Books, CAN YOU READ?! Options

[Dr Strum]

This thread is for discussion of books. Books you're reading, books you've read, books you're interested in, etc.
--Tom Clancy is lame--


But anyways. I'm currently reading Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It's interesting, but I'm having difficulty getting into it, partially because of school, and partially because the month before I started it, I had just finished the Dark Tower series.

[Frisk]

I HAVEN'T POSTED SINCE I STARTED THE SEMESTER OH MY GOD OKAY

Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. This was the first book for my American novel class. It read like a typical war novel reads to me: very concerned with the events at hand, at every angle, at any given time, with less focus on characterization. That said, I really enjoyed it. The characters had depth and the writing was very tense and concise. It's pretty much the opposite of Alas, Babylon in every possible good way.

Island by Aldous Huxley. SO THIS WAS JUST A REALLY LONG ESSAY REALLY ON WHY OUR SOCIETY SUCKS AND HOW IT COULD BE BETTER. I don't like it when the story and plot are literally just backdrops for the author's ideas, and this book was one hundred percent that. It hasn't really turned me off Huxley though (there were a few really great passages, like the drug spiritual mind trip journey). If I ever get a chance I'll read Brave New World

Alas, Babylon. Don't remember off the top of my head who wrote it. The world ends and people put it back together. The whole thing was pretty unrealistic to me. A pretty big deus ex machina at the end, too. It felt like one long propaganda piece for America in the 1960's. Everyone bands together and works to put the world back and nuclear fallout really isn't that big a deal. It's pretty much the opposite of Fail-Safe in every possible bad way.
OH BUT THERE WAS A REALLY INTERESTING PART ABOUT A BANKER.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken motherfuckin' Kesey. Best book I've read for class so far. It's weird that the book I enjoyed the most I have the least to talk about. But yeah. If you're interested in how mental facilities used to be run (or masculinity stuff), you should check the book out.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. It's about Ken motherfuckin' Kesey. It was pretty enjoyable, and for a biographical/historical piece of nonfiction, it's very novel-y. The prose style was awesome, but it was exhausting to read sometimes. It made me want to read On the Road really badly, so that's probably the first thing I'll read when I get the chance.

Upcoming books (non-italicized because I'm lazy): In Cold Blood, The Crying of Lot 49, and somethingelse I don't remember.