To start off my summer reading, I just finished Harry Potter 7. I haven’t read any of the HP books since reading this one the day it came out almost four years ago (wow!), and I am so glad that I did. There were definitely things that had not stuck with me from the first reading, but I definitely enjoyed this time through just as much, if not more than before.
With this reading, I realized that Neville is probably my favorite character. A favorite character not being something I had really considered before. Also, I actually enjoyed the epilogue with this read through. Which is weird, because I was adamantly against it the first time. Still don’t like the whole Albus Severus thing …
“Shelf-Pod is a private residence and study building, located in Osaka prefecture, Japan. The client owns an extensive collection of books on the subject of Islamic history, so he requested that we create this building with the maximum capacity for its storage and exhibition.”
*Click-through link to more pictures.
Last day of the school year for me is Thursday, June 9th. The weekend will consist of cleaning, packing, and moving back home for the summer. A summer for which I have almost no plans whatsoever. For the first time in years, I will not be taking summer classes nor will I be working. I am ecstatic, for this of course means that I will have all the time in the world (well, three months of it at least) to spend reading. So here, without further ado, I write down my summer reading list:
American Gods — Neil Gaiman
Atonement — Ian McEwan
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress — Dai Sijie
The Blind Assassin — Margaret Atwood
A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess
Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Corrections — Jonathan Franzen
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime — Mark Haddon
Death Comes for the Archbishop — Willa Cather
Dracula — Bram Stoker
Empire Falls — Richard Russo
Far From the Maddening Crowd — Thomas Hardy
Freedom — Jonathan Franzen
Game of Thrones — George R. R. Martin
Great Expectations — Charles Dickens
The Finkler Question — Howard Jacobson
The Imperfectionists — Tom Rachman
Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell — Susanna Clarke
Jude the Obscure — Thomas Hardy
Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert
Middlesex — Jeffrey Eugenides
Mrs. Dalloway — Virginia Woolf
The Name of the Rose — Umberto Eco
The Namesake — Jhumpa Lahiri
Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro
Neverwhere — Neil Gaiman
On the Road — Jack Keroua
Oryx and Crake — Margaret Atwood
Persuasion — Jane Austen
The Road — Cormac McCarthy
Tinkers — Paul Harding
A Visit From the Goon Squad — Jennifer Egan
White Teeth — Zadie Smith
The White Tiger — Aravind Adiga
Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë
“You want weapons? We’re in a library! Books! The best weapons in the world! This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have—arm yourselves!” — The Doctor; Dr. Who, episode “Tooth and Claw”
“Did you wear through your sandals that are on your feet, and did you tear your garments that are on you while you were transiting heaven and earth?”
— Ancient Egyptian pick-up lines for the win!
I found this on page 110 of The Literature of Ancient Egypt, a text used for my Ancient Egyptian Religion course. It might not have exactly been a pick-up line in context, but I can’t help but be amused by how similar this line is to today’s “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?”
… over this past year and a half. At least, not much outside of what’s been required of me for school. Then again, I also have a terrible memory, thanks to which I have trouble recalling what activities I took part in even the day before, so I could just be confused.
In the past eight months, I’ve probably read over 50 books for school. Some required by a class/teacher, some simply necessary to meet source requirements for a paper. Last quarter, I must have read a good 15 books alone about the biblical book of Jonah for a single paper. Granted, I’m pretty sure I now know everything there is to know about those two pages of the Bible. =|
That’s another book I’ve been reading a lot from lately. The Bible. A lot of it for classes (religious studies major), but on occasion I find myself reading it just for funsies. I would most definitely recommend it. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament—sort of) in particular is beyond fascinating.
So yeah, that’s where I’m at so far as reading goes. It hasn’t been for pure pleasure in quite sometime, but at least it’s never been exactly painful.
It’s been a while and I’m not sure if I’m actually returning to start-up this tumblr again, but I’m thinking a post here, right now, might motivate me to return tomorrow or the next day (when it’s not one in the morning) and post something more worthwhile. In the meantime, if any of you still follow this blog, read any good books lately?
(via booklover)
(via architectureblog)
Hi, can Bilbo come out to play today?
but I have had to stop since heymikewaskom threw a fit on twitter about me reading ahead of the book club and so I will be putting that adventure on hold. Now I have to get ahold of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, which is our first book club read. I’m excited!
(via cavesoflilith)
Personally, it’s always been a goal of mine to get both in the library.
World's Greatest Libraries: Past and Present
From the book When Yoda Does Literary Cliches.
Haha. That took me a second longer than it should have, but quite funny.
(via librarianpirate)
“As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are to not have one. Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.” — The Wizard of Oz (via hopelesslymg) (via feelinganddreaming)