books i read in 2010

[ateolf]

in the order i finished them...almost ALL of them before august (and teaching)...actually only the last one was finished in the interim...

[Poll #1663016]

Comments

[mojosmom.livejournal.com]

;or the Whale by Herman Melville (Review of Contemporary Fiction issue: the anti-abridgement of all the "unimportant" parts of the book)

When I was in high school, we were running short on time, so when we got to Moby Dick our English teacher told us we could skip all those "unimportant parts". No wonder I hated it. Some years later, I went back and read the whole thing and loved it.

[ateolf.livejournal.com]

It's one of my favorite books. The "unimportant" parts are the best parts! The book isn't the same without all of the insane ranting. What a lot of people cite as dry and boring about the book is, to me, what really makes it absolutely hilarious. The book on my list took an abridgment called Moby-Dick in Half the Time and edited together exactly and only everything that was cut out of that edition, including stuff like stray punctuation. So it takes the flip-side of what was a classic, coherent adventure story and renders it a textual, postmodern cut-up. It was a really fun read, though, uh, not for everyone. Definitely for fans of the original (and especially fans of ALL of the original).

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

We were allowed to skip only a few of the sections. I remember being bored almost to tears by lists of names of fish! Definitely wasted on many high school students.

[ateolf.livejournal.com]

It is one of the most amazing books ever written, though I don't think I would have appreciated it at that age. In fact, I actively avoided it 'til I was 31 because it seemed like it'd be a boring, old book (which it's not at all, but much of the humor's working on a different level than most teenagers).

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

"....much of the humor's working on a different level than most teenagers"

Gosh, I think that that might be an understatement worthy of the English class where we read Moby Dick. (When in doubt, we went for the understatements.)

[ateolf.livejournal.com]

Well, most of the book's humor is extremely understated. That doesn't shadow the fact that it's extremely funny.