Nightlight

Oh so disappointing. It could have been exponentially funnier. The Twilight series is so easy to make fun of, but the Harvard Lampoon completely missed the boat. The short parody in the last issue of the Lampoon was much, much funnier. Nightlight had a few funny bits, but don't read it.

Look at the Birdie

Very enjoyable. Vonnegut is just a good writer and these stories were short but thought provoking.

Writing With Sources: A Guide for Harvard Students

Ohhhh so helpful. This was like a massive how-to of bibliography construction. I referenced it often. It scared me a bit though, because I initially felt like I couldn't write anything without getting Ad Boarded for plagiarism. Haha

The Portable Edgar Allan Poe

Hmmmm, Poe is a bit repetitive, I'll be honest. His writing is intense, and I really love how much effort he put into each "design."

Favorite Quote:

"Poe resumes drinking." "Poe continues drinking." "Poe relapses into alcoholism." "Poe begins drinking again." Perhaps this explains much of his writing...?

Short Guide

A Short Guide to College Writing was surprisingly helpful. It had concrete examples of how to improve your own writing (with easy steps) and was sometimes funny. The authors did an outstanding job of keeping things simple and useful.

Psychology

This was THE only textbook I ever looked forward to reading. I LOVED Gray's sense of humor, and I especially loved that it came through in his writing (in a TEXTbook!). Everything was short and sweet, and the examples and experiments Gray cited were amusing and sometimes funny. Nicely done, sir.

How the Mind Works

Well done, Pinker. This book was an informative introduction to behavioral psychology and neurobiology. I enjoyed it a great deal, but I enjoyed his lectures more...!

Favorite Quote:

"This type of conspicuous waste was not seen again until the Jewish bar mitzvah."

SuperFreakonomics

These guys are good. As always, I love the random connections they made. I found the section on global warming especially impressive and interesting.

Sometimes I wonder if they manipulate their statistics a bit, but it's entertaining nonetheless.

Favorite Quotes:
The entire section on prostitution

Eating the Dinosaur

Chuck Klosterman!!!!!!! Okay, this was a good one. There was a lot of randomness, but there were also plenty of pearls of wisdom thrown in. His essay about the Unabomber was genuinely outstanding, on many levels.

Favorite Quotes:

"Nader's reasons for running in 2000 (and in 2004) were unvarnished extensions of what he claimed to represent. He was not psychologically troubled. He was literal, which is received by the public as the same thing."

"Not all crazy people are brilliant, but almost all brilliant people are crazy."

"If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self aware! And this is idiotic."

"I love the internet. And I will probably love whatever technological firebomb comes next. My apologies, Ted. Your thirty-five-thousand-word document makes sense to me, but I cannot be saved. You'll have to blow up my hands."

Another PostSecret Book (!)

Favorite Secrets:

"I used to tell myself I was helping my patients end the pain... Now I think I just wanted to play God."

"I resolve to be brave, and strong, and proud of my life."

"I already knew your secret. Everything is going to be alright."

"Since life is so short, I feel like I need to be active all the time. I feel guilty for taking time to relax."

"I meditate on the tiolet. (You should try it sometime.)

Creepy Stories

Just finished 'The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales," which is a collection of, duh, Gothic short stories. As messed up as it is, Gothic fiction is fascinating on many levels, and this collection was especially interesting. It's a good read if you're looking for twisted psychology, entrapment, and/or patriarchal oppression. Enjoy.

Favorite Stories:
Goat Girl
Ruins of the Abbey of Fitz-Martin
If You Touched My Heart

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Meh. Gothic fiction is always interesting, but I prefer the really messed up, perverted Gothic fiction to mere ghost mysteries.

Nice try, Radcliffe. I know you're a pioneer in Gothic fiction, but Austen was right to make fun of you.

Northanger Abbey

I really love Jane Austen, and Northanger Abbey is a keeper. It is a parody of Gothic Fiction (specifically, The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe) and it was clever.

Favorite Quotes:

"What ideas, Miss Morland, have you been admitting?"

"The heroine's father did not lock her away in the cellar as is the custom of one such story as this."

My First Complete Book in Months

Yes, I read this book for a class, my freshman seminar, "Dealing with the Global Financial Crisis." And then the author (Amity Shlaes, who has been on the Daily Show) came and spoke to our class. And then we had refreshments at Professor Ken Rogoff's house. With his wife Natasha (a former NBC producer), the chief economist from Kuwait, and the editor of the Wall Street Journal.

It was so awesome.

Only at Harvard.

Oh, and the book was outstanding too.

Business Etiquette 101

Short, to the point.

There were some simple tips and everything was explained fairly well with helpful examples.

I would say this is an excellent quick-reference book.

Me of Little Faith

Two things:
1. I thought this book was going to be funnier.
2. I think this book would have been funnier if I listened to it on tape (Lewis Black is all about the delivery).

Favorite Quotes:
"All I could think was, 'I need a cheeseburger.'"

"I probably use the word 'fuck' too much. That was probably her point."

A Man Without a Country

I love ya, Vonnegut, and I respect your political views, but this book was just too socialist for my taste.

As always, it was funny and engaging (and short!), but in the end, this was like a paranoid Commie rant (a bit). Still entertaining though (and still short!).

Favorite Quote:

"If I die, God forbid." It's funny because he says it frequently and he doesn't believe in God! Hehe.

Remember Me When I'm Gone

This one was "written" by Larry King and, basically, it was a collection of epitaphs written by celebrities and other famous figures for their own "funerals." The point was to get these people to reveal what they hoped they would be remembered for. Some of them were funny, some of them poignant, others long-winded and arrogant.

I actually expected more from this book, but it was a.) short, b.) fast-paced, c.) sometimes interesting, and d.) it accomplished its purpose: the celebrities really did reveal what they wanted people to remember about them.

Favorite Quotes:
Michael Ian Black: "And so it is with heavy heart that we bid Michael adieu. His taste in music may have been terrible, but his choice of wardrobe was worse."

Bobby Knight: "When my time on earth is done/ And I have breathed my last/ I want they bury me upside down/ So my critics can kiss my ass."

Donald Trump: "A man of great vision, who fulfilled many of his dreams, loved his family and was loyal to his friends."

PostSecret: A Lifetime of Secrets

Okay, let's be honest, the PostSecret books aren't exactly "books" in the conventional sense. And I read this one because I was falling severely behind in my goal for this summer and wanted to catch up. BUT, let's not let that fact negate the value of PostSecret books. They are simple and INTERESTING. And some of the secrets are genuinely profound.

Favorite Secrets:
"I love my TV more than people."

"My ex-boyfriend would sit down when he peed. I would bring it up in arguments."

Over Halfway Review

Status Update: Still in the trenches with Ayn Rand.

I have been reading Atlas Shrugged for about a month now, and I am well over halfway finished, but still a few weeks away from being done.

BUT, I will take this opportunity to reflect on my 52-in-52 booklist as a whole. Here are some random rankings from best to worst books, best quotes, etc...

5 Best Books

1. Atlas Shrugged (Doesn't officially count because this is not my first time reading it.)
1. Downtown Owl
2. Outliers
3. Wuthering Heights
4. Armageddon in Retrospect
5. Child 44

5 Worst Books

1. Breaking Dawn
2. How Doctors Think
3. Letters from a Nut
4. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging
5. Let's Spend the Night Together

5 Most Influential Books

1. Atlas Shrugged (Still doesn't officially count.)
1. Outliers
2. Blink
3. Tipping Point
4. Why is God Laughing?
5. Wuthering Heights

5 Funniest Books

1. Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea.
2. My Horizontal Life
3. Downtown Owl
4. Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas
5. Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs

5 Most Boring Books

1. How Doctors Think
2. Sex Lives of the Popes
3. The Darwin Awards
4. Treatise on Tolerance
5. Let's Spend the Night Together

5 Weirdest Books

1. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
2. Choke
3. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
4. The Glass Castle
5. Armageddon in Retrospect

5 Best Quotes

Note: My top 100 quotes are from Atlas Shrugged, but because I have read it more than once, I will stick to quotes from books I have read only this year.

1. "I am a humanist, which means, in part, I behave decently with no expectation of reward or punishment in an Afterlife." Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian.
2. "We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die." Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl
3. "Religion can be a Tylenol for a lot of unhappy people, and I'm so glad it works." Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect.
4. "I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had." Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner.
5. "We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States." Clarence Darrow, Scopes Monkey Trial.

Runners Up:
"If anyone here should wind up on a gurney in a lethal injection facility, here is what your last words should be: 'This will certainly teach me a lesson.'" Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect.
"Within the two hour time frame of the romantic movie, the couple meet, fall in love, fall out of love, break up, and then just before the end of the movie, they happen to bump into each other by "coincidence" somewhere absolutely absurd, like by the river. This never happens in real life. The last time I bumped into an ex-boyfriend was at three o'clock in the morning at Rite Aid. I was ringing up Gas-X and corn removers." Chelsea Handler, My Horiztonal Life.
"I had escaped from Welch, WV, once, and now, breathing in those same old smells of turpentine, dog hair, and dirty clothes, of stale beer and cigarette smoke and unrefrigerated food slowly going bad, I had the urge to bolt." Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle.

So there you have it. Back to Atlas Shrugged!