[▲.]'s Reading List for 2010.

2009-12-12 [Easterling]: Ohhh... I have read Blindness..! I won't say anything about it yet, but it's going to be interesting to see your opinions about it afterwards. If you write a review. :)

2009-12-13 [▲.]: I will write a review. I've already read pieces of the novel and I like it very much. I can't wait to read it for soaking it in and then to write a review on it.

2009-12-13 [Easterling]: Ok. Good luck! :) I can't wait to get started either. I always want to start as soon as possible when I've decided to do a challenge. (Then in the end I tend to save everything to the last minute... but in the very beginning I'm excited. xD)

2009-12-13 [▲.]: Very exciting, isn't it? I can't wait!

2009-12-14 [member181737]: Kesey, Jane Austin, and Huxley--Solid Reading list :)

I recommend Faulkner, Wordsworth and F. Scott Fitzgerald if you haven't already indulged.

2009-12-15 [▲.]: F. Scott I've been thinking of. Wordsworth... not sure I have any around here...

2009-12-15 [member181737]: They’re all great writers, some more so than others. If you look at them beyond mere books, and as, perhaps, literature, or art (anyone can write their thoughts down, but art is indicative of a journey) you will see that while most are stuck in the present, their thoughts were loftier. Works by those such as Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Burroughs, and the Like, though we often have to read them in school, are not common modes of thought—they deal with causes, and show us not the present, but the future.

In the end, they show the difference between a society which thrives, and one which is falling apart (Fitzgerald, for instance, showed how the ambition of Americans inherently causes us to hide our emotions, and contort our soul to the point where it’s very discovery, and recognition will lead to the loss of a will to live). If for anything else, they should be read for information--they are strong minds separated from the herd.


Best of luck with the list!


-N.


Post Script--As far as Wordsworth is concerned, his 1789 work, The World is Too Much With Us is a recommendation and will fit right in place with readings such as Milton's Paradise Lost in which, Satan rejects the order and rules of heaven to find a life for himself, and Shelly's magnum opus, in which new technology creates life and discovers it does not belong in this world. All of these are anchored by the same weight: a unity of the power of aesthetics, and that of a mythic imagination--a world in which honor, beauty, and reverence are still upheld as the highest rule.

2009-12-16 [▲.]: Thank you! I'll certainly look into your suggestions, and I'll try to do the books justice when I review them.

2009-12-24 [member181737]: Sweet^^

2009-12-24 [▲.]: :DD