so called top 100 books

The Big Read reckons that “the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

• Look at the list and bold those you have read.
• Italicize those you intend to read.
• Underline the books you LOVE.
• Reprint this list in your own blog  so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them

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
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 Hitchhiker’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 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
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 Burnet
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

What is it?

about Jude Deveraux books? Sh is an author that I have been reading for years, I think I was about 11 when I picked up my first one. And I have read her books over and over, more times than I can count. I try to pick up new books as soon as they come out, and for some reason, even if I don’t feel like a “cookie cutter romance” book, her stuff just sucks me in. Before I know it, I can’t put the book down, and then the next thing I know I have read the whole book in a matter of hours. This exact thing happened again just this last weekend. I had gotten Lavender Morning in Friday’s mail, and I just didn’t think I was in the mood, but I picked it up on Saturday afternoon anyway. The next thing I knew it was Saturday evening, and I was done, and honestly, I really enjoyed the read. I don’t know why, but there is just something about her writing that sucks me in. It makes me feel as though I know the characters, and the story is happening around me. Jude is definately someone I will continue to read as long as she continues to write!

Teasers.

One of my favorite authors recently released a teaser chapter for the latest book in a series, due out in early June. I hate when they do this. Why? Because I have a hard enough time waiting for the new book as it is. Then they release the teaser chapter, which is always just enough to really suck you in, then it is over and you end up having to wait MONTHS until the release and you can read the rest of the tale.

This time it is Laurell Hamilton, and the latest Anita Blake book, Skin Trade. I am resisting the draw of the teaser chapter. But I know, sometime before the book comes out, I will cave. I just have that little will power where Anita is concerned. *sigh*

Any suggestions that might keep me distracted until June 2nd?

Which book next?

Right now I am reading J.D. Robb’s Salvation in Death, as soon as I finish it I will want to start another book, however I have two waiting on me to read them.  Nora Roberts’ The Pagen Stone and Sherrilyn Kenyon’s One Silent Night I have read all the previous books in both series. Help me decide which book to read next. (ok, so I admit it, I really wanted to play with the polls too…)

I have been thinking…

with the huge hype around the Twilight books, I read them. I was unimpressed, they weren’t *bad* per say, but they weren’t particularly good either, and definitely not worth the huge hype going on about them. Among the hype, I have heard several people ask how appropriate they are, and this leads me to what I have been thinking about. I am thinking I may do as my parents did when it comes to censoring my children’s reading. Don’t. I am not saying that my parents let me read porn. But within limits. Basically, if I was interested in it, and it wasn’t porn or erotica, I was allowed to read it.  I picked up my first Dean Koontz book when I was 9, and LOVED it. Also available in my parents house were Anne McCaffrey, Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood and Johanna Lindsey.  I think I was about 13 when I first read The Stand by Stephen King.

I believe that by telling a child / teenager that a book is forbidden only makes it more enticing, but if you tell them they can read it, it has less draw. For this reason, in MY house if the child can find it, they can read it… and the erotica will be kept well hidden, and passworded (since my erotica is ebook format.)

Library Day

I took my girls to the library today. Since my 8yo has finished all the Harry Potter books I let her get more than the standard 3 books.  She ended up getting 2 in the juvenile secion, and 1 from young adults.  She got Edge Chronicles 1 we shall see how she likes that.. and I talked her into  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, since she loves the movie and hadn’t read the book yet. And she chose Dragon Rider on her own.  She also wanted to look at crochet books, since I have taught her to crochet, and she found the Stitch and Bitch Happy Hooker book, she was thrilled.

My younger daughter found some easy to read kids books, which are at her level, but not very interesting to me, and I found the Stitch and Bitch Nation book. That is ok, I have some here that I need to read too.

what is happening around here…

um… not lots… lol

The girls are in school, have been for like 3 weeks now (no, I am not counting, to lazy) so during the day I just have hubby and a 2 year old boy… some days this is like having 5 2 year old girls!

Hubby has gone back to work (did you hear me celebrating? it got a little wild for a bit there!) so now he leaves the house at about 1pm and I get all of 2 hours to myself, that is IF my 2 year old naps that day, and that 2 hrs is usually spent cleaning up what ever mess that hubby and the 2 yr old have made.

Also with Hubby back to work, and the girls in school we are working out an exercise program, I desperately need to lose some weight, and hubby is a sadist, so we walk 2-3 miles minimum a day… in 90-100 degree heat, with 50% humidity ( yes, I am whining, live with it.) until when we get home and I collapse into a chair the muscles in my legs are still twitching, and this is after they spent the last half of the walk cramping.  I will admit, at least the sadist is pushing the stroller and not making me.

Then, when school lets out, unless there is some appointment we have to get to, I walk the half mile to the school and get the girls (again, pushing the slug monkey in the stroller) by then, it is usually pushing 110, and back again… do all the snack time and homework trauma. Then on to dinner, baths and bed.

When I do get time to myself to sit and do what I want I work on what ever project I am knitting on (recently my pi shawl

This is an early picture, when it was still pretty small, not that it is anywhere near done yet… but it is progressing. And the picture does show off the colors very well.. and being the Green Fiend that I am, I totally love the way it is knitting up.

I also read when I can, I am currently working my way through Laurell Hamilton’s Anita Blake series again. I love this series and anytime I want a simple, quick read I don’t have to concentrate on, I go back to these. Plus, some fictional charicter lust doesn’t hurt does it?

After only 7 months

I have finialy found something about this city that is GOOD… the library system. I went in last Friday, and picked up 2 books, one had been out for a month (Elizabeth Lowell’s Blue Smoke and Murder), the other for 3 weeks (Johanna Lindsey’s No Choice But Seduction.) I read those over the weekend and was looking at the online catalog last night… they had 2 new books that I really wanted to read on the shelves… Janet Evanovich’s Fearless Fourteen has only been out two weeks, and Catherine Coulter’s Tailspin has been out only a week, I was there when the library opened and got them both…YES!!

I was wandering through the newer but not brand new book shelf and found another book that looks good. It is a prequel to the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery. The name of the book is Before Green Gables, by Budge Wilson. I haven’t read it yet, but since I have read all the other Anne books several times I had to pick this one up.

you know you have a problem…

ok, So I admit I do a lot of reading… a lot.. most of it is either on my computer screen while knitting and listening to the kids, or on my palm as I have a few minutes here and there through out the day. Once in a while I am able to lay hands on a paper copy of a new book before I am able to lay disk on it… and such has happened with not one, not two, but three books recently..

So I am wandering through the house, setting the book on the counter while I do something and reading, on the edge of my desk while I knit, and read… and then it happened. I had a grand revelation that I need to read paper books more often… I realized that instead of actually turning the page I was just tapping the page… and getting frustrated when it didn’t just give me a new page of text to read… *sigh* on the Palm I tap the screen and it scrolls, on the PC I either hit page down, or scroll the mouse wheel (usually the page down button, as I am knitting and it is more controllable.)

It may be time for that Bibliophiles Anonymous meeting… but then I realize.. I am still not ready to quit. I can’t wait for the next story, the next twist, the next mystery to solve. I may be doomed.

Library Day

took the girls to the library this morning, and got us library cards and a few books each, I managed to find 2 on my wish list YAY!! My 8 year old found a couple of Nancy Drew Graphic Novels, and Ella Enchanted. And my 6 year old found 3 pretty easy readers, just at her level.

I plan on making the library trip a once  a week outing, hopefully Saturday mornings, that way, if hubby has to work, we can still go before he leaves, and on Saturdays, we can continue that after school starts again, without having to drag along a loud, hyperactive, wild child, also known as my 2 year old.

*I* may have to take a mini trip back before I take the girls back, I only got 2 books, and I am halfway through the first already!