Read 1,000 books

Wrote an essay comparing this to Star Wars and it reached twenty pages. I’m cool.

Next semester’s books look really rad, yay!

okay, it’s been a wicked long time since I updated and I’m not even sure that this is everything, but…

55 – Charles Darwin, On Natural Selection
56 – Sophocles, Antigone
57 – Plato, The Last Days of Socrates (Five Platonic Dialogues)
58 – Moses?, Genesis
59 – Plato, Symposium
60 – Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
61 – Sir Thomas More, Utopia
62 – Virgil, The Aeneid
63 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
64 – St. Augustine, Confessions

I liked this, although it sort of depressed me (and I found a squashed fly in chapter 13. The hazards of used books, I suppose). It was a satire on political thought: on governmental tyranny, political dissidents, those who want change, those who fight against change, those who believe modern youth are corrupt and those who let them just run around and have their way. In the end, I almost believed Burgess to be a nihilist: nobody can win, so why bother existing? Everybody is bad and evil in the end, and they spawn their bad and evil children and let the cycle continue. Oh my. I enjoyed it, though; it made me think, and I like that quality in a novel, even if this sort of reminded me a bit too much of other dystopian novels I’ve read.

I read this once before, during the summer prior to tenth grade, but I don’t think I properly understood all of the deeper aspects other than the humour way back when. This was an assigned reading for my English class and I, again, enjoyed it—not as much as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but it was a worthwhile read and by far not the worst thing I’ve ever read. (Writing the paper ruined it a little, though.)

AH! I laughed so much while I was reading this, and for a self-proclaimed grammar nazi, I learned a ton about both American and English grammar. It was not only funny, but it was informative, and that’s a good combination in an educational book. I loved it so much that I recommended it to my English teacher as summer reading for one of the honors classes and he actually agreed, which made me feel special. But anyway, yeah. One of the better books I’ve read in a while.

Book #3 in the Inheritance Saga. I thought it was the most well-written so far, and Paolini has improved tremendously since the publication of his first book, Eragon. It’s still not the best book I’ve ever read, but it was entertaining and a good read all the same. I liked it.

Bleh. Picked out for me by the school librarian. Predictable. The prose wasn’t bad, but there were many plot holes.

I’m going to write real reviews next time…

It’s been so long - six years! - since I had read this, so I read it again on the flights from New York to Indiana.  Je t’aime, Tolkien.

Yay, comics!  A little overrated, but still excellent.  I liked the immense detail in all of the panels, the historical references and what-have-you.

Yet another assigned reading for English class (it seems that I lack time to read for fun nowadays, ack).  It was enjoyable; not my favorite book ever, but I have definitely read worse, and I loved the story of perseverance.  Sort of made me realize how futile and unremarkable my life has been thus far and reminds me that I need to work to be extraordinary, because I can’t stand being ordinary.  I liked it.