The Quincunx right now. Always got a couple books going. Lotta mystery, sci fi, history, science & classical type novels (Vanity Fair, Tom Jones, etc.). Already read most modern "classics" - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc, but have gaps that might seem odd for a Humanities major with a minor in English. Never read Lord of the Flies, Native Son, The Outsiders or Catcher in the Rye, for example. Typical high school fare I never had. Course, for two years went to an all boy Catholic high school, wearing suits & ties.
Which reminds me of something completely different, as Monty Python used to say...
I remember one 40 something priest, trying to be hip & cool in relating to 15 year old boys in the mid '70's, trying to persuade us not to masturbate.
He talked about the consequences of what happens if you don't masturbate (and aren't getting sex with girls, which most of us weren't, although I do have a "Summer of '42" story" or, I suppose, guys, but that was so far off the radar the idea never came up). Nocturnal emissions, wet dreams, that is.
Should we be embarassed about the stains on our sheets or underwear? No! Our moms would be proud of us for our restraint!
How our mom's would know the difference between wanking & not wanking on the sheets was never explained. Did they do a CSI type exam of splatter patterns? Does any 14 year old boy want his mom proud of his wanking behavior? When the moms get together for coffee or martinis, are they bragging that "my boy's not wanking - I know! Check out this sheet!". I don't watch many chick flicks, but the ones I have seen haven't mentioned this.
Why that priest, who was a nice guy and was widely regarded as a priest who could "connect with kids" (and, no, afaik neither he nor any of the other priests I knew, even as an altar boy, were molesters) would think a talk like that would be effective is a mystery to me.
On the other hand, our class would have Mass once a week in the small chapel. Before Mass, Father'd go into the confessional to hear us confess our sins. A couple guys would then start rolling doobies in the back pews (the '70's were a
lot more permissive to weed, although maybe not in the Catholic church
). They'd send us all in, one by one, to confess our sins (never personally confessed to wanking) so they'd have time to smoke it. Father'd then come out and start Mass at the altar. He'd start sniffing around and make some comment about incense being strange this week.
I think he was basically a good guy; we weren't fooling him, but he had to toe the party line to some extent. OTOH, he was one of those people that get too close to you physically, the kind that gets 12 inches from you. Not meaning harm, but not what most of us were used to.