A Long List of Books

This is making its way around Facebook:

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.
How do your reading habits stack up?


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
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 - x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
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 – x
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - x
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - x
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
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 - x
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - x
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - x
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
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - x
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 - x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddonx - x
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 - x
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
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
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante - x
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 - x
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 - x
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- x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 34 of 'em. How about you?

A New Look for a New Day

I guess I don't really know if it is a new day, or if anything is really different from the old day. But I thought it was time for a change.

(Also, check out my weekend activities over at lisa's candid look at life.)

AND, I guess I've been tagged by Ann-Marie:

Four Things

Four things I was doing 10 years ago:
1. Going to CCCHS; that's right, high school
2. Living with my parents and siblings in Clay Center, Kansas
3. Working at the public library, one of the original Carnegie Libraries in Kansas
4. Writing Affirmative Cases and Negative Briefs for my stint on the Debate Team (I believe it was the year to debate foreign policy with Russia?)

Four things on my to-do list:
1. A paper on the theology of the human body
2. Bread-baking
3. Phone date with Becca
4. Find my other box of fall sweaters

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Camp Store & Canteen Manager
2. Publications Project Manager
3. Waitress/Soda Jerk
4. Nanny

Four movies I’ve watched more than once:
1. Remember the Titans
2. Spellbound
3. The Bourne Identity
4. Love Actually

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Kenosha, Wisconsin
2. Clay Center, Kansas
3. Chicago, Illinois
4. Soldotna, Alaksa

Four places I want to visit:
1. Fairbanks, Alaska
2. South America (yes, the whole continent, though Brazil and Ecuador in particular, I suppose)
3. Thailand
4. Sweden

Four television shows I watch right now:
1. The Office
2. Presidential Debates
3. Brothers & Sisters
4. Friday Night Lights

Four things you might not know about me:
1. I have five siblings, six if you count a brother-in-law.
2. I’m in seminary and don't really want to pastor a church.
3. I am a faithful NPR listener.
4. I watch most of my television online on the weekends.

Four things I THINK I WILL like about being married:
*Since the original question didn't really apply to me...
1. I will get to live with my best friend for the rest of my life.
2. Someone sitting across the table will be interested in what I'm saying, but not afraid to challenge me on it.
3. Being a primary family unit that is not spread across the states.
4. Companionship

(I'm supposed to tag people now, but I think I'll add that later...)

The New Classics

I love lists.
I love books.
It only stands to reason that I love lists of books.

A few years ago I stumbled across Time Magazine's top 100 novels written in the English language since 1923, the year the magazine was first published. It was great fun to go through the list and see how I fared against the "best of the best". I have only read 13; at the time I decided that it would be an excellent goal to slowly make my way through that list, and read all 100.

Well, fast forward a couple years; I have not made a lot of progress, but still love lists. Today I came across Entertainment Weekly's "New Classics" list: the top 100 books published in the last 25 years. (Which, coincidentally, is as long as I have been alive.)


Those which I have read:

• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
• Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
• The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
• Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
• Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
• Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
• The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
• Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
• The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
• The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
• A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
• Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
• The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)

Those which are actually on my To Be Read list:

• Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
• Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
• On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
• The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
• Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
• The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
• Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
• Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
• The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
• Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
• Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
• Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
• High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)

Which leaves 69 others that I know nothing about, or (as of now) have no interest in reading.

Joining Up

For a while now I have been looking at and considering several book challenges. When I stumbled across this one over at Amy's blog, I knew it was perfect for me. [I must be the first to admit that I missed much of season 4, and will spend a large amount of time this summer catching up.] Check out the contest rules to find the lists of books that are connected to the show, and think about joining up yourself!

The books I will read for the LOST challenge are:

• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (Judy Blume)
• Of Mice & Men (John Steinbeck)
• The Invention of Morel (Adolfo Bioy Casares)
• The Turn of the Screw (Henry James)
• Evil Under the Sun (Agatha Christie)

I will finish these all by the end of 2008... which really means hopefully most of them by the end of the summer, before classes start again. Wish me luck! Or, as Jen tells me, work is what reading is for sometimes. ;)

tagged

Ann-Marie tagged me, and I am now supposed to list ten things about myself:

1 I am fairly well addicted to Facebook (sad, but true).

2 I really, really wish i could live both in Chicago and near my family.

3 I love a good piece of chocolate, especially filled with caramel.

4 I’m in love with Kiernan David.

5 I feel really victorious when I a) bake something that is enjoyed by many people, especially those who claim not to be tempted by sweet, baked things, or b) write something that even I must admit isn't half-bad.

6 I would sit in the sun by the lake, with my best friends, 24 hours a day if i could.

7 I check my email way too many times a day.

8 I’ve been trying to lessen the amount of stuff I own, but do not need.

9 Aside from the goals I’ve already reached in my life, I want to know that I am following the path drawn for me, especially when it is not easy and I don't understand it.

10 I really love the quiet moment of the morning when I wake before the alarm, and the city is not quite awake around me. There is something glorious in the calm before the storm.

And now I tag Emily and Mom.

Lots of 4's

Ann-Marie posted this one her blog a while ago, and I have decided that I think it's fun to think about these things. Makes a quiet Friday night a little less "normal" at least. :) So, here are my lists of 4's.

four jobs i have had in my life
1 * summer camp counselor, canteen & camp store manager, & office assistant @ covenant cedars bible camp in hordville, nebraska.
2 * waitress & soda jerk @ lincoln avenue fountain and grill in clay center, kansas. yes, a real old-time soda fountain.
3 * student body vice president @ north park university in chicago, illinois.
4 * resident assistant @ alaska christian college in soldotna, alaska

four movies i would watch over and over
1 * mean girls
2 * the princess bride
3 * the bourne identity
4 * little women

four places i have lived
1 * my family's homes: lincoln, illinois; jamestown, kansas; clifton, kansas; clay center, kansas
2 * various campus housing @ north park university in chicago, illinois
3 * a dorm at alaska christian college in soldotna, alaska
4 * my aunt & uncle's basement in kenosha, wisconsin

four tv shows i love to watch
1 * grey's anatomy
2 * 24
3 * friends
4 * 48 hours, 60 minutes, 20/20, an all other variety of investigative newsmagazines

four places i have been on vacation
1 * san francisco
2 * anchorage, alaska
3 * traverse city, michigan (the snowiest spring break in history)
4 * anywhere and everywhere my grandparents have lived

four of my favorite foods
1 * chips & salsa
2 * butterfinger bells (i WAIT for the christmas season for these! ... well, among other things like celebrating Jesus, too...)
3 * banana bread
4 * anything thai

four places i would like to be right now
1 * somewhere warmer than chicago
2 * alaska (ok, obviously not warmer than chicago... but, still...)
3 * somewhere i can see the stars at night
4 * on an airplane to a much more exciting place than ever before