[ultron87]

One Play Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams The Doll House - Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People - Henrik Ibsen Antigone - Sophocles The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams Our Town - Thornton Wilder A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry Fences - August Wilson Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw

Death of a Salesman is always a great read. Antigone is also pretty good if you like the style of Ancient Greek plays.

[njean777]

Pretty good so far, even though it is considered the worst in the series. I am enjoying it.

[Dresden]

Hey GAF, For my school's summer reading I have to choose one play to read and then either two short books or one longer book. I've laid out all the options below and was wondering if you all had any suggestions. (I can also choose books that are off-list, but they have to be classics of some form) - edit: and as a side note we will also be reading Great Expectations and Oedipus Rex One Play Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams The Doll House - Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People - Henrik Ibsen Antigone - Sophocles The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams Our Town - Thornton Wilder A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry Fences - August Wilson Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw + Two Short Books The Awakening - Kate Choplin Billy Budd - Herman Melville Persuasion - Jane Austen The Turn of the Screw - Henrik Ibsen The Color Purple by Alice Walker Cry, The Beloved Country - Alan Paton Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne The Stranger - Albert Camus Sula - Toni Morrison OR One Longer Book All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner Emma - Jane Austen Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy Moby Dick - Herman Melville Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy Native Son - Richard Wright

All the Pretty Horses (my pick; engaging, romantic, and quite bloody), or Moby Dick (although it is long and a hefty read), imo

As for the play, if you haven't read/watched it, A Streetcar Named Desire would by my choice as there's a Simpsons skit associated with imagery from the Brando movie and you really can't lose out on that.

[TestMonkey]

Currently rereading through the malazan series and novellas.. read the first 7 then stopped due to moving house.. also reading them one after the other... roughly 5000 pages and ongoing now lol just finished now onto

I finished the main series earlier in the year but without the Esslemont books. I plan on rereading the whole thing once Esslemont finishes up which will hopefully be in a year or two. But yeah I have no idea how it's possible to keep the series straight in your head if you take breaks between books.

[CracknutWhirrun]

Hey GAF, For my school's summer reading I have to choose one play to read and then either two short books or one longer book. I've laid out all the options below and was wondering if you all had any suggestions. (I can also choose books that are off-list, but they have to be classics of some form) - edit: and as a side note we will also be reading Great Expectations and Oedipus Rex One Play Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams The Doll House - Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People - Henrik Ibsen Antigone - Sophocles The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams Our Town - Thornton Wilder A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry Fences - August Wilson Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw + Two Short Books The Awakening - Kate Choplin Billy Budd - Herman Melville Persuasion - Jane Austen The Turn of the Screw - Henrik Ibsen The Color Purple by Alice Walker Cry, The Beloved Country - Alan Paton Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne The Stranger - Albert Camus Sula - Toni Morrison OR One Longer Book All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner Emma - Jane Austen Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy Moby Dick - Herman Melville Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy Native Son - Richard Wright

I actually enjoyed Jane Eyre, it was an interesting, easy, and quick read. I'd pick that and Death of a Salesmen

[Cyan]

Death of a Salesman is always a great read.

Hated it in high school. Too much misery, like everything else you're forced to read back then.

I often wonder how many kids get a potential love of reading snuffed out thanks to school.

[Ceebs]

Hated it in high school. Too much misery, like everything else you're forced to read back then. I often wonder how many kids get a potential love of reading snuffed out thanks to school.

I think the worst offender for me was The Scarlet Letter. Fuck not only that awful book, but all the assignments and the way it was taught made me loathe it even more.

Up until that point my school reading list had been pretty good. We did Great Expectations, Of Mice and Men, Ethan Frome, Alas Babylon, and A Tale of Two Cities (with King Lear and The Crucible thrown in for the plays)

[vareon]

Kinda disappointing. The book pretty much only namedrops 80s reference, and the riddles are very shallow even compared to today's ARG.

[Ceebs]

Kinda disappointing. The book pretty much only namedrops 80s reference, and the riddles are very shallow even compared to today's ARG.

My exact thoughts on it. Vastly overrated.

[RatskyWatsky]

Hey GAF, One Play A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams + The Color Purple by Alice Walker The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne OR One Longer Book Moby Dick - Herman Melville

These ones.

[Raika]

Just finished The Hunger Games trilogy. The first two books were amazing and I was hooked throughout, but the final book was rather disappointing. Overall an excellent series to read though.

[Cyan]

Gotta love how everyone gave totally different advice.

[Mumei]

Gotta love how everyone gave totally different advice.

Heh

I liked your advice about Pride and Prejudice since I have an annotated edition out of the library on a friend's recommendation.

[Maklershed]

Hey GAF, For my school's summer reading I have to choose one play to read and then either two short books or one longer book. I've laid out all the options below and was wondering if you all had any suggestions. (I can also choose books that are off-list, but they have to be classics of some form) - edit: and as a side note we will also be reading Great Expectations and Oedipus Rex One Play Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams The Doll House - Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People - Henrik Ibsen Antigone - Sophocles The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams Our Town - Thornton Wilder A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry Fences - August Wilson Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw + Two Short Books The Awakening - Kate Choplin Billy Budd - Herman Melville Persuasion - Jane Austen The Turn of the Screw - Henrik Ibsen The Color Purple by Alice Walker Cry, The Beloved Country - Alan Paton Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne The Stranger - Albert Camus Sula - Toni Morrison OR One Longer Book All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner Emma - Jane Austen Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy Moby Dick - Herman Melville Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy Native Son - Richard Wright

I like your teachers style. Great Expectations and Oedipus were fantastic. And of your choices - for play I say Antigone or Our Town. And the books - The Color Purple and Their Eyes Were Watching God are among my favorites so I say choose them.

[sgossard]

Hey GAF, For my school's summer reading I have to choose one play to read and then either two short books or one longer book. I've laid out all the options below and was wondering if you all had any suggestions. (I can also choose books that are off-list, but they have to be classics of some form) - edit: and as a side note we will also be reading Great Expectations and Oedipus Rex One Play Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams The Doll House - Henrik Ibsen An Enemy of the People - Henrik Ibsen Antigone - Sophocles The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams Our Town - Thornton Wilder A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry Fences - August Wilson Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw + Two Short Books The Awakening - Kate Choplin Billy Budd - Herman Melville Persuasion - Jane Austen The Turn of the Screw - Henrik Ibsen The Color Purple by Alice Walker Cry, The Beloved Country - Alan Paton Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne The Stranger - Albert Camus Sula - Toni Morrison OR One Longer Book All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner Emma - Jane Austen Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy Moby Dick - Herman Melville Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy Native Son - Richard Wright

Read the 2 Hemingway and Camus short books. Both are awesome.

[bengraven]

Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw + Two Short Books Billy Budd - Herman Melville The Color Purple by Alice Walker A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne OR One Longer Book All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner Moby Dick - Herman Melville

You can't go wrong with any of these. I bolded my suggestions, but I also choose any from this shorter list as well.

Also, Great Expectations is one of my favorite books of all time, if not my favorite, so good that you're reading it!

[CracknutWhirrun]

I like your teachers style. Great Expectations and Oedipus were fantastic. And of your choices - for play I say Antigone or Our Town. And the books - The Color Purple and Their Eyes Were Watching God are among my favorites so I say choose them.

I could not STAND Their Eyes Were Watching God

[rocksteady1983]

Finally finished the last Hunger Games book. Just started Stephen King's "Full Dark, No Stars".

[Quote]

Kinda disappointing. The book pretty much only namedrops 80s reference, and the riddles are very shallow even compared to today's ARG.

I agree. I couldn't even finish it because every name drop made me grind my teeth.

[Ceebs]

Just finished Cloud Atlas. I fucking loved it. Sad I did not read this sooner.

Now to go find something super trashy to read.

[SaltyDoughnut]

Wow, thanks everyone for all of the suggestions!

I ended up going with:

- Drama - Pygmalion

- Short Fiction - The Color Purple

- Short Fiction - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

[dr3upmushroom]

Just finished Cloud Atlas. I fucking loved it. Sad I did not read this sooner. Now to go find something super trashy to read.

Not to sound too elitist here, but I have many friends who say the exact same thing and I've never understood this mindset. "Wow, this work of literature was amazing! Now for some genre fiction I've read a hundred times before!" If you appreciated Cloud Atlas, don't you want to read more books like it? I realize you probably go back and forth between silly stuff and serious stuff, I've just never really got what people who enjoy more serious literature still get out of the twentieth retelling of the same bland fantasy/ science fiction/ mystery story.

Had a friend a couple years ago read War and Peace, gush on and on at every opportunity about how brilliant it was for the entire month or two it took him to read it, and after finishing it went straight into some super-generic looking fantasy book. Probably the best example of where I was like "You wouldn't rather look into some of the other Russian authors after this seemingly rekindled your love of reading?"

Anyway, SaltyDoughnut, I'd definitely pick A Farewell to Arms as one of your books, it's a quick read and really good.
Edit: just noticed you've already chosen, A Farewell to Arms is a good one to get back to though.

I'm closing into the end of A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court and it's turned out pretty good. Like I said earlier it's a little preachy, especially in comparison to Huckleberry Finn where all the social commentary is more subtle in its "as seen through the eyes of a child" way. ACYiKAC is at times Twain going on for pages at a time about the virtues of free markets, patents, newspapers, and other things that make America great. The part with the king going out dressed as a peasant was sort of interesting, I assumed it was going to be a cliche thing where he realized the consequences of his ruling style and would rewrite the laws to make everything more equal, but instead even witnessing the deaths of a family taken advantage of by their local lord really had no impact on his views of royal blood.

After I finish that I'm excited to get started on The Long Ships, although I think I might read I Am Legend and reread Cat's Cradle before, I got them on sale on Amazon a few months back and haven't gotten around to them.

[Cyan]

Serious literature is serious work. After one of those, you want a break.

[Mumei]

Not to sound too elitist here, but I have many friends who say the exact same thing and I've never understood this mindset. "Wow, this work of literature was amazing! Now for some genre fiction I've read a hundred times before!" If you appreciated Cloud Atlas, don't you want to read more books like it? I realize you probably go back and forth between silly stuff and serious stuff, I've just never really got what people who enjoy more serious literature still get out of the twentieth retelling of the same bland fantasy/ science fiction/ mystery story. Had a friend a couple years ago read War and Peace, gush on and on at every opportunity about how brilliant it was for the entire month or two it took him to read it, and after finishing it went straight into some super-generic looking fantasy book. Probably the best example of where I was like "You wouldn't rather look into some of the other Russian authors after this seemingly rekindled your love of reading?"

I do what your friend does sometimes (though it isn't getting back into reading for me; just going back and forth), just because occasionally I want to read something I don't need to think too much about and can just enjoy on a base, surface level.

Edit: What Cyan said!

[dr3upmushroom]

Serious literature is serious work. After one of those, you want a break.

Yeah, I can see that. Now that you say that, most of my friends who do that read way more than I do, so I guess I palette cleanse by switching to games or music for awhile instead of reading an "easy" book.

For some reason I can listen to just about any music and enjoy some pretty mindless games, but reading genre fiction has always felt like a waste of time with few exceptions.

[Ceebs]

Yeah, I can see that. Now that you say that, most of my friends who do that read way more than I do, so I guess I palette cleanse by switching to games or music for awhile instead of reading an "easy" book. For some reason I can listen to just about any music and enjoy some pretty mindless games, but reading genre fiction has always felt like a waste of time with few exceptions.

It helps that I really enjoy the trashiest of trashy novels just as much as serious books.

Finally broke down and ordered the Sally Lockheart books from Amazon since it seems they will never get a Kindle release and I have been wanting to read them for some time.

In the meantime I am reading this Graceling book someone posted earlier in the thread.

Also is someone going to make the June thread?

[&Divius]

3rd entry in the L.A. Quartet

[Fritz]

Hey GAF, For my school's summer reading I have to choose one play to read and then either two short books or one longer book. I've laid out all the options below and was wondering if you all had any suggestions. (I can also choose books that are off-list, but they have to be classics of some form) - edit: and as a side note we will also be reading Great Expectations and Oedipus Rex

It's Turn of the Screw by Henry James not Ibsen! But I'd recommend that. It's a chilling gothik novel.

What's the page limit on a short novel? I'd say add something by Chekhov (eg The Shooting Party or The Lady with the Dog) and than read one of the plays by Tennessee Williams, who really embraced Chekhov.

Really just my preferances.

[Maklershed]

Finished Pudd'nhead Wilson and on to No Country for Old Men. I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I'm shocked at how faithful the Coen Brothers were to book when they did the movie. No wonder the movie was so awesome.


No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

EDIT: Ooops just realized its a new month. New thread incoming.

[neojubei]

The doomsday key by James Rollins. Finished reading the last oracle by james rollins. trying to finish up the sigma force books before the new one comes out.

[nakedsushi]

I do what your friend does sometimes (though it isn't getting back into reading for me; just going back and forth), just because occasionally I want to read something I don't need to think too much about and can just enjoy on a base, surface level. Edit: What Cyan said!

I'm the same way. But I do find it jarring sometimes to from wonderful writing (Ishiguro, Nabokov, etc.) to only so-so writing. I tend to do something like literature, highly-rated sci-fi or fantasy, trashy paranormal romance or fantasy, non-fiction, repeat.

But sometimes I get stuck on a trashy trend, especially if it's a series, and I end up reading a bunch in a row.

It is the need to take a break from serious stuff that drives me to it. Sometimes, I just want a cheap thrill, not 300 pages of navel-gazing.

[aidan]

Just for Cyan, I'm currently reading Wards of Faerie by Terry Brooks. I know Brooks doesn't have a lot of fans around these parts, but he's long been a favourite of mine for, alongside Tolkien, introducing me to the Fantasy genre. I went into Wards of Faerie with extreme caution, given the quality of Brooks several most recent novels, but have been pleasantly surprised by the book. It's the best thing he's written in 10 years.

After that, I think I'll move onto:



The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. Recently won the Arthur C. Clarke award.