TehMatt Wrote:I've just always been hesitant to reading Stephen King. I tend to not like horror because it just doesn't interest me. I like to have a main character I can sympathize for, but at the same time I don't want to be reading a horror story.

Rob Wrote:Hey, Greg, this is funny and all, but I prefer GOOD BOOKS in this thread.

TehMatt Wrote:Just give your opinion of a book, either good or bad

Grog Wrote:I know man, and I'm sorry, but I haven't really read a GOOD book in a long time. Twilight just happened to be one of my first skims in a long time. I read through like half of Angels & Demons, but kept putting off finishing it, and now it's just sitting there on the same desk its been sitting on since last year. ;~;

Rob Wrote:I can assure most of the books in this thread are good reads, trust me.

Rob Wrote:Oh, I didn't see what Matt posted anyway, sorry.

I can assure most of the books in this thread are good reads, trust me.

Grog Wrote:Iono man, I never finish my books, even if they seemed good from what I had read already. When I was in elementary school, we'd go to the library once a week, and I'd always get a different Goosebumps book and never read more than half of it. The only kinds of books that I barely enjoy reading are biographies/autobiographies. I read one on Slash (Guns n' Roses guitarist) two years ago and it was great. That was the last book I actually finished... baww...

Khoi Wrote:Except what Greg posted.

 Spoiler

Rob Wrote:I'm gonna get addicted to this thread. lol

Kafka By The Shore - Haruki Murakami

 Summary

Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world¹s toughest fifteen-year-old." He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days--continuing his impressive self-education--and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu and the other characters.

God, this book was awesome. After reading Norwegian Wood from Murakami, I wanted more. I found myself reading my own imagination. This book was like a long run-on sentence, as I finished its 730 pages in just a week. It was like a trip. The best part of this is that after finishing it, it's even better! I'm still asking myself what happened, why people got to relate to each other the way they did, how did that happen, etc.

Awesome read. I look forward to read more from this author.

The Schiff Wrote:The Picture of Dorian Gray-Oscar Wilde

 Spoiler

The story's title character is an exceptionally handsome young man who, both in the eyes of the artist tasked to paint his portrait, Basil Hallward, and in those of their somewhat older friend Lord Henry Wotton, epitomizes perfect beauty and is coveted by both men for that very reason. Seduced by hedonistic Lord Henry into believing that beauty can literally justify anything, including any act of immorality, Dorian sells his soul for maintaining his beautiful appearance, letting his portrait age in his stead. (In that, his character resembles Goethe's and Marlowe's Faust.) He then quickly turns from an innocent youth into a cruel and calculating man whom society, in its shallow adherence to appearances, nonetheless never associates with any of the results of his cruelty, never looking beyond the surface of his handsome exterior and assuming that a man so beautiful must necessarily also be good.

God, this book was awesome. I recently finished this for a high school Western Literature class. Oscar Wilde's wit and sarcasm found in epigrams and some of Lord Henry Wotton's dialogue kept the book actually fresh and somewhat humorous at times for me. Lord Henry Wotton is definitely one of classic literature's more interesting characters. What I really liked about this was how excellent Wilde is at presenting Dorian's gradual changes in character and the impact of the painting on himself as it builds slowly towards the revelations at the ending. However, the one thing I dislike about this book is the large amount of ambling, directionless conversations that appear within the book; but the rest is pretty riveting and thrilling to me. Wilde himself said that he did not like for morals to mix with art due to the aestheticism movements going around in England during his time, so I'm not entirely sure of this, but I felt that the story moves in a direction where the reader is almost hoping for some sort of moral justice to satisfy them at the ending due to Dorian growing increasingly cruel.

TehMatt Wrote:You really like Japanese books, eh?

 Cover