Love is a Dog From Hell- Charles Bukowski

I'm also writing a book of poetry. Does that count?

Just finished [i]The Kite Runner[/i]. It's the first book I had to read for school that I actually took the time to read AND took a break from Pokemon Diamond.

Too bad this is the last book I have to read in high school.

I thought this might be a good place to ask for some advice on a book.
I have to find a novel for English, and I have to finish it in a week tops.
I like mystery, and some of the less far-fetched fantasy, but I'm fine reading anything with an interesting story and good plot.

The Great Gatsby. Considered an "AP book," and it's a really good read.

[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031231261X/sr=8-3/qid=1155956166/ref=sr_1_3/102-4992599-9440111?ie=UTF8]This.[/url]

[quote="Marekenshin"]The Great Gatsby. Considered an "AP book," and it's a really good read.[/quote]

hated that book, along with most of the "classics." I can't really think of any off the top of my head that you'd like, cause i rarely read mysteries, but Neuromancer, by William Gibson, does have some mystery elements, but it's one of those cyberpunk 80s novels. Damn good writing, though. I'll try to think about it over the next couple hours

Neuromancer's good, but I find it's a slow read. Maybe just the pacing.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke was pretty good and short, if my memory serves me. A bit more out-there sci-fi though.

Over the summer, I'm thinking about just going to the local library and reading say.. an hour a day there or so.

Some books I intend to check out:

Slaughterhouse Five
Breakfast of Champions
Catcher in the Rye
1984
Animal Farm
Cat's Cradle

and -=maybe=-

King Lear

ugh. george orwell belongs in school curriculums, and only there.

Not rly. 1984 is really good.

also, Breakfast of Champions is funnier if you've already read a lot of Vonnegut books.

I'm currently reading Sirens of Titan by mister Kurt V.

[quote="discovolante"]Love is a Dog From Hell- Charles Bukowski

I'm also writing a book of poetry. Does that count?[/quote]
Oh snapes. PM me some of your poetry, or post it or somet'ing, please.


I just finished More than Human. I had previously read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein before that. I'm not sure which book I should read right now. I'm debating between Bram Stoker's Dracula, Franz Kafka's the Trial, or Dostoevsky's the Brothers Karamazov. I want to check out the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and also that Kite Runner book. I have some non-fiction books I should probably read >_>;

I go to the library's used book store weekly and buy some books for like 35-50 cents each. I usually get 6 a week. I've gotten two psychology text books (most expensive one was 50 cents and they're like REAL textbooks), a Western Civilization textbook, textbookish type thing of writings for and against communist countries, Dracula, Frankenstein, 4 sci-fi novels, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Brothers Karamazov, a German Dictionary, two German how to speak books, about 6 Italian how to speak books, an Italian workbook, a Russian how to speak book, a Vietnamese children's book, a Vietnamese philosophy book, a Finnish philosophy book (This was the only Finnish book they had XD ), two German novels, and some other books that I'm blanking out on.

Moral of the story: Go to your local library. Check if they have a used book store. Check it out Buy buy buy buy buy.

[quote="Joyeuse"]Neuromancer's good, but I find it's a slow read. Maybe just the pacing.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke was pretty good and short, if my memory serves me. A bit more out-there sci-fi though.[/quote]

due to finals week i never saw this post. But i dunno, childhood's end was actually a slow read for me, i have a book of all arthur c clarke's short stories and love most of those, but this was the first novel of his i read and found it kinda boring.

as for what i'm reading currently, it's a mix. In the past week i read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, Camoflauge by Joe Haldemann, and also re-read The Forever War by Joe Haldemann, which is by far the best of those three books. Otherwise, been trying to plow through Haunted by Palahniuk and The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I read a lot :-/

Well, first thing this morning, I had to go pick up my diploma at school at nine, so when I got back home, my mom was just like, "So, what're you going to do today?"

I wasn't really quite sure so I just said, "Well, I'm thinking about going to the library and just hanging out there and reading for maybe an hour or two." (I think it's a good idea like I said in my other post.) But it was only like 9:30 and the library doesn't open until noon.

My mom was just like, "Oh, anything else?" I shrugged and had an idea about heading over to Borders, so I vocalized it. She said that'd be fine so we went (basically as a graduation treat, I gather) to Borders. I noticed the seventh Harry Potter book can now be reserved and shiz. (Hint: Harry and Snape die.) Looked to see if Robert Jordan's got his twelfth book out yet, to no avail, so I headed to the literature section to look for one of those books I'd been intending to read.

Browsed around, looked at Catcher in the Rye, but nothing was printed on the back cover and I didn't just want to jump into a book knowing nothing beforehand, so I walked over to the Vonnegut section and looked at the back of Slaughterhouse V. It looked kind of intimidating, and it appeared that it'd be a good idea to have at least read some of his other books first, and on the back it said Cat's Cradle established him as a "true artist" (which I remember looking at his Wikipedia entry, he graded his book in retrospect and gave himself an "A") so then I looked at the back of Cat's Cradle.

"Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features [b]a midget as the protagonist;[/b] a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an incredible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat's Cradle is one of this century's most important works...and Vonnegut at his very best."

It had me at "a midget as the protagonist" . Anyway, I cracked it open and the first few pages were just like, "Wha?" but after you get into the story (fairly quickly) it's hilariously awesome. I'm not that far yet; I just finished chapter 29--the one where the author visits Dr. Hoenikker's tomb.

I won't do justice describing the scene, so I'll just type it out to illustrate how hilarious Vonnegut is.

There was one more thing I wanted to do in Ilium. I wanted to get a photograph of the old man's tomb. So I went back to my room, found Sandra gone, picked my camera up, hired a cab.

Sleet was still coming down, acid and gray. I thought the old man's tombstone in all that sleet might photograph pretty well, might even make a good picture for the jacket of [i]The Day the World Ended[/i].

The custodian at the cemetery gate told me how to find the Hoenikker burial plot. "Can't miss it," he said. "It's got the biggest marker in the place.

He did not lie. [b]The marker was an alabster phallus twenty feet high and three feet thick. [/b]It was plastered with sleet.

"By God," I exclaimed, getting out of the cab with my camera, "how's that for a suitable memorial to a father of the atom bomb?" I laughed.

I asked the driver if he'd mind standing by the monument in order to give some idea of the scale. And then I asked him to wipe away some of the sleet so the name of the deceased would show.

He did so.
[b]
And there on the shaft in letters six inches high, so help me God, was the word:


MOTHER[/b]


Out of context it may seem like a whole bunch of wtf, which it is, but I definitely highly reccommend this book so they can too appreciate its greatness.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I left out that I picked up an Ultimate Japanese book Beginner-Intermediate. It looks pretty compromising, but I haven't really looked into it in-depth yet.

[quote="h2orowe"][quote="discovolante"]Love is a Dog From Hell- Charles Bukowski

I'm also writing a book of poetry. Does that count?[/quote]
Oh snapes. PM me some of your poetry, or post it or somet'ing, please.[/quote]

http://artfagmcgee.deviantart.com

Though now I'm writing that book as well as a novel, which is sounding as fantastically insane as the book Blank described above. Should be interesting.

the quest for enlightenment, bhaktivetivedanta swami prabhupada

yeah i'm going through some kind of quarter-life crisis or something. i've known some vedantans in my time though, and they were all nice people? *shrugs* (hint: vedantans are just a chapter hinduism, so unless you consider hindu a cult...)