In My Mailbox/ My Summer Reading List Part 2/ Stacking The Shelves/ Mailbox Monday

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This is the Road Trip list! ^^ 


When I read Paper Towns by John Green and loved it, I realised I had barely read any books about road trips. Then I read Going Bovine and it was all kinds of awesome ( Review: http://oopsireadthatbook.blogspot.in/2012/05/going-bovine-by-libba-bray.html ) , and so I am now gonna read a whole heap of books about road trips. 

1) On the Road  by Jack Kerouac

Is it kind of embarrassing that I have not read this book yet? Yes. It is. And that must be changed soon. 

2)  Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Okay well, accepted this is more of a sea voyage than a road trip book, but it's an exception I made for this book because it's about a Tiger. And, I have a soft corner ( Translation: Obsession) for the Felines. Not to mention, much like the time when you are on the lookout for the perfect Woody Allen meets Jesse Eisenberg meets Seth Cohen hyper intellectual, neurotic guy, but you get totally distracted by a super hot french musician; well, this is like that time. A Man Booker Prize Winner being much like a super hot musician. French one. Stupid analogy. Because  I'd totally prefer the dork. 

3) The Least Awesome book by John Green

I started reading. Didn't like it as much as Paper Towns or Looking for Alaska. But whatever, John Green is John Green. This book is third person though. Meh. 

4) Saving June by Hannah Harrignton

I really didn't wanna read this because I had made up my mind it was a quintessential romance book.  But then a lot of people recommended it and I heard the main guy is like a hipster-ish dude who loves Neutral Milk Hotel or something. Anyways, I remember liking the music he likes, and it is a a road trip book, and the cover isn't shabby either so whatever, I'll check it out.  

What's in your mailbox?

Check out my Summer Reading List Part 1 

My Summer Reading List Part 1 and thoughts on the *ahem* plagiarism debacle

Wow, the blogosphere has been pretty fucked up, huh?

So what better way to distract myself than making a summer reading list. This way I can keep the whole summer mapped out and finish off a large chunk of my to-read pile.

So here goes, 

1) Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Why it is on this list?

Kafkaesque Underworld. Surrealism. Unicorn skulls. 

Wait, I need to say that again. 

UNICORN SKULLS. 

As if the book didn't have me eating out of it's palm at Kafkaesque. 

2) The Summer We Read Gatsby: A Novel by Danielle Ganek

I am not very fond of the cover but the title wins brownie points. I mean, what's a summer reading list without books that have the word summer in the title?

And it's supposed to be a delightful comedy of manners set at the Hamptons. Hamptons are pretty summer-vibe inducing too. 

:) 

3) Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford

Light breezy romances are great for summer and all, BUT I NEED TO GET MY DAILY INTAKE OF DEPRESSING SUICIDAL READZ ON.

4) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Speaking of depressing as shizz but uplifting books, I am super excited about this one. I already started it and it's great so far. And I love the cover. So quirky.

5) The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu

I am so lucky to have come across this book! 

I first saw the original version which is in French and needless to say my French isn't so good that I could read an entire novel. Anyways, I was happy to know it was translated in English. 

But this cover is pretty fancy. 

Okay, so I noticed that almost all of the blurbs of these books describe them as "poignant". 

:/ 

We are lurking into pretentious book territory.

What to do? 

.

.

.

.

Oh look, problem solved.

6)  Sixteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton

How is that for jazzing things up? That's definitely a non-poignant book. And possibly the most summery of the bunch. 

I mostly want to read it because I love the cover. I mean, I love beaches. And, I totes want that dress. And, possibly the guy too. As long as his face looks like Jesse Eisenberg. 

So, now that the quintessential cheesy summer romance book has been added, the PART 1 of my Summer Reading List is done. 

The whole list is like 30 books, so I am gonna divide it into a few parts and put it up. 

And now onto the plagiarism bit,

It's wrong as hell. I get it. In the blogging world it's the shittiest thing you can do. If someone did it to me, (I mean with all this eloquent shizz I pop out here, it could happen :P), I'd be super angry too. But this, what is happening, what I am sure we are all aware is happening, it sucks. It's just sad. It's one thing to say someone did something wrong and demand an apology, it's another to rally around attacking them on every possible level and write huge posts damaging their reputation. I am not taking any sides. I just feel like some people are not so much angry at the plagiarism per se, as they are overfilled with schadenfreude. 

Well, that was my two cents on the matter. 

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.” 

- John Green

Paper Towns by John Green

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night - dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows her. Margo's always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she's always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they're for Q. 

Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.

Published October 16th 2008 by Dutton Juvenile

10 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT PAPER TOWNS

1) Dear John Green,

 You had me at, “Maybe all the strings inside him broke.”

2) Meet the characters:

Quentin: Nerdy, Alternative and Hipster. Basically, every John Green character.

MaRgO:  She capitalises random letters because otherwise it’s not fair to the other letters.

She is mad as a hatter and odd as a bat.

In Ben Starling’s words,"She's the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome."

Also, the show Revenge should drop Emily or Amanda or whatever and follow Margo because hell hath no fury like Margo scorned.

Radar: Nerdy, Obsessed with Omnictionary which is a site like Wikipedia and LOOK, IT EXISTS. http://www.omnictionary.com/index.php/Main_Page

 Oh, and owns the largest collection of Black Santas EVER.

Ben: Funny Ben is Funny.

3) Pop Culture references.

Example: "The last time I was this scared," Radar says, "I actually had to face a Dark Lord in order to make the world safe for wizards."

Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Wilco make a special musical appearance.

And THE BELL JAR! THE BELL JAR! MY The Bell Jar. 

Also, Emily Dickinson.

4) The entire novel is weaved along with Walt Whitma’s Song of Myself from his book Leaves of Grass.

5) This book followed major themes of Perception and the Mirrors vs Windows concept.

6) Urban explorers.

7) Quentin is the book version of every character Jesse Eisenberg and Adam Brody have ever played. ( Except Zuckerberg in The Social Network. He would fit too, if he were ever so slightly dumbed down. :P ) And if nothing else, that in itself is enough for me to love the movie.

8) The novel is divided into 3 sub-parts, each providing insight into a major metaphor.

So we have The Strings, The Grass, and The Vessel.

And the only thing I like more than awkward, hyperintellectual, neurotic guys (Read: Woody Allen, Jesse Eisenberg, Adam Brody) is METAPHORS. I can eat metaphors for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

9) I loved this paragraph.

“Here’s what’s not beautiful about it: from here, you can’t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town. I mean look at it, Q; look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning thing. All the thing paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too.”

10) THE ROAD TRIP. THE BLOODY ROAD TRIP. It was all types of awesomeness and coolness and I can forever fangirl over the road trip. And honestly, it made me wonder why I haven’t read any books on road trips before. Picked up On The Road by Jack Kerouac the very next day. Any other recommendations? 

I don’t know how a book filled with pranks, clues, mystery, beer and naked graduation manages to be philosophical, but this one does.