A Book Update

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan (January)
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (January)
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (reread) (February)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy* (February/March)
Dubliners by James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (play)
The Misanthrope by Moliere (play) (March)
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Stranger by Albert Camus (reread) (February)
1984 by George Orwell (reread)
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (reread)
Nickel and Dimed (March)

*Currently reading

(I think that's everything so far.)

Who I've Wanted to Be

Here is a list of careers I've considered throughout the years:

Elementary School:

• Pediatrician- Not only did I know I wanted to be a doctor, I knew what kind of doctor I wanted to be. It was also the only doctor I'd really had much interaction with at the time.
• Writer- I missed my third grade yearbook class picture because I was spending recess in the cafeteria writing a ghost story. At the time when I found out, I was sad because I wasn't in the picture. But now I just think that's how it was supposed to be.

Middle School:

• Any kind of doctor- Medical school was always one of my plans. A career as a doctor was something planted in my mind when I was very young. It's also an idea I occasionally entertain now but usually just as one of those, "What if I had done this..." thoughts.

High School:

• Psychiatrist- After my first hospitalization my freshman year of high school, I got a really cool psychiatrist from Russia. I can't remember her name because I could never pronounce it correctly. I was still leaning towards a medical degree at this point.
• Clinical Psychologist- I decided I liked the person I talked to more than the person who prescribed me my drugs so this career looked a little more attractive.
• Graphic Designer- I like when things look nice. I like designing things to make them look nice. In high school I had a penchant for making mix CDs and then designing CD covers and actually drawing on the CDs themselves. I like words and I like pictures. I also like when they are aesthetically combined. Well-designed posters and restaurant menus make me happy.
• Art Therapist- I took an art class my senior year and loved it. We went over the very basics for the first month and then we were given free reign of the school's art supplies. There were a total of four people in that class so we would all be working on different projects and still getting the individual attention we needed. (I remember at one point my friend was doing a watercolor, I was working on an acrylic painting, another kid was doing a very detailed pencil drawing, while the fourth person was doing a stained glass piece.) I knew I would never be good enough at making art to make any kind of career out of it but I thought I could somehow share that therapeutic effect art has with others.

And now I'm just going to list the ones I'd considered while in college without explanations because I'm lazy.

College:

• Clinical Psychologist
• Marriage and Family Therapist
• Social Worker
• Elementary School Librarian
• Big City Librarian (official title?)
• Elementary School Teacher
• University Professor
• Researcher
• School Counselor

Post-Graduation:

• Librarian- I love books. I love them with a rather large portion of my heart. I had an awesome school librarian while I was in elementary and middle school. She knew I was enthusiastic about books and was enthusiastic about that fact. She would get new books and set them aside for me without putting them up on the shelf because she wanted me to read them first. She would let me check out more books than the allowed limit and I could check out books that weren't supposed to be checked out (like classroom collections for assigned readings.) I could also keep books longer than we were usually supposed to. She liked me and I liked her and she set an amazing example of the kind of librarian that should exist in all libraries. Basically, I've wanted to be that librarian for someone else. Books can change lives and good librarians catalyze that process.
• High School English Teacher- I like books and I like writing. I want others to like them also. Similar to my librarian friend, my high school English teachers were really great. One of them didn't think my essays were always that great and that discouraged me but I don't hold that against him anymore.
• Pharmacist- Medications have interested me since my psychiatrist first told me how Prozac and other SSRIs work. Whenever I get a new medication, I thoroughly read their little information papers and then often look them up online to read more about them. This is not just for safety- I'm also just really curious. When I overdosed in May 2008, I didn't tell the nurse what medications I had taken (excedrin, benadryl, nyquil gelcaps), instead I told her the exact number of milligrams I had consumed of aspirin, dextromethorphan, acetaminophen, caffeine, diphenhydramine, and doxylamine succinate. <--Probably a bad example of my interest in pharmacy. Anyway, the way drugs work has always interested me. Also, I didn't do too poorly in my science classes.
• Stay-at-home mom- I realize that it's kind of weird that I'd never really considered this option seriously until fairly recently, especially having been raised in a church that emphasizes the importance of the mother in the home. I just always thought I'd have some kind of full-time job for the rest of my life until I retired. It wasn't until I met Brenden and we talked about getting married and having a family that I realized that this could potentially be an option. Growing up, I never calculated getting married and having a family into my educational and career pursuits. Basically, since I was child I just assumed I would get a bachelor's degree and then a MD or a PhD. And THEN I'd get married and have kids. My mom worked full-time and all of my friends' mothers worked full-time. It made sense to me. Still having trouble reconciling this option with my lifetime's worth of ideas of how things were supposed to be.

Also, right now I just really, really, really want to be in graduate school. Unfortunately, I haven't decided what career path I want to take and we don't have the money for me to just take classes because I want to. Lamesauce.

Thought

If I'd left on a mission when I had been planning/hoping to, I would be coming back this month.

Not sure how I feel about that in particular.

But in general I feel very sad right now and I don't know why.

2012 Reads

Heidi's post about her January reads reminded me that I needed to write down my booklist for this year. I had scribbled titles of books and authors on a piece of scrap paper at work about a week and a half ago as an effort to take a tiny break from entering names and diagnoses and payments and insurance information, etc. I've been adding to this list as I sit at work and think about books I'd rather be reading at that moment.

Here's my list at this point:

• The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (reread)*
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (play)
• The Misanthrope by Moliere (play)
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Stranger by Albert Camus (reread)
• 1984 by George Orwell (reread)
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (reread)

*Currently reading

Like Heidi, I've also been aiming at reading about two books a month but some books may take longer than others (e.g., Anna Karenina vs. The Catcher in the Rye) so I'll have to space them out accordingly. Several of these books have been on my "To Read" list for years now (I bought my current copy of Anna Karenina as a freshman in high school and just never read it, but it was one of the books I shoved in my suitcase when I packed for Hurricane Ike) so I really just want to buckle down and read them. I know they're good books. It's just that other good books have often gotten in the way. The four rereads listed on here are all books I read in high school and I just want to read again. I LOOOOVED The Stranger when I read it the summer before sophomore year (that summer I did the summer readings for both high schools on the island which my friends thought was both totally unnecessary and totally nerdy; I didn't care, I loved it). I read it twice that year and then forgot about it until freshman year of college when I got to read The Plague by Albert Camus for some class (I can't even remember which class it was-- I think it was maybe History of Psych?) and I loved that book too. My rereads are at the bottom of this list (except Prozac Nation) because I should read the other books first, though I WILL read The Stranger again even if I don't get around to everything on this list for some reason like other good books getting in the way.

Other things I would like to read this year but won't put on the above list because I don't feel like I need to commit to them as much:

• The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
• 50 poems by e.e. cummings
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (I think I've read this book about once a year since I first read it in high school. This is one of my favorite books of all time.)
• Anything by Amy Tan because she is becoming one of my favorite authors
• And maybe a few Newbery Award winners for some light reading. It's kind of an unwritten goal of mine to read all of the past Newbery Award winners and then just keep up with them as they come out each year. I thoroughly enjoy children's literature.

Please feel free to recommend other books for me to read this year (there are still about seven spots open, if I plan on doing at least two a month) or to simply add to my neverending list of books to read in this lifetime.

"Life has become struggling to catch a single thought versus wondering if anything is going on in my head."

I have no idea where this quote is from. I found it in an old journal of mine and thought it still applied today. 

2.23.06 vs. 1.24.12

This is from a post in my livejournal dated February 23, 2006.  Present day answers italicized and in brackets. Asterisks indicate answers that are no longer true.

                                                        
Four jobs I’ve had...
1. ice cream person! [Children's Department Summer Temp at Rosenberg Library]
2. babysitter [Teaching Assistant for three different college courses]
3. -- [Research Assistant for the Flourishing Families Project]
4. being lazy (the pay was horrible) [Some Assistant Person in the Small Practice Department at Pettigrew Medical Business Services. I don't actually know my official title.]

Four movies I can watch over and over...
1. Ten Things I Hate About You
2. Pirates of the Caribbean* [The Hours. Not really sure why Pirates was ever on this list.]
3. Mulan
4. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King* [Dead Poets Society. I kinda need to watch all of the LOTR movies together, not just one over and over.]

Four books I can read over and over...
1. Second Helpings* [The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath]
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
3. Any Harry Potter book* [The Hours by Michael Cunningham. At the time, the seventh Harry Potter book hadn't come out yet. I can't read that book over and over. The fifth book is kinda annoying too; Harry is just so whiny.]
4. White Oleander

Four places I’ve lived...
1. Galveston, Texas
2. Galveston, Texas [Provo, Utah]
3. Galveston, Texas [Seattle, Washington]
4. Galveston, Texas [Athens, Georgia]

Four TV shows I love...
1. I [Parks and Recreation]
2. don't [Modern Family]
3. like [The Mentalist]
4. TV [--]
[This sentiment is still true to an extent.]

Four places I’ve vacationed...
1. Hawaii [Cruise to Mexico]
2. Philippines [Texas]
3. California [Florida]
4. Utah [Illinois]

Four favorite foods...
1. Eggrolls
2. Pancit
3. Spaghetti
4. Lasagna* [Pad Thai]

Four Websites I visit daily...
1. livejournal* [Blogger]
2. gmail
3. yahoo mail* [Facebook]
4. flickr* [--]
[I visit Pinterest and Hulu regularly but not daily. Still, it's obvious I really just use the internet to waste time.]

Four places I’d rather be right now...
1. with Edward* [In graduate school studying literature or art history or psychology. P.S. Edward was my boyfriend at the time.]
2. outside* [Texas!]
3. Hawaii
4. not O'Connell

Snapshots of Life This Week (This Post is for Carly)

The type of stuff normally shared on many blogs:

- I accomplished so much this week! Even though I've been busy working eight hours a day at my brand new job (which is going great, by the way), I pulled out my sewing machine and finally did a few little sewing projects I've been meaning to do. I finished them and they look great. Not too shabby for a beginner.
- I have THE BEST husband in the world. This week he made dinner every night and made me breakfast before work even though he didn't have class until 11am and could've slept in. And it was all delicious! He's so thoughtful. I bring home the bacon and he makes breakfast burritos with it.
- I finished another book last week, The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan. I read her book The Joy Luck Club the summer I was in Seattle. I fell in love with her writing style, the imagery and feelings she creates, and her descriptions of life in China and of life in America as a second generation Chinese-American. The Joy Luck Club really struck a familiar chord with me whereas The Kitchen God's Wife tore at my heart. It was one of those books that just made me think about how grateful I am for the blessings in my life. I started reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I've been meaning to read it since high school and just haven't done it. I saw it at Goodwill for $1 in great condition and bought it. I got such a good deal! It was basically brand new! It's a really good book so far. I just finished reading Part One.
- I love my coworkers. They are so sweet and helpful. And my supervisor keeps telling me how blessed they are to have me at the job. She's been impressed by how quickly I've learned and told me I've been the answer to their prayers. (They've gotten incredibly behind on their stuff and I've been helping them catch up.) I really enjoy having my own office. I still need to decorate it!


The type of stuff people normally leave out:

- My sewing stuff is everywhere. I left my sewing machine on our dining table for the entire week which means we've been eating around it. The table is small as it is. Imagine a big sewing machine on top of a tiny table with two people trying to eat around it. It doesn't work too well.
- We ran out of dishes this week. We have enough place settings for twelve people and yet we ran out of our bowls halfway through the week, all of our spoons (small and big), almost all of our pots and pans, and only had a few plates left before we finally did the dishes today. We had dirty dishes piled in the sink and across countertops. It was lovely. Also, I didn't do the dishes. Brenden did. He always does. I simply refuse to do the dishes. This okay because Brenden refuses to do the laundry.
- I've been reading so much lately because I was sick all last week and had no energy to do anything after coming home from work. I got used to not doing anything after coming home from work and now I just catch up on old episodes of Parks and Recreation and eat junk food while dishes pile up in the sink.
- Work has been going well but the initial novelty (its redeeming factor) is gone and I am so bored. I print things and prepare claims to be sent to insurance companies and do data entry all day long. I have little interaction with others since I have my own office. And there's this annoying buzzing noise emitted from the ceiling light that somehow seems to get louder throughout the day (most likely my imagination.) Also, my office is near the kitchen so from 11:45am to about 1:30pm I hear a lot of foot traffic and smell a lot of smells.
- Brenden came home late the other day and I couldn't get a hold of him at all beforehand. I was being completely rational and thought he was dead. And then thought that I would be incriminated for his murder because I was home alone and there was no one with me as a witness of me not murdering my husband. So I kept calling him from the house phone every few minutes. I think I ended up leaving about 10 messages. And then when I finally got a hold of him and realized that he'd previously told me about the thing he'd been doing that evening I was still upset not entirely at him but just in general. Even so, I yelled for a good twenty minutes, not necessarily at Brenden, just yelling to get the built up stress and frustration out. I ended up feeling horrible anyway and my throat was in pain. The most repeated sentence out of my mouth was "I AM SO MAD!" I just kept saying that over and over again. It was awesome. Just ask Brenden.

All of this stuff is true and actually happened this week or the end of last week. The good stuff and the bad stuff. I'm just tired of blog posts where I can't relate to the author because their life seems perfect. Although perhaps because of how much I sometimes share, people probably still can't relate to me because I'm crazy.

/Old Journal Entries/

Some of my old journal entries from college freshman and sophomore/junior years (sophomore/junior was one year and I can't figure out if it should be my sophomore year or my junior year.) Testing out our new scanner.

Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge

I know, I know. Another booklist. Apparently this is a list of all the books Rory Gilmore read on Gilmore Girls. I knew she was super smart in the TV series, but seriously? All of these books? Makes a good list. Found this on Pinterest, original link here. Read 54 of these from cover to cover (bolded.) 38 excerpts or still on the bookshelf (italicized.)

1984 by George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – read – July 2010
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney (same translation too)
The Bhagavad Gita
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
Candide by Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Christine by Stephen King
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Cujo by Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Deenie by Judy Blume
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells Don Quijote by Cervantes
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
Emma by Jane Austen
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Ethics by Spinoza
Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
The Graduate by Charles Webb
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
Howl by Allen Gingsburg
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Iliad by Homer
I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inferno by Dante
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Love Story by Erich Segal
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf- currently reading
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
Myra Waldo’s Travel and Motoring Guide to Europe, 1978 by Myra Waldo
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Night by Elie Wiesel
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Old School by Tobias Wolff
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby – read
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James Mckean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Holiday by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
The Rough Guide to Europe, 2003 Edition
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller by Henry James
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Hotels of Europe
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus by Henry Miller
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shining by Stephen King
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy – on my book pile
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams
Stuart Little by E. B. White
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Time and Again by Jack Finney
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe – started and not finished
Unless by Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Kono Michi

Catching up on some music discovery I came across Kono Michi at 3hive.com . The music is good and this video is very cool.

From the 3hive.com review:

It’s a DIY stop-motion effort in which Kono Michi, a Brooklynite, traveled 6,000 miles across the country photographing herself jumping in the air so it looks as if she’s floating around. If that doesn’t mesmerize you for a few minutes, then you’re a sad, jaded soul and I feel for you…