Last Book You Read and Your Review of It

[Hot Shot]

Catch-22

Probably the best book I have ever read. This book follows the adventures, or rather misadventures, of a group of enlisted men in a bomber unit. It is very comedic and filled with paradoxes (as you would expect from the title). The author creates many characters who have so many bad qualities but you can't help but like them. And the bizarre and outlandish situations they get in are sooo funny. A fine example of modern American literature. Simply a classic. I would recomend this book to anybody!

[Rye]

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood.

This was... amazing. I feel like this is what more subtle romance & family dramas like Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice and Wuthering Heights are supposed to be like. Compared to really bold and frightening dystopic novels like The Handmaid's Tale and The Year of the Flood, this might seem a little too slow at first, but this story really gripped and rocked me. I think the twists were well done, in that I wasn't surprised (I rarely am), but I just figured out what was going on right before the twists were revealed, so it was satisfying without being too like "I knewwww that already, boring!"

I'm reading Q&A right now by Vikas Swarup. It's so different from the movie, I'm kind of surprised. I really like it though. I'm not sure which I prefer yet since I'm only a quarter into it. This one is a lot grittier, which I like. I really enjoy the writing. It has a simple honesty too it.

[Madame Adequate]

I finished the first of Harry Turtledove's Worldwar books a couple days ago - I found the first two in a charity bookstore in town and snapped them right up.

Worldwar - In the Balance.

It's pretty standard Turtledove stuff; alternate history which focuses pretty much completely on war. This one's a bit more out there than most though, because aliens invade right in the middle of 1942. They are a bit surprised at how we've got radio and tanks and stuff, on account of their probe having seen knights and the like just 800 years ago, which is obviously not long enough to make any advances at all. Anyway, if you like Turtledove I expect you'll like this, and if you don't, I don't think this will change your mind. I will say that he does a good job of getting humor into his work though, both regular and the sort of black humor which sustains a man on the frontline.

[rubah]

while driving, I'm having Kate Rudd narrate The Year of the Unicorn to me. I've read it before, but didn't remember all that happened, but remember enjoying it.

It's nice to see some other regions of the witch world's universe-- the Hounds of Alizon are familiar, and Estcarp gets a few mentions, but the Were-Riders take the stage here. I don't really like the first person style, but Norton uses it quite a bit, and in this format, it's particularly nice-- I can really feel that Kate is Gillan!

It gets pretty stream of consciousness at times, but that usually isn't a big detraction, and overall I still enjoy it

[Clo]

A lot of books!

I read Wonderland by Joyce Carol Oates as the semester ended. I read a short story by her before, and this was my first novel by Oates, and though I really enjoy her writing style, the plot at the end was so neurotic and random it was a bit too much. I kinda want to discuss it with someone, because I know it was all about personality, but the last part of the novel was so bizarre and I couldn't see the point of it. His wife also -- her character before marriage, and the sudden focus on her in the third part of the book where she's near insane -- her character seemed so different, as if there was a completely different person in her place now. I know it's probably commenting on the nature of marriage, but I was so disappointed with how her character turned out. And the she drops off the face of the planet, like every other character. I'll need to try another book by her one day and hope for a better experience.

I had been reading a lot of serious stuff, so I decided to chill after that with a nice Neil Gaiman book, Anansi Boys. It was cute, but I liked the more serious nature of American Gods better, and I still like his short stories better than anything else so far (I think the only work of his I have left to read is Coraline).

After that I read John Green's second book, An Abundance of Katherines, because I loved his first book Looking for Alaska a lot. They're YA books, and I was hoping to use Looking for Alaska one day with a class. Katherines is good -- I enjoyed it a lot, probably just as much as Alaska, though the ending was very abrupt and the main character was a tad bit annoying, though that was pretty much the point. So I dealt with it.

Now I'm reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, because I noticed I had it and it's fairly short. Her writing is so pretty to read.

[Miriel]

I just finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

SOBBING AND CRYING OMG. Tears everywhere.

[Rye]

I seriously love that book. I need to bring it to England and let Huxley have a turn reading it! He was the one who bought it for me at a charity bookshop. <3

I just finished Q&A by Vikas Swarup. This is a first - while I really enjoyed the book, I think I much prefer the movie, Slumdog Millionaire. The writing was great, but I just like the course of events Slumdog Millionaire a lot more. The movie and the book were soooo different.

[Quindiana Jones]

Tiger! Tiger! (AKA (LAMELY) Stars My Destination). Alfred Bester.

My favourite book ever. I've read it roughly eighty-five thousand times, and it's as good as the first time every time. Kinda like yo momma.

[champagne supernova]

Catch-22

Probably the best book I have ever read. This book follows the adventures, or rather misadventures, of a group of enlisted men in a bomber unit. It is very comedic and filled with paradoxes (as you would expect from the title). The author creates many characters who have so many bad qualities but you can't help but like them. And the bizarre and outlandish situations they get in are sooo funny. A fine example of modern American literature. Simply a classic. I would recomend this book to anybody!

I'm glad you like it. I find it great. But a lot of people don't like it for some reason. Maybe try read The Good Soldier Shweik by Jaroslav Hasek (Czech author). He died before it was finished, but Catch 22 reminded me a lot of it.

Oh, random fact, but the phrase Catch-22 actually came about because of this book. Before it was released, if you were in a catch-22, you'd have to give a lengthy description of your situation

[escobert]

I've been reading the Dark Elf Trilogy. Great books so far

[Kirobaito]

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

I had heard so much about Kerouac, and being at least a bastard child of the beat generation, I figured I'd read it. It was easy enough to read, and Kerouac has a good way of turning phrases ("We turned and faced each other at twelve yards, because love is a duel," etc.), but I wasn't exactly wowed by it. Maybe I'll need to sit on it longer, but I don't particularly feel like a more enlightened person for reading it.

[Rye]

I finished Oryx and Crake. It took me kind of a while to read through this - it wasn't a fast pace really gripping read until midway, then it became addictive. I was really impressed by the ending of it.

Currently reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World by Haruki Murakami. I tried this book ages ago and I could not break into it at all, which is weird, because I'm really into it now, I really dig it.

It's a split narrative novel, with the odd-numbered chapters taking place in Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and the even-numbered chapters taking place in The End of the World. In Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the story centers around a man who works as a split-brain data processor for an old crazy scientist who is trying to eliminate sound. In The End of the World, a man who has no memory of his past comes to a Town where he is separated from his shadow and is forbidden to leave, and is made to work as Dreamreader.

[Zeldy]

I've been reading a crazy amount of books recently for my English Literature A-Level xD and so:

F.Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby. I read this book twice last year, but as I failed (well I got a D) the exam this book featured (along with Curious Incident..) I re-sat the paper only last week. Re-reading it a year older, and at my own pace and not 'up-to-speed' with the class, I was able to like it a little bit. Last year I despised this book; but I think that was more how it was rammed down our throats. The book isn't all bad, it's incredibly boring however, still. I was able to get a lot out of it though and ended up really feeling for Gatsby, the old sport, at the end; a question in the re-sit asked me to comment on to what extent the idea of Gatsby's lifestyle being an illusion that.. urm, something to do with human values! It was a super question though.

Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time meh, it's a book I vaguely like. It starts off humourous, through the way the author presents the child as having asperger's syndrome; the obsession he has with prime numbers, his complete attention to detail and the idea of the book being presented as murder mystery novel being told by a 15 year old. Yet it's not humourous, it's rather same'y, and yeah I liked it, it's an easy read but seeing as thought it was for my English, I had to anaylze it and there was NOTHING to analyze. The question was pretty nice again though, commented on the influence a narrator has on the reader.

Shakespeare's - Macbeth My favourite Shakespeare of all time? I think so! IS THIS A DAGGER I SEE BEFORE ME, THE HANDLE TOWARD MINE HAND?! I love this play. Our topic for this book is gothic too, so I can go crazy on the presence of the witches, the duality of Lady Macbeth ("unsex me here, and fill me top to toe with direst cruelty...") the repetition of blood ("will my hands ne'er be clean?"), murder, treachery. Although Shakespeare originally wrote Macbeth as a tragedy it's accidentally incredibly gothic. (Bit of revision there, testing myself on remembering quotes)

Chaucer - The Pardoner's Tale I do not like this. It's in middle English, and I have to remember quotes word perfectly (pretty much) in a closed book exam. HAEEEET.

Finally, Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber I Loooooooove this, it's incredibly gothic and it's simply wonderful how Carter re-inverts innocent fairy tale stories into that of the gothic. I recommend it as a read most indefinitely, I think it's incredibly clever. Written through a feminist perspective, Carter re-inverts stories such as 'puss in boots' and 'red riding hood' to be explicitly gothic; through the sexual connotations and unbelievable amount of gore.

[Kossage]

I finished Tuliholvin alla (Under the Fiery Dome) by Eino Hosia.

It basically set the basics for realistic Finnish war novels (vivid description from a soldier's POV, not overtly patriotic etc.) for years to come.

The story details the battles that took place in Taipale and Vuoksi during the Winter War when the Soviets tried to invade Finland. There's the occasional flashbacks which take place a few months prior in Helsinki where the ominous mood of an impending war are described in a very impressionistic manner. Although there's a narrator (who is basically an author avatar for Hosia), it's more about detailing the experiences of the soldiers as a collective with bits of individual scenes written in. Because of it the story actually becomes quite universal and sucks you into the narrative when you feel like you're out there with the soldiers defending your home.

What I enjoyed in the novel was Hosia's way of writing detailed, nightmarish visions of war. Corpses rise from their graves (thanks to the enemy bombarding the area the soldiers are fighting in), the earth itself is personified as mud becomes symbolic of spilled blood and tree stumps look like skeletons reaching for the sky, the struggle of Finns is compared to the struggles of Jesus etc. Surprisingly enough it doesn't become over the top because everything adds up and creates a very immersive environment in whch you can feel the dread of the soldiers as they fight against all the odds. There are also lyrical, contemplative passages (of particular note is the scene when the narrator visits his brother's grave after the war) which help to balance the nightmarish, apocalyptic visions.

Despite these creepy descriptions the Soviets aren't portrayed as monsters; instead the author sympathizes with them and sees them as people who are forced to follow a dictator's commands. The point of view remains Finnish, though, but it's nice to see that there isn't that much patriotism or demonizing the enemy, so you get a rather interesting story which only wishes to present the horrors of war and their toll on a soldier's psyche.

Overall the novel may not be among the best Finnish war novels but it definitely deserves its place as a trend setter and is definitely worth a read for anyone interested in the psychological side of war (and particularly vivid descriptions of the battlefield).

[Clo]

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

I had heard so much about Kerouac, and being at least a bastard child of the beat generation, I figured I'd read it. It was easy enough to read, and Kerouac has a good way of turning phrases ("We turned and faced each other at twelve yards, because love is a duel," etc.), but I wasn't exactly wowed by it. Maybe I'll need to sit on it longer, but I don't particularly feel like a more enlightened person for reading it.

Aw, I really enjoyed this book. I read it in the heat of summer and it was just perfect, and I wasn't "wowed" but I fell in deep, deep like with Kerouac's writing.