A New Book For Reading?

[XxgoeyxX]

[QUOTE=Darorinag]I never got to finish Cat's Cradle.QUOTE]

Ooooooooo Darorinag..you cant just stop there. You must read, its only fair you were the one who told us to read it in the frist place. Its such a quick read. Did you get bored of it or something?

[Darorinag]

Noooo, I didn't get bored of it. I just couldn't pick up a copy of it from the library, and reading longish books on a laptop is tiresome.. And then I started reading Zamyatin's book (hard copy), and never got back to Cat's Cradle. lol... OK, I promise I'll finish it. Just give me 2 more days.

[Darorinag]

"National Chairman of Poets and Painters for Immediate Nuclear War" <--- LMAO!!!!

OK, I am not done yet, but I am posting some of the passages/sentences that caught my attention:

Christ, back in Chicago, we don't make bicycles any more. It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan.

-Chapter 42

Any thoughts on this? I'm just trying to get the discussion going until everyone (including me ) finishes the book.

[Darorinag]

I loved the book. =) I just finished it last night. I think what little Newt said about the cat's cradle 'look inside, no cat, no cradle...' just about sums it all up, doesn't it?

Ahhhh, that was one of the things that caught my attention too..

So as I had promised, I finished the book! It was a surprisingly quick read (read from Ch. 40--> end in less time than I had read from Ch. 1 -->39!) I really liked the ending. It was very well-written and more satirical than any other part of the novel.

This caught my attention:

She was sitting on a three-legged stool in the clearing where Frank's house had stood. She was sewing strips of red, white, and blue cloth together. Like Betsy Ross, she was making an American flag. No one was unkind enough to point out to her that the red was really a peach, that the blue was nearly a Kelly green, and that the fifty stars she had cut out were six-pointed stars of David rather than five-pointed American stars. (Ch. 123)

I thought this was very interesting (naturally ) I've read Vonnegut's Mother Night, which is about Adolf Eichmann (Nazi) and a bitter mockery of the kangaroo court in Nuremberg. This was a very interesting comparison to that one.

Hmm, anyway...

[thedebutante]

I'm reading Bradbury (I loooove Ray Bradbury)-- Dandelion Wine.

He mentions Armenia and Armenians. Twice. Interesting.

Yeah, a lot of books mention Armenians. Even Jack Kerouac mentions them in his ever so famous On the Road.

I know that the book of choice right now is Cat's Cradle, but if you guys ever have free time, I highly recommend the following books:

Voyages
Daughters of Memory
The Great American Loneliness
All of these books were written by Peter Najarian (teaches at Berkeley I think). This guy is amazing. However, I can't really place his books in a single genre. All I can say is that they are very abstract and include subtle but ever so present references to how Armenian Americans deal with their past and cope with life in the present.

[Anonymouse]

This reading group thing never really got off to a good start.

[Darorinag]

Well, I mean, I finished the book because people asked me to (since I had suggested it in the first place), and now it seems like everyone has given up on it.

[XxgoeyxX]

Oo schoolll started...now its going to be harder for me to read anything. Im gone read text books for the next 3 months. Anywho...Im glad you finished Darorinag. Ill try to post something about the book...but right now my mind isnt on cat's cradle.

[XxgoeyxX]

Okay so it seems like some people are not reading or they dont have time to read. I understand. When school starts we are not able to read for pleasure. So, I still have not finished Confessions by St. Augustin. BAD BAD BAD! But I am reading the Bible because Im taking a Bible class for my minor. Its so interesting the things I found out. I never knew the Bible was written in a certain way. How many writters there where, who wrote them and stuff like that. I think want fascinates me most is the History of the Bible.

Now I read Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and realized that there were two different writers, telling two different creations stories. I would have never understood that nor would figured that out if I hadnt taken that class. So it seems by the end of the semester we will finish the Bible. I'm hopeing I learn even more things..cause I'm super excited. There are so many things that I am now understanding when I didnt know before. School is awesome!

[Anonymouse]

The Bible, for the most part is written in symbolism and allegory. But the profane do not know that.