Since I'm only a post away from advancing another level in my member rank, I might as well post in here.

Firstly, to taranchula and Partymember, thanks for your post-reading suppliments to Heart of Darkness. I finished the novella a few days ago, and I'll attempt to get to those.

The last thing I read was a tennis equipment catalog I found lying around. The last serious thing I read was Chapter 11 in my Macroeconomics textbook. It was about aggregate expenditure (riveting). ::)

I'm thinking of reading "20,000 leagues under the Sea". I was looking around my local book store and gave the classics section a look over. Now I want to go bury my nose in some good ol' sci-fi and horror novols.8D

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair (Another AP Lit book)

Even though the book gets off to, IMO, a rocky start, it's really good. It follows the struggle of a Lithuanian family in Chiacgo's Packingtown (meat packing city type thing) in 1906. It's very good, albiet rather... vivid in its description of the way the sausage was made before the meat industry was regulated. (I swear, I'm never eatin sausage ever again, Pure Food and Drug Act or no. Not that I ate that much sausage to begin with. ;))

Time to rescue this all-important thread from being banished to the murky depths of the Other Entertainment back pages.

I finished reading Wicked last week. Yeah, I know I'd been reading it for a while and had always become totally engrossed by it whenever I picked it up, but I then did have to put it down periodically whenever academic reading called. By the time I got to the final portion of the book, however, I was able to read the final hundred pages in a single day. It was fantastic reading, in which Maguire really succeeds in making you empathise with and root for the cackly green horror you were brought up to fear - if not by Baum then by Victor Fleming, as in my case. Elphaba remains a flawed and at times morally questionable character, but this book really enables you to step inside her (non-ruby red) shoes and feel for her, and I found the last few pages to be extremely poignant. I'm definitely going to see the musical some time (which, I am aware, makes some fundamental deviations from Maguire's narrative, but apparently they do work), and I'm also going to make a point of checking out some more of Maguire's fiction in the future, since apparently he has a whole series of books dedicated to re-interpretation of celebrated stories from the antagonists' point of view.

I've also been reading A Rat's Tale by Tor Seidler, a lovely little book from my childhood which I'd been reminded of ever since Ratatouille and had long been meaning to revisit. Although a bit less epic than I seem to have envisioned it as at the time - well, back then a book of around 200 pages certainly seemed like an epic to my inexperienced literary mind - it was every bit as funny and delightful as I recall it being, and naturally I'm inclined to appreciate any book that gives a sympathetic depiction of my favourite rodents. I've picked up another book about Tor Seidler, which I've never actually read before, called the Wainscott Weasel, so I guess that'll be the next thing I'll be engrossing myself in.

finished reading alive a few days ago for english class. true story, great book, but i dont ever want to hear the word "fuselage" again.

Currently, I'm reading The Twelfth Planet by Zechariah Sitchin. I'm really, REALLY uncertain what I think about it right now, but I'll probably talk about it once I finish it.

"Redwall". Found the book at a local Frenchy's and dove right into it. I enjoyed the show when it first aired and I've been planning to get the book at some point. I'm loving the but much more than the the show.:D

I'm reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck for Freshman English right now. I think it's really meh so far - but it's well written, I'll give it that.

I had to re-read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain since I have to take a test on it on October 2nd. Personal favorite of mine. :D

For pleasure when I'm bored - I'm reading Half-Blood Prince(or Harry Potter 6 to non-fans) by JK Rowling as well. I know it's not exactly loved by the fans, since a lot of it was claimed to be filler for Deathly Hallows but it's my third favorite.

In fact, all of the HP books in order of how I like 'em from most to least:

*Order of the Phoenix
*Prisoner of Azkaban
*Half-Blood Prince
*Chamber of Secrets
*Socerer's/Philosopher's Stone
*Goblet of Fire
*Deathly Hallows

As you can see I dislike Hallows and Goblet with great intensity :herriman:

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Is Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series any good? From what I'm told they read out like really bad fanfics.

I actually like the Twilight series. I'll admit, it has it's faults, and the relationships can seem kind of cheesy at times, but they are enjoyable books to read. But that's just my opinion, I'm sure someone'll disagree.:P

Interesting that Order of the Phoenix should be your favourite, since nearly all of the Potter readers I know (myself included) really can't stand that one. I put it down to the fact that Harry himself spends the entire novel in a perpetually foul mood (which, much to my relief, had been severly toned down for subsequent novels, and for last year's movie adaptation). My personal favourites in the series would have to be Prisoner of Azkaban and the Deathly Hallows (the only aspect of the latter which did not appeal to me was the epilogue, which needs no elaboration I'm sure, but everything else I found to be perfectly satisfying, and then some).

Sorry to report that I don't have much time to devote reading for pleasure right now. Pretty much everything I've been reading over the past couple of months has been related to my dissertation somehow. Curses! I'll look forward to when it's all over and I can finally get back to all the things I enjoy.