a summer reading list (abridged)

No television and no easy internet access do not make me a dull boy, unless you think reading four books on your day off is dull.

• A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf


• Tumble Home Amy Hampl


• *Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera


• Immortality Milan Kundera


• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera


• Mother Night Kurt Vonnegut


• Here to Timbuktu Kurt Vonnegut


• *Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger


• Catch 22 Joseph Heller


• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams


• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Douglas Adams


• Life, the Universe, and Everything In It Douglas Adams


• So Long and Thanks for All the Fish Douglas Adams


• Steppenwolf Herman Hesse


• *Arcadia Tom Stoppard


• Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro


• A Matter of Life and Sex Oscar Moore


• The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story Richard Bach


• The Possessed Fyodor Dostoyevsky


• Diary of an Art Dealer Rene Gimpel


• Myra Breckenridge Gore Vidal


• Haunted Chuck Palahniuk


• Mysterious Skin Scott Heim

*second time reading

I have also worked my way through various books on HTML and CSS. I am gathering strength for more complicated web matters, but I am on techo-holiday. Or just too lazy to learn more. I tend to speed through books, focusing more on finish them than content, and since I never discuss the books with anyone, I forget most of the essential elements. The Possessed took me a period of almost nine months to read, and I am not sure if I understood it at all. I read The Bell Jar today, and I must say it was not as depressing or man-hating as I had been led to believe. Plath was a good writer, and now I am going to invest time into her poetry. I have never been into reading poetry, but if this goes well I am going to check out Rainer Maria Riilke. I think most of my reading habits are cliche and a bit too influenced by what's popular to read, but I read what I like or what I think I will like. My second time through Catcher in the Rye was odd since I am now older than Holden Caufield. I am also a year older than Esther of The Bell Jar and six years older than Charlie of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Can I outgrow the coming of age novel when I, myself, have not come of age? After a year abroad I do not feel any more "centered" as a person. Parts of me are more mature, but the old self does not die so easily.

I think it means it is time to find a new genre of books. Though, Steppenwolf's protagonist is 50 and the story reads very much like a coming of age novel. Will I connect more with Hesse and less with Salinger as I grow older? I barely remember Franny and Zooey, so maybe I should read more Salinger and see what I find.

Part of me wants to hunt down Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, but who reads those for pleasure? Maybe I am ready for Ayn Rand and Nietzsche. Or maybe I should find a new project.