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OxySnake posted:On that note what is everyone's favorite books? I love myself myself some Catch 22, and really almost anything by Palahniuk / Vonnegut.  Catch-22 is my all time favorite book. Before I joined the military I loved it for it's absurdism and afterwards I became convinced half the poo poo in that book happened but no one believed him. Outside of that probably Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Slaughterhouse 5, Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina. I love satire and Russian novels apparently. Oh also Wind-up Bird Chronicle, that book blew my loving mind.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:28
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piss tape israel posted:In hindsight I really loving hated Honors English Same. The books wouldn't have been so bad but for some reason in my district English was elevated to this plateau and was the only class to force summer homework. Every year, you had to read 2-3 books, write essays and fill out some 100-question thing. I used to love reading and 4 years of that just killed it for me.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:28
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My favorite books are Midnight’s Children, The Andromeda Strain, and a few others I can’t remember
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Jan 12, 2018 23:32
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I remember reading the Outsiders and liking it, but I don't remember a single thing about it
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Jan 12, 2018 23:33
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I took only 2 AP classes, composition and US History. I was... woefully unprepared for US History. I could read the amount needed, retain said amount and apply said amount. I kind of want to take that class again knowing what I know now.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:34
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The Stand is still my all time favorite book. I think I've read it 16-17 times and is probably the reason I like reading apocalyptic fiction.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:35
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My AP US History class was right when the 2003 Iraq war started. Fun year
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Jan 12, 2018 23:36
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Silly Burrito posted:The Stand is still my all time favorite book. I think I've read it 16-17 times and is probably the reason I like reading apocalyptic fiction. What version do you recommend
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Jan 12, 2018 23:37
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Relentlessboredomm posted:
Catch-22 is so interesting because it's absolutely hilarious and at the same time is arguably one of the darkest books ever written. You're laughing and joking about how silly and funny something is and then a bit later you see the same story and oops some guy accidentally cut someone in half with his plane's propellers and then he intentionally crashes his plane to kill himself. Hahaha isn't that so zany??? And then you hate yourself for having found it funny. I dunno how Heller figured out to gently caress with the reader like that but it's an incredible experience.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:37
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a neat cape posted:My AP US History class was right when the 2003 Iraq war started. So was mine. But my teacher didn't talk about modern stuff at all. It was weird.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:38
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seiferguy posted:I took only 2 AP classes, composition and US History. I was... woefully unprepared for US History. I could read the amount needed, retain said amount and apply said amount. My high school didn't offer many AP courses, but I took the AP World History test when my only non-American based history course was one year of medieval european history. Aced it, thank you childhood years of Carmen Sandiego  Relentlessboredomm posted:Catch-22 is my all time favorite book.  Also Player Piano, Last Chance to See, Wuthering Heights and I remember loving the Trial, but it's been a very long time since I read that and maybe I was just a punk rear end Brazil loving kid at the time. (I still am)
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Jan 12, 2018 23:40
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SHOAH NUFF posted:What version do you recommend I've only ever read the expanded one. Don't know why I never picked up the first one, but  .
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Jan 12, 2018 23:41
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a neat cape posted:My AP US History class was right when the 2003 Iraq war started. My AP US History class was split into 2 years and managed to somehow skip all of US history from Reconstruction until Teddy Roosevelt. You would think with that we would then get to cover everything in more detail, but nope, we stopped right after Watergate and my teacher the second year was so clueless about actual history that me and one of my friends who knew a bunch about this stuff due to being politics nerds were nearly teaching the class near the end. That class was so bad. Thankfully my AP European History class was loving incredible and I learned a whole lot. I'm just sad they didn't start doing AP World History until after I graduated. I know very little about African/Latin American/Middle Eastern/Indian history because of it. East Asian history I'm ok on because I took it as a course in college though. And then senior year I took AP Econ and that uh, ended up working out real well for me as it made me decide to major in Econ (and then eventually add a Math major just because I had already taken so many math courses).
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Jan 12, 2018 23:41
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One time my mom gave me money to get a book at the school book fair and I bought a Lamborghini Countach poster instead.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:41
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a neat cape posted:I remember reading the Outsiders and liking it, but I don't remember a single thing about it Stay gold SA2K.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:44
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a neat cape posted:My AP US History class was right when the 2003 Iraq war started. My first semester of college was in fall 2001. I thought about doing Poli Sci as a major, and was taking International Relations. Our teacher literally ripped up the syllabus once classes restarted after 9/11. I took IB English which I liked because it included books that weren't US/British authors only. Off the top of my head, we read Scarlet Letter and a couple Hawthorne short stories, 100 Years of Solitude, The Sailor who Fell From Grace with the Sea, Dune (I chose that out of a list of like 25 other books), and a couple Ibsen plays. Then senior year was Handmaid's Tale and some Atwood poetry, some Frost poems, The Sun Also Rises, Song of Solomon, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Heart of Darkness, and a few other short form readings.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:45
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I bought nfl books all the time at the scholastic book fairs. I had a neat book that had the biographies of Aikman Kosar Moon and Young condensed into a little kids book and I read it like 400 times
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Jan 12, 2018 23:45
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lol this brings back memories share if you remember 90's book fairs
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Jan 12, 2018 23:48
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↑↑↑↑ those ruled Catch-22 is a great band
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Jan 12, 2018 23:48
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a neat cape posted:My AP US History class was right when the 2003 Iraq war started. my one memory is we were doing something well after school and someone in the class came in and said chris farley died we weren't surprised
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Jan 12, 2018 23:49
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I lived in the UK for three years, age 13-16, and then came back to finish high school. So my history consisted of elementary school curriculum, seventh grade history, and then three years of whatever they do the last three years of middle school in the UK, which turned out to be a lot of coverage of WWI, and then the last two years of high school which I did honors history I think. So basically even more piecemeal and weird than the normally piecemeal and disorganized way Americans are taught history. As for my favorite books, I really struggle with that. I loved the discworld books by terry pratchett, but I'm not saying they're the best books ever or anything, they're probably not "literature," but they resonate with me. I also enjoy Gibson, and always enjoy his books, but also usually find them to be flawed. I read tons and tons of C.J. Cherryh in my teens and twenties, but nowadays I probably would re-read them and maybe not like them as much? I dunno. There were a lot of books that had a strong influence on me like Dune, but I wouldn't go back and re-read Dune again so... if that's the criteria then I guess it fails. I re-read the hobbit and LotR every ten to fifteen years, so maybe that counts. Hmm. Do comic books count? Transmetropolitan is probably my favorite "literary work" I read in the last 15 years. I've slowed way down. I probably only read three or four novels a year now, interleaved with nonfiction. My days of consuming multiple novels a week ended when I stopped taking public transportation every day.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:49
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a neat cape posted:My AP US History class was right when the 2003 Iraq war started. I literally watched coverage of 9/11/2001 from my APUSH classroom lmao edit: Ehud posted:lol this brings back memories share if you remember 90's book fairs Those were good but 
Spoeank fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jan 12, 2018 |
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Jan 12, 2018 23:50
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Ehud posted:lol this brings back memories share if you remember 90's book fairs Hell yeah. Movie novelizations were the hidden gold at those things.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:50
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The First Law series is prolly my favorite books in recent memory
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Jan 12, 2018 23:51
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Spoeank posted:I literally watched coverage of 9/11/2001 from my APUSH classroom lmao Lol. I had world history 1st period as a sophomore. We didn't do much that day
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Jan 12, 2018 23:52
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Spoeank posted:I literally watched coverage of 9/11/2001 from my APUSH classroom lmao I sat up in bed, turned the TV on and after about 30 seconds saw the 2nd plane hit Live. I threw something at my roommate and yelled "classes cancelled", then tried to call the people I knew who lived in New York to see if they were okay and the phone lines were already hosed.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:52
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Ehud posted:lol this brings back memories share if you remember 90's book fairs Did those in the 80s. Bookmobile, too. I was generally reading around six grades above my grade, so by the time I was like 13 they were terrible because I was no longer interested in large format hardback kids' books. I was like, where's your azimov section, or do you have any conan books, and they'd be like... oh, hmm, welp
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Jan 12, 2018 23:52
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God, dude...
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Jan 12, 2018 23:53
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Leperflesh posted:Did those in the 80s. Bookmobile, too. I was generally reading around six grades above my grade, so by the time I was like 13 they were terrible because I was no longer interested in large format hardback kids' books. I was like, where's your azimov section, or do you have any conan books, and they'd be like... oh, hmm, welp By that point I had found the sci/fi & fantasy and fiction sections of the library, so paying for books was an extinct concept... Now comic books, I bought tons of that poo poo.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:54
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I can't imagine being so bored I'd read any book by a football player. Or coach or gm or agent or sports talk goober.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:54
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The day 9/11 happened, I went to a college career fair and only one of my classes was canceled. Engineering schools 
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Jan 12, 2018 23:54
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Kalli posted:By that point I had found the sci/fi & fantasy and fiction sections of the library, so paying for books was an extinct concept... Yeah. I think the saving grace of the bookmobile/book fairs was that they'd have humor books, like calvin & hobbes. I probably read a fair number of extremely terrible Garfield books from those things.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:56
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah. I read a lot of Garfield at 80s book fairs when I was a kid, too. I'm not sure what age I was when I realized it was garbage but I jumped from Garfield to Calvin and Hobbes to Bloom County pretty quick if I remember right. Also shout out to Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:58
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oh man scholastic book fairs were the loving jam i remember getting a lisa frank dolphin diary because i was really into dolphins. my grandparents got it for me. my dad was like "Wtf"
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Jan 12, 2018 23:59
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah. My father had every bloom county and doonsbury book, so I devoured all of them as a kid which had no overarching effect on my knowledge of the world beyond an encyclopedic knowledge of how to make fun of people like Ed Koch, and an utter loathing of Donald Trump when I was like 10. 2016 was very confusing to me.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:00
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axeil posted:Catch-22 is so interesting because it's absolutely hilarious and at the same time is arguably one of the darkest books ever written. You're laughing and joking about how silly and funny something is and then a bit later you see the same story and oops some guy accidentally cut someone in half with his plane's propellers and then he intentionally crashes his plane to kill himself. Hahaha isn't that so zany??? And then you hate yourself for having found it funny. Agreed. There are so many zany and wildly depressing characters in that book that sit on that razors edge between comedy and depression. There's a character who's terrified he's going to get shot down so he decides to slow down time by doing incredibly dull things, that way he can live 30 years in 30 hours. Nissin Cup Nudist posted:
Also true
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Jan 13, 2018 00:02
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kiimo posted:Also shout out to Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing.  the second Judy Blume book I ever read (first was Freckle Juice)
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Jan 13, 2018 00:03
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kiimo posted:I read a lot of Garfield at 80s book fairs when I was a kid, too. I'm not sure what age I was when I realized it was garbage but I jumped from Garfield to Calvin and Hobbes to Bloom County pretty quick if I remember right. That sounds about right, yeah. I was reading the funnies in the daily and sunday paper, so I was generally up on bloom county, doonesbury, etc. At some point I completed my Calvin & Hobbes collection, which I still have: as far as I know, every C&H ever printed, including the full color sunday with the optional sometimes-cut-out header portion included (which is in the Lazy Sunday book). You also have to include the Essential Calvin and Hobbes book because it has a handful of strips not printed elsewhere, IIRC. Anyway yeah doonsebury in the 80s had a lot of commentary about post-veitnam politics and reagan etc. and I remember it being my main source of info about that stuff, which was probably terrible but whatever. I'm sure a ton of it still went over my head. Oh god, I just remembered The Far Side. Yeah. Devoured everything Gary Larson. I was really upset when he retired and then C&H ended not long after.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:05
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Kalli posted:
I have a pet theory that reading great satire in your formative years really primes you to love leftist politics. I'm waiting for the day that theory gets destroyed when some poo poo head like Ted Cruz talks about loving Vonnegut with zero self-awareness like Paul Ryan loving Rage Against the Machine.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:05
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Leperflesh posted:Anyway yeah doonsebury in the 80s had a lot of commentary about post-veitnam politics and reagan etc. and I remember it being my main source of info about that stuff, which was probably terrible but whatever. I'm sure a ton of it still went over my head. I think it's mostly fine, virtually all kids media stole famous plots wholesale for stories, and it's a great way to get kids interested in those stories. How many kids thought Macbeth might be cool because he flew around on a hoverbike being a frienemy of the Gargoyles? Alternatively you just end up as Family Guy.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:09
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