Returning to a book
Nov. 23rd, 2005 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_ytI've been thinking lately that I should start reading some classic books (or start reading, period, because I don't do it as much as I used to). So I've been making a list, in my head, of the books I want to read, though whenever I have an opportunity to get one I seem to forget the whole list. Since I recently watched the anime Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (which is the recent series, not the movie, and I think it's better than the movie on the whole), I decided that I had to read Catcher in the Rye. SAC makes numerous references to J.D. Salinger's work - the legendary hacker called The Laughing Man is named after one of Salinger's short stories, and the motto that appears on his "calling card" is "what I thought I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes [or should I?." They even slip in a reference to the "secret goldfish" story that Holden Caulfield's older brother wrote.
I hadn't read Catcher in the Rye, but I'd heard it read before. One of my teachers in middle school read a chapter to us every day for a few weeks. I don't remember much about it, except that I was surprised that we'd get to read (or be read to from)a book with so much profanity in it. That was...God, eleven years ago. Practically forever. Anyway, I got an audiobook version just the other day. I used to mock my mother for listening to audiobooks, rather than actually reading the books they were recordings of, but my views on audiobooks have changed recently. For one thing, I've been listening to audiobooks of Neil Gaiman reading his own work, and it's really a different experience from reading the book yourself. Although I'm not saying that I'll give up books altogether. Another thing is that I need stuff to listen to at work anyway. And of course I like to knit, and you can't really read and knit at the same time. So I figure I could listen to an audiobook while knitting. That works.
Anyway, about Catcher in the Rye - I'm about two thirds through it, I think. And I can certainly understand and appreciate it a lot more now than I could when I was in middle school. Now I know why people are so fascinated by Holden Caulfield - he's kind of an ignorant jerk, and often immature, but he's remarkably perceptive. You wouldn't think that one character could be all the things he is without seeming fake (or, in his words, "phony,"), but he does. More than that, is consistent in certain ways but tends to act and speak kind of randomly, the way a real person (especially a confused and angry teenager) does.
You could conceivably sum him up by saying that he has A.D.H.D. or something, and I don't think you'd be far wrong, considering the kinds of problems he has (failing out of multiple schools, absentmindedness, inappropriate comments, almost pathological lying, etc.), but that doesn't do him justice. It's more like he's thinking on a level that most people, for the sake of their own sanity, don't think on, and that takes up all of his mind so that he can't think about what most people would consider practical things. He's constitutionally incapable of playing along or pulling the wool over his own eyes the way most people do - he knows how it's done, but he doesn't have the stomach for it - so he never fits in and keeps getting in trouble. Or maybe he's not so special, maybe he's a lot like the average teenage boy, only a little more so. He's difficult to explain, and seems like a complete jerk, but you can't help liking him.
I hadn't read Catcher in the Rye, but I'd heard it read before. One of my teachers in middle school read a chapter to us every day for a few weeks. I don't remember much about it, except that I was surprised that we'd get to read (or be read to from)a book with so much profanity in it. That was...God, eleven years ago. Practically forever. Anyway, I got an audiobook version just the other day. I used to mock my mother for listening to audiobooks, rather than actually reading the books they were recordings of, but my views on audiobooks have changed recently. For one thing, I've been listening to audiobooks of Neil Gaiman reading his own work, and it's really a different experience from reading the book yourself. Although I'm not saying that I'll give up books altogether. Another thing is that I need stuff to listen to at work anyway. And of course I like to knit, and you can't really read and knit at the same time. So I figure I could listen to an audiobook while knitting. That works.
Anyway, about Catcher in the Rye - I'm about two thirds through it, I think. And I can certainly understand and appreciate it a lot more now than I could when I was in middle school. Now I know why people are so fascinated by Holden Caulfield - he's kind of an ignorant jerk, and often immature, but he's remarkably perceptive. You wouldn't think that one character could be all the things he is without seeming fake (or, in his words, "phony,"), but he does. More than that, is consistent in certain ways but tends to act and speak kind of randomly, the way a real person (especially a confused and angry teenager) does.
You could conceivably sum him up by saying that he has A.D.H.D. or something, and I don't think you'd be far wrong, considering the kinds of problems he has (failing out of multiple schools, absentmindedness, inappropriate comments, almost pathological lying, etc.), but that doesn't do him justice. It's more like he's thinking on a level that most people, for the sake of their own sanity, don't think on, and that takes up all of his mind so that he can't think about what most people would consider practical things. He's constitutionally incapable of playing along or pulling the wool over his own eyes the way most people do - he knows how it's done, but he doesn't have the stomach for it - so he never fits in and keeps getting in trouble. Or maybe he's not so special, maybe he's a lot like the average teenage boy, only a little more so. He's difficult to explain, and seems like a complete jerk, but you can't help liking him.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-29 12:11 am (UTC)I'm not really into classic science fiction, although I have read and enjoyed a few works like Joan D. Vinge's Snow Queen. But I'll get around to tackling that genre soon.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-29 12:26 am (UTC)Alfred Bester (GOD yes)
Theodore Sturgeon
Philip K. Dick
Upon command, I can cheerfully draw up a list of the /very best/ in scifi literature from across several different eras. Or, you can do what my husband does: Whip out a list of the Hugo and Nebula award winners/nominees for each year (easily findable on the net) and just start picking books from them. :>
P.S. I think Piers Anthony is like that for everyone... Although his Bio of a Space Tyrant series was... cough... quite adult.
From a review on the net: While Bio of a Space Tyrant is indeed a juvenile looking and sounding book, I must caution that it is not by far. Much of the storyline, and especially throughout Refugee, is very gory, sexual and brutal. It is rife with senseless violence, so if you're in the mood for a space drama that has no qualms about melting people with warp drive engines and providing the wonderfully gory and detailed results, or the bloody mass rape of entire stocks of women, this is your cup of tea. Or should I say blood?