podpolia

history has now been ripped a new one. i finished my term paper for my “the west in american history” class. to say the very least, i was not particularly gentle with the general historical view of Manifest Destiny. if anyone wants to read the paper then, i'll email it to them (or if people request me to put it up, i'll put it up here.)
BLAM!

it has been suggested that i write in here about what i'm doing in general, instead of all of the “horrible things that happen to [me].” ok, i'm game. other than being sick right now, i'm in a fairly good mood
in any event, since my last entry i've read:
Labor Camp Socialism: The Gulag in the Soviet Totalitarian System by Galina Mikhailovna Ivanova (i love that name). this was for History of the Soviet Union, and i also wrote an 8 page paper on it afterwards. (though i probably would have read it for my own entertainment as well)
The Clash of Civilizations by Huntington
A Clockwork Orange by Burgess
A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
Discourse on Method by Descartes
The Atom Station by Laxness.
Clockwork Orange was a brilliant book. if you've seen the movie, read the book. the book is much better and actually has redeeming qualities (the movie is one of the few movies that i honestly have no desire to see a second time). if you haven't seen the movie, don't, and read the book anyhow. it's hard to follow for a while (as it's written in an english slang that incorporates thieves' cant and anglicised russian words) but it's definitely worth it.
Hemingway is good, but depressing.
Laxness has reinforced my stereotype of modern literature: The Atom Station is more or less a pointless novel. it actually HAS a plot, unlike many modern 'literature' pieces, although the plot kinda goes in a circle and dances about as if saying “hey, look! i'm a plot!” the characters are extremely interesting (most of them are insane in one way or another, and the book seems to be an attempt to make you think like them), and it is very very sympathetic to the communists. so, basically, for two hundred pages you follow insane people around with very sketchy descriptions of what's going on while they try to make you a crazy commie. an interesting experience, but not something i can really get into.
in any event, i've gotta come up with another book to start tonight. tolstoy's Anna Karenina and dostoevsky's The Idiot along with hugo's Les Miserables are all fighting for my attention, but i'm not sure if i wanna start any of them at the moment. ah, well. there's always solzhenitsyn, gogol, turgenev, etc…