This weekend I read Sphere by Michael Crichton, I liked it a lot. I thought the suspense was very good and I liked the plot.

I also read Volume 1 of Sandman by Neil Gaiman, the volume is called Nocturnes and Preludes. I liked it a lot.

Now I am going through No Country for Old Men. Liking it so far.

Yeah you're right. It started out talking about people in the 90's -- back story and such -- and I assumed the whole thing was going to be set there.

I saw Sierpinski Triangles as I was scrolling down. Made me smile.

I started reading George Orwell's "A Clergyman's Daughter". It's not the Cosmicomics which I should be reading, but I like it so far.

Andy Beal definitely seems like a very interesting man.

There has been very little on him so far in the book. There was a huge write-up of Jennifer Harman in it. I think the author is pretty sketchy as a writer. There are a few things an editor should have caught, and one paragraph I still remember as being almost impossibly bad.

Poker stories like these are almost always very readable though, so I'm sure the book will be relatively smooth going even if the writer is of middling talent.

What is YA literature?

Also, I read Of Mice and Men by Steinback yesterday. I liked it a lot. I also liked that it was only 100 pages.

Wait until you get to the stuff about Ted Forrest. Pretty awesome stuff. Can't comment on his writing ability as I read it a while ago, but read it fast because it was so fun.

There's just been a bit about him so far. The book starts out on him. Then he wins a couple million in the first round of playing and the book moves on to Harman. I'm hoping there will be some good stuff about Chip Reese.

I would assume Young Adult. I've heard it used before like that, and makes sense within the context of the sentence, but I could be completely wrong.

Diddy is right. YA is Young Adult. I think that most people, including myself, generally refer to is as Adolescent Literature though. Even when I say "YA Lit," I'm thinking "Adolescent Lit." I find it really fascinating because it's interesting to see what sort of things are appealing to teenagers at the time and how authors attempt to appeal to them as well.

Of Mice and Men might be another book I pick up really soon. It's one of the few books that I have here. I haven't read it since high school.

Speaking of, I picked up three Marc Aronson books. He writes these YA books about historical figures mostly, but in a narrative form (and with research). One is on Sir Walter Ralegh and the other is on the Salem witch trials.

My 3 day teaching stint is coming up next week and I still haven't finalized (or started really) on topic ideas. I am going to read these books trying to find out if I can do something on characterization.

The reason I picked Aronson is because he is coming to the local high schools to talk about his writing and try to help kids with their writing, that sort of stuff. Hopefully I can link up something from his work with my lessons.

(My other lessons look like they're about exciting things such as MLA and reliable internet resources!)

I like Steinbeck too, but haven't read that much. Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row is about it. Both great reads.

East of Eden is one of my favourites, fwiw. It's a touch long but doesn't drag too much (there are a few parts where his writing style tires a bit, though, imo, but I think mostly that's just my nitpicking of certain sentences that seem a bit odd) and is very rich in theme. Definitely worth reading if you like Steinbeck. Also, the religious aspects are explained fairly clearly, so a biblical background that goes beyond the basics isn't really necessary.

Edit: First chapter is brutal, though. It gets a lot better afterward.

Grapes of Wrath is amazing...long but very worth it.

Everything. He is one of my favorite authors.

So, I've started The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I'm only a little ways into it but... I dunno, this guy is supposed to be a literary genius? Some of his sentences are very unreadable... they are like half a page for one sentence. Very wordy. Maybe it will grow on me?

I bought the book because it had The Gambler in it, but The Double is first so I'm reading it first. Anyone else read this? Thoughts? Am I just not smart enough? I'm only 30 pages in but that is like 20%.

edit: I mean, compare Dostoevsky's page long sentences with Cormac McCarthy, Steinback, Salinger or Orwell. So much harder to read and seems totally unnecessary. /end rant - I'll slog through it.

MarkD, it is unfair to judge Dostoevsky's sentences as unreadable as he didn't write in English, he wrote in Russian. Maybe the translator is not doing a good job.

I read the Gambler, there should be a thread in the Lounge as it was discussed as the first book in the Book Club. I thought it was okay, didn't seem that great. I haven't much else, but I did read the first chapter of "Notes from the Underground", actually I have read it five times. It is a great monologue.

Fair enough, but it's all I have right? What else can I judge it on? It's not like the translator took a 10 word sentence and turned it into a 200 word sentence with 10 conjunctions and 3 semi colons that weren't originally there.

That's cool about the book club and the gambler. When I get to that story I will have to dig up the thread. Should be interesting. After I finish The Double I will probably take a break from dost and read something else. I have a pile of books to read still, and they will be a bit more enjoyable I think.

Well, different languages have different feels to them and what sounds great in one doesn't often translate well in another language. The translator could make it longer as he could try to express what the original sentence said, sometimes a word in one language cannot be translated in one word and needs several words to translate it. In any case, The Double doesn't sound like one of Dostoevsky's best. His most famous are: "Crime and Punishment", "Brothers Karamazov" which are in a league of their own and then there's like second tier where you have stuff like "The Idiot". Of course I may be wrong as I am going on what I've heard from people I've asked and from reading bits of his biography, but I haven't actually read those books.

I'm rereading From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming for the Nth time...this is a terrific little read. James Bond doesn't even appear in the whole first part, as we're shown how Smersh first identify a good target 'for terrorist attack' and weld each of the parts of the conspiracy together, with the aim to discredit the English Secret Service and kill Bond. The 5th in the series btw, and I'd recommend reading them in turn (like I'm doing).

Casino Royale
Live and Let Die
Moonraker
Diamonds are Forever

It's the names that made Dostoevsky(sp?)'s stuff sometimes so hard to read, for me. Everyone had names that were unfamiliar to me in the first place, but then they had lots of nicknames and pet names, and every character would call the same person by a different name. Sometimes the pet name would be sprung on you without comment, in a scene in a room in which the name could have been applied to more than one person, and then you would only see a particular variation once every dozens of pages or much much more, so there would be very little chance to memorize through repetition. It was catastrophic and a lesson in what NOT to do.

But putting aside that sort of huge pain in the arse, the guy is still well worth reading. He's one of the first people who gave me a true conception of what a literary "masterpiece" was.

What book should I read next? I just finished Tale of Two Cities. I've read almost no "Classic" literature and I'm trying to correct that but hardly know where to start.

Geroge Eliot - Silas Marner
If you want more Dickens, Oliver Twist or Great Expectations
Take your pick of Dostoyevsky - but The Gambler is a good read
Hardy - Tess of the Durbervilles
Lawrence - Sons and Lovers


Seriously, there's hundreds of them.

Thats the problem...

I remember one writer, in his own book on writing, relating the advice he got, which I think is good. He was told, "Read all the Faulkner you can get your hands on, and then read Hemingway to clean it all out of your system."

Understand that it doesn't have to be precisely those people, though it couldn't hurt. But the principle is a good one. To understand certain styles of writing and consciousness, fully exploring and immersing oneself in one extreme and then its opposite can give you a great deal to think about.

Of course, that's geared more toward a writer's perspective, and is a bit meta on the subject of literature, an attempt to pierce to its heart and help derive one's own feelings rather than accumulate knowledge. There's plenty to be said for accumulation too though. Just thought another perspective would also be worth entertaining.

With respect to classics, maybe you can turn to classics of international classics and read the very funny "Don Quixote" by Miguel Cervantes. Or you could read Cervantes' contemporary William Shakespeare. A funny anecdote about these two authors is that they died on the same date (April 23, 1616) but not on the same day because England hadn't changed to the Gregorian calendar, hence Shakespeare died 10 days later. In honor to these greats, April 23 was named the International Day of the Book by UNESCO.