All I want for Christmas...

One of the things I'm looking forward to most about winter break is being able to read whatever I want, whenever I want.

I have not had the chance to read anything lately, other than a lot of feminist spirituality books for a class and lists of Latin verbs for another one, so I have a long list of books I want to read over break...so in the spirit of the holidays, here's my literary Christmas Wish List:

1) On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Not sure how I've missed this one so far. Jack Kerouac was one of the founding members of the Beat movement in the 60's, and wrote the whole thing in some insanely short amount of time on one huge roll of paper so the flow of his words wouldn't be interrupted by having to change the sheets in his typewriter.


2) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
This book has been recommended to me by two of my friends, as well as my grandmother and my mother. Seeing as my mother really doesn't tend to like "the classics" and my grandmother never reads fiction, I figure this is probably a pretty important book.

3) The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
This man is just brilliant. I started this book a while ago and never got around to finishing it, but just the first three pages managed to change my life, so I'm thinking I should finish it.

4) The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
See above: haven't started it, but this man is brilliant. He teaches journalism at Berkeley, incidentally.

5) The Dickens Hero by Beth Herst
I meant to read this for my thesis, and never quite got to the downtown library that had a copy of it. I still think it sounds really interesting, though, so I wanted to read it at some point and break is as good a time as any.


6) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
My friend lent this to me about four months ago and I have yet to crack it open. I have been slowly working my way through the series since December of last year, when I bought Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone at a bookstore at King's Cross station in London and proceeded to finish most of it later on a bus ride back to the airport. But since Sirius is dead, I don't know how good it's going to be. Honestly, you've got to admire J. K. Rowling for her ability to just kill off major characters in a blaze of glory.

7) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
One of my friends told me she really liked this book, and again, she's not one to love traditional literary standards (this is the friend with whom I had an enormous argument about the merit of Great Expectations). Somehow I managed to miss it in my Early American Lit class.

8) The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Same here-- managed to miss it. But this wasn't really recommended to me, more like my friend was trying to convince me not to read it and I thought it sounded cool...

Merry reading, everyone!