But Oh, Oh Those Summer Nights

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where--" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

This quote was posted on my boyfriends facebook, and being the literary genius that I am, it really made me think. It moved me, even--I know that sounds very strange, but I read it and I thought "You're right. It doesn't matter which way you go." I thought about this quote for literally hours, forgetting about it only when something else demanded my immediate attention, and then when I had a moment of free thought my mind returned to the quote.

Furthermore, it made me want to read. Last summer I told myself that I was going to read like crazy, but that never happened. I didn't even read the book that I was required to read for my First-Year Seminar class. But, this summer is going to be different.

This is my summer reading book list. I'll keep reposting this blog as I add more books, read more books, and have opinions to write about them.

~The Reader by Bernhard Schlink*

~Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

~One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

~Doubt by John Patrick Shanley 

~A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

~Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov

~1984 by George Orwell

~Complete Short Stories by Oscar Wilde

*The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink. This book was wonderful. I originally found out about it from the movie, which I saw with P and ended up pretty much crying in the movie theater. The book is exactly the same but entirely different--all of the same events happen, but our main character approaches them very differently. It's the story of the love between a young man and an older woman. One day she disappears, and ten years later he's attending a Nazi trial for a college class that she's being convicted in. In the movie he's very emotional and cries a lot, even trying to visit her in jail once but failing. In the book, he's cold; he feels not only as if he's betrayed her, but as if she's betrayed him. Throughout the trial he feels cold, seeing old images of her in his mind but feeling nothing. It's almost less of a love story and more of the internal battle of our character with what is right and what is wrong, what we have power of and what we don't, and who should be judged what which things that they do.

It gets a bit dry at times, seemingly going on and on about nothing, but he always draws it to a very thoughtful, deep conclusion that was worth the wait. Out of five stars: three and a half.