Books; sweet Lord it's been a long time since I've posted
The quick sum up with a yadda, yadda, yadda here & there: was a mathematics major this semester until last week about; have switched back to the English lit. because I decided I didn't want a career in math (not that a math B.S. would require that, of course, but you know..) I'm taking my math and physics courses in stride now that they'll be counting as mere electives.
It's been getting cooler (and pleasant to begin with), and I've been wearing long sleeves to superstitiously coax the weather along.
My workload (& extra curricular obligations) has helped me to avoid reading or hearing about the upcoming presidential race; I think it's a really interesting election (unlike, say.. Dole v. Clinton (if you're my age, try to think of Dole's VP/running-mate..)), I just don't think I have a great personal interest in it. I don't have a set opinion on so many of the 'key' issues, and not because I'm not informed but precisely because I am informed (and I don't mean that in a cynical way). Another reason to avoid all of it for the time being is that despite all the chatter and movin' & shakin'.. nothing is going on. It's more or less like a soccer match. There's a lot of jogging, there're some penalties, there are some last minute substitutions & then one team wins, often 1-0. And arguably it's their win because their team has the money to afford the best players (why the Irish never have good clubs; all the promising micks go abroad for the check), arguably. Come to think of it, watching the networks on an election night is a lot like watching a good sporting event, just more epic: it tilts one way, it tilts another, passions are flying all over, you've got Tim Russert with his play board over here, you've got assistant coaches for one of the teams over there, people who support the same team get together and watch and yell. I think most people who are really committed to one political side/ideology or another have made a decision of faith in their team. Now, when the time comes, I will in fact have to decide who I think will be the best head of the executive branch for our nation and the world (because, no, I don't believe in not voting (though it is a tempting belief)). I'll have to make a more in depth political post/think some more in depth political thoughts in the days to come to clarify because I'm not as cynical as all this lets on.
Bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities *
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad*
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales *
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune *
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Bastard out of Carolina
It's been getting cooler (and pleasant to begin with), and I've been wearing long sleeves to superstitiously coax the weather along.
My workload (& extra curricular obligations) has helped me to avoid reading or hearing about the upcoming presidential race; I think it's a really interesting election (unlike, say.. Dole v. Clinton (if you're my age, try to think of Dole's VP/running-mate..)), I just don't think I have a great personal interest in it. I don't have a set opinion on so many of the 'key' issues, and not because I'm not informed but precisely because I am informed (and I don't mean that in a cynical way). Another reason to avoid all of it for the time being is that despite all the chatter and movin' & shakin'.. nothing is going on. It's more or less like a soccer match. There's a lot of jogging, there're some penalties, there are some last minute substitutions & then one team wins, often 1-0. And arguably it's their win because their team has the money to afford the best players (why the Irish never have good clubs; all the promising micks go abroad for the check), arguably. Come to think of it, watching the networks on an election night is a lot like watching a good sporting event, just more epic: it tilts one way, it tilts another, passions are flying all over, you've got Tim Russert with his play board over here, you've got assistant coaches for one of the teams over there, people who support the same team get together and watch and yell. I think most people who are really committed to one political side/ideology or another have made a decision of faith in their team. Now, when the time comes, I will in fact have to decide who I think will be the best head of the executive branch for our nation and the world (because, no, I don't believe in not voting (though it is a tempting belief)). I'll have to make a more in depth political post/think some more in depth political thoughts in the days to come to clarify because I'm not as cynical as all this lets on.
Bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities *
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad*
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales *
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune *
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Bastard out of Carolina