If you read back to the earliest posts on this blog (which I hope you don't because, frankly, they're crap), you will see that one of the inspirations for this was Julie Powell's book, Julie and Julia. It's a fun book and I recommend it for some light reading. But what really drew me to that book was that Julie Powell had a mission. Hers was to cook every recipe out of Julia Child's The Art of French Cooking cookbook. Well, I like to cook, but I don't like french food (or, frankly, Julia Child all that much), so obviously I needed to find a new quest. Besides, when you go on a quest, you'd like it to be unique.
A while ago, my friends and I stumbled across a list of "the 1001 books to read before you die." Shortly thereafter, my one friend--the Good Doctor--started giving us copies of the very heavy book by the same title and, luckily, same list. So, I sat down and figured out which ones I had read and, low and behold, I've read 5.99% of them. Yes, for someone who loves to read, I've only read 60 of these books!
So, there is my mission...to read all these books before I die. If nothing else, it will ensure a very long life. And it will give me much to complain about...I'm already mystified as to why The Shining and Interview with the Vampire are on the list, but not a single Harry Potter book is there. And is Salman Rushdie such a great writer that ALL of his books are listed? Not even Dickens can claim that.
Anyway, here is where I am now...below are the 60 books I've just read.
Voltaire by Candide
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (A favorite!)
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (A favorite!)
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
Germinal by Emile Zola
Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte (A favorite!)
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (at this point, I need to add that most of these Jane Austen books were read under duress during my college years. The truth is that I hate Jane Austen novels!)
The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (ugh!)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (A favorite!)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (A VERY favorite!)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (pure agony)
The Little Prince by Antone de Saint-Exupery (in French, no less!)
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (good book, dumb movie)
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (didn't live up to the hype)
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
Howards End by E.M. Forster
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (A favorite!)
Animal Farm by George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (A VERY favorite!)
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguru
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tail by Margaret Atwood
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Atonement by Ian McEwen
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (A favorite!)
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (A favorite!)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguru (I just finished this one on Friday--I recommend it but I will warn readers that it is not what you would expect!)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
So, only a little less than 941 books to go (I'm about 20 pages into Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald). If you are interested, you can google this list and it will come up...or you can buy the book....or you can email me for my marked up list. And, if you want to buy me a gift, I'm putting all the books I haven't read (that are in print) in my amazon wish list!
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Monday, May 14, 2007
Friday, September 29, 2006
Public Service Announcement
This is a public service announcement—one I wish I had received before lunchtime today!
I’m currently reading The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. It’s a pretty good book (apparently far better than the movie from what I hear) and it’s keeping my interest when my mind really should be on the ins and outs of Human Resources. It’s a fictional story based on the factual unsolved and heinous murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles, who became known as the Black Dahlia.
So, I’m at Borders today during lunch to peruse the paperbacks which I should not buy. Then I notice a book called something like The Black Dahlia Files. It’s written by some guy whose previous books include one insinuating that JFK and the mob did in Marilyn Monroe. Well, this piece of, um, investigative journalism, attempts to prove the theory that the mob did in Elizabeth Short. But, more importantly, it has pictures.
I thought it would be interesting to see what Elizabeth Short looked like and boy, oh boy did I find out. Without any warning, this book contained the actual CRIME SCENE PICTURES! Yes, there was the bisected and cored body of the Black Dahlia, her chopped up face and then, if that wasn’t enough, crime scene and autopsy photos of several other murders!
Hello, could there not be a warning? I mean even CNN is nice enough to put a warning out before the show anything of potentially objectionable content. (I’m not sure if the content is actually objectionable since I usually opt not to take the chance and switch over to the Food Network). And this book was right there on the front table, where anyone over 3 feet tall could have gotten to it!
I’m not saying, exactly, that the pictures should not have been published. Okay, out of decency they should not have been published. What my gripe is that anyone just browsing would have been subjected to that. Honestly, did it really belong on the front table? If someone is really that interested in mutilated corpses, they need to be shopping in the back of the bookstore. Now I face a sleepless night—thanks so much Borders!
And now, on a light note, my favorite quote of the day!
One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.
-Mother Theresa
I’m currently reading The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. It’s a pretty good book (apparently far better than the movie from what I hear) and it’s keeping my interest when my mind really should be on the ins and outs of Human Resources. It’s a fictional story based on the factual unsolved and heinous murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles, who became known as the Black Dahlia.
So, I’m at Borders today during lunch to peruse the paperbacks which I should not buy. Then I notice a book called something like The Black Dahlia Files. It’s written by some guy whose previous books include one insinuating that JFK and the mob did in Marilyn Monroe. Well, this piece of, um, investigative journalism, attempts to prove the theory that the mob did in Elizabeth Short. But, more importantly, it has pictures.
I thought it would be interesting to see what Elizabeth Short looked like and boy, oh boy did I find out. Without any warning, this book contained the actual CRIME SCENE PICTURES! Yes, there was the bisected and cored body of the Black Dahlia, her chopped up face and then, if that wasn’t enough, crime scene and autopsy photos of several other murders!
Hello, could there not be a warning? I mean even CNN is nice enough to put a warning out before the show anything of potentially objectionable content. (I’m not sure if the content is actually objectionable since I usually opt not to take the chance and switch over to the Food Network). And this book was right there on the front table, where anyone over 3 feet tall could have gotten to it!
I’m not saying, exactly, that the pictures should not have been published. Okay, out of decency they should not have been published. What my gripe is that anyone just browsing would have been subjected to that. Honestly, did it really belong on the front table? If someone is really that interested in mutilated corpses, they need to be shopping in the back of the bookstore. Now I face a sleepless night—thanks so much Borders!
And now, on a light note, my favorite quote of the day!
One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.
-Mother Theresa
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
2 Sort-of shameless plugs
It's late and I can't help myself...I have 2 sort of shameless plugs. One more shameless than the other. Let's start with the more shameless one and get it out of the way.
You see the Amazon.com box on the side bar? If you go through there to order books I get credit. I don't know if this makes it better or worse, but I opted not to be paid actual money but, instead, to be paid in Amazon gift certificates. You see, I love books and, unfortunately, sometimes buying the books ends up to be cheaper than going to the library (I have a, um, small fine at the moment). I love Amazon because they give me recommendations...which saves a lot of work on my part. In fact, I may be a bit more shameless and start recommending books that I've just finished and loved, such as:
Really, I did just finish it yesterday and now I want to move to Alaska!
Speaking of Alaska, that brings me to my less shameless plug. You may have noticed that my list of blogs in the sidebar is growing. What can I say, I'm a blog addict! I do recommend that you give these a look! But, also, feel free to leave comments...if you have a blog, I'll be sure to add it to the list.
Okay, plugging is done.
You see the Amazon.com box on the side bar? If you go through there to order books I get credit. I don't know if this makes it better or worse, but I opted not to be paid actual money but, instead, to be paid in Amazon gift certificates. You see, I love books and, unfortunately, sometimes buying the books ends up to be cheaper than going to the library (I have a, um, small fine at the moment). I love Amazon because they give me recommendations...which saves a lot of work on my part. In fact, I may be a bit more shameless and start recommending books that I've just finished and loved, such as:
Really, I did just finish it yesterday and now I want to move to Alaska!
Speaking of Alaska, that brings me to my less shameless plug. You may have noticed that my list of blogs in the sidebar is growing. What can I say, I'm a blog addict! I do recommend that you give these a look! But, also, feel free to leave comments...if you have a blog, I'll be sure to add it to the list.
Okay, plugging is done.
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