From the artist formerly known as jenniam (who has a locked blog so I don't want to give her real blogger name).
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them
I've taught a few of these. And I started several of them and did not get through them, but I did bold them on this list.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - NOTE NEVER will I read this. I saw the movie and it freaked me out!
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Saturday, May 3, 2008
I might be back.
I've been wanting to blog again lately. Things have been crazy - the son turned four, the trip to Washington D.C. is approaching quickly, things have been ignored for far longer than they should have been. Plus being at work has been interesting. So we'll see if this lasts.
BLOG!
BLOG!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Raising a Boy
I am a girl.
My son is a boy.
There are two parts to that sentence. Both make things a little different.
My son was the first part. That says so much of it. He is my son. He was in my belly for nine months. He has my eyes. He has my cheeks. We laugh about things and have a special nickname (buhbuhbee, which means 'person that I love'). We like Mandarine and Mango Iced Green Tea. He sings and dances all the time. He's mine.
The second part is boy. He is a boy. I am not. No matter how alike we are, we are always going to be different. I don't see the appeal that his 'birdie' and 'big things' have for him. He will grow and develop in ways that I did not. Society will place different expectations upon him.
I would like to think, however, that my expectations of him are not different from those of a little girl. I want him to be polite. I want him to listen. I want him to be a good member of society. I'd want that of a girl. I want that of a guy. I'd hate to think that I required different things of him or treated him differently because he's a boy. I treat him like a Patrick. I treat him like a child of mine. I treat him like someone that I'd want to hang out with later in life. I don't let him get away with things because he's a boy and thus expected to do them louder, faster or with less attention. He's my child and he is expected to do them the way I taught them to him - or better.
I have so much more to say on this topic but I'm tired. Perhaps later. Until then, I have a child to remind to say please.
My son is a boy.
There are two parts to that sentence. Both make things a little different.
My son was the first part. That says so much of it. He is my son. He was in my belly for nine months. He has my eyes. He has my cheeks. We laugh about things and have a special nickname (buhbuhbee, which means 'person that I love'). We like Mandarine and Mango Iced Green Tea. He sings and dances all the time. He's mine.
The second part is boy. He is a boy. I am not. No matter how alike we are, we are always going to be different. I don't see the appeal that his 'birdie' and 'big things' have for him. He will grow and develop in ways that I did not. Society will place different expectations upon him.
I would like to think, however, that my expectations of him are not different from those of a little girl. I want him to be polite. I want him to listen. I want him to be a good member of society. I'd want that of a girl. I want that of a guy. I'd hate to think that I required different things of him or treated him differently because he's a boy. I treat him like a Patrick. I treat him like a child of mine. I treat him like someone that I'd want to hang out with later in life. I don't let him get away with things because he's a boy and thus expected to do them louder, faster or with less attention. He's my child and he is expected to do them the way I taught them to him - or better.
I have so much more to say on this topic but I'm tired. Perhaps later. Until then, I have a child to remind to say please.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Book MeMe
This one via It's Not All Mary Poppins.
The below listed books are the top 106 books most often marked as being “unread” by LibraryThing users.
The instructions are simple:
Bold those you’ve read.
Italicize books you have started but couldn’t finish.
Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
Underline those on your TBR list.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha*
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West*
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon*
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
The below listed books are the top 106 books most often marked as being “unread” by LibraryThing users.
The instructions are simple:
Bold those you’ve read.
Italicize books you have started but couldn’t finish.
Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
Underline those on your TBR list.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha*
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West*
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon*
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Monday, September 24, 2007
Wow. It has been a while.
My name is Heavenlyginger and I do the best imitation of myself.
Things have been a bit crazy. I did get my gallbladder out, almost six weeks ago. My son may have whooping cough. I have facebook. I'm taking a cake decorating course. I'm quite tired.
The quest for the jeans continues. 'The Emperors Children' is a great book. My cousin bought the new Kalen Porter CD and has told the interweb about it.
NCIS premiered this week. The Office premieres tonight. These things make me happier than they should.
I'm tired.
My name is Heavenlyginger and I do the best imitation of myself.
Things have been a bit crazy. I did get my gallbladder out, almost six weeks ago. My son may have whooping cough. I have facebook. I'm taking a cake decorating course. I'm quite tired.
The quest for the jeans continues. 'The Emperors Children' is a great book. My cousin bought the new Kalen Porter CD and has told the interweb about it.
NCIS premiered this week. The Office premieres tonight. These things make me happier than they should.
I'm tired.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Chick Lit, so to speak
My mom and I had a conversation the other day regarding "Chick Lit" and what it is. It seems that publishers are so happy to have a name for books featuring females that they put them all in that category. As long as the main character is a female and usually if the writer is a female then Chick lit it is. You might see 'Great Beach Read' also around it at this time of the year.
So this is not a new issue. People have been talking about it for ages - the classification of all female literature as 'Chick Lit'. Goes along with the 'Chick Flick' movie classifications. However, it amazes me all the different books that are placed in that category. I've read a lot of them or at least, at some point have read something from the author and I have to say: Danielle Steele and Jennifer Weiner are not the same.
See... almost every book features a quest. In some 'Chick Lit' books it seems as though the quest is love. The identity of the female is wrapped up in finding love. Employed in this quest are all kinds of characters who demean the main character along the way until finally they find love. They're beautiful, they're (allegedly) strong and they need to be loved. The end of the book has a romantic happy ending 99% of the time. In other 'Chick Lit' books, the character is on a quest as well - but it's for personal understanding. Personal acceptance and an understanding of where they fit in the world. The character is still often beautiful, perhaps not as conventionally, however, that's not always a positive. They may end up in a romantic relationship, but they have figured out who they are within it, not because of it. In the second category, the writing is often not as formulaic.
Why are these two lumped together - just because they have females in them? So very frustrating and something that shows that the world likes to place things in boxes and call it something. This summer, don't box up your reading. Read wide and varied and enjoy. don't read it because it's chick lit - but don't not read it because it's chick lit. You might find something good.
So this is not a new issue. People have been talking about it for ages - the classification of all female literature as 'Chick Lit'. Goes along with the 'Chick Flick' movie classifications. However, it amazes me all the different books that are placed in that category. I've read a lot of them or at least, at some point have read something from the author and I have to say: Danielle Steele and Jennifer Weiner are not the same.
See... almost every book features a quest. In some 'Chick Lit' books it seems as though the quest is love. The identity of the female is wrapped up in finding love. Employed in this quest are all kinds of characters who demean the main character along the way until finally they find love. They're beautiful, they're (allegedly) strong and they need to be loved. The end of the book has a romantic happy ending 99% of the time. In other 'Chick Lit' books, the character is on a quest as well - but it's for personal understanding. Personal acceptance and an understanding of where they fit in the world. The character is still often beautiful, perhaps not as conventionally, however, that's not always a positive. They may end up in a romantic relationship, but they have figured out who they are within it, not because of it. In the second category, the writing is often not as formulaic.
Why are these two lumped together - just because they have females in them? So very frustrating and something that shows that the world likes to place things in boxes and call it something. This summer, don't box up your reading. Read wide and varied and enjoy. don't read it because it's chick lit - but don't not read it because it's chick lit. You might find something good.
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