Libertine is a great way to describe it, actually.
[Reply]

Veerry nice. Thanks, man. I'll probably staet one of these in the next couple of days.
[Reply]

McCarthy sounds like he at least deserves my attention for one novel. Thanks for the info, guys. CP has once again given me the hook up.
[Reply]

Exactly! I was assisting an old army buddy with his Intro to Literature class, and reading all the old literature had me wanting to tear my eyes out. Just not for me.
[Reply]

My kid's an English major and she's the same way. Balked really hard having a Shakespeare requirement too.
[Reply]

If you want to ease your way into 'classic' literature, Dickens is your surefire route. Ripping great plots, tons of social commentary, and it's told in a manner for the short attention span [relatively, for the time] of the newspaper reader, as many were published in installments in British papers.

More substantial than today's 'trashy paperbacks' less dense than hardcore old-fogey lit.

A Tale of Two Cities
David Copperfield
Bleak House
Our Mutual Friend

You can't go wrong with any of them.
[Reply]

I read David Copperfield summer 2012. Dickens can run on too and be excessively wordy though his characters are great. Still love some of his stories. Not so much—Hard Times tho'. My favorite so far out of four of his is Oliver Twist. I love little Oliver though things can get overly weepy and sentimental in parts.

I plan on reading his Great Expectations next.
[Reply]

Gregory Maguire's Wicked series is a decent quartet as well. Retelling Baum's Wizard of Oz through alternative eyes and sensibilities.

Competent and clever enough to be considered literature, breezy enough for summer reading.


[Reply]

I saw "Wicked" on stage. Loved it. It was a prequel to the Oz story.
[Reply]

Originally Posted by :
On a dark road deep inside Russia, a young American tourist picks up a most unusual passenger - a U.S. POW on the run with an incredible secret to reveal to an unsuspecting world. The secret concerns "The Charm School", a vast and astounding KGB conspiracy that stands poised against the very heartland of America.

Arrayed against this renegade power of the Soviet state are three Americans: an Air Force officer, who will fly one last covert mission into the center of a mad experiment; an embassy liaison, who will have her hopes for a saner superpower balance brutally tested; and the chief of the CIA's Moscow station, who will find his intricate dance of destiny and death reaching its devastating conclusion.

amazing book. You will feel like you are in a movie reading this novel.



[Reply]

Just finished Seveneves, Neal Stephenson's latest. I love the guy's writing, so I loved the book. Basically, an "agent" (in the scientific sense of something that acts on something else), destroys the moon. The first half of the book is about humanity's struggle to survive and colonize space from the resultant catastrophe. The second half of the book is set 5,000 years in the future as humanity has become 7 distinct races attempting to recolonize Earth.

If you know anything about Stephenson, you know what to expect. Lots and lots of heavy scientific theory and sometimes tedious explanations of everything from gravitational circles to algae formation interspersed with fantastic action sequences.

I did find the structure of the book to be a little uneven, wishing that more time were spent on the second half and less on the first half. Still, it's a great read.
[Reply]

Y'all got your copy of Go Set a Watchman?
[Reply]

Go with Choke first. Damn good book. I've got a signed copy of it.
[Reply]

I finished David Baldacci's The Innocent last week. Really good

A friend told me I had to read Ready Player One so I downloaded it while on my trip without reading any reviews/synopsis. It seems to be aimed at teens which I didn't realize but is ok. I'm not real far in but so far it seems like a Willy Wonka ripoff moved to a new locale.
[Reply]

If Willy Wonka were full of 80s and nerd culture video game references, I guess. That books is the tits.
[Reply]