A Summer Reading List, Part 2

Continuing from Wednesday, here's part 2 of my thoughts on all the books I read this summer.

8. Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff

One of my weaknesses is young adult literature. Even better when it's kind of a romance. I can't help it! I've always really liked the way that sort of thing goes. Brooklyn, Burning is a really unique example of YA romance, however, and I really especially loved it. The romance isn't the only point in the book, large amounts of it concerning an arson investigation. Also, the main character's relationships with their parents, peers, and adult friends are very much important parts of the novel. A lot happens in a short space, and it happens really well. Plus, this book just hits a lot of the right emotional chords with me, with a lot of emphasis on music, movies, cities, and poetry. It took me a bit to warm up to everything, but when I did, I found myself engrossed in this book. A wonderful example of young adult, romance, and LGBT literature.

9. Rhinoceros and Other Plays by Eugene Ionesco

When I was in high school, I only ever got to perform in one play. And if it could only be one, I am glad it was Ionesco's Rhinoceros. Avant Garde absurdity about people turning into rhinoceroses? I'd never have looked at it before, but it exposed me to a lot of the things I love in studying literature. Plus it was just a hell of a lot of fun to perform. This was my first time rereading it since then, and it was such an enjoyment. This edition also includes The Leader, which is a lot of fun and not subtle at all, and The Future Is In Eggs or, It Takes All Kinds To Make A World, which is.... weird. But that's the point! Social commentary through batcrap craziness is something we could use a lot more of these days. Worth a read, but not for the faint of heart.

10. Looking for Alaska by John Green

There's that young adult stuff coming up again. This was great. After a long time of being told how awesome John Green is, I finally decided to see for myself. I watched some of his famous YouTube videos, and I really loved them, so it was only natural that I decided to go pick up some of his books from the library. I decided to start where he started, with Looking For Alaska. This is an excellent book. It took me a moment to get into it, because the characters were not what I was expecting. The biggest problem I've often found with YA literature is that my teenage years were rarely like it. But once I got past some of my preconceived notions, I actually found a lot in this book that hit home with me. I'm honestly kind of envious of the way John Green writes his characters: recognizable and consistent, very likeable, but also with a lot of realistic depth. This will certainly be one of my inspirations as a writer.

11. Ballistics: Poems by Billy Collins

My first exposure to Billy Collins was through his appearances on the incredible radio variety show, A Prairie Home Companion. My second exposure to Billy Collins was through his wonderful book, The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems. My third was through so many literature classes. He's a fantastic poet, and he writes meaningful, accessible poems in a literary climate that doesn't like to call someone a true poet unless they deliberately obscure any sense of actual point in smug, jumbled pretense. That might be a generalization, but I assure you, Billy Collins is still a breath of fresh air among a lot of today's poetry. This particular collection does seem much more melancholy than usual, but melancholy has never been something Collins has shied away from. I might not recommend Ballistics as much as The Trouble With Poetry, but I assure you that reading it would not be a mistake.

12. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Well, I can't acquaint myself with John Green without reading his most popular book, now can I? The Fault in Our Stars was one of those books that really appealed to me as a reader and a writer. It has this wonderful focus on literature and the way people can develop personal relationships with books, which probably is a good part of what makes this book so beloved. Besides that, the main characters are very enjoyable, and their unique insight to the nature of mortality doesn't take away any of their familiarity at all. Plus, who can resist a novel that discusses the nature of Swedish hip-hop? (protip: check out Movits!)

13. Happy to Be Here by Garrison Keillor

This is a collection of short stories by one of my heroes: Garrison Keillor, the creator of A Prairie Home Companion. It was something of a slow read for me, as short story compilations tend to be, but I very much enjoyed it. A great mix of subtle comedy, absurd humor, and distinct melancholy fills this volume, just like all the best things Keillor has done. The best stories in this volume are the ones about radio – well, they were to me – but the others are good as well. There's a story that wonders what Washington D.C. would be like if it were more like Hollywood, there's a staff report for the world's least qualified baseball team, and there is a great tale about a young man in a high school punk band as they debate whether or not they should bite the head off of a live chicken. It's a great book, and even if you just read it a story at a time, I recommend it.

14. The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allen Poe

I was browsing the “Last Chance” bargain bin in a Barnes and Noble when I came across this really lovely publication of some of Poe's poems. I really liked the visual style, and I knew I needed to further acquaint myself with this legendary writer, so I picked it up. Though it wasn't the best book I read all summer, and wasn't the best poetry collection I ever read, I still very much enjoyed it. I don't really have much to say about Poe's poetry - I like it, but I'm not in love with it. Besides, what can I say here that hasn't been said much more eloquently by people who studied his work much more thoroughly? I will say that it definitely piqued my curiosity to further experience his writing. And again, it was very attractive, visually.

That's part 2! Part 1 is A Summer Reading List, part 1. Part 3 will be up on Monday!

A Summer Reading List, Part 1

This blog has been a little bit neglected for the past couple weeks, much to my own disappointment. I've just been very busy with preparing for my return to school, and sometimes that got in the way of the writing and updating I've been meaning to do daily. I have been doing it some, though, which I am very glad of. And I know neglecting this won't be a habit; updating this blog and daily reading and writing have been a source of great pride for me this summer. I will continue to do so.

But since summer draws to a close, I figured it would be a good idea to share my thoughts on what I have been reading over the course of May through August.

1. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

I've always really enjoyed Sherlock Holmes since I was a kid. Growing up, I read a short story here or there, watched adaptations on Wishbone, passively enjoyed a weekday morning cartoon that placed him in the 22^nd Century, things like that. And since then, I have loved the BBC's current adaptation, and have found myself pleasantly surprised by the films starring the incomparable Robert Downey, Jr. So this year, I managed to track down a few of the books and read them. Honestly, these two books could not be more different from each other. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of some of the short stories, and each one is quick, direct, and concise. It's not bad, but sometimes it feels like the story ends just as it gets interesting. The Hound of the Baskervilles, on the other hand, wonderfully takes its time. There is a sense of enjoyment that comes from just the nature of the narration, the way words flow together and describe things in such a slow, lush way. This novel definitely takes the reader along with it, which stands in stark contrast to the short stories often featuring an arrest long before most of the evidence is even shown. I did enjoy both books, but it is not a stretch for me to recommend The Hound of the Baskervilles much more highly.

3 and 4. Kingdom Hearts volumes 1 and 2 by Shiro Ama

Not everything I read this summer was high literature. In this case, some of it was a manga adaptation of a popular video game franchise. In this case, it was Kingdom Hearts, a JRPG video game crossover between Square Enix's blockbuster Final Fantasy franchise and assorted Walt Disney films. If that sounds like an odd choice of things to crossover, it is. But the games work well due to enjoyable gameplay and beloved characters. You kind of lose the first half of that with a manga adaptation, though. But I can't really give this much of a review, since manga is a difficult medium for me to really get into. The way storytelling moves along in often cluttered pages is not something I find easy to read, at least when it comes to action series. But fans of the games and manga enthusiasts might have a different take on this.

5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I've been meaning to read this for the longest time, and I am quite glad I did. It was a very enjoyable read. It's always an interesting experience reading something that you know only from adaptations. I was surprised to find that Alice was not as sensible and blameless in things happening as some versions have suggested. Altogether it is a very fun children's book, and it can be read as a very interesting study on post-modernism, regardless of what the original intent was. Hey, I never said I wasn't pretentious.

6. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Though I read a number of good books this summer, if it came right down to it, this would be my favorite of them. I adored this book from beginning to end, and I had troubles putting it down. When the final page ended, I went back and read the publication information, praise blurbs, and every single other word in the book, just so that I didn't have to stop reading it. I could get into the plot, but that would take so long, and there are probably many other places that can summarize it coherently. I can say though that the characters are fantastic, the plot is great, its interpretation of Revelations is really interesting, and it is extremely funny when it tries to be funny, incredibly exciting when it tries to be exciting, and incomparably heartwarming basically all the time. Read it, you fools!

7. The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

This is the seventh book in a series of Japanese light novels that I am thoroughly enjoying. There are actually somewhere around ten books in the series, but they are being officially translated into English and released gradually. In any case, this was probably the best entry in the series since the fourth book. The pacing was good, and I was pleased to see almost every character get some development over the course of the book. A lot of the books will focus on just a few characters, or feature stories that really only develop one, but this novel managed to grow the roles of each main character and even one of the minor characters. A lot of questions are answered in this volume, and more than a few more are raised. This is definitely a great book in a great series.

That's the first seven books on this list, making this part 1 of 3! I'll continue this on Friday.

My Favorite Book

I've had a number of favorite books over the course of my life. When I was very young, it was of course The Tawny, Scrawny Lion, a book I do not entirely recall, but whose naming fits with my brother's favorite book around the same age, The Saggy, Baggy Elephant. Growing up, I enjoyed books by Roald Dahl, especially The BFG, which hit that mixture of childhood whimsy and people dying brutally that really spoke to me as a child. This might have contributed to my discovery of Michael Crichton, whose books I read with great fervor through what most people would consider my middle school and early high school years. Not long after, I discovered the Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card, which despite controversy and declining quality surrounding Card's more recent work, gave me Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead as two of my favorite books of all time.

Throughout the years since, I discovered other books that really stuck with me. Books like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien really resonated with me in high school, exposing me not only to fascinating narrative methods, but also to themes that I might have otherwise never accepted. In college, I have discovered an incredible love for poetry through the works of Langston Hughes and Billy Collins especially, both of whose unique styles I've sought to emulate and learn from. Additionally, books like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa, Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff, and Looking for Alaska by John Green have really rekindled my love for young adult literature.

But throughout all of this, I often forget about what has probably been my favorite book through it all, much like how I often forget that The Blues Brothers really is my favorite movie of all time. When I was around the age of Junior High – I don't recall exactly when – my trumpet instructor suggested I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. He said he thought it would fit with my sense of humor nicely, which was dry, sarcastic and silly as a sort of byproduct of growing up watching a lot of British films that often involved James Bond or the Monty Python troupe.

So I picked it up from a library, and I loved every line of it. I cannot remember finding anything so funny as the first time I read The Hitchhiker's Guide. It really remains an incredible book, a near-perfect blend of hard science fiction elements and mind-bending, absurd humor. Douglas Adams was the master of describing things in terms that are nearly impossible to visualize. A spaceship shaped like an Italian Bistro that can only be seen out of the corner of ones eye. A slender four that prances in the background of one scene. A cocktail that feels like getting bashed over the head with a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick. It's a masterpiece of both classic sci-fi writing and humorous literature at the same time.

The “Hitchhiker's Trilogy” of course contains a total of five books and a short story by Douglas Adams, as well as another novel named And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer. I haven't read this final one yet, apprehension prevents this for the moment. But I plan to after I reread the whole series, which I have just started again this week. Despite my uncertainty, I actually am looking forward to reading it. It would be nice to have an ending to the series that isn't the depressingly bleak Mostly Harmless.

But if you have not read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I cannot think of any excuse for not at least attempting. It's a difficult book, one that can hurt the brain at times, but it is also one of the funniest things ever written, and the series explores a number of interesting themes. It probably is my favorite book of all time, but this is, of course, always up for debate.