As an English Major, I've been required to read a lot of books here lately, and too many short stories to count. Right now I'm working on A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It's an interesting read, but it's so long. The world-building and characterization are amazing, though, and the juvenile nature of the conversations and games is a fantastic representation so far, although I only just got to chapter four.

Before that, we read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. It's an interesting novel in that it can either be read as a novel of flashbacks or a collection of short stories. In either case, O'Brien takes the time to comment on the writing process within the pages of the stories, using himself as a character to explain things that never actually happened to him, but how memory helps draw imagination. The sole Veteran in our class was very proud of how the overall work was what it was without covering anything up. I, meanwhile, was reminded of some of my own pains and losses, because pain is something universal, and literature can be a way to call up things in the strangest of ways.

And then there are the two books we started out with: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle. I'm currently working on doing a compare and contrast paper regarding the language between the two and how each one is effective in its own right. Both were a little hard to read in their own ways, The Bluest Eye because of its subject matter, and The White Boy Shuffle because the entire second half of the book gets rather absurd.

I did say that I'd post about what I was reading at some point, so there you go. I'd recommend all of these depending on what criteria someone is looking for. Like, if you have a long flight to somewhere and want to be entertained, definitely opt for A Prayer for Owen Meany, because you'll probably reach your destination before you finish it, unless you're some kinda massive speedreader like a friend of mine who can go three to four lines at a time.