Alana Is Reading

Posts tagged books

I’ve read hundreds of books in my life, but there are some classics that people assume that a bibliophile like me would have read by now.  But I haven’t.  Or I have tried and failed.  There have been a lot of books I’ve started and not finished because I firmly believe that life is too short to read books you don’t like.  So here is a partial list of books I haven’t read.

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  I tried several times and never got past the first 50 pages.
2. Moby Dick by Herman Melville.  I don’t have time for 400 pages about the details of running a whaling ship.  Even my high school English teacher refused to make us read it.  I watched the movie.
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin.  I can’t stand books where it’s just people talking and nothing ever happens.  This goes for everything else by Jane Austin as well.  I couldn’t even make it through the movie of Emma.  (Even with Ewan McGregor as eye candy.)
4. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.  I’ve read Huck Finn, but it’s just not my style, so I never read much Twain other than short stories after that. 
5. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.  Haven’t seen the movie either. 
6. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.  I guess it just never came up.  Closest I ever got was Muppet Treasure Island.
7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  I would read it, given the chance.  I just haven’t gotten around to it.  You have to be in the right mood for future dystopia.
8. Most of the books of Charles Dickens.  I had to read Great Expectations for school, and I read A Christmas Carol on my own, but his style is just too densely British for my taste.
9. Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.  I read The Deerslayer in school, and it is beyond me why such a completely talentless writer is forced on our schoolchildren.  I will never read anything else by JFC except under threat of death.
10. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.  I don’t know why I haven’t read it.  I probably should.

So there’s my top ten list.  There are others.  Let me know in the comments, what books do people always think you should have read by now?

I bet if you look at the average teenager and the average adult, the average teenager has read more books in the last year than the average adult. Of course the adult would be all like, “I’m busy. I’ve got a job. I got stuff to do.” WHATEVER. Read! I mean, you’re watching CSI: Miami. Why are you watching CSI: Miami when you could be reading CSI: Miami the novilisation.

John Green, from here (via madelinestarr)

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Ray Bradbury

I’ve been posting book reviews and other things here for several weeks now, so I thought I’d say a word or two about how I’m trying to do this.

First of all, ideally I’d like to continue posting one review per day.  (It sometimes varies due to Tumblr queue weirdness, but usually one.)  Then I try to post at least one non-review book-related thingy per day.  That’s more variable, depending on how busy I am because those things aren’t queued and planned as well ahead of time.  

Here is the schedule of things I’m going to attempt to keep.  Note that it is written on the internet, not set in stone.

• Sunday - anything goes
• Monday - photos or art
• Tuesday - shameless self-promotion (and hopefully something else amusing)
• Wednesday - quotes from or about books 
• Thursday - weird books I’d like to read
• Friday - book-related links
• Saturday - typography and grammar

So that’s how I’m trying to make it go.  We’ll see how it really goes this week, since it feels like I have the start of a sinus infection.  There are enough reviews in the queue to last a while, but I’m not sure about everything else.

And thank you and welcome to all my followers.  There aren’t a lot of you, but I appreciate it nonetheless.  And don’t forget to check out my other Tumblr and my blog and other stuff at my main web site, girlalive.com.  

-Alana