Himself

"THIS BOOK DOES NOT CLAIM to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again." Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson Uggghh. I did not really enjoy this. The prose was, in my opinion, awful, especially in comparison to what I am and have been reading. The story was trite, though that is because it forms the basis for virtually all pirate stories that followed. One can tell that it was written as a children's novel; I definitely would have enjoyed it much more had I read it 5+ years ago. 2/5

Thanks for the reassurances, folks. Yeah, that's part of what motivated me to just form my list as I went, rather than attempting to thoroughly organize anything.

I finished Treasure Island and began Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

Thanks! I have made the decision to start jotting down notes on whatever book I am reading, so the reviews should be getting more substantial and thought through for the coming books. After looking at your 2011 thread, I'm a little embarrassed about the total lack of consistent or coherent order present in my reading list.

My favourite is Onegin, by Pushkin. Unfortunately, it is a wee bit too long to simply copy and paste, so here's a link to legally download it: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23997

Here goes my first attempt at reviewing: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson The thought which was in my mind in perpetuity while making my way through this roman à clef was "These guy are totally bat-shhhhhhh insane." Thompson's prose is far from prosaic; It is as riveting and absorbing as anything I have read. My main problem with this book lies more in its form than anything else, its gonzo journalistic nature made it feel like it dragged. Writing that, though, I begin to feel that that is more because of my frame of reference and its aberrant nature, more than an actual flaw with the novel. An excellent foray into the culture of his era and the nature of the drug community: I certainly recommend it to anyone who has not read it. 5/5 Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer I love Foer's fiction writing, so going into this I was worried that his humorous style would not transfer well. Luckily, not even half a page into the book, my fears were assuaged. Foer skilfully weaves in parables and anecdotes from his life and research, while not once straying from, what I would call, effective and objective journalism. Reading this soon after first witness the wonders that are David Wallace's journalistic forays, especially Consider the Lobster, the book shines a little less brightly that it would have otherwise. It is refreshing to read a thoroughly thought through argument that is also extremely well presented. At no point did any conclusions that Foer posited seem rushed or unsubstantiated. After reading this, I would be extremely disappointed in myself were I not to - at the very least - cease eating factory farmed, and fast, food. 4/5

Reserved

TBR, both pile and ethereal 1. Adams, Douglas – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency 2. Adams, Douglas – Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul 3. Aquinas, Saint Thomas – Summa Theologica 4. Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics 5. Aristotle – Politics 6. Aristotle – The Poetics 7. Asimov, Isaac – Forward the Foundation 8. Asimov, Isaac – Foundation 9. Asimov, Isaac – Foundation and Earth 10. Asimov, Isaac – Foundation and Empire 11. Asimov, Isaac – Foundation’s Edge 12. Asimov, Isaac – Prelude to Foundation 13. Asimov, Isaac – Second Foundation 14. Asimov, Isaac – Youth 15. Aurelius, Emperor Marcus – Meditations 16. Austen, Jane –The Complete Works 17. Auster, Paul – Invisible 18. Auster, Paul – The New York Trilogy 19. Ayer, A. J. – Language, Truth and Logic 20. Bacon, Francis – Essays 21. Blake, William – Poems 22. Blake, William – Songs of Innocence and Experience 23. Borges, Jorge Luis – Labyrinths 24. Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451 25. Bradbury, Ray – Something Wicked This Way Comes 26. Bradbury, Ray – The Illustrated Man 27. Bronte, Emily – Wuthering Heights 28. Brooks, Max – The Zombie Survival Guide 29. Brooks, Max – World War Z 30. Bulgakov, Mikhail – The Master and Margarita 31. Burgess, Anthony – A Clockwork Orange 32. Byron, George Gordon – Don Juan 33. Camus, Albert – The Plague 34. Carroll, Lewis – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 35. Carroll, Lewis – The Game of Logic 36. Carroll, Lewis – The Hunting of the Snark 37. Carroll, Lewis – Through the Looking-Glass 38. Carson, Kevin – Organization Theory 39. Carver, Raymond – Beginners 40. Cervantes, Miguel de – Don Quixote 41. Chabon, Michael – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay 42. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich – Uncle Vanya 43. Child, Lee – Killing Floor 44. Chodorov, Frank – The Rise and Fall of Society 45. Cicero, Marcus Tullius – Letters 46. Cicero, Marcus Tullius – Treatises on Friendship and Old Age 47. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 48. Conrad, Joseph – Lord Jim 49. Conrad, Joseph – Notes on Life and Letters 50. Conrad, Joseph – Under Western Eyes 51. Darwin, Charles – On the Origin of Species 52. Dawkins, Richard – The God Delusion 53. Dawkins, Richard – The Greatest Show on Earth 54. Dawkins, Richard – The Selfish Gene 55. Defoe, Daniel – Robinson Crusoe 56. Descartes, Rene – A Discourse on Method 57. Diamond, Jared – Guns, Germs and Steel 58. Dickens, Charles – The Complete Works 59. Doctorow, Cory – For the Win 60. Dostoevsky, Fyodor – Notes from Underground 61. Dostoevsky, Fyodor – The Brothers Karamazov 62. Dostoevsky, Fyodor – The Idiot 63. Dumas, Alexander – The Count of Monte Cristo 64. Dumas, Alexander – The Three Musketeers 65. Eco, Umberto – Foucault’s Pendulum 66. Eco, Umberto – On Beauty 67. Eliot, George – Middlemarch 68. Eliot, T. S. – The Waste Land 69. Faulkner, William – The Sound and the Fury 70. Feyerabend, Paul – Against Method 71. Feynman, Richard – Six Easy Pieces 72. Feynman, Richard – Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman 73. Flaubert, Gustave – Madame Bovary 74. Flaubert, Gustave – Sentimental Education 75. Flaubert, Gustave – The Temptation of St. Antony 76. Forster, E. M. – A Room with a View 77. Forster, E. M. – Where Angels Fear to Tread 78. Frankl, Viktor E. – Man’s Search for Meaning 79. Franklin, Benjamin – The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin 80. Franzen, Jonathan – Freedom 81. Gallico, Paul – The Snow Goose 82. Genette, Gerard – Narrative Discourse 83. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von – Faust 84. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von – The Sorrows of Young Werther 85. Gogol, Nikolai – Dead Souls 86. Gogol, Nikolai – The Collected Tales 87. Gould, Stephen Jay – The Mismeasure of Man 88. Harding, Paul – The Tinkers 89. Hardy, Thomas – Tess of the d’Urbervilles 90. Hawthorne, Nathaniel – The Scarlet Letter 91. Hayek, F. A. – The Road to Serfdom 92. Heller, Joseph – Catch-22 93. Hemingway, Ernest – A Farewell to Arms 94. Hemingway, Ernest – The Old Man and the Sea 95. Hemingway, Ernest – The Sun Also Rises 96. Hitchens, Christopher – God Is Not Great 97. Hitchens, Christopher – Hitch-22 98. Hitchens, Christopher – The Portable Atheist 99. Hobbes, Thomas – Leviathan 100. Hofstadter, Douglas – I Am a Strange Loops 101. Hoppe, Hans Hermann – Democracy 102. Hugo, Victor – Les Miserables 103. Hume, David – An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 104. Huxley, Alduous – Point Counter Point 105. Irving, Washington – The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow 106. Ishiguro, Kazuo – Never Let Me Go 107. Jacobson, Howard – The Finkler Question 108. Jevons, William Stanley – Elementary Lessons in Logic Deductive and Inductive 109. Jordan, Robert – The Eye of the World 110. Joyce, James – Dubliners 111. Joyce, James – Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man 112. Joyce, James – Ulysses 113. Kafka, Franz – The Metamorphosis and Other Stories 114. Kafka, Franz – The Trial 115. Kant, Immanuel – The Metaphysical Element 116. Keats, John – Endymion 117. Keats, John – Lamia 118. Kerouac, Jack – On the Road 119. Keyes, Daniel – Flowers for Algernon 120. Kierkegaard, Soren – Fear and Trembling 121. Kierkegaard, Soren – The Sickness unto Death 122. King, Stephen – Insomnia 123. King, Stephen – It 124. King, Stephen – The Stand 125. Klingberg, Torkel – The Overflowing Brain 126. Knowles, Sir James – The Legends of King Arthur 127. Lewis, Michael – The Big Short 128. Locke, John – Conduct of the Understanding 129. London, Jack – The People of the Abyss 130. London, Jack – White Fang 131. Lovecraft, H. P. – Against the World, Against Life 132. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia – One Hundred Years of Solitude 133. Maugham, W. Somerset – Of Human Bondage 134. McCarthy, Cormac – Blood Meridian 135. McCarthy, Cormac – The Road 136. McEwan, Ian – Atonement 137. Melville, Herman – Moby Dick 138. Mill, John Stuart – On Liberty 139. Miller, Henry – Tropic of Cancer 140. Mises, Ludwig von – Human Action 141. Mises, Ludwig von – The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality 142. Mitchell, Margaret – Gone With the Wind 143. Montaigne, Michel de – On Solitude 144. More, Thomas – Utopia 145. Nabokov, Vladimir – Lolita 146. Nietzsche, Freidrich – Ecce Homo 147. Orwell, George – Why I Write 148. Palahniuk, Chuck – Pygmy 149. Pascal, Blaise – Pensees 150. Paton, Alan – Cry, the Beloved Country 151. Pinker, Stephen – The Blank Slate 152. Poe, Edgar Allan – The Complete Works 153. Pound, Ezra – Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 154. Powell, Padgett – The Interrogative Mood 155. Proust, Marcel – Swann’s Way 156. Pynchon, Thomas – Gravity’s Rainbow 157. Pynchon, Thomas – The Crying of Lot 49 158. Pynchon, Thomas – V. 159. Racine, Jean Baptise – Phaedra 160. Roth, Philip – American Pastoral 161. Roth, Philip – Portnoy’s Complaint 162. Roth, Philip – The Human Stain 163. Rothbard, Murray N. – Man, Economy, and State 164. Roussea, Jean-Jacques – The social Contract 165. Russell, Bertrand – History of Western Philosophy 166. Sagan, Carl – Contact 167. Sagan, Carl – Cosmos 168. Sagan, Carl – Pale Blue Dot 169. Sagan, Carl – The Demon-Haunted World 170. Schopenhauer, Arthur – Essays on Human Nature 171. Schopenhauer, Arthur – On the Suffering of the World 172. Seslick, Dr Dale – Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary 173. Shakespeare, William – The Complete Works 174. Shaw, Bernard – Pygmalion 175. Shea, Ammon – Reading the Oxford English Dictionary 176. Shea, Ammon – Satisdiction 177. Sheldrake, Rupert – Morphic Resonance 178. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft – Frankenstein 179. Sinclair, Upton – The Jungle 180. Smith, Adam – The Wealth of Nations 181. Spinoza – Ethics 182. Stephenson, Neal – Snow Crash 183. Stevenson, Robert Louis – Treasure Island 184. Stoker, Bram – Dracula 185. Stowe, Harriet Beecher – Uncle Tom’s Cabin 186. Swift, Jonathan – Gulliver’s Travels 187. Tacitus, Caius Cornelius – The Histories 188. Thackeray, William Makepeace – Vanity Fair 189. Thompson, Hunter S. – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 190. Thoreau, Henry David –Civil Disobedience 191. Thoreau, Henry David – Walden 192. Thoreau, Henry David – Walking 193. Tolstoy, Leo – Anna Karenina 194. Tolstoy, Leo – The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories 195. Tolstoy, Leo – War and Peace 196. Trollope, Anthony – Barchester Towers 197. Trollope, Anthony – Doctor Thorne 198. Trollope, Anthony – The Warden 199. Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 200. Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 201. Twain, Mark – The Prince and the Pauper 202. Twain, Mark – What is Man? and Other Essays 203. Verne, Jules – A Journey to the Centre of the Earth 204. Verne, Jules – Around the World in 80 Days 205. Verne, Jules – Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea 206. Vinci, Leonardo da – Notebooks 207. Virgil – The Aeneid 208. Voltaire – Candide 209. Vonnegut, Kurt – Breakfast of Champions 210. Vonnegut, Kurt – Cat’s Cradle 211. Vonnegut, Kurt – Slaughterhouse-Five 212. Wells, H. G. – The Invisible Man 213. Wells, H. G. – The Time Machine 214. Wells, H. G. – The War of the Worlds 215. Whitman, Walt – Leaves of Grass 216. Wilde, Oscar – The Picture of Dorian Gray 217. Wilson, Robert Anton – The Illuminatus! Trilogy 218. Woolf, Virginia – To the Lighthouse 219. Yalom, Irvin D. – The Schopenhauer Cure 220. Yalom, Irvin D. – When Nietzsche Wept

SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

1. Age (<18, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55+) <18 (16) 2. Gender Male 3. What do you read on a daily basis? (blogs, newspapers, books, etc.) Reddit, some blogs, telegraph, and books 4. How often do you read for fun in a week? Daily 5. What time of day do you like to read? Evening 6. Where do you read? Bed, bath, at my desk 7. How many books have you read in the last 6 months? ~25 8. What type/genre do you enjoy reading most? Philosophy, classics, "philosophical" fiction 9. Why do you read? (entertainment, relaxation, learning, etc.) Erudition and escapism, mostly 10. What barriers prevent you from reading more? School, cunctation, me 11. Do you think reading for fun is important? Yes, primarily because it tends to force one to think, which is an activity I think many need to partake in more frequently 12. Do you fold page corners or use a bookmark? Both. I will usually bookmark to keep my place, but dogear for interesting passages, vocabulary, and whatnot 13. Do you prefer to read to music or in silence? Silence, I am too easily distracted 14. Do you discuss books with your friends? Not really 15. Do you borrow books from the library? Occasionally, but I prefer to own the book 16. Do you borrow/loan books from/to friends? Very rarely, only when I am forcing someone to read something.

I finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and have begun Treasure Island

I thoroughly enjoyed Haruki Murakami's collection The Elephant Vanishes. It is certainly an interesting take on the, I suppose, banalities of existence.

Thanks for the welcomes everyone. I hope you're all having a great Christmas. I go through phases. I was, for a while, almost exclusively reading philosophy, but I have recently moved back into fiction.

I have long been a lover of trivia, so naturally I tend towards non-fiction, especially philosophical works. I have, however, found myself having more of a propinquity towards fiction. Perhaps it is because I have recently begun to more acknowledge and understand the philosophical underpinnings of much of what I read.

I am a huge fan of Stephen Fry, and, having watched his Christmas Cracker the other day, have become increasingly interested in his story. Good to hear his memoirs are well written enough to more than justify that curiosity.

Currently Reading: Catch-22, Joseph Heller Read: December, 2010 1. Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson 5/5 2. Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer 4/5 3. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson 2/5 4. Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl 5/5 5. Dirk gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams 4/5 6. The Time Machine, H. G. Wells 3/5 7. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut 4/5 January, 2011 1. Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne 3/5 2. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy 4/5 3. Point Omega, Don Delillo 4/5 4. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy 3/5 5. Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth 5/5 6. King Lear, William Shakepeare 5/5 7. Contact, Carl Sagan 3/5 8. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 5/5 9. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro 4/5 February, 2011 1. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury 2. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Greetings, I am Himself. I am 16 years old and from London. I consider myself to be an avid reader, but have been getting off track with regard to keeping up with all the things I actually want to read. I love reading as much for its ability to provoke thought as I do for the stories it tells. This dictates much of choice of books. Well, that's all, for now.