Books books books

INSTRUCTIONS: Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. (Not sure if the BBC stuff is true. Even so, I LOVE book lists. So this is still fun. I bolded the books I have been wanting to read/already own, striked out the ones I have read in their entirety and italicized the ones I started but haven't finished.)

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 (all)
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 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
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 Berniere
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
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

This list does a good job of visualizing my aversion to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Would you like to know my ridiculous reasoning for avoiding these two authors? It is because people gush about them. I guess this applies more for Jane Austen than Charles Dickens, at least from my experience as a BYU co-ed (not sure why I don't read good ol' Dickens.) I'm afraid of becoming obsessed like everyone else. Isn't that the most ridiculous reason for avoiding good literature?

I finally read The Hunger Games this weekend after a year-long internal debate of whether or not I really wanted to read it. I guess I really just try to avoid "jumping on the bandwagon," even though sometimes that bandwagon is actually going somewhere I have been wanting to go. I determined that The Hunger Games was a much cleaner version of Battle Royale, which I read in ninth grade after telling Reuben I really enjoyed reading Lord of the Flies (talking about unhealthy obsessions: probably better to love Austen than books where children kill each other.) Unless you want to read something really violent and gruesome, don't read Battle Royale; just stick to The Hunger Games, which is excellent but definitely geared toward younger audiences (something I appreciate, by the way, since writing about games in which you have to kill everyone around you can easily become an ordeal involving explicit language and gruesome imagery; see Battle Royale.) But it's not as original of an idea as many fans of the book thought it was.

All in all, it was stupid of me not to read the book earlier, as I'm sure will be the case when I finally get around to finishing Pride and Prejudice (which I really only started so I could read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies- at least I was going to read the original book!), reading some Dickens and probably more of Austen.

This Right Now

"What is worse? Being sad because something tragic has happened, or being sad because that is all your brain knows how to do?"

September 28, 2011

Today Sean and Heidi became parents. And I became an aunt. And Brenden an uncle. It's an exciting time for the McQuays and McIntoshes. And little Evette Rose.

The leaves have started to change here. They were once a vibrant green but the colors have begun to fade. Some are a pale green while others are a bright golden yellow. They fall on my car as I drive down Cedar Shoals drive. I find them sitting on my car when I leave in the morning. I'm still waiting and hoping for the fiery oranges and reds to appear. There are so many trees here; the city would look aflame.

I am trying to study for the math section of the GRE but the concepts aren't sticking. The thoughts running in my head keep shoving everything else out of the way.

\\

I am so distracted. My thoughts are overwhelmingly loud, drowning out everything else around me. I cannot concentrate on anything.

Planets are big.

Yes, indeed, they are! In fact, planets are bigger than the Moon. And here's a cool video showing that. Another Youtube post today!

Bon Iver: Michicant

I have been playing this song over and over this week. It's a good one.

I was unafraid. I was a boy. I was a tender age.

Today I

- Wore my unwashed hair in a messy bun on the top of my head.
- Learned not to use two spaces after a period. Read here.
- Ate the same leftover food for lunch and dinner.
- Skipped breakfast.
- Listened to my Bon Iver station on Pandora. Got bored of the music in between the Bon Iver songs and just listened to Bon Iver albums instead.
- Studied for the GRE.
- Did two loads of laundry.
- Picked up my husband from school.
- Talked to my sister for two minutes as she walked to her psychology class.
- Fell asleep after dinner and jerked awake ten minutes later when my phone alarm went off.
- Uploaded pictures to Facebook at my sister's request. Realized it was awhile since I last uploaded an album on Facebook.
- Read all of my old unpublished drafts on this blog (there are 46 of them.)

Respite

Today was a Seattle day up until about five o'clock. The sky was gray. The trees were green. The roads were damp. The air was cool and there was a strong smell of earth. And then there was a tornado warning issued for the Athens-Clarke County. I spent the next half hour or so in a closet.

Campus was empty when I dropped Brenden off to practice at the music building. There was, however, a truck dragging a trailer full of porta-potties around.

Back at the house, our neighbors' dogs (and birds?) were throwing fits next door. My GRE vocabulary study time was interrupted by yelps and whining as well as frenzied bird noises. Peregrination, peroration, prestidigitation, stultification.

I woke up this morning at ten-thirty grasping at the remnants of the dreams I had just left behind. I had dreamt of people I missed. People living eight hundred eighty two miles away. Living one thousand nine hundred fifty four miles away. Dead. I wanted so badly to go back to sleep and visit with those dead loved ones I could not call or write or email. We drove up to our old house, made the turn off Ferry Road and there they were, two great-uncles (brothers) sitting on our old porch in rocking chairs we never owned. It's strange. In my dreams, those that are dead in real life always know that they are dead or dying. Perhaps it's my mind reminding me this is temporary. It will not last. They will not last. They didn't.

I woke up and I wanted to shut out the light pouring in from the window. I was willing myself back to sleep but I was awake. I couldn't go back to sleep. And even if I had been able to, my great- uncles would have been gone; everyone I was visiting with last night and this morning was gone.

The strange thing about my desire to go back to my dreams was that these weren't normal dreams. These were anxiety-ridden nightmares. The people living one thousand nine hundred fifty four miles away were telling me they couldn't help me and left me in an empty parking lot as I frantically tried to figure out what I needed to do (though now I can't remember what it was I needed help with). The people living eight hundred eighty two miles away were trying to keep me hidden from others trying to kill me. And the people no longer living were telling me they were going to die as they rocked back and forth in the rocking chairs on the porch of my post- Hurricane Ike childhood home.

I woke up whimpering like a frightened child and I still wanted to go back to those dreams.

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
-Jodi Picoult

Wednesday

Today Brenden has music diagnostic exams on campus so I'm at home by myself for a good portion of the day.

The maintenance guy came and fixed some things. The ATT guy came and set up our phone and internet. The trash guy came and brought us a trash can. I'm currently waiting for a representative to answer my call on Uniden's Customer Care Line. The pre-recorded messages keep telling me that they will be with me in "just a moment" and to "please hold for just a moment longer." Also there's some guy with a Southern accent that pops up at the end of every recorded message cycle advertising the now available bluetooth cellular headset that comes with a bonus car adapter. The music is perhaps the best part though. It reminds me of an early nineties video game. I can't recall the exact name of the one I'm thinking of but I've got a specific one in mind.

I've looked at some jobs on UGA's human resources website. I've looked at some graduate programs on UGA's graduate school website. I've looked up a recipe for chicken and gnocchi soup. And now I'm blogging.

(Sidenote: I just got off the phone with the guy from Uniden and tried to figure out what happened to my music. I had been sitting with the phone on speaker while I was waiting but now my early nineties video game soundtrack complete with Southern sales rep has gone.)

This year will be interesting for me. I will be job hunting until I find a job. I will be home/volunteering until I find a job. I might also be applying for graduate programs. Maybe I'll learn how to use my sewing machine. I could finally read all of those books I've been buying this summer. I can take dance lessons. Catch up on the sleep I lost these past few years. Learn a new hobby. Review the Dewey Decimal System. Write a book. Give homemaking a try. See if I like it. Try to like it if I don't.

I think my biggest problem with finding a job is knowing it's temporary. Because it's temporary (and because I'm not sure for how long it will be temporary- two years or until next fall) I really don't know what I want to do. Guess I should figure that out. Brenden's only been gone for part of one day and I've had people at the house for a good part of that day and I have tons of unpacking to do and I'm in the middle of reading three different books and I'm still bored. Ridiculously bored.

I want to take dance classes again so badly. Looking up adult ballet, pointe, and contemporary dance classes in Athens.