(Untitled)

[_morbidity]

Hey, now that I don't have rehearsal anymore, I have a lot more time to read.

I recently finished Dreamland in about a day, as per recommendation of insanely_poetic and because it's one of my summer reading books

Comments

[a_hollow_year]

My Antonia sucks except for one particularly awesome story about wolves, but Vonnegut rocks. Which books of his did you get?

[_morbidity]

Breakfast of Champions & Slaughter House-Five. Everything else was checked out.

[a_hollow_year]

Haha, those are only two of his best. If you get a chance, Galapagos and Bluebeard are also quite good. His nonfiction essays are lovely, too (Fates Worse than Death and Timequake - though that's half fiction ^_^ ). BoC is one of my favorite novels of all time. I hope you enjoy it.

[numisma]

Kurt Vonnegut rocks. I have only read Slapstick and part of Slaughterhouse Five, but I instantly fell in love with his writing style.

[insanely_poetic]

Hmmm...I personally disagree with you, but thats probably because understanding the main character came more easier to me, because, well, I just understood. Sure the plot was rather cliche, but I rather liked it. I was probably reading way too into the subliminal text, but because I did it for my novel review, I was forced to cut the book up into pieces and connect the dots. Matching the settings, writing characterizations, the works. One of the bad points was the fact that the writing didn't expand to show the starking change in her character, but she did change, just over such a long gradual period the change was hard to detect. The whole book was centered on cause and effect, and dealing with situations, rather then the climb back up. The thing I find about cliches, is that though they wittle and wittle down at the worth of a scenario, when you take the time to really think about it it you can't find fault in the way their reactions played out. I suppose I'm thinking much more realistically, then fictionally, but thats what I feel

[_morbidity]

Don't feel bad! It's totally all right. I'm a nice person and all, but when it comes to literature, I turn into a completely overly critical, condescending ass. And I would have read it eventually, I'd been meaning to for a while. I totally don't think you have bad literary sense. It's absolutely within the scope of comprehension that you'd relate more to the emotions than the plausibility, and instead of critizing the main character for being stale, kind of adopting her and filling in the spaces. It seemed like Caitlin was supposed to be the reader instead of her own character anyways.

As for the novel, I guess my abhorrence stems from the fact that I felt like I was above it. That sounds so condescending, but that's not the way I mean it. It's like, from the very first page, I could see that everyone was making the wrong decisions. Cass ran away, which was wrong. Caitlin became a cheerleader even though she didn't want to and smoked pot and made out with some random guy, even though all those were wrong. Well at least,

[hardlyfatal]

J'adore Molière. Le Misantrope and Tartuffe are awesome. I also v. much like Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, for sheer slapstick goofiness.

[_morbidity]

Moliere owns. I finished the Misanthrope & Tartuffe in a day. They were amazing.

[yaburetayume]

Any of Margaret Atwood's poetry, Big Mouth & Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates (and also any of her short stories), anything by Mary Stewart, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee, Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle, anything by Dave Barry, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (and you may also want to check out the movie), Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Virgin Blue.
I think those're enough recommendations, don't you?
Sorry to read you didn't like Dreamland. I own it, rather like it, but I can see where you're coming from.

[_morbidity]

Thanks for the recs. I've already read The Lovely Bones. In fact I owned it until a certain someone borrowed it and never gave it back. I didn't like it at all, the ending annoyed me, but that was back in eighth grade, so I might not have been able to appreciate it fully at the time.

I abhorred Dreamland. I ranted about it in a previous comment to insanely_poetic as to why. If you're really curious you can read it, because if I get started on that horrible book, I'm afraid I'll never stop.

[yaburetayume]

*lol* I already read your rant, and you make good points. I'm ambivalent about it. I liked it when I first bought it, though now it's sorta declined to where I just like reading the part where Rogerson loses it in front of her house and her family FINALLY finds out what had been going on. I like that part because, for some reason, I can see it really clearly. *shrugs*
Happy reading!