Originally posted by StarrmanWow! Saul Bellow and Robert Pirsig!!
Herbert, Tolkein, Catch 22, Number 9 Dream, Feersum Endjinn, Excession, Against a Dark Background, Night's Dawn Trilogy, Anything by Kundera (especially Immortality), His Dark Materials series (100 times better than Harry Potter), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Henderson The Rain King, and strangely The Nichomachean Ethics is something I still like flicking through once in a awhile.
hmm...
I read The Exorcist about 1973 or 74. Scariest book I ever read at the time, but as I've become older and jaded (and wiser) I've never gone back to it because it'll never be as scary as when I was 13 or 14. It'd be quite boring to read, in fact.
I was working at my first job in 1978 and picked up a copy of The World According To Garp. At the time it was a great read, very dark and funny. I tried reading it again 11 years later and I couldn't; My life experiences and circumstances had changed me so much that I couldn't get through it.
The Ring trilogy and The Hobbit are eternal.
I hardly ever read fiction, and haven't read much in the past 20 or more years that isn't non-fiction. I picked up the first Harry Potter back in 2000 or so and have read them and for the most part enjoyed them. I also went to a matinee of Stardust and they handed out a copy of the book so I read that...Stardust the book is different from Stardust the movie but I think it's the first time I really liked movie and book on their own terms equally.
Originally posted by utherpendragonWhy?
I love to kill a mocking bird
I could not read this book. It seemed to me that the characters were wooden and the writing stiff. The storyline was plausible and heartwarming, and it helped a lot of white people to join in the cause of racial justice. But, I've begun to think that its popularity ultimately stems from legions of white high school English teachers finding it more compatible to their interests and ideologies than much better writing about the South, and race relations in the North and West, too, by African American writers. Ernest Gaines, for example, and Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, James Baldwin, and many others threatened the status quo in ways that made Harper Lee safe.
Originally posted by WulebgrAgreed, gee, we have something else in common.
Why?
I could not read this book. It seemed to me that the characters were wooden and the writing stiff. The storyline was plausible and heartwarming, and it helped a lot of white people to join in the cause of racial justice. But, I've begun to think that its popularity ultimately stems from legions of white high school English teachers finding it more co ...[text shortened]... es, James Baldwin, and many others threatened the status quo in ways that made Harper Lee safe.
Originally posted by Bosse de NageI enjoyed the characters as well and her writing style. The racial element has nothing to do w/it as far as I am concerned in enjoying the book.
The children's point of view is handled pretty well. Boo Radley, that sort of thing.
I read it ages ago, I was surprised to like it, can't recall too many details but it definitely engaged the emotions.