<p>no school books allowed!</p>
<p>what are you currently reading?</p>
<p>here's mine:</p>
<p>The Autograph Man -- Zadie Smith</p>
<p>Goodbye 20th Century: The Sonic Youth Biography -- David Browne</p>
<p>I just started The Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson</p>
<p>and I’ve been meaning to read On the Road by Jack Kerouac</p>
<p>Just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and I loved it!</p>
<p>I’m currently reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and it’s AMAZING!</p>
<p>Currently reading Cell by Stephen King. Also, I’ve been meaning to finish reading Freakonomics; it’s collecting dust.</p>
<p>Wicked by Gregory Maguire… technically I’ve already read it, but I decided to re-read it :D</p>
<p>School’s started, so recreational reading is pretty much off the table until at least November (after early applications are due). However, I spent much of the time that I should have been doing college/work things this summer reading instead. A few new ones that I read were:</p>
<p>The Shining - Stephen King (Verdict: It’s basically the epitome of King’s style and preferred story type, and the main character is essentially Stephen King himself - King’s main characters are very poorly disguised versions of himself rather often, but Jack was absolutely blatant. I’d have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t read about eight of his novels in the last six months; my appreciation for him has burnt out. You can only read so much of one author, even if it is The King of science fiction horror himself.)</p>
<p>Rant - Chuck Palahniuk (Verdict: I am an incurable zombie-flick fanatic, and I went into the book thinking that it was about a Patient Zero and the rabies epidemic he initiates. Unfortunately, the epidemic was only touched upon briefly in the book, and it wasn’t even remotely zombie-esque. I did enjoy the first half or so of the book, before Rant goes to the city; the episodes from Rant’s childhood were marvelous and horrible. But when the book transitioned into the city, it lost the impact of Rant’s small-town personal creepiness, and by the end of it the author had essentially abandoned the story entirely and gone on a tangent about time travel and immortality which ran circles around itself and never resulted in any conclusion. There wasn’t really a point to the book, and the clarity that it started out with unraveled steadily as the story evaporated.)</p>
<p>All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot (Verdict: Absolutely wonderful book. It’s a recount of a 1930s veterinarian (the author)'s work and life experiences; it doesn’t pretend to be anything extravagant, and it’s got a very down-to-earth, good-humored writing style. Each of the memoir stories is a little delight, and I was extremely disappointed when the book ended. Luckily, he wrote three more of them, which I haven’t read yet.)</p>
<p>I just finished Freakonomics and The Republic, and I am now reading For Whom the Bell Tolls.</p>
<p>Amy Hempel’s The Collected Stories - basically, a collection of many of her short stories that she’s written in her career. It’s a slow read (she has painstakingly crafts every sentence’s importance), but the stories are amazing.</p>
<p>these are the next few books I’ll read (or attempt to read):</p>
<p>Knockemstiff-Pollock (similar to Chuck Palahniuk, apparently?)
Bright, shiny morning-James Frey (just interested in what it’s like)
Rumors-Luxe Novel-guilty pleasure! hah
Other Queen-Philippa Gregory-love love love OTBG</p>
<p>Armageddon in Retrospect - Kurt Vonnegut
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac</p>
<p>The Communist Manifesto - Marx [really though.]
Wuthering Heights - Bronte</p>
<p>I can’t read much nowadays except my APEH textbook :[</p>
<p>Haunted- Chuck Palahniuk
Watchmen- Alan Moore</p>
<p>Read Watchmen! Even though it’s a graphic novel, the message behind it is amazing. I cannot wait until the movie!</p>
<p>One Hundred Years of Solitude = best book, evar. <3</p>
<p>I just read The World Without Us (Alan Weisman). I’d reccommend it to any environmental-types (or to non-environmental-types, because it will turn you into one). Layman’s science ftw!</p>
<p>I don’t read books. At all. (more like I don’t finish 99.99% of them). I’ve only read 1 book this year and that was 1984 because that was worth it.</p>
<p>I get all my reading done by skimming sparknotes and reading gaming blogs/news, sports articles, etc…and that’s fairly from time to time either. </p>
<p>I probably read as 1/50 as much as any average person on here, without exaggeration. Looking at boring words just isn’t my style. That probably explains why I don’t read very fast…and why I suck at writing as well.</p>
<p>Gone with the Wind. Never seen the movie or read the book, so I figured I should do one.</p>
<p>Anna Karenina
The Audacity of Hope
A Star Wars book</p>
<p>I usually try to read three books at a time, but usually they are in very different genres. The school year is starting though, so I won’t be reading as much now. I do plan on finishing this trilogy of Star Wars books that I’m reading, and I also plan on reading a couple other books by the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.</p>
<p>Lol @ the barack obama book. It seems everyone’s reading it nowadays…I read the prologue/preface/intro? thing and that was enough insight/information about him that couldn’t have been more significantly augmented later on.</p>
<p>what’s freakonomics about? can it be read for pleasure or is it one of those books full of jargon that only economic freaks would understand…? </p>
<p>also can anybody suggest some books that would help with writing style</p>
<p>I just finished 1984. I read it because I loved Brave New World and heard that 1984 was better. Just before that I read Animal Farm because it came with the book that 1984 was in.</p>
<p>Was Brave New World better?
Freakonomics is an economist perspective on a variety of interesting topics from gangs to the KKK.</p>