Then and Now

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Grandpa

Well-Known Member
Mar 2, 2014
9,724
53,642
Colorado
I think I did my best reading in college. When the Legends Die by Hal Borland. Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. Evan Hunter's Sons. Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (horrorshow, my droogs). Just a bunch of little gems, not well-known all that much (except I knew I liked Evan Hunter from reading my parents' Ed McBain books). And some well-known books, too, like William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. And those were for fun that I plucked out from the library.

Heck, Now I kinda wish I could remember the required reading from back then. Oh, yeah - Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. Those were decent little stories. The Sun also Rises by Hemingway, which was a yawner, sorry. The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, which was about 65% okay. Gulliver's Travels by Swift which, when you understand the satire behind it, was simply brilliant, especially A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhns.

I also listened to some Ravi Shankar while doing homework, and no, I wasn't doing drugs. Other big musical explosions: Tarkus by ELP, Grand Funk Railroad, Uriah Heep (which reminds me - A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, and yes, I know Heep was in David Copperfield), King Crimson, Yes, and the Woodstock album. Metalhead by Deep Purple was out, and that was a great album.



(Excuse me while I stroll down memory lane.)

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Lily Sawyer

B-ReadAndWed
Jun 27, 2009
6,625
15,016
South Carolina
I'm part of CarriesYoungerBrother's tribe: I was the lit geek.
I loved most of my assigned reading in high school and college. British Lit in high school was mainly poetry and plays, with lots of Shakespeare and Chaucer and Wordsworth and Yeats and Herrick.
American Lit was when the books started to be assigned: Poe short stories, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, To Kill A Mockingbird, As I Lay Dying, My Antonia, Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, Dana Jean's favorite Steinbeck book, and Heart of Darkness are what I remember.

I loved most of it until I was forced to read The Stranger three times, once in English and twice in French. I wouldn't cry if someone burned all remaining copies of it.