Booking Through Thursday: Reading Right Now

I'm feeling all melancholic. This is the last BTT I will be writing from home. Next time I will be at my student accommodation, probably with a massive hangover from partying and socialising! But I will still be reading a lot and therefore this week's question is perfect:

Quick–what are you reading right now? (Other than this question on this website, of course.) Would you recommend it? What’s it about?

Ok, so at the moment I'm reading three different books:

'Breakfast of Champions' by Kurt Vonnegut.

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s  most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

I am loving this book, Vonnegut is a great author. And the little drawings he did to illustrate the story are hilarious. The tone is almost casual, as if you are sitting down with him and he's telling you a story. But it's also really interesting from an authorial point because it discusses the influence books can have.

'Life Knocks' by Craig Stone

Life Knocks is the story of a guy who falls from grace, but rather than confront that fall, decides to hide in his room and pretend it never happened; but, little by little, Life Knocks...The story will confront, challenge, evoke laughter, tears and, in parts, possibly offence...But then life never claimed to be Disney world.Step outside your bubble, because the only thing to fear in life is living in one.

Another book that has a very casual tone while discussing quite serious things. The characters are great and Stone is amazing at describing his surroundings, using the most absurd but perfect comparisons. This book makes me laugh, the right way.

And finally,
'The Picture of Dorian Grey' by Oscar Wilde

Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”

Do I even have to say anything? This is a great book, Wilde is a genius and you should read it too!

So, what are you reading? What are you recommending? Leave your link in the comments!