summer reading list report

The official list, seeing as it's September (!!!) with helpful links and insightful commentary thoughtfully provided by yours truly.

- Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor - Mildly interesting, but really could have been written better considering the appeal of the topic. Honestly, I read this so I could better debate with my boyfriend, the indie-music aficionado.
- Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas by William H. Gass - The author has developed a unique and interesting writing style, somewhere in the shadows between prose, poetry, and stream-of-consciousness, and its beauty took me a good fifty pages to appreciate.
- Angels by Denis Johnson - Denis Johnson is a genius. I loved it.
- A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf - Interesting, but read it for class, not on your own.
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway - Not your typical Hemingway. I really really really liked the characters, which is rare -- normally I find most characters in novels pathetically flawed.
- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis - Mind food.
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (favorite #1) Just utterly fantastic. So well written, succint and beautiful and dirty and poignant. Better by far than the movie.
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - Any woman around the age of 21 ought to read this, really.
- The Stranger by Albert Camus - In the past year or so I feel as though I've gained appreciation for what makes things French and what makes French things wonderful. This is a wonderful book, translation or not.
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote - Riveting.
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - Simple and graceful, like another story from the Bible you've never heard before or a modern day epic poem.
- Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction by J.D. Salinger (re-read) - Yeah, Salinger will change the way you think about writing.
- Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (favorite #2) Like eating a loaf of delicious, perfectly crusty bread.
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - Not as good as I had hoped, but still dense and dark. I think I need a few years and a re-read before I can appreciate this one.

Grand total: 14!