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Monday, May 2, 2005


I needs to catch up in the What Are You Reading thread.
I've finished the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (five-book trilogy, rather) and A Clockwork Orange since I last posted there.

This morning I picked up The Sound and the Fury at the school library, but returned it promptly and prematurely as soon as school got out. I had to really force myself to read it in the first place, since I'm not too keen on all those Southern Great Depression books.

And really, that's one of the reasons I hated To Kill a Mockingbird. Every damn character in there was a narrow-minded redneck moron except for Atticus and possibly Jem. No, I don't care if that was the point or not. It was teeth-grindingly annoying and aggravating, and if you can't come anywhere near enjoying a book because of things like this, then I see very little point in reading it. In fact, probably the only other conceivable reason to read a book would be to learn something from it and refine your intellect.

Say what you will, To Kill a Mockingbird did a damn sorry job at this. It had one message/theme throughout the entire book, and a stupefyingly simple one at that: injustice. Don't do harm to those who do none to you. The book was crammed full of this, using the same exact scenario over and over and over until I wanted to pull out some white-out and a pen and finish the dang thing myself.

But returning to the matter at hand, that was one of the main reasons I so hastily returned The Sound and the Fury. Another was the off-the-walls narration of it, leading me to believe that Faulkner must've been on a seriously heavy LSD trip when he wrote it. One scene will, without warning or hesitation, simply change into an entirely different one (set in a different time in the chain of events, in a different setting, with different characters), yet somehow still sound similar enough that you won't have realized that it's changed until halfway through.

Despite all this, though, I still have a mild curiosity for the book, and I hope to pick it back up when I feel up to it and like I can appreciate it more.

In its place I got Farenheight 451, a part of my long list of books to pick up or movies to see or bands to listen to, etc., and have only read several pages so far. But I. Love. It.

This Ray Bradburry chap seems to have tremendous writing skills, and not only does the book look to be provoking, but it's downright beautiful. Here's just one excerpt I've come across so far:

"He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you? People were more often--he searched for a simile, found one in his work-- torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?"

Happy times, happy times.

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