Spring Break Reading

"So, what did you do over spring break?"
"Oh, just some light reading...."

I read ten freaking books over spring break. I mean, one of them (well forty pages of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) was sort of mandatory but the other nine...were strictly optional.

Yes. Ten books. 2,705 pages. It was fantastic. There is really nothing better than sitting down and reading a good book for hours, and going through all of it in just a day or two rather than stretching it out over a week.

So, from top to bottom I read:

The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare

Macbeth by Shakespeare

Maximum Ride: The Final Warning   by: James Patterson

Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports    by: James Patterson

Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever    by: James Patterson

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment     by: James Patterson

March by Geraldine Brooks

The Picture of Dorian Gray   by: Oscar Wilde

The Outsiders   by S.E. Hinton

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest   by Ken Kesey


Some of the books were rereads, like The Outsiders, for example. This was the book that made me fall in love with reading, the first book that I truly felt like the world had ended around me when I finished it. Reading it again for the first time since freshman year was amazing, I loved it even more and the entire message of the book was revealed to me once again in different ways. I could relate to the characters all over again, and they still feel strikingly real to me and it's so hard to shake I've stopped trying.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was fantastic. It took a better portion of my day to read, but it was totally worth it. Actually, I probably should have saved the last chapter or so until the next morning, because Dorian Gray stabbing the picture, therefore stabbing himself...the whole ordeal really freaked me out at one in the morning, to be quite frank. The movie Dorian Gray starring Ben Barnes (who I love) was sadly very disappointing (and come to think of it actually horrifically terrifying also and another thing I should have saved until daylight).

Oh! How could I forget- The Merchant of Venice. I actually laughed out loud when I finished the play because this was the first of Shakespeare's plays I've read where no one dies in the end. Ha, ha! (I'm looking at YOU Hamlet).

Those three were certainly highlights for me, but the one book I did not care much for was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.  This was pretty far outside the realm of books I would choose myself to read, and overall I just did not like it too much.This is saying something because I enjoy virtually everything I read. The whole tone was sort of... bleak? I'm not really sure. I also found it difficult, personally, to relate to this group of forty year old men drinking cough syrup and hanging out with prostitutes. Maybe I'm just a funny feminist that way.

Now, I'm off to take the eleven books I currently have checked out of the library back to their home, and maybe start The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.