Monday, May 05, 2008

Gatsby and my book list

Finally finished off The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most people have to read that in high school but apparently you can get around that at AHS. Anyway I was fascinated by the descriptiveness of the writing. The style was its own entertainment regardless of the story. I should have kept track of my favorite quotes as I went but here's one that stuck out...

Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantlepiece in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair.

So I can cross that one off my reading list. I've got some feelings of inadequacy about how many books I have (not) read so I'm working on that. After failing miserably at matching famous characters with famous books during a trivia contest, I came up with this reading list...

To Read:
Ulysses, James Joyce*
Big Sur, Jack Kerouac*
1984, George Orwell
The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac
Middlemarch, George Elliot
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
The Subterraneans, Jack Kerouac
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Endurance, Alfred Lansing*
*sitting on the shelf waiting for me to pick them up

These were on the list (read 'em):
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
This is probably one of my all-time favorites already. See above.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
I may have read this in the past. I certainly read parts of it but I'm not sure if I ever read it all the way through. Either way it was worth taking off the shelf and getting into. It doesn't need any compliments.

Other books I have read recently:
American Miler: The Life and Times of Glenn Cunningham, Paul J. Kiell
This was given to me by a friend. It's okay. Cunningham is an interesting guy but this book isn't written too well. If you're a fan of track & field I'd recommend it.
A Drinking Life, Peter Hamill
This is a great read. It's very entertaining and certainly made me take a look at my night life, what excuses I make and what priorities I think I should be setting.
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Great stuff. This book made me re-evaluate whether I should be sitting here in this same job and same apartment trying to build some kind of nest or whatever my goal here is...making money? I still don't know but I don't have the balls to quit it all and run off. I think about it sometimes though.

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