November Reading

It's December and I'm still trucking along with my reading.  The end of November felt like it flew by for me.  Black Friday and on has been mainly spent assisting consumers with their Christmas needs at my job.  I have, however, been able to absorb, and love, every minute spent reading and mentally visualizing each word of the two books I have pictured above, even though I've slowed down a bit in pace.  I truly enjoy the anticipation to read more and more as I mentally latch unto to the protagonist and imagine their experience in the text as if it were real.  That feeling when you want to continue and keep reading on to the end; when the book is thinning towards the back cover and really you want the opposite so that you'll stay in mentally in this written world. 

I didn't always read this consistently.  College kind of dampened my personal reading when I struggled to finish assigned reading as well as numerous art projects on top of it.  And I'll admit I've also pushed reading aside at times when I was in relationships.  Movies were just more crowd-pleasing.  I still watch movies with Greg as well as read for personal enjoyment.  Since I found inspiration in an old Jack London novel, Adventure, in the Syracuse Regional Market, among a lot of aged German books, I have been reading and craving more books; especially those written by Americans from the twentieth century.  

Shown top to bottom:
          On The Road by: Jack Kerouac (currently reading)
          Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey into the American Dream 
                  by: Hunter S. Thompson

I loved reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  I enjoy the way Hunter S. Thompson writes in the way that it feels personal-almost like a diary from a witness.  I'm intrigued by his writing and the experiences he's lived through America and Puerto Rico.  Fear and Loathing is absurd and doesn't stray far from the outskirts of Las Vegas and the Nevada desert.  It was above all interesting adventure of a read of a lot of drug and alcohol consumption, interpretations of trends in America from an opinionated sociological perspective, and the quintessential search for "The American Dream."  Kerouac has been spot on fantastic and an equally intriguing read based on America in the late 1940s.

I hope you're reading an equally enthralling book that keeps you anticipating the next pages and prolonging those last pages that edge the back cover.  I'm also very open to suggestions from other twentieth century writers on their own search for an America and how they fit into that place.  

-Caroline