books

[timepiececlock]

Here's a short bit of meme...


top ten books read:

1. Dark Tower Series - Stephen King
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
3. The Hobbit - Tolkein
4. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
5. The Jungle Book (& assorted stories) - Rudyard Kipling
6. Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradburry
7. 1984 - George Orwell
8. The Giver - Lois Lowry
9. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
10. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand (though I'm not finished yet, so it's placed low)

Comments

[dragolyn.livejournal.com]

I've only read The Giver once, but it was the first of those "censorship is the first evil" books (of which there are at least three on my list) I read.

Me too! I think that's why it stands out so much to me. It opened my eyes in a lot of ways- of course, so did 1984 and in a much more evolved, thorough way. Ender's Game is so special to me, like an old friend, LOL. I even named my kitten Ender, once upon a time.

how disgusting is it that in the three books of that type I was forced to read, all the supposed "strong women" were only allowed to be happy when they'd suffered much and were finally "rewarded" through their penitence by getting the forgiveness and love of their big, strong, emotionally fucked up man?--sorry, OT rant.))

Very, very disgusting!!! GRRR arg... it worries me to no end to think of how many kids in high school are made to read books and are influenced by these sort of paradigms at an institutional level. My little sister is 16 and it seems that she and all her friends have fallen for this way of thinking.... of course it's not the fault of their school, but being taught that strong women = women who are subdued by their men really could not help.

I'll have to check out the Stephen King, haven't read that before. Actually, I avoided his work for a long time because of a trauma (watched Pet Cemetary when I was WAY too young for it and never recovered!) but after reading (and loving) his book on writing, I've been wanting to read his fiction. I do love the movie The Stand- have you read the book? I've been wondering how much it differs from the movie. I'm a sucker for those post-apocalyptic stories (happily they abound in fanfic). :-)

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I even named my kitten Ender, once upon a time.

You know, I won't have enough pets in my lifetime for all the names I've got planned. :sigh:

I'll have to check out the Stephen King, haven't read that before. Actually, I avoided his work for a long time because of a trauma (watched Pet Cemetary when I was WAY too young for it and never recovered!) but after reading (and loving) his book on writing, I've been wanting to read his fiction.

I've never read The Stand, or Pet Cemetary. I've read others, including IT, which was phenominally scary but somewhat anti-climactic at the end. Still, very very good. Wonderful use of transitions to flashbacks.

The Dark Tower series is four books so far, beginning with The Gunslinger. It is crucial that you read them in order. They're not SK's typical "horror" books-- they're dark fantasy, with an element of the post-acpocalyptic. They're not quite like anything else I've read, and highly imaginative. Apparently they're also the books that SK receives the most amount of feeedback over.

They're about Roland, and his journey over a dying world in search of the Dark Tower, which lies at the center of all worlds/universes. He's sort of a knight, sort of a cowboy, sort or a lot of things. He's looking for the Dark Tower because something has gone fundamentally wrong with all the universes, and the worlds are slowing dying, and his life's obsession is to find the Dark Tower and fix what's wrong (though he certainly doesn't know what).

Stephen King's first idea for the novels came from the Robert Browning poem "Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower came."