Summer reading: The Eye in the Door

I'm trying to figure out what to write my autobiography paper on (still) and so I decided to get my brain back into World War One mode by listening to The Eye in the Door, the second installment of the Regeneration trilogy, a series of novels that takes place in England, on the "home-front", during the war. The books are about injured and "shell shocked" soldiers receiving psychological treatment from the neurologist and cultural anthropologist Dr. W.H.R Rivers. Nearly all of the characters are based on the lives of real men, including Dr. Rivers, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Robert Graves, except for our protagonist Billy Prior, a temperamental Northerner who'll unapologetically have sex with anyone (homosexuality features as a primary theme in the novels as a threat to national security and something which is frequently treated at the hospital in which Dr. Rivers works), who hates his father and seeks to replace Dr. Rivers as a father figure, and who is a fighter as well as a lover. Prior is a bit over the top, but I am absolutely in love with him.

Summer reading: American Gods

I love books, I love studying literature, but I hate reading. This is the great contradiction of my life, and unfortunately it has kept me from being as well-read as I'd like to be. I just don't get as much pleasure from reading as a lot of people do. I'd much rather watch a tv show (or glance through blogs, watch youtube videos, or stare at a wall) than read a book. Reading is work and I am lazy. But, since these crazy people in this PhD program gave me a fellowship and I'm getting paid to read, it really is work and I am obligated to do it full time. So I'm trying to work on getting through as many novels as I can this summer. Not necessarily great works of literature, but books I've been meaning to read for some time, books I hope will be enjoyable, and most importantly books I can listen to so that I can push through them while I'm doing other things like cleaning my bathroom or walking to school. I'm going to try to keep track of them on the blog so I have a good record of what I've read.