52 (now 53)

A friend posted this on my facebook page. Play along and give me your number in the comments. See my thoughts on this below ...

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. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses. :)


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 Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
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 Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. 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 Inferno - Dante
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 - E.B. 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

These lists are silly. This one made me feel pretty good.

Who is the BBC to decide which 100 books should or shouldn't be read?

Whether or not I agree with this list, I am proud that I have read (all or parts of) these 52 books. 

Twenty-on have been attempted or completed since college.

I have never even heard of thirteen of these.

I never intend to read six of them.

Four are on my list for next year.

My 11 years old has read 13 of them.

New Year

Already. It is only November, but I have come up with a reading project for next year.

Each month of 2011, I will read that book. You know the one that you were supposed to read in high school or in college and that is referenced and referred to in other classic and modern works of literature, but that just somehow got away from you. Yeah, THAT book. Here are the 12 I have chosen:

Ulysses
Madame Bovary
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Mrs. Dalloway
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Absalom, Absalom!
Moby Dick
Vanity Fair
Invisible Man
Doctor Zhivago
Farewell to Arms

Most of these, by the way, are sitting on my library bookshelf. Two just arrived this week from Amazon.

All of these, except Doctor Zhivago, are on The Novel 100 list, but that is not why I picked them. Interesting to note however, that a number of books that I finished this year are also on the list including, Middlemarch, Great Expectations, Don Quixote, and War and Peace. Some are long time favorites including Huck Finn, Lolita and Pride and Prejudice.

Oh yes, lest I forget, my 11 yo son and I will also be reading The Hobbit. Yet another one that got away!

Hopefully, I will have time to throw in some lighter reading as well. You know, The Atlantic or The Bible? Please tell me you get the sarcasm.

Bad Habit

I have a bad habit.

Ever since I purchased Amazon Prime last year, I buy books without even giving them a second thought. No waiting for them to arrive at the library for me. I don't even have to wait for my total to equal $25 to qualify for free standard shipping. Any book. Any time. Free two day shipping. My latest purchases are due to arrive Tuesday.

Thanks to Girl Detective, I followed a few links to New Century Reading and Nonsuch Books. After reading a few posts I decided I had to have Doctor Zhivago. A few more clicks and I was at Amazon where I could buy that AND Madame Bovary. People buy these books together. So I guess I should too. $40. But free shipping.

But when the hell am I going to read them? Maybe I will wrap them up and put them under the tree. They look like good January books.

The Package

UPS delivered a much anticipated package last night at 6:15 PM. It is now 6:27 AM. My husband finally gave up on all conventional means of opening it. He is in the garage with a hacksaw. No wonder it cost $11.50 to package and ship.

Go Cats!

I am an extremely proud Northwestern University grad who lives in Texas - far, far away from most Big 10 football action. I miss Chicago. I miss Evanston. I miss Buffalo Joe's. I miss the El. I miss the weather (only in Spring when the crocuses bloom). I miss listening to NUMB (Northwestern University Marching Band) play the fight song.



Now we can all enjoy it and practice for the NU football game. My friends think I am a little crazy to be so excited, but I haven't seen my beloved Cats play in over 10 years. Go. Wear Purple. Beat the Owls!

And Another Photo

You know you wanted to see another photo of Glacier National Park in Montana ... I know I did. Did I mention this was July 14th?

iPhone Dependency

I broke my iPhone. I broke it 8 days ago. I have been waiting for my new iPhone 4 to arrive at the store. Did you know that 7 to 10 business days is an eternity?

I remember when my oldest child was born. I didn't even have a phone.

Heck, I remember living in South America the year after we got married and I didn't even have internet in my apartment. How times have changed. I think I could almost live without the internet. I know I could live without facebook. But my phone. Come on AT&T and Apple ... could you please speed up production, processing, shipping. I can drive to Fort Worth to pick it up ... it is only 4 hours. I am not sure I can take this much longer.

I think I may soon need a support group for people experiencing withdrawal from the iPhone.

Ready for Vacation

I am deep in the middle of planning next year's summer vacation. You think I am crazy? Hotels in the National Parks book up a year in advance. Easter will find us in Big Bend and August will find us in the Dakotas visiting Mount Rushmore, Badlands, and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks.

We take a lot of vacations. We don't drive fancy cars. We don't spend a lot of money on our interior design. My kids don't wear designer clothes.

We travel. After 15 years of marriage and many, many moves, I can't sit still for long. Besides, my husband just found out he is eligible for one more week of vacation than he thought he was. We will now have to fill five weeks instead of four. We also have to use those two carry-over weeks sometime.

Just for Laughs

Check this out ... Catalog Living.

Many thanks to Laura at 11D for sharing this. I needed to laugh out loud.

So two weeks became ...

almost a month without writing.

To be perfectly honest, I have settled into a mild depression. I don't want to live in Houston. I don't want to raise my kids here or drive here or shop here or eat here.

I want to live here.



O.K. so this would be tough as it is accessible only by a 4 mile mountain hike. Close to here would be nice. Close to here so I could visit and take my kids to see this more than once a year. Close to hiking and white-water rafting and skiing in the winter.

I want to be far away from the maddening rat-race of our lives.

I'll get better. I'll snap out of it. I'll reengage in my life and start reading and teaching and participating. But I don't want to .

I want to move to Montana.

Excuses, Excuses

photos by David Restivo

Not that I have been busy blogging a lot this summer, but I won't be again for about 2 weeks. I am going to Glacier National Park. Aren't you jealous?

I'll have photos of my own to share when I get home.

This Time He Has Gone to Far

My husband, that is.

He left 5 days ago and went to Paris and Antwerp.

Soon he will be on a plane bound for Columbo, Sri Lanka.

Please do not get any ideas that this is in any way glamourous or fun. It is work and he hates it.

Sri Lanka is, however, a new country for him. I can't remember if it is number 40 or 41. He could also add Qatar and U.A.E, but when we count countries we believe you actually have to leave the airport. Well, I count Japan even though I never left Narita, but I spent 14 hours in that airport with two young children. I paid my dues there.

To get home he will take two planes and fly 21 hours. He will leave Sri Lanka at 3:15 AM his time and get home at 4:25 PM my time.

That is too far away from me and the boys. We miss him. We have been trying to fill our days. It doesn't help much.

Best Photo

I don't know this man. He works at our favorite bar-b-que restaurant. I would like to know him. I bet he has some interesting stories.

Summer Reads

I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last night at 11:37 PM. I then stared at the ceiling for a good hour or so processing what I had read. I started out slowly with this book, not sure I was going to like it, but the momentum built quickly and once Lisbeth was more fully introduced I could not put it down.

I will be driving to the bookstore this morning to pick up the next two in the trilogy. These are perfect summer reads.


I was recently called a "book snob." Yes, I am. I WILL NOT read Twilight. I WILL NOT. Funny, the comment came from someone who hasn't picked up a book in months. She couldn't remember the last book she had read. And she is surprised at how well my children read and what they read. Go figure.

A Masterpiece

Despite my general enjoyment of life, I have been a little frustrated lately. Always one to lead, I feel like I have just been buffeted by competing forces. I have been in a few situations that robbed me of the power I usually have over my life. I couldn't get out of a rut. I have been living in a never-ending dress rehearsal.

I was finally able to turn things around and have been having a great summer. While not giving 100% (you were right, that would be off-balance), I have been living deliberately. I have been making the decisions in my life. I have taken the power back.

It has been so enjoyable. Each day, I have woken up knowing what my responsibilities were and what I wanted to make of the day. I have done what I needed to do and what I wanted to do. I have taken some steps to insure my children are insulated from the crazy people I am forced to live near.

We have travelled. We have had fun. We have spent time with real friends. We have created. We have even played a few video-games.

As I was driving home from dropping my husband off at the airport early one morning, I missed the NPR station and landed on the Christian radio station where I was lucky enough to catch a taped interview with the late Coach Wooden. What a funny guy with his homespun poetry and sayings. What an amazing leader and teacher. How he loved his wife.

Make each day a masterpiece. That's it. Same concept as my "there are no dress rehearsals," but I think I like the Coach's words even better. A masterpiece. A thing of beauty. Something enjoyable.

And guess what. My masterpiece is not yours or my neighbors. So if I am something you aren't and if I do things differently (from almost everyone else around me - which is not a way to win a popularity contest, by the way), then that is o.k. This is my masterpiece.