Project Alphabet

A few hours ago I finished reading the A-book. “The Verificationist” by Donald Antrim. I feel like I must be missing something. I really like the way the guy writes. It made me feel like the character was a real person. His thoughts were random and I liked that. But, still, I must be missing something. There had to be something beneath the surface, but I can’t figure out what it was. What was he trying to tell us? There are only a select few people I would recommend this book for. But if anyone wants to read it, I have a copy.

I finally did it. I read “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury. If you haven’t yet, do so now. It was… wow.

This is the kind of book that you can easily miss and if you do, it really doesn’t matter. But once you’ve come in contact with it, if you get nothing out of it, you’re actually worse off. This book is translated from French, but please don’t hold that against it. This book is dry, but not boring. Philosophical, but not elitist. I give it a gold (but not the shiny gold, the kind of gold that’s been handed down from generation to generation and is all tarnished… like your bubby’s shabbas candle sticks) star.

I finished my ‘D’ book, finally! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, maybe I expected too much from you. I was bored throughout the first few and last few chapters, though the middle chapters were quite interesting. I could have done without the last chapter completely and I wish the ending of the second to last chapter were entirely different. Sorry for being so cryptic, but in case you do want to go out and read this, I don’t want to ruin the less than extraordinary ending for you.

Finally finished the “E” book. 529 pages is a bit much for me, but there really was nothing in the story that could have been left out without making it incomplete. Very interesting story told in an interesting manner. I wouldn’t say its a must-read, but if you’re in the mood for a good story, by all means, pick this book up. I wish I had more to say on it, but there’s really nothing else to say. Its a well written, interesting story.

It boggles my mind that some books are considered classics. While “The Great Gatsby” was quick reading, I found nothing redeeming about the story at all. I felt like I was having a conversation with a name-dropper. You know the type. They just talk and talk and talk about people assuming you know exactly who they’re talking about because they’re the coolest people ever, but you’re just thinking in your head, Who the hell are they talking about and why are they telling me this asinine story? With every new character that was introduced that is how I felt. I definitely wasn’t bored while I read it, but I can’t help but feel that this book was a complete waste of my time.

I finally finished my ‘G’ book. I have technically been reading this book since April. Between final papers, finals, morning sickness and then skipping town I put off finishing this book. I’d have to say that although I can barely remember what the first 3/4 of the book were about, I do remember enjoying them. I also enjoyed the last 1/4 of the book, but as a whole I had a lot of trouble with the book. Whenever there is more that 4 main characters that I have to pay attention to I get confused. Undiagnosed learning disability? Maybe. Attention span of a crack baby? More likely. If you’re looking for a good story, this book definitely has it. But if you’re like me, I’d say skip this book and find one with less characters to focus on so you don’t have to keep saying to yourself, “Wait… who’s that?”

The irony in this book is fantastic. When I told a friend of mine several years back that ‘1984’ by George Orwell was my favorite book, she said that I couldn’t say that until I read ‘Brave New World’. Well, I read it and ‘1984’ is still number one. That’s not saying that ‘Brave New World’ didn’t rock my socks, as the kids say. Wait, do they still say that? But ‘1984’ was more my cup of tea. I see why she said what she said though. The ideas behind both books are very similar, but the way they manifest themselves is so completely different that they are easily discernable. I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone, whether you’re a fan of ‘1984’ or not.

I was too lazy to read all 20 or so pages of ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ so I went with this 5 page essay that I found in the same book. The essay was okay, to say the least.

I’m not normally a fan of non-fiction books. They’re either too patronizing or too boring, which makes me unable to finish them. ‘The Year of Living Biblically’ though, was fantastic. My interest was kept (nearly) the whole time and it was really fast reading. I say that my interest was kept only nearly the whole time because there were a couple of chapters where the author seemed to be writing a research paper rather than the book he had set out to write and live for a year. For those of you who don’t know the premise of the book, it’s about a secular Jewish guy who decides to take the Bible as literally as possible and live according to the Bible’s literal laws for a full year. The first 8 months he dedicates to the Old Testament and the rest of the time he focuses on the New Testament. His first two months on the New Testament, though, he didn’t seem very connected. It seemed like he was just doing research for a final paper and not that he was actually trying to put the Bible into play in his own life. Thankfully, the last two chapters of the book he went back to the format of the first two chapters. Very interesting read overall. I give it a 9/10.