Following the lead of a friend, I too decided it was time to get back into reading literature.

What, you thought this blog couldn’t get any more random?

My reading list of the last few years is a lot less impressive than Shawn’s, although I’ll assign partial blame to the fact that I was doing a lot of reading for school. But nonetheless, here’s what I’ve read the last few years:

• Three Nights in August, by Buzz Bissinger, who previously wrote Friday Night Lights, covered a three game Cubs-Cards series in August of 2003 from the perspective of Manager Tony LaRussa. A fascinating look into LaRussa’s life, strongly recommended for any baseball fan.
• Triple, by Ken Follett. Not his best book (Code To Zero is my favorite), but a good read. And it only took me three separate plane trips to finish.
• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. A tremendous story from an author who uses simple language but still paints vivid pictures of triumphant, joyous, tragic, and gruesome scenes.
• Hundreds of Bill Simmons articles.

Not that Ken Follett can’t write a thriller, but I wanted to get back into the more classical literature, so I stopped by Barnes and Noble last night and picked up a copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I picked it because it looked like something I could read in an afternoon and George Orwell’s other blockbuster, 1984, is my favorite book I’ve ever read. I read two chapters of the book last night and finished it this afternoon, and let me say this: wow.

Orwell is completely masterful in predicting the future and pointing out every flaw of totalitarianism (similarly to 1984: I did some research and found out that pretty much all of Orwell’s writing is along those same themes) but unlike 1984, which uses gritty, realistic detail to make his point, in Animal Farm, Orwell creates a farm of animals that represents a micro-nation and uses satire to make his points. Almost every type of person in society is represented in the farm and while the premise itself is ridiculous, the points made are valid. I thought about writing a longer blog post drawing parallels between the past and present administrations here in the U.S.; instead, suffice it to say that parallels exist and I’ll let you draw them on your own. I greatly enjoyed reading Animal Farm, and highly recommend it to anyone into the Utopian society thing. Plus, it’s a really quick read – about two hours between last night and today and I was done.

It’s been a while, literature world, but I’m glad to be back.