AP Adventures

Unbeknownst to me my AP English adventures began in grade six when I decided to attempt to read all the “Penguin Classics” [that were in my school’s library]. My favorite was Jane Eyre and since then I have read it probably 20 times. Next I read Brideshead Revisited a few years later. I think I was too young to really enjoy it because it is one of my sister’s favorite books but I don’t remember much about it a.k.a. clearly was not a huge fan, so I might need to revisit that expedition. I read Anna Karenina this previous summer and thoroughly enjoyed reading about the aristocratic lives of nothingness [not being at all sarcastic]. Earlier this year I read A Farewell to Arms after reading and enjoying Son Also Rises last year. I like Hemingway’s straight forward writing style which appears simple, almost emotionless, but really hides a semi-autobiographical novel and a love story between Catherine and Henry. Most recently I’m reading Catch 22, Love In the Time of Cholera, and War and Peace. My sister has been encouraging me to read Catch 22 for a few years and I finally started, I’m not that far yet so maybe that is why I’m not a huge fan. I don’t like the character of Yossarian but I think that might be the point. I’m not far enough into the book to understand when he is being serious or not so I’m still slightly confused about what is going on. In Love in the Time of Cholera I’m about 100 pages in, so far enough to learn about the beginnings of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza’s love but not far enough to know what went awry and why she marries Dr. Urbino. I like Dr. Urbino with his eccentricities; his parrot, daily nap followed by a glass of lemonade, chess playing, and stubbornness. I’m not a huge fan of Marguez’s writing style, although it is very eloquent and filled with awesome descriptions, it takes him a little too long to say something. Compared to Anna Karenina War and Peace is The Terminator. Tolstoy mixes in some aristocratic fighting to the nothingness in War and Peace. So far I like Nikolai the best, even though I’m somewhat perplexed that he seems to go from 14 to 20 in a matter of months [but that may have been a misreading on my part]. Also somewhat confusing is that everyone is a prince or princess, Russia must have been teeming with them in the 1800s. I’ve also been reading World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks which is really good. It’s written entirely through interviews from around the world of different people’s experiences of the zombie attacks [in this case the zombies are more like vampires, they don’t come back from the dead but they are bitten and then become “infected” with zombie-ism]. As well as finishing the Tristen and Isolde series, I actually just read the last one yesterday. As you can see, I still have not chosen a book to write my paper on, I would like to use War and Peace but it’s questionable whether I will finish it so I’ll most likely use A Farewell to Arms or finish Catch-22.