Summer Reading

[dwdean]

i'm sure some moron posts this every season, so i'll be the moron to do it this time...

since the beginning of june, what have you read?

my list;

Dracula
The Vampyre
Carmilla
Frankenstein
Transformation
The Mortal Immortal
Company Commander
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
The Great Gatsby
The Picture of Dorian Gray

[ChicagoReader]

1984 - George Orwell
Mao II - Don Delillo
Dubliners - James Joyce
Horse Soldiers - Doug Stanton
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Death of a Salesmen - Arthur Miller
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Ghost Soldiers - Hampton Sides

[dwdean]

im hoping to get to "Of Mice and Men" next

[Desolation]

So far this summer, I've read:

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

By the end of summer, I hope to also finish:
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Justine by Lawrence Durrell
The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust

[phalium]

The Passion - Jeanette Winterson
A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
The Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels

[Johnny_]

I'm in Chile, so that means i'm in winter. But with my winter vacations I plan to read a lot of books.

I have already read 2:

- Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
- The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilder

I don't really know which ones to read now. But I've been thinking of the following:

- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- 1984 - George Orwell
- The Catcher In The Rye - JD Salinger
- Through The Looking Glass (I think that's the name) - Lewis Carroll
- The Outsider (?) - Albert Camus

[dwdean]

So far this summer, I've read:

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Within A Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

By the end of summer, I hope to also finish:
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Justine by Lawrence Durrell
The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust
Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust

when you get done with "tender is the night" i'd love to hear your thoughts. i haven't yet read it, but after my magnificent experience with Gatsby, im anxious to read more of Fitzgerald

[dwdean]

I'm in Chile, so that means i'm in winter. But with my winter vacations I plan to read a lot of books.

I have already read 2:

- Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
- The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilder

how did you like Dorian Gray? i just finished it two days ago. quite an ending eh? have you read other works of Wilde? i've read that Wilde used some areas of Dorian Gray to attack the Catholic notion of confessing one's sins to a priest. thoughts?

[Johnny_]

how did you like Dorian Gray? i just finished it two days ago. quite an ending eh? have you read other works of Wilde? i've read that Wilde used some areas of Dorian Gray to attack the Catholic notion of confessing one's sins to a priest. thoughts?
*Could be kind of a SPOILER*

I liked it a lot. The ending, how it's so sudden and came out of nowhere is simply great. Because everything is settled but you're still curious about what could have happened later with other characters.

And about that confessing thing ... I think in one part in the book it says that it's not the priest that gives you the forgiveness for your sins, but the confession itself of the things you've done. And I believe it's quite true. But besides that, I don't really see how that confession thing is in the book. Perhaps because Lord Henry tells Dorian that whatever he does is just ok, because he deserves it for being so unique and beautiful (Henry being the priest, that gives him the absolution) but Dorian always feels bad for his things. He feels fine for a while, but in the end he goes mad, because he never confessed the things he did, so it didn't matter what anyone said he still had that burden on him.

The book is quite interesting, it has a lot of sides to the story that could be subject of analisis for example the Duality of Humans. I bought The Importance Of Being Earnest now so I would like to read it in a few days. :D

[ChicagoReader]

- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- 1984 - George Orwell


Can't go wrong with either of these novels. I've read both within that past month or two and found both very entertaining, though I lean towards Huxley.

[Desolation]

when you get done with "tender is the night" i'd love to hear your thoughts. i haven't yet read it, but after my magnificent experience with Gatsby, im anxious to read more of Fitzgerald

Well, I'm 70 pages in, and right off the bat I can tell you that it starts off pretty slowly, and you have to get through a little bit to really get into the meat of the text. It's also beautifully written, and there's a big sense of tragedy looming around the corner from the very beginning.

I actually didn't really like Gatsby, and I'm reading this to give Scott another chance. So far, I haven't been disappointed.

[dwdean]

Johnny_, if my memory serves me correctly, confession was mentioned more than a few times throughout the work. i tend to read up on popular themes found in a book before i read said book. maybe that causes some bias in my studies... i also read that many considered Dorian Gray to be autobiographical in the sense that Wilde saw his life heading towards destruction, yet found repentance immeasurably difficult, perhaps impossible. any thoughts on this?
Earnest is a great one, in my opinion. i do hope you enjoy it.

Desolation, thats a shame. a damn shame. i loved Gatsby... It did, however, take a while for me to become involved in the text. hopefully Tender will pick up for you, i'll get to it by Sept, i hope.

[Willard]

The Possessed- Dostoevsky
Ulysses-Joyce
The Hamlet-Faulkner

[Venerable Bede]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Inferno by Dante
Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

[Insane4Twain]

As anyone can see from my user-name, I heartily approve of reading anything from America's greatest writer. So, hooray for the Bede and his choice of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."

As such, I heartily recommend "Lighting Out For the Territory" by Walsh. Everyone here should know the the story of how Sam Clemens became Mark Twain.

Also read a biography of James Garfield, and re-read Thoreau's "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience."