Saturday, May 22, 2004

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Thanks for the suggested Summer Reads y'all.
My two favorite web people (what?) gave such differing suggestions, I'm going to have to check out everything. To the e-mailer that offered to mail me her/his collection of romance....Not this summer, thanks though.
My mother would read to us from the collections in the Children's Worldbook Encyclopedia when I was very small. When it was my turn to choose (which was often because I was the baby and got my way) I always chose "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.
My sixth grade teacher (thanks Mrs. Scott) read "A Wrinkle In Time", by Madeleine L'Engle, aloud to us.
The following summer I noticed and, subsequently devoured, four books my dad had bought for a college course.
The Scarlet Letter
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451
Anthem
The same book, 32 years later.
An alternate universe opened up to me and the library became my favorite place.
It drove my mother nut's. She hated my reading all the time and said I was boring.
I wish I'd been one of those people that kept a running list of every book they ever read.
I have actually bought books and gotten a couple of pages in when I realized I had already read them.
Very disappointing.

A few I still remember reading.
Everything Kurt Vonnegut but Timequake
Everything John Irving (Except the autobiographical wrestling stuff)
The whole week with Rabbi Small
Margaret Atwood, Anne Tyler, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, George Eliot, Dickens, Barbara Kingsolver.
To me, Joseph Heller was a one hit wonder with Catch-22. Let me know if you found different.
Likewise with E. Annie Proulx (so far). The Shipping News is one of my top 5 but nothing else she has written came close.
A Soldier of the Great War was a good book.
Boy's Life
Al Franken is a hero to me. He watches the Wingnuts, he make note of every inane thing they say and do, and he calls them on it.
I didn't finish school so I've felt obligated to try to read everything in the "Classic Literature" section of the library. Most of it was not wasted time but I never enjoyed Hemmingway or Faulkner. Jack London doesn't do it for me and I don't know why but I can"t get past the 1st couple of pages of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : An Inquiry into Values". Maybe it's because the guy that says I have to read it, voted for Bush.
I haven't read any Harry Potter but I want to save it till Vincent is older.
We read Goodnight Opus a lot now.

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