What BOOK(s) are you reading?

mc wrote: You know what though. I have been sick of messianic figures since forever and this isn't changing my mind about that.

What are the other novels like?

jeb wrote:

Greg Aleknevicus wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: There are so many of these "great books" we waste on precollege kids.

My absolute "favorite" in this regard is Death of a Salesman -- exactly who thinks the plot or theme is of interest to the average high-schooler?

And don't get me started on Shakespeare.

English teachers tend to teach what will be on the exam. There's been more movement on the canon recently than in almost any previous time, actually. That's changing. For me (high school was late 80s), the worst offender was Dickens. Holy shit did I hate to read Dickens. Any Dickens fans out there want to tell me about a good one, because I fucking hated GREAT EXPECTATIONS so much I haven't read a word by him since 1989. Feel free to champion Charles and let me judge you once I try again.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.