On Reading

So it seems to me it is fashionable to discuss what one is reading nowadays. And being an avid reader, I think I too will share. Because sharing is caring; and I care about reading.

First off, I would like to express my distaste and then my slight distaste for two books, then I'll move on to the good ones.

Boris Godunov, by Pushkin was promised to be a masterpiece...and many other wonderful things. Well I found that it is not. It could be because of the translator, because, being bilingual myself, I understand how something can be utterly delicious in one language and well, not, in another. Overall I found it boring, confusing, and not really worth my time.

The book I feel slight distaste for is Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Now, [side note] I have always been "bad" at not liking books, it seems that my innate pleasure of reading tends to color anything I read, regardless of how bad it is. This is not one of those books. I usually love descriptive writing, and the content of this book is right up my alley: Robin Hood, knights and many other great things, but as much as I love the original stories and legends this book really needed an editor! A bit like my blog, this book tends to go on tangents and not get to the actual story fast enough, furthermore, it brushes over the good characters and focuses on, in my opinion anyway, the boring characters.

Now the rest of the books are great and they are from the two classes that I enjoy the most this semester, the first one being a Russian Lit class, called Dostoevsky and the West, which tends to be more philosophical than anything else--which is why I'm taking the class in the first place. And the second is an independent study with my aforementioned "Mentor" (who doesn't know they get called that), where we discuss writing within the Fantasy genre.

Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud: This book inspired a short story, and what will hopefully be a novel-length work, two things that I'm presently working on, or trying to when I get the time, anyway.
The Rebel by Albert Camus.
Notes From the Underground by Dostoevsky.
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre: This is a one act play of psychological warfare and overall amazingness....hint: it's set in hell.

From the second class we have:
On Writing by Stephen King. One of the reasons I'm looking forward to graduating is to have time to re-read this book, even though I just finished it less than three weeks ago.
The Secret History of Fantasy by Peter S. Beagle. If you like short stories, and you like Fantasy, read this. Now.

So. Ahem-ahem. I know no one really reads this (yet?), but if on the off-chance someone stumbles upon this and wants to comment on this list, or maybe provide one of their own--that'd be, well, awesome!