Books!!

Salinger's one of my favourite writers.

Also, the heart of darkness was a superb book

Everyone NEEDS to read The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. It's the best book I've ever read

Currently reading Fear and Loathing. Not the Hunter S. Thompson book, but the Hunter S. Thompson biography. It's really good, so far.

During university, I tend to ditch reading, get lazy, and half ass my way through my classes. Now during summer break, I love reading. I've already read 4 books this month. Hopefully I can find time to read during school, but I find it tough.

I tried reading Lolita starting about two months ago, only now when I'm off for study break am I Really getting into it


Lo-Lee-Ta

Im just about to start 'Zapata and the Mexican Revolution' by John Womack.
Tired of referring to Zapata without knowing anything about his life.

I've been reading a few murder mysteries lately by Jo Nesbo, Chelsea Cain and Karin Slaughter. I've come to realize they all are pretty cookie cutter. Rough cop and a witty killer.

I've been reading Red Dragon (the one before The Silence of the Lambs) for a couple days. I love it.

I've been wanting to read Society Verse by Ross Farrar of Ceremony. Haven't been able to find a copy.

Just finished the first book of The Walking Dead. Not sure if you'd count this under books, since it's a comic, but still. It was awesome. Differed a fair amount from the show. Still not sure which I like more.

I read A Dog's Tale by Mark Twain. It was sad.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I finished Brotherhood of the Bell and have begun the Game of Thrones series.

Just finished Song of Ice and Fire (the ones that were written at least) over the course of the summer. That's almost 5000 pages of reading in about 3 months. Started reading Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut a few days ago and I'm almost done it. Really good novel.

Jaren van de Olifant by Willy Linthout. No idea if it's available in English. It's a sad story about a father who's son commits suicide and him trying to deal with it. The book is brought in a comic book kind of way, making it hilarious at parts and really powerful at others. Example: At one point the man goes to bed and switches the lights off, followed by a couple of completely black frames, followed by one black frame with the line "good night, Sam", followed by some more black frames.

Tim wrote:

Jaren van de Olifant by Willy Linthout. No idea if it's available in English. It's a sad story about a father who's son commits suicide and him trying to deal with it. The book is brought in a comic book kind of way, making it hilarious at parts and really powerful at others. Example: At one point the man goes to bed and switches the lights off, followed by a couple of completely black frames, followed by one black frame with the line "good night, Sam", followed by some more black frames.

This sounds really interesting!

Is it this by chance? http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6272135-years-of-the-elephant

Yes it is! If you can get it, I highly recommend you doing so.

I found it online to buy already. I just have 5000+ pages of Thrones to read first.

Dollhouse by Mike Boyle (singer/songwriter/guitarist of NEW LEFT)

A Condeferacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy

i recommend all these books.

Reading The Pearl of Strings, that is the original Sweeney Todd from 1846. Quite different from the Burton movie.

The Carlos Ruiz Zafon series is amazing.

The Shadow of the Wind

The Angel's Game

The Prisoner of Heaven

One of the best series i've ever read. If you love a great story, you'll love these. Cheers.

still reading all of the: Harry Potter books ... (better late than never ^^ )

Why do you kill, Zaid? - Jürgen Todenhöfer
The Hungergames 1-3
(a bit of a chliche teenager book but if you ignore that it's ok )
The Children of Húrin - J. R.R. Tolkien

pizza wrote:

cooljayhu wrote:

Everyone NEEDS to read The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. It's the best book I've ever read

Funny this is mentioned on the second to last page, I read this recently and was just about to post about it.

I would be lying if I said I didn't like it since it made me cry quite a bit. But I do have mixed feelings about it. I mean, what's the point in having a book start out by averting the usual cancer tropes - like, the cancer kid that's wise beyond their years, never complains, and is an inspiration to everyone around - if it ends up embracing the clichés anyway? What's more, I thought the characters were a bit inconsistent. One moment, the protagonist is a generic teenage girl who watches America's Next Top Model, the next she's a fucking genius with crazy deep thoughts and insanely good articulation. Same problem with the male lead and even some of the supporting characters like her father.

I'm not sure what cliches you mean. Death maybe? That's not a cliche in my mind. It's looming inevitability, especially when you have cancer. I mean not sure what you expected when it's a book about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love. Wouldn't it piss you off more if they ended up riding off into the sunset as a sweet mid-90s indie rock song swells up to a crescendo?

As far as the characters being inconsistent I think that's because real people are complex. People can like both non-intelligent things while being intelligent. This especially true when put through the stress of knowing your and your loved one's number could be up at anytime. You tend to think unconventionally.

I'm sorry if this sounded harsh. I really love this book and I think it's one of the best teen-fiction books ever written. In fact, Time Magazine named it the best book of 2012.

I'm sorry the Time magazine thing came off that way I was just adding in a little fact about it, not trying to say "you have to like this book cause Time magazine said it was great". My apologies.

In terms of the language thing, I would say that a lot good books have a heightened use of language and/or don't attempt to perfectly recreate human speech. I think a book that did (or tried to) would be incredibly painful to read (see Twilight, yes I'm reading Twilight for an English and it's horrible). So when the characters are being overly poetic I think you need to suspend some disbelief for the sake of readability and brevity.

You're actually the first person I've met that hasn't liked this book. You do make some interesting points that I hadn't considered before. Thanks for reading it (I really like John Green, the author) even if you didn't like it that much.

The Great Gatsby...I wouldnt really recommend it