It's vaguely hysterical that this is really exciting to me.

[beatriceeagle]

I got my summer reading list for English today.

Required: The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard.

And then I have to choose two of these:

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
The Scarlet Letter
The Kitchen God's Wife
My Antonia
The Sun Also Rises
The Grapes of Wrath
To Kill a Mockingbird
Intruder in the Dust


I've already read To Kill a Mockingbird, and of the others, I'll probably read Grapes of Wrath or Scarlet Letter, because I've been planning on both for a while, and this is as good of a chance as any.

Actually, it'll almost certainly be Scarlet Letter, because I know where my copy of that is.

Yay for summer reading.

ETA: So, according to the comments, My Antonia is both excellent and horrible, the Grapes of Wrath is mind-numbingly boring, well written, and interesting, and the Scarlet Letter...is not worth commenting on, apparently.

I love people. XD

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I vote for the Willa Cather. That's an *excellent* book.

[seraravi.livejournal.com]

Well, unless you're exceedingly patient and a HUGE fan of nature and imagery, I'd go with The Scarlet Letter. I read The Grapes of Wrath for Senior English, and it was just one of those books that you can appreciate being very well-written and still be bored to tears. It's 600 or so pages (ordinarily I love long books), in which nearly every other chapter has none of the story's characters in it (and instead are about things like car sales, dust, and turtles crossing the road). It moves very slow, very little is accomplished, and there's a little more character drop-off than I like (not so much death, as wandering away into the forest, getting arrested and disappearing for large chunks of the book, and other such exits). I don't know, some people love it, but I just couldn't get into it. But maybe that's just me. And I'm the kind of person who was driven batty by the author of Brave New World seeming to change his mind several times throughout the book on who the main character should be; Our Town's final act because it completely abandoned the characterization and feel of the first two acts; and the fact that Herman Melville, upon deciding that Ahab was more interesting than his current protagonist, decided to just kill him off and go from there with Ahab rather than, I don't know, editing the book. So truthfully, I was probably a little more bothered by the freqent abandonment of the characters, both in chapters and in character exits, than most would be. Plus, I sort of burned out on long paragraphs of nature imagery after reading so much of it in other books. I think I'm still recharging. It is one of those books everyone should read though, or so they say, and at least Steinbeck can write. I may have just been burnt out from all of the Romantic Poetry we analyzed in preparation for the AP test (which paid off got a 5 on it).

I loved To Kill A Mockingbird, though. I've read it two or three times. The Fredrick Douglass one I also read twice (once for my Freshman English and once for a research paper), and it's actually not too bad as far as autobiographies go. Shortish, pretty straightforward, fairly easy to read, and actually sort of interesting. Of course, I did a whole research paper on him, so I'm kind of biased.

I haven't read The Sun Also Rises, but I have read Hemmingway before. He tends to write in huge run-on sentence paragraphs, and he somehow manages to be very to the point despite having a decent amount of nature imagery, or at least he was in Farewell to Arms. He didn't seem to be big on delving very deep into emotions or internal struggles, at least in that book, and kind of just stuck to the facts and actions and let people interpret them how they'd like. There was still a good deal of relationship stuff, but a good portion of it would be like observing people rather than looking into their heads and emotions. My English Teacher didn't like how he wrote women, and said it annoyed her that most of his books seemed to be about people going around and getting drunk. Still, I'm just going off another Hemmingway book, since I haven't read that one. And none of that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just what it is.

Of course, you're taking this from a person who loved Catch-22 once she made it through the first few chapters and "got it" (about half the class hated it), has read TKaM about 3 times, enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities and Hamlet when much of the class hated them, and was absolutely fascinated by The Things They Carried. I actually enjoyed most of what I read, I just tend to be bothered by character-related stuff. Which is funny, because the fact that just about everyone in Hamlet and Catch-22 dies didn't seem to bother me. I guess it's when I feel characters are just being abandoned or ignored for long, or are thrown in there for no real reason. Being so character-focused isn't always a good thing.

Not that, you know, you asked for opinions about any of those books or anything. I'm a Lit/Creative Writing major. People mention books or writing, and I just can't help myself sometimes.

[beatriceeagle.livejournal.com]

XD That's okay, I understand. My piano teacher periodically tries, unsuccessfully, to get me excited about composers, but then we'll get onto a book discussion and I won't shut up.

As for Catch-22, I need to read that. It was on the reading list for the other English class, and I was excited because I thought it was a perfect chance to read it, and then I realized tha tit wasn't my list.

I'm going to read Grapes of Wrath eventually -- my dad loves Steinbeck, so he'll make me read it at some point, if nothing else -- but I don't think this summer. I did like Of Mice and Men, though.

All I've read of Hemingway is Old Man and the Sea, and that was years ago.

[beatriceeagle.livejournal.com]

I will take that under consideration. I read the first chapter of O Pioneers! last summer and liked it, but something got in the way of me finishing it. (I don't remember what.)

[seraravi.livejournal.com]

Most people seem to either love or hate Catch-22. The first three chapters or so, I was completely overwhelmed and confused by a gigantic surge of characters who all seemed to be really weird and often had equally weird names, and nothing was making any sense, and everything was contradicting itself. I just shook my head in frustration and thought what the hell? Then, around chapter 4 or so, it suddenly clicked. The fact that it is completely ridiculous and confusing and contradictory is the whole point of the book, so that it makes you see things in a completely new and altered way, and kind of makes you see some truths about things if you look at it right. Once I realized that, and embraced the fact that it was completely random, nonsensical, and unrealistic, I absolutely loved it. If you eventually get all that, and if you get its sense of humor, it's actually quite funny. It's the only book I've read where they kill off most of the characters (and there are SO MANY. The body count, like everything else, is rather ridiculous and exaggerated), but I don't end up depressed or frustrated, even though I end up caring about a good number of them. It's a book that should be utterly depressing, but it's so ridiculous and amusing that somehow, it's not. When it gets closer to the end, it intentionally allows how terrible and hopeless it is start to hit home, which is actually a good thing, because it lets the end of it have a weight and meaning it wouldn't have had otherwise, and it manages to sort of pull you back up in the end. Like I said, you either get it or you don't. If you don't, and you don't have the right thought-process/sense-of-humor for it, then if would be incredibly frustrating and unappealing, and you'd hate it; but if you do, it's awesome. The class was about 50-50.

And I do agree that you should read TGoW eventually, and it is very well-written, but I would advise you wait until you have time to take it slow and go at the slow pace it wants to take you, and don't read it when you're feeling antsy or impatient. You really have to be in the right frame of mind for it, and have the time for it. Having to read it in two weeks is not a good way to get the most out of it, as it wasn't meant to be read like that. If you try to slog through 50 pages a day, and those are a slow 50 pages, it can get a little frustrating and boring. Of course there were days when I didn't get around to reading, leaving me 50 pages to make up every time. I think as long as you take it slow, and don't have to rush it for school, it would read better.

I never got to read Of Mice and Men, but my sister did, and she really liked it. I hear the pace is quicker, and it's a little more to the point. Most people I talk to like OMaM. Why do I abbreviate everything?

Glad to hear that I'm not the only literature nerd here. Though, with the way you write, it doesn't surprise me :D

[petitecrivan.livejournal.com]

Don't read Scarlet Letter. Read My Antonia. I haven't read it, but I heard it was good.

[airriphlyer.livejournal.com]

I tried reading My Antonia a couple years ago and couldn't get past the first twenty pages or so. Of course, that was a year or two ago, but still. It was horribly boring. D:

Grapes of Wrath, which I began last month or so, seemed interesting and yet, at the same time, also mind-numbingly boring. *shrug*