Friday, February 20, 2009

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Well now!

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. Apparently this list is labeled as "classics" but as a fallen book snob, I still cannot accept that. Regardless. Or, as I liked saying -heh- IRREGARDLESS.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.

Here's the list:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible (-)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (X)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (X)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (-)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (X)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’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 (X)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (X)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
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 (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (X)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (X)
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 (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (X)
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 (X)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (X)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (X)
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 (X)
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 (X)
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 (X)
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 (X)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

32 X's
6 -'s; which means I've read part of the book but not all
1 *, meaning I haven't read *that* book, but I read (and translated) the original Latin. Hah!

So, 39ish total... which is still a failing grade :(

Saturday, February 14, 2009

WELL

I feel chatty, and ... unmotivated. Nothing new, yes?

So anyway - my "wow" is the Kindle 2. I talked a lot of trash about the Kindle 1 and how it was uglier than sin. And said the Kindle 2 looked like a graphing calculator on steroids. And... I still don't think its as pretty as the Sony. However, the backing and shape has changed, and I like that you can get on wiki.

And that you can get free books for the kindle - amazon, don't disappoint me now! So, Kindle 2s are up for preorder. Time to get one now!

Then report back - although I might have one then... or not. Hopefully the laptop hangs on, as it is deeply needed.

And now...


Thursday, February 12, 2009

You Scream, I Scream...

It's not about romance or novels or anything... I'm talking about one of my true loves ;)
ICE CREAM.

I just made myself (hah - "made") a rather large bowl of Strawberry Breyer's ice cream. I haven't had it in a long time, and it's so very good. I heart ice cream. A lot.

Jeni's Ice Cream in Columbus, Ohio is one of my favorite places. And Dolce Zza in Georgetown, DC is one of my favorite gelaterias.

Yay. Now I'm off to do "important things" and eat my ice cream - while freezing my fingers off. Joy!

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Well

Generally I'm a pack rat, but maybe it would be nice to have a place where everything is transitory and I'm constantly weeding things out. I also feel guilty with so little content, but then, why should I? It was my choice to compartmentalize my life.

I also tried to blog "deep thoughts" and facets to an unfamiliar crowd, and got burned. But then, what can you expect from the internet? There's a reason so many conflicts occur, because there is no tone or inflection.

Technology, I heart you. Perhaps I shall use this space to ponder about books, and all sorts of other things. Or not. Still, I should use it for something, yes?

...
Yes.