Summer Reading

One thing I love about the summer is getting to read! Which is kind of ironic in a way. But during the school year I am so busy reading books for school, and doing all sorts of other work, I never feel like I have time to read for fun. And furthermore, after reading hundreds of pages of required reading, the last thing I would find pleasurable would be reading anything!

This semester, I kept a running list of books I heard about and wanted to read, and was getting all excited about getting to check them out. However, when I had my purse stolen in NYC, it contained my planner, which contained my list. So, I am back to the drawing board.

Thankfully, there are a million and one books I have found I want to read anyway, and I am a slow reader so, I highly doubt I'll get through my current list.

So, I shall start my weekly book review:

This week I worked a lot, which meant a lot of commuting, hence a lot of reading.

"Naked" by David Sedaris: This is heard about in a book of books to read for every mood, under the category of "books to make you laugh." The Back of the book stated, "Sidesplitting." Maybe it was because I went in expecting a lot, and expecting humor, but alas. I did not let out even a meager chuckle. There was one line regarding rocking crack babies, that I vaguely almost laughed inside, however, it definitely was not a laugh out loud kind of a book. Other than being incredibly disappointing in the laughing category, I overall was not terribly impressed by it. I have heard very good things about Sedaris, but apparently its not my taste. I'll give it one star.



"Running with Scissors" Augusten Burroughs. I have a problem when I read similar books right after one another (as I did with Naked and Running with Scissors which I read within a period of two days.) I wind up merging their content. This also happened when I read 1984 and Brave New World within the same week, I will never be able to keep straight which one is which. Burroughs and Sedaris are two extremely flamboyant authors, which I have no problem with, but at the same time, I have read too many flamboyant author books already, and reading them right after one another was just excessive. Running with Scissors was funnier and generally more of a page turner for me than Naked. I Had previously read "Magical Thinking" which is also a memoir by Burroughs. Frankly, reading two memoirs by the same person is just overkill, unless you REALLY like the person. For me, I wasn't the biggest fan. "Running with Scissors" was interesting, I suppose, but I think I have read too many books with a similar theme/ storyline. Its like how strange and horrible in a humors way can your life really be? I almost just want to read a book about some horribly mediocre person who simply writes about their day to day life for a change. 2 stars.


"A Clockwork Orange" Anthony Burgess. I love weird/ cultish/ horror etc movies. And I was a big fan of the movie. A friend had recently read this and he told me the end was better and strangely more romantic than the movie, so I have been wanting to read it. Burgess likes to make up his own words, apparently they were suppose to be the up-in-coming teenage slang (whether they ever came into vogue or not is unbeknownst to me) but nonetheless, they made the book hard to get into at first, as I was spending half the time trying to figure out what was going on. THe book was seperated into 3 parts. The first part was very hard to get through, due to the made up words. After that it was fine. The story line is of course great, if you have ever seen the Stanley Kubrick movie, its very similar. Overall, it wasa great book, I enjoyed the theme, and I did wind up liking the style of writing after I figured out his language. 3 stars. I do recommend watching the movie first (Which I generally never do), I think it made figuring out what was going on a bit easier. I also read it almost entirely on trains etc. so its possible it would be much more easy to understand if reading it and actually focusing on it more.



"Of Mice and Men" John Steinbeck. A very easy to read Novella, it was only about 100 pages, and its a classic, so I was embarrassed to not have read it. This could be easily read in an hour or two (again i just read it during my commutes, but I finished it in one daysworth of commuting.) Its a sad book, I refrained from crying because I was in public, but its not one of those books to read to put yourself in a good mood. Fine literary merit. 3 stars.

If anyone has any good recommendations (or books for me to borrow :) ) let me know!

good day!