movie though.
And FINALLY, my read that I just finished this winter break was Carl Hiaasen's "Bad Monkey." You may remember Hiaasen's other titles, "Hoot," and "Flush," which were a couple of my favorite childhood reads, but now Hiaasen has moved on to adult novels and the result was awesome! A highly recommended and wonderfully entertaining read.
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Post by Lacey Doby on Dec 24, 2013 19:12:29 GMT
Like Keely, I've got college on the mind. When I visited Linfield, I saw a book in the counselor's office and they gave it to me for free. It's called "CAMAS" and it is created entirely by the students of Linfield. It's full of short stories and poems and incredible pieces of art, and I love sitting down and flipping to a random page where a new piece is waiting for me. I love it so much I'm afraid to open it all the way because then the spine will crease and it won't look as clean and new.
So far, my favorite poem is about a person exploring space with a special someone and stumbling across a door suspended in the vacuum. The last line is my favorite: "Take my hand, hold your breath, and let us (together) step through the door--I hear there's a hell of a good universe over there."
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Post by fionabyrne on Dec 24, 2013 19:34:29 GMT
I love short stories especially when I don't always have time to read. It seems to me that the medium of short story leads writers to take more chances and do things that they wouldn't do in a novel. I also like the trend of short stories having incredible endings. Salinger for example, in almost every one of his "Nine Stories", ends by punching the reader in the face. I find short stories to be more realistic because life doesn't always follow the loss-quest structure. I am reading "The Night in Question" by Tobias Wolff. "Bullet in the Brain" can be found in this collection. When stories are short, people are depicted in ways that, in novels, might seem to deny them depth. In a novel, this lack of development could be qualified as stereotyping but in a short story it makes sense that you would only get to see one side of a person.
To illustrate what I mean about endings, a few from "The Night in Question":
"...of words, Wiley knew, there was no end"
" 'Strauss,' he said. 'Good. She's happy.' "
"If you haven't driven fresh powder, you haven't driven"
These mean nothing unless you've read the stories. Having read the stories, I can for the rest of my life be able to flip back to the final line and remember the whole story.
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Post by elizabethmeyer on Dec 24, 2013 19:44:17 GMT
Over the last couple of months I've been working on re-reading one of my favourite series, The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica by James A. Owen, because the last book just came out and I wanted all the details to be fresh in my mind. They are the most amazing books ever!! They are mainly fantasy-adventure, but there are an unbelievable amount of literary, mythological, biblical, and pop-culture allusions. Seriously: there's a part in book 6 in which Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are busily minding Jules Verne's battle goats in the Himalayas; Mark Twain, Verne, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne (to name but a few) and two of the three actual main characters (who shall remain nameless because of spoilers) are intent on trying to mend Time itself, and H.G. Wells is in the ancient future looking for his wife with The Grail Child, a mechanical owl named Archimedes and a young cartographer who can map time. That's not to mention the Dragons (it's more of an office than a species specification, although most Dragons are indeed dragons), the Dragonships, the time travel, the amount of Arthurian mythology involved in each book, or the amount of Middle-earth references in each book. It's insane. I would highly recommend these books to any English student, but particularly to all of you. So many of the books that we read last year and the authors that as AP English students we've been exposed to as well the mythology and other allusions that are involved in these books make them ideal independent reading books because we actually get the references! The first time I read through book 5 I hadn't read enough of the books that are referenced to really get all the nuances, but after having read Poe's The Raven and his piece on how he wrote it, Poe's character in the stories made so much more sense. Well, except for the fact that he has a thin for pistachio nuts...
They're rather complicated stories (time travel features heavily), and every detail matters. But they are completely amazing and they truly have something for everyone.
If anyone's interested - and like I said, I think everyone should read them; they're spectacularly clever and really good reads and not enough people know of them - then here are the titles:
Book 1: Here, There Be Dragons
Book 2: The Search for the Red Dragon
Book 3: The Indigo King
Book 4: The Shadow Dragons
Book 5: The Dragon's Apprentice
Book 6: The Dragons of Winter
Book 7: The First Dragon |
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Post by jamiezimmerman on Dec 24, 2013 22:21:03 GMT
Just this morning I read A Rose for Emily, by William Faulkner. However, I will probably have to re-read it because one of the questions following the story suggested that Miss Emily is a maniacal killer, but I totally missed that part upon first reading.
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joelk
New Member
Posts: 36 
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Post by joelk on Dec 24, 2013 22:29:34 GMT
I’m with Gary on a few things. I don’t make an effort to read “classics” or “deep” literature in my free time. If I see something that catches my eye, I read it. That ranges from the traditional deep works—I once read 1984 and A Brave New World the same weekend when I was into that futuristic-dystopian genre (I would not recommend this; I still sometimes have trouble keeping them straight)—to just about anything. The first/only book I have read since break started was Dave Barry’s Insane City (now that Gary’s finally returned it to the LO Library). I agree with him that it isn’t on par with Tricky Business, which is one of the funniest fiction novels I have ever read. Having read a lot of Dave Barry (I’ve picked up over a dozen of his “nonfiction” humor books at Booktique over the years for a few quarters each), I was actually more disappointed than Gary sounds like he was with it. It struck me as Barry’s attempt to write another novel, but, unlike the first novels he wrote, he never really got into novel-writing mode. Often, characters would say something that Dave Barry himself might write, but it would seem out-of-character and less funny that it would in one of his columns. I will admit, however, that the book is probably one of his “deepest” with its interesting social commentary and rich socialite who protests for immigration reform, but doesn’t want to help an actual immigrant if it even remotely gets in the way of her wedding. I’d love to put up a favorite quote, but the novel is written as an, as Gary puts it, “everything that can go wrong will go wrong” sort of thing, and so a short passage I find hilarious will make no sense without a few chapters of back story. And if I explain the joke, well, we all know it’s not funny anymore. Since break has still sort of just started, I haven’t had time to read anything else yet (apparently, we have to write essays? For college? What is this?). But on my desk, mocking me until I finish up these applications (and all courtesy of Booktique), are: Nonfiction: - Reefer Madness, by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), about the American Black Market - Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell - The Millionaire Mind, by Thomas J. Stanley Sort of Nonfiction/Escapist Nonfiction: - Sex on the Moon, by Ben Mezrich. Yes, his stories are somewhat formulaic, but they are all “based on an 'amazing' true story.” He wrote The Social Network and every other “college student does something ridiculously risky and gets rich/loses it all” book. - Fair Game, by Valerie Plame Wilson. Apparently it’s a movie, but I’ve never heard of it. If you want more context, the cover says “How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government.” The real events took place in 2003. I guess it’s a lot of nonfiction and nonfiction written like fiction, but I find that I often read more nonfiction during the school year, since we cover mostly fiction in class. I also find fiction riskier to read during the school year—unless you know the author or it is a “classic,” you might read the novel and realize it wasn’t well written. (Whereas with nonfiction, at least you know the topic the book is based in interests you.) Over the summer, that’s not a big deal, but when you’re crunched for reading time, pouring a few hours into a book you don’t end up getting anything out of is a bigger loss. I probably won't be able to get to all 5 of those, unfortunately, and I'm also hoping to read Dance Dance Dance. For those of you who said you like short stories, I highly recommend any of the “Hitchcock’s Anthology” books from the 80s, especially Volume 7, if you can find it (once again, I owe mine to Booktique. If you can’t tell, I go there like once a month.) |
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Post by jessicalee on Dec 24, 2013 23:51:34 GMT
I was at Barnes and Nobles the other day picking up an iPad book for my grandpa when I spotted "Bossypants" by Tina Fey sitting on display. I recalled Hannah Lewman talking about how amazing this book was, so I decided to read it and lo and behold, it is hilarious. On a more serious note, I am also going to read "Native Son" by Richard Wright, as it was given to me by one of my besstttt friendsssss, Sammy Wong. And to satisfy my inner philosopher I am going to read "The History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell. (Okay so maybe I have to read that last book for my Con Law class but nonetheless I predict that after I'm finished, I will return to school as an enlightened intellectual.)
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Post by davidqin on Dec 25, 2013 3:23:58 GMT
I normally despise the zombie genre because I think it's dull and mindless just like the creatures themselves, but I'm currently reading Max Brooks's World War Z as less of a zombie novel but more of a social criticism. It satirizes ineptitude of bureaucracy and international relations, yet praises the ability of individuals to rise to the occasion and perform extraordinary feats of grace. More importantly, I love its unique style, which works under a tacit agreement by the reader to read the book not as a work of fiction, but to enter into a fictional universe and then read it as a nonfiction work.
Other than that, I finished an account of the evolution of Czechoslovakian freedom written by none other than Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton. Prague Winter was an interesting read especially considering I'd been to Prague. More so, it evinces a very colorful and multifaceted view of history, and a welcome relief from the one-sided accounts in other history books.
(edited for excessive spacing)
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Post by Anna M. on Dec 25, 2013 6:00:03 GMT
I'm with Jessica-- I'm probably going to reread Bossypants because its HILARIOUS. Also, I have a book of short stories by Ernest Hemingway that I probably won't finish over break but definitely plan on reading on the way to Japan.
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Post by betsyrahe on Dec 25, 2013 19:36:02 GMT
I plan on finishing the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm currently half way through Two Towers and I received the whole series for Christmas so now I don't have to borrow my friend's copies! I might also reread the Princess Bride( my favorite book) because I was given a 40th anniversary addition so now I don't have to steal my mom's when I go to college haha. Like alot of people have been saying, I have college essays to write and homework but I since I'll be spending several days without any internet I'll have plenty of time to read. Hope you all have a splendid break!
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Post by kevinle on Dec 25, 2013 19:51:39 GMT
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