All about prose and stuff

Hey-ho, Pokécommunity. Here's a thread about the one thing you must have loathed in high school: reading stuff! (Often against your will.) I want to know about the kind of books you read, maybe drop in a couple of titles of books you've read recently, and maybe your favourite titles, authors, series, genres, whatever. Talk about your personal experiences with literature, and even whether you want to start writing books yourself. Everything that's literature-related could fit in this thread.

As for myself:

I've not always been a huge fan of literature. I always thought reading was a bit boring, and being coerced to do it for school kinda drew away the potential fun of letting your mind sink into a good book and really appreciate the printed word. Always knowing that what you read must be turned into a book assignment, and will determine a very important grade, and it will alter the course of your life when you fail and you won't ever pass high school and you'll become a hobo for the rest of your life ALL because you could not give a proper character analysis of Holden Caulfield...sorry, train of thought derailed. Always knowing that what you read must be turned into a book assignment kind of changes the way you read things. It becomes like work, which is exactly what reading should not be.

However, I've always been a fan of roleplaying, so indirectly, I've always been in contact with prose. I wrote it myself. And I read some of it for my own enjoyment in the form of fanfiction and short furry stories. But in the end, that'll only bring you so far. It's not like you can expect gold to come out of most fanfiction or furry stories (even if there are some good authors out there). And I've always wanted to try my hand at writing someday (And to this day, I still have only failed miserably at it).

I've only really gotten back into literature, for fun instead of just to get a passing grade and then put the book away to never think of it again, around the beginning of this year. I did read some books that I really liked before that. I enjoyed reading The Beach by Alex Garland, and later on Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It wasn't until January that I really started devouring books at a rate like I've never done before. I've read The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger, and after that went straight on through to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and I've recently finished Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I've just now started reading another novel: On The Beach by Nevil Shute.

If you want to read On The Beach. Spoiler Alert:

Since this is about books, this is better suited in General Entertainment, so I'm going to move this there.

-moved/

EGKangaroo said:

On The Beach.

Click to expand...

There's a copy of On The Beach staring at me right now. I saw the movie and, damn, depressing. I was going to read it when I was in a mood to read a bunch of dystopian works, but after The Handmaid's Tale I was done. That was one soul-wrenching book.

I read a lot. Right now I'm reading Baum's Oz books. They're quick, not at all challenging, but I like that sometimes. It's interesting to see how Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and others can be quite mean and insulting to certain characters. I give props to Baum for putting a female character front and center, but he had problems when it came to egalitarianism. Anyway, it's the fantasy and imagination of the stories I enjoy. I'm a fan of certain types of fantasy. Not really the sword-and-sorcery high fantasy which is Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones (or whatever the books are called) but I love me some Earthsea books (Ursula Le Guin) or His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman) or one of my favorites, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which is written like it's a 19th century book though it deals with magicians.

I have a number of books that I have left to read on my metaphorical bookshelf:

• A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin
• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
• In the Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

And I'll probably read them in that order, as well. The last two I've had for over two years now and haven't even touched since I got them for Christmas presents. The more fantasy ones have been recommended to me by different people, so I'm hoping for the best. And Naked Lunch was because I was on holiday to Tangier in Morocco (where the book is set), so I bought the book pretty much straight away when I got off the plane back home. The above selection probably isn't that reflective of my taste in books: a bit too much fantasy. But, as I've said to lots of people, I tend to like good books... as pretentious as that makes me sound. Genre, for the most part, doesn't really matter to me, which is good, I guess! :D

My earliest memory of reading a literary piece was back in 3rd grade. It was a short novel entitled Stone Fox. I didn't do much reading after that, until Harry Potter came and swept me off the ground. I decided to stick with fantasy after that. Then again, I've only had the chance to read books again these past few months, recently finishing the Hunger Games trilogy. If ever I've read any books before that period, it must have escaped my memory. I'm planning on reading the Percy Jackson series next, as a friend of mine has been pestering me to do so since last year.