Me either. :D I picked it because my teacher says it’s impossible to write a bad AP essay on Equus, so yeah.

GAHHHHHHH. Yeah, the College Board loves Equus. I… I don’t. One of my least favorite books in AP Lit my senior year. Why did I hate it? See the Anti-Postmodern Club. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Hidden for book spoilers, not sure how much you’ve read

I hated Death of a Salesman for similar reasons. Hmph.

I am going to make a booklist and stick to it. I’ve gotten far too lazy and into the habit of dropping a book only halfway through. I watch more tv nowadays. For hours on end.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME

Another reason it could be construed as being like Twilight is that the reader often ends up hating the main character with the fire of a thousand burning suns.

Can we please? Pretty please?

Anyone up for a fanfic?

Then throw her into one of those pod-things from Mockingjay. One that’s full of explosives.
The funny thing is, I think I remember one scene in The Hunger Games where Katniss was hallucinating about sparkling people. She wonders whether it’s real or not, and then decides it can’t be . . . because sparkling people couldn’t possibly be real.

If Deborah is right, we… have… CROSSOVER!

I’m starting An Innkeeper’s Diary by John Fothergill and The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge this week. I never heard anything about either before, but I’m going to finish them as soon as possible. I used to devour books like crazy and I need to get into that habit again. I’m still slogging along with, ahem, The Book Thief. Yeah, it’s good and everything, but I don’t seem to be able to focus as much as I used to. Nobody kill me, please.

Found an old copy of one of the Artemis Fowl books on the shelf. I have no idea what it’s doing in the campus library, but I decided to flip through and ended up reading a bit of it. I love books that get me all nostalgic. And Artemis is a little creepier than I remember. Seriously. But still great.

Yeah. An example of how to do YA right – simpler words and more digestible sentences, but engaging and thought-provoking (and fun) material.

Just finished reading Agatha H. and the Airship City (aka the Girl Genius novel). Review to come.

I agree [I assume that you’re talking about The Hunger Games?}. The first book was fantastic, but the next two didn’t seem like a natural continuation of the story. I liked the third, though.

Yes, I was referring to the Hunger Games series — that appeared to be the main topic of discussion. I have adjusted my original wording to make this clearer. The third book was depressing.

@Sen – The Discworld books are all more or less inter-connected, so in a sense they’re all in the same series, but for the most part you can read them easily as stand-alone novels. There are sort of groups or sub-series of books (the Rincewind books, the Witches books, the Watch books, the Tiffany Aching books, etc.). This reading guide is not completely up-to-date (it’s missing about a half-dozen of the newer books), but it’s still very useful for seeing how they all relate:

As for The Light Fantastic is the second (written, anyway) and… yeah, it’s not my favorite. Rincewind is OK, but I prefer some of the other books/characters. And Pratchett hadn’t quite found his writing style yet at that point. I would suggest starting with something later (if you can find any!). My personal favorites are the Watch books (with Commander Sam Vimes) and the Moist von Lipwig books (Going Postal and Making Money).

Also, on Wuthering Heights, yes, I hate everyone in it too! I take comfort in the fact that that’s the point; Bronte was trying to show just how unromantic and awful those sorts of relationships/people could be.

And I’m finally done with The Baroque Cycle. Pretty good, if not for the hundreds of pages where nothing really happens.

You people should all know that Dracula, the original book, is freaking awesome and I highly recommend it. In words of the best praise I can offer to any novel, it’s a damn good story. I’m going to write an article on a couple thoughts it gave me, but everyone needs to read it.

Do so at once. Then we shall be free to engage in witty, rapier banter consisting entirely of Douglas Adams quotations.

Then we shall be free to engage in witty, rapier banter consisting entirely of Douglas Adams quotations.

Yes, please. :)

I’m reading Henry V, and a book called Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth.

BRIAN BLESSED!

May I ask what Netflix is?

The college library has the DVD. I’ll probably check it out after spring break.

I finished A Dance with Dragons.

Are you looking for any specific genre or time period?

As far as ADWD goes, I actually thought Tyrion’s parts were some of the weakest(this doesn’t need to be spoiler tagged, does it?) I’m too lazy to discuss it more, though.

I actually agree with you. He didn’t seem like himself.

Starting on Thomas More’s Utopia.

Great. You already ruined it a little. But to be honest, I’m not exactly loving it so far.

@Sen:

Sorry. But Utopia isn’t really a novel or even a story, because there’s no plot. It’s just some guy talking about this place that’s just so wonderful and awesome, and explaining why it’s so wonderful and awesome. Then again, that’s the problem with all utopian fiction in my experience: there’s never any plot, because it there’s anything wrong with society, then it can’t be perfect.

That, and the fact that I quickly figured out that the concept of a ‘utopia’ is entirely subjective.

@BlueMask:

The ‘wherever whores go’ line is a reference to where his father told Tyrion his first wife, Tysha, went after exposing the whole ruse. Since his time with her was probably one of the happiest times of his life, finding her might make him happy again. At least, that’s my take on it.

Probably because Utopia was the first instance of someone actually writing about the concept.

“you know nothing.”

Gahh, I hate that line.

Sen, I wouldn’t give up on Thomas More just because of that, for the following reason:

In the sixteenth century, Thomas More’s book Utopia proposed an ideal society of the same name. Some readers, including utopian socialists, have chosen to accept this imaginary society as the realistic blueprint for a working nation, while others have postulated that More intended nothing of the sort. Some[who?] maintain the position that More’s Utopia functions only on the level of a satire, a work intended to reveal more about the England of his time than about an idealistic society. This interpretation is bolstered by the title of the book and nation, and its apparent confusion between the Greek for “no place” and “good place”: “utopia” is a compound of the syllable ou-, meaning “no”, and topos, meaning place. But the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning “good,” also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly “good place” is really “no place.”

From Wikipedia. While no one theory is fully supported, of course, a lot of people believe the book is a satire of the utopian mindset in the vein of Swift.

I just finished the first of The Hunger Games which I thought was pretty good. I then reread Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss so I could be prepared for the next in the trilogy. And as I was doing a few Google searches about the books, I came upon a little bit of information that Patrick Rothfuss lives in my college city, Stevens Point, and was actually lecturing here in the English Department for a while. That blew my mind, but I think he’s writing full time now.
I’ve now started a nonfiction, Undaunted Courage, about Lewis and Clark.

I just read this YA book called The Roar by Emma Clayton. It’s her debut novel, and I thought it was pretty good, considering. I liked it. It was sort of an escape for me, since I have so many stuffy literature classes this semester, so I wasn’t really being critical.

Finished reading Transmetropolitan. Seriously screwed up world, seriously awesome character and stories. Spider Jerusalem is my new hero/person-I-admire-but-would-never-want-to-be-within-a-hundred-miles-of.

And yeah, I know it’s a graphic novel and should go in the graphic novel thread, but I can’t find it. :P

I started reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green today. I read a few of his other books and I wasn’t too crazy about them, but I’m definitely liking this. It’s funny and sad at the same time, which is impressive.

If you’re okay with The Fault in Our Stars from the beginning, it only gets better. I ended up liking it despite being a little put off by all the DEEP MEANINGFUL PHILOSOPHY that pops up when the characters first meet.

I feel like I should bring up the fantastic Anya’s Ghost again, as I just reread it last night.

It was nearly better than the first time!

I’m also looking to get Daughter of Smoke and Bone from the library tomorrow, which I can’t wait for—I’m a big fan of Laini Taylor’s Dreamdark series, and it sounds like this could very well be better.

Hey, I read that! I remember liking it. The illustrations was what drew me to it in the first place, actually, because they were so cool and interesting.

Just got six books from the library, and they all look really good! Just got started on… The Magnificent 12, which is mostly good. (But I’m only twenty or so pages in.)

Tutoring someone who’s writing a paper on The Hobbit. I really, really need to reread that book!

I envy you, I got a huge stack of books and all of them bombed, except one (it was Pearls Before Swine collection), it’s like watching a race where all the horses make it about thirty yards and then they all break a leg and die at the same time.

Well, first one bombed (humor style was overdone and I found it irritating), started the second one last night and it’s goodish—it’s a very atypical book, barely being a novel, and it’s hard to judge it on regular standards so whatever.

Just as a warning, they’re all kids’ books, ‘cause that’s my preferred age-range right now. Anyway:
The Magnificent 12: The Call; The Exquisite Corpse Adventure; Leisl and Po; A Tale Dark and Grimm; Secrets at Sea; and The Mystery of the Missing Everything.

I believe they’re all in the 8-12 range, and I got them all from the new books section (which seems to extend back two or three years, but whatever).

Hey, I hear ya. Nice find.

Jude the Obscure

Just started Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone. It’s kind of… generic, in many ways, but nevertheless engrossing. I’d kind of forgotten what wishing I could stay up later to keep reading felt like.

That, and Pullman demonstrates a distinct lack of knowledge regarding teh Re4mation and teh workings of teh Catholic Church.

This. If you’re going to write literature undermining the philosophy and existence of a belief system, it usually helps to understand the belief system.

Also, it’s weird having an intelligent book discussion when everything gets translated into “forum speak”.

@Wulf: yeah, there’s a weird disconnect. Reminds me of this one bit from some comedian whose name I can’t remember. It was something like this:

“I wonder what the smartest sentence to begin with the word ‘dude’ is. ‘Dude, these are isotopes.”