@pherai : That book is awesome. I recommend watching the movie adaptation also. Henry Fonda was awesome as Tom Joad. They changed a few things in the end but the gist of it is still there.
Rioting Soul: The world is your oysters man! There has to be something out there that you can devote into. Don’t let yourself stop yourself from doing the things you like to do or need validation from others. No one else can make you truly happy except yourself. For me, reading scifi stuff is awesome because it just opens my mind of the different possibilities out there and expresses just how imaginative writers can be :tup: .
I have the opposite happening, I used to hate reading back in high school. I remember reading cliff notes instead of finishing book assignments such as Clockwork Orange and Fahrenheit 451 but when I went back and re-read them post-college years, it was awesome! I think the only book assignment I actually enjoyed was Flowers for Algernon mainly because the main character was banging broads left and right mid-way to the story and the diary-style writing was neat.
@"Rioting Soul" That’s the brilliant part of it all; I personally have strong powers of complete apathy if I have to invoke that, but the problem is that it doesn’t totally “switch off”, to put it one way. I know the feeling.
And so does Holden.
Don’t worry about it too much; you’ve got time, no?
Looking for book(s) that have strange yet interesting worlds that involves really odd monsters/creatures of some kind. If anything, possible a story about how a normal person found such a strange world, and is trying to coop with it.
I finished reading the Flamethrowers. A REALLY good book, imo. It kept me locked in because of so much motorcycle usage. It’s later dropped to deal with NY during the 70s, how artists behaved then, what constitutes art, the main character trying to find a reason to be who she is, a rich boy fighting to keep his freedom while being roped in by his rich family history, and Italian unrest after Mussolini. I recommend this book to anyone. It’s an easy read and very captivating once they stop going to the dad’s point of view, which I didn’t give a fuck about.
I’m reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections right now. In eight pages I was sort of over Franzen’s style of writing, but I’m 100 pages in and I’m enjoying it a lot more.
I just finished “Devil at my heels: A Heroic Olympian’s Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II,” by David Rensin. This book was written by a different author, and I enjoyed it much more than the Laura Hillenbrand version. She just rambled too much and focused too much about the POW’s emotions, but that is one reason that I rarely read female authors, particularly contemporary ones.
I’m starting Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and after I finish that I will tackle War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I have already read the Count of Monte Cristo, Don Quixote, and War and Peace usually rounds out most classical top 3 lists. I’m just going to read it in sections, I have heard it is quite a grind.
Went for Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (non-fiction/pop-psycology?). His books have always been a bit hit and miss for me, depending on what he chooses to study.
In Outliers he pretty much puts together a bunch of case-studies proving that there’s no such thing as a naturally talented person. He studies everyone from ballerinas, to virtuoso musicians, to pro ice hockey players, to The Beatles, to the likes of Bill Joy and Bill Gates, proving that it’s mostly a combination of timing and your environment. Puts together a pretty solid argument too.
Really odd, but really interesting.
The Stand has been on my reading list for years, as has the Dark Tower series. Never gotten round to reading any King stuff.
@Valaris My reading list since January (mostly Audible due to driving). All quite mainstream stuff, but until this year I hadn’t picked up a book since college.
[details=Spoiler]The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - James Thurber
Ender’s Game - Orson Card (A Live, full-cast audio enacted version, highly reccomend)
One Summer - Bill Bryson
Consider The Lobster - David Foster Wallace
Consider Phlebas - Iain M Banks (RIP, favorite author)
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchet
Reamde - Neal Stephenson
The Book of Five Rings - Miyamoto Musashi (read this in college, along with Tsunetomo’s Hagakure, but found a great audio version narrated by Scott Brick, probably my favorite narrator)
The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchet
Dune - Frank Herbert
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Quarry - Iain Banks (same author as Iain M Banks, but separates his fiction from his Sci-fi with the letter M)
Dangerous Women - Compilation of short stories inc George RR Martin and Claudia Blak
Pimsleur Japanese Phase 1 (great language vocab courses)
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
World of Warcraft: War Crimes - Christie Golden
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself - David Lipsky
Attack on Titan book 1 - Hajime Isayama (Manga)
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Battle Royale Slam Book - Compliation
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell[/details]
I haven’t read this essay specifically but I’ve read “Borges on the Couch” and “Federer Both Flesh and Not” and they were easily two of the best things that I’ve ever read.