Monday, May 19, 2008

Kate gave me the memes...

...well, just one meme.

From her post in

"The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list [I could not get Blogger to underline, so I've put quotation marks instead]."


So I am following her pattern:D

Well, I added commentary and just bolded (a word?) what I read but hated and explained why I hates it (it burns...)



The List

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina (couldn’t go more than once, I am too like Anna…)
“Crime and Punishment”
“Catch-22”
“One Hundred Years of Solitude”
“Wuthering Heights” (just ‘cause the Brontes crack me up)
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose (Italics…M. Sullivan gave to me and I nearly threw up)
Don Quixote
Moby Dick

“Ulysses”
Madame Bovary (will not read ‘cause Lancer said it's too much like Emma on French crack)
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*************************
Jane Eyre* (*sigh* - I on principle do not like the Brontes’ characters , but I like their plots!)
A Tale of Two Cities (italics – I liked the Wishbone episode better :| )
The Brothers Karamazov (WOOT!)
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Does watching the PBS series count???)
War and Peace
Vanity Fair (I loved the book, I just can’t seem to get through it – love the noble house of Binky!!!)
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma (I could only stomach it once)
The Blind Assassin (I have only liked The Handmaid's Tale by her)
The Kite Runner
“Mrs. Dalloway”
“Great Expectations”
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged – no flippin’ way!!!
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha (gee – white male much?)
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales – the whole thing in the original or transliterated? We Johnnies need to know these things!
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead - again, you'll NEVER get me Ann Rynd!
Foucault’s Pendulum – (I love Eco, but I love his non-fiction…his novels have something to be desired IMO)
Middlemarch - on my list to re-read again!
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King – LOVE!!!
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984********************************** (it was my obsession in my formative years…)
Angels & Demons – um, never
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses - seriously???
Sense and Sensibility****************
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park**
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels**** (I wrote my seminar paper on it and took it WAY to seriously)
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (I really enjoyed this)
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury

Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything – I need to read this on the treadmill or something
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter* - unfortunately...
Eats, Shoots & Leaves – don’t read it!!! She’s very stuck up and I liked my copy of the Transitive Vampire better (thank you Kate and Odious)
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita*
Persuasion************** (it is becoming more habit forming than P & P)
Northanger Abbey - the recent BBC version was better than the book! And I LOVE ME some Jane
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
“Watership Down” – in honor of the dearly departed Pipkin
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit – I couldn’t do it! I liked LotR better
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers


Whew! Far less than Kate, but a decent amount.

How was this list generated? It feels like a cross between high school recommended reading, what a snobby high schooler would consider intellectual reads, and a best sellers at a Barnes and Noble. Or random selections from a library sale.

And WHERE is the Harry Potter??? I would have owned if that was on the list (I am on my second re-read of the whole seven book series). Or maybe my problem is that I have to find something else to read BESIDES HP...ah well.

One book I do want to read is A Room with a View - I have been watching A LOT of masterpiece theater and I thought the recent BBC adaption was quick and nice. At least it didn't have a non-character moment like Anne Elliot running the Bath Marathon at the end of it (if you haven't seen the recent BBC Persuasion, you aren't missing much).

Here's how Holy Week went down...

It is often the case that one starts with good intentions, and then plans fall by the way side like so many pairs of dirty socks.

Sunday: Eat sushi. It is good. Go to church then bed.

Monday: have no time for anything - wake up, teach, church

Tuesday: same, though am able to record pre - communion prayers in garageband. Export all files to itunes and they go unedited.

Wednesday: VERY hungry - begin getting stitch on my side and warm bread sounds luxurious. Drink water.

Thursday: I am focused during Mass with students but only because I have students slouching, tickling each other, and in other ways misbehaving. I really like the Celtic Lord Have Mercy (A-keer-en-deh Tro-kerah -- I have no doubt butchered it).
I do stay up till midnight working on grading, etc. Purchase food. Warm food is GOOD!!!

Friday: Went to all services and drank TONS of water after the Veneration of the Epitaphion (sp?) - stayed up organizing food, cooking bacon (drool), etc. Listen to more prayers on ipod.

Saturday: Go to services. Cook more and get NOT ENOUGH SLEEP!!! Quiches look really good. Accidentely put kulich icing in mouth - AGH!!! I spit it out and reflect that it is really runny. I was supposed to put one TABLESPOON of lemon juice in the powdered sugar, NOT the juice of one lemon!

PASCHA: IT IS BEAUTIFUL - all of the services are beautiful, but you forget just how glorious they are. I vow next year to keep a daily journal and not one hastily written around the mid-feast of Pascha.

We had two people (newly Chrismated) pass out - there was an ambulance! I am sure the EMTs thought "Why are these people at church this late at night...?" And the BIRDS were singing, their melody floating in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday. Do birds sing that early? The sun had not even caused the sky to glow, yet they chirped as though it were a sunny day.

A wonderful Pascha indeed!