<p>So, as we embark upon our summers, any suggestions for my reading list? I thought, who better to ask than some of the most brilliant individuals on the planet - my future fellow Yalies!</p>
<p>Besides, we need more threads on this thing - Princeton is beating us by about a hundred. Chit-chat, guys!</p>
<p>What kind of reading are you looking for? Leisure reading or more serious stuff?</p>
<p>Both!</p>
<p>But here's the range, thus far:</p>
<p>Re-read the Iliad
Finish the Complete Works of Shakespeare (Which means mostly histories - ugh)
The Invisible Man
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
On the Road
Slaughterhouse Five
A bunch more that I can't remember - my list is in the other room</p>
<p>How about you all? What are you reading this summer?</p>
<p>The Invisible Man, like the sci-fi trash one, or Ellison's Invisible Man, like, the best book (ever)? :P</p>
<p>I have a friend who's going to tackle Gravity's Rainbow over the summer.. 'cha, good luck. :P</p>
<p>I probably won't finish all of these, and I'll surely change the list as the summer goes on, but this is my tentative summer reading list:</p>
<p>Louis Auchincloss, East Side Story.
Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Charles Dickens, *Bleak House.
Gioia Diliberto, I Am Madame X.
Alexandre Dumas, *The Count of Monte Cristo.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.
Ada Louise Huxtable, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Henry James, *The Ambassadors.
Henry James, The Ivory Tower.
Michael Kathrens, Great Houses of New York, 1880-1930.
Ayn Rand, *The Fountainhead.
Witold Rybczynski, The Look of Architecture.
Witold Rybczynski, The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio.
Vincent Scully, Architecture: The Natural and the Manmade.
Leo Tolstoy, *Anna Karenina.
Mark Twain, *The Innocents Abroad; or, the New Pilgrim's Progress.
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth.</p>
<p>*The starred ones are the more 'serious' ones that I'm more excited about.</p>
<p>Everyone needs a little Joyce before the head off-try Dubliners, or, if you are ambitious, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or, if you are masochistic, Ulysses.</p>
<p>I'm currently reading Reading Lolita in Tehran.</p>
<p>girl with a pearl earring was awesome, we had it as required summer reading the summer b4 my frosh year of high school</p>
<p>anyone else intimidated by the length of these lists?? im usually lucky if i can squeeze in 5 books in a summer! how do u guys read so much/so fast!?</p>
<p>i seriously am a slow reader tho. i just finished A Civil Action...it was really good but the end was kind of depressing. I thought it'd be all cheesy and everything would settle out nicely like in Erin Brockovich, but it's good that it was realistic.</p>
<p>my <em>goal</em> reading list this summer is (funny how ive started reading almost all of these in past summers and never found time to get into them):
Smart Women Finish Rich
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Dante Club
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay</p>
<p>and I want to start The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and the Da Vicnci Code by Dan Brown to see if they're really as great as everyone says</p>
<p>while we're on the subject of books, for english this year we recently read Toni Morrison's Beloved. I tried, but I just could NOT get into that book, it made me have bad dreams if I read it before I slept. So...i senioritised and didn't read it, but everyone else is like in love with it. I always feel sorta guilty when I can't get into a "classic." Then again it seems like Yale loves James Joyce and i HATED Portrait of the Artist so maybe I'm just crazy.</p>
<p>I just read Portrait of the Artist and Dubliners. Both incredible, although Portrait of the Artist definitely had a stronger effect on me. Wow I love Joyce. On to Ulysses!</p>
<p>Vivaldi, I love you. Bleak House=best book ever.</p>
<p>If you're looking for a weird book, try <i>Invitation to a Beheading</i> by Vladimir Nabokov. It's, um, strange and takes place in a pseudo-reality. Essentially, it's Nabokov's commentary on the restrictive place we as individuals make society.</p>
<p>mmmmm....Portrait of the Artist. I totally concur with tycew. James Joyce is my hero. </p>
<p>A word to vivaldi and anyone else thinking about reading The Fountainhead: Everyone I know who's read the novel (myself included) has either ended up worshipping it (sometimes to a fanatical degree of infatuation), or, like me, abhorring it. My libertarian friend refers to The Fountainhead as "his Bible," which, to say the least, can get a bit disturbing. I'll admit, Ayn Rand can write exceedingly well and she can philosophize to no end, but Objectivism is just too irrational, unrealistic, and dogmatic for my taste. Its worship of capitalism is not my cup of economics. And I hate how Rand seems to view all humans as either true individuals or parasites. And now Ive been ranting for too long so Ill stop there. For cultural literacys sake, read the book if you must.</p>
<p>To end on a happier note, I'm currently reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. And it's amazing.</p>
<p>I recommend:
Lolita
The God of Small things by Arundhati Roy
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus
The Garden of Eden by Hemingway
Nausea by Sartre
The Stranger by Camus
and a contemporary novel that I actually really enjoyed, it's more for leisure than for intellectual stimulation:I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe</p>
<p>Of course Ellison's! And, yes, the book was fantastic. Sorry for the delayed response - I was in Sardinia, Italy. As in, no internet access. Lots of reading time, though!</p>
<p>And thanks for everyone's imput! It's really fun to see what you all are reading.</p>
<p>Poisonwood Bible
Atlas Shrugged (100 pages left!)
Lolita
The Brothers Karamazov
Harry Potter!
I probably won't get through any more lol</p>