I'm a Book Snob!

I have a friend who posted this as a Facebook note the other day. I don't really like this list because it seems to focus more on "national literary" than on the individual worthiness of each book. When I was an English major we defined national literacy as the literature people need to be familiar with because it is often referenced in their society. The best example is probably the Bible. Even if you're not religious chances are you are familiar with the most common Biblical motifs because they are everywhere. 


But enough of my rambling. Basically here is a list of books that someone deemed worthy of this list. I have highlighted the one's I've read. I don't agree with a lot of this list but I always find it interesting to see what books are considered important.

Have you read more than 6 of these books?  The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen    This is a good example of a book author that I do not find worthy of any list. Mark Twain said that a library without any work by Jane Austen would be a good library even if it had no other books in it. He really hated her work. If you're ever in need of a laugh I recommend Googling "Mark Twain Jane Austen" 

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - Surprisingly good!

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible- I haven't read the whole Bible, but I'm pretty sure most people haven't. I have read at least 12 books of the Bible from beginning to end though.

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 1984 - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials

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

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife-- This is one that I don't understand why it made the list

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 Dostoevsky

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

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

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 Another one I don't find deserving of any list 

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

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

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - 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 (unfortunately)

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 - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (some of his short stories)

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 I'm reading this right now

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


Many of these have been on my "to read" list for a while. Now I have to get busy!!

20 Things

So I never did finish my goal of writing about something I was thankful for between Nov 1 and Thanksgiving, but here is a list of 20 things that I am thankful for.

 1- Thankful for blogging because it keeps me sane

 2- Thankful for my comfy bed

3- Thankful for living in a free country

3- Thankful for Family

 5- Thankful to be back in New England!

 6- Thankful for good money habits

 7- Thankful for my health

 8-  Thankful for my friends

 9- Thankful that my dad was able to help me work for a few weeks

 10- Thankful for a job

 11- Thankful for an interview for a job that fits my personal taste better

 12- Thankful for my amazing husband who is so patient with me

 13- Thankful for my dogs because they make my days so happy

 14-  Thankful for my education

15- Thankful for a warm dry place to live

16- Thankful for food on the table

17- Thankful for the internet because it allows me to stay in touch with everyone

18- A quiet house after a busy day

19- Thankful for books and my phone because they keep me busy when I'm really bored on public transportation.

20- Thankful for warm clothes to bundle up in when it's cold outside.



And now it's time to start making some home made Christmas Gifts. I am very excited.

Back to Being Thankful

I do plan to make a final list sometime between now and next Thursday, but last week I'm thankful that I was too busy to post much because I actually had some work and was making some money, and today I am thankful to have been given a job and to have another interview tomorrow, finally a light at the end of this tunnel.

Thankful for My Best Friend

The Past five or so years have been crazy for me and my best friend. We actually went a year without speaking, not because we were made at each other we were just at really different places in our lives doing very different things. To be honest that's still where we are in our lives. Still, no matter how different our lives are at the moment we still do things that make me swear she's like my platonic soul mate.

We both have the most ridiculous thought processes but they are very much the same. I used to think this was the result of how much time we spent together. But over the past few years we're been seeing each other 2-3 times a year and talking on the phone at most once a month and still our logic is impeccably similar.

We wanted to make cookies. I unfortunately left all my dinosaur cookie cutters in Oklahoma so we had to go out to buy new cookie cutters. the place we went had two packages to choose from and each package had two different shapes in it. We could choose between hearts and flowers, or stars and butterflies. Our analysis of this situation was hilarious because our thoughts are so alike. Talking over each other and finishing each other's sentences we came to the following conclusions.

1) Stars are the best shape offered.

2) Butterflies are the worst shape offered

3) Hearts and flowers are both boring and mediocre.

Therefore we both felt it was better to buy the stars and butterflies and at least get one awesome shape rather than two boring ones.

This might not sound awesome in writing but the way we were racing to finish each others thoughts was awesome. It's just so comforting to know that I am not alone in this world no matter how weird and eccentric I may be.

This shape is relatively awesome.

This shape is boring and awful.

This shape is utterly average.

We didn't want to use these shapes because the cookies were for her Jewish boyfriend. (I know it's hard to tell but the yellow one came in an Easter Bunny set.)

This shape is amazing but I thought it was in Oklahoma (I found it later.)

Stuffed Animal Surgery

nine month old me with Mother Goose

When I was little there was nothing more amazing in this world than my stuffed animals. They all had their own personalities which were tiny little extensions of my own personality. The were confidants, playmates, comforters, and anything else I needed them to be. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking that stuffed animals are the most amazing gift any little girl could ask for. They only have one draw back, but it's a significant one. The more a child loves a stuffed animal, they more the stuffed animal will get ruined.

When something would happen to my stuffed animals (or other toys but most frequently stuffed animals) I would bring them to Dr. Meme to get fixed up. Dr. Meme is my grandmother and a pioneer in the field of stuffed animal surgery. She invented the neck transplant to fix up my poor poor Mother Goose more times than I can remember. She was always ready with a needle, thread, pliers, paint, bleach, whatever my toy required.

It's not that I didn't trust my mom. It's just that Meme had YEARS of experience and I only trusted my loved ones with the most expereinced inanimate object surgeon I could find. I would sit anxiously at the other end of the counter watching as she sewed animals back together, replaced gears in music boxes and performed other operations.

Like I said Mother Goose proved to be the biggest challenge. I got this Mother Goose when I was nine months old. Apparently at one point you could put cassettes in her and her mouth and eyes would move as if she was reading the stores, but I have no memory of this. I she was almost as tall as I was so I often carried her around by her neck. Eventually I pulled her head off her neck and messed the wiring all up. Her head didn't actually fall off but it hung awkwardly as if her neck was broken.

Dr. Meme never was able to make Mother Goose's mouth move again, but she did amazingly reattach her head to her neck. She cut into the seam in the fabric and used a wire coat hanger to support Mother Goose's neck and hold her head where it was supposed to go. It took about three different attempts at this "surgery" before it was a success.

This story may seem completely ridiculous now, but at the time I really felt as though Meme was a super hero when she fixed my toys. Despite all it's ups and downs I'm thankful that my childhood  allowed me to have such a close relationship with my grandparents.

Be Careful Who You Tell Things To...

Today I am thankful that my husband is very loving and has a great sense of humor when it comes to my mischief.

When we first met we worked together and were friends who bonded over each-others' "impishness." We both consider ourselves very clever and enjoyed trying to outsmart each-other. We worked at a grocery store together as cashiers. The bane of every cashiers existence is being in the express lane and J discovered a way around it. We had a rule that said if a cashier had over $600.00 in his or her drawer they had to get someone to come take the money away. This was to keep the money safe. Well J let his drawer get over $2,000.00 in it when he was on the express lane. When he was yelled at it he said "I didn't have time to have someone pick up the money I was too busy with all the customers." When I asked him about this he told me with a smirk, "If you do something wrong once, you'll never be asked to do it again."

Oh J, if only you'd known then that I was the woman you;d marry. Then maybe you would have thought twice about letting me in on your big secret. Flash forward to yesterday.

I was backing my car up. I was aware that my side view mirror was hitting a bush, but I wasn't concerned. Then suddenly.. CRASH!! It turns out that bush was hiding a big metal pole, and that pole took my mirror to the ground. J told me "You broke it your in charge of fixing it." So I did for $3.00.

I would like to thank the inventory of purple duct tape, and my husbands' patients for this moment of incredible awesomeness. I am still debating buying some leopard print duct tape and making a pretty design. I have a feeling I won't be in charge of fixing the car again anytime soon. Mission Accomplished,

More Thankfulness

November 4- I am thankful for my family. I know this is coming late but I knew that I was going to write about it  at some point so I figured I would write some less cliche things first. I wrote the other day about how much my dad works. I have always been every thankful for that. I am also thankful for how incredibly close knit my family is. What this essentially means is that we all annoy the heck out of each other on a very regular basis, but we also will stand by each other no matter what. I think it's a decent trade off.

November 5- To be very honest I am having a lot of trouble being thankful today. I'm not grumpy exactly, I'm just not exactly feeling grateful. That being said I am incredibly thankful that I live in New England again. I missed my family around the holidays and I am generally happier here.

View of Lake Winnipesaukee in NH from Mnt. Major

Really, is there anything not to love about this view?

November 6- I'm thankful for every life lesson about money that has contributed to me actually surviving this broken collar bone and resulting unemployment.

November 7- Today I am thankful for my health. This is another one that I knew I would write about eventually. It seems a little silly to me to write this with a broken collar bone, but that's very different than poor health. Before I broke my collar bone I was working as an in home aid for a child with cerbal palsy. He was a very sweet very happy child. He made me realize how little I have to complain about. (See I'm getting more thankful as the days go on.)

Thankfulness

A blogger who I follow is participating in a Giving Thanks Challenge I am not interested in the challenge part, but I am interested in the part where I would be writing everyday about one thing I am thankful for. Instead of making a month worth of short post I will probably just update this one a lot. I have decided to do this because I am very grumpy and all "woe-is-me" lately so I figured this will help. If you are interested in the challenge I learned about it through this blog. 

November 1- Today I am thankful for my blog because it encourages to me to write which keeps me sane.  


November 2- I am thankful for my incredibly comfy bed and my sweet dogs and amazing husband who make me feel safe so I can sleep well at night. (It is very obvious I am tired.)


November 3- The election made me think about how thankful I am to live in a country where we get to vote and have our voices heard.

EDIT: I wrote this original post really late at night so I apologize for getting the name of the challenge wrong a bunch of times. I have it figured out now.

Marrying Too Young

J and I got married when he was 22 and I was 21. Within a month we became prime examples of why 21 and 22 are too early to get married. Even with all the planning ahead we did ahead of time we were able to find our selves in shockingly unexpected circumstances and struggling to figure out how to manage our own personal problems while learning how to be married at the same time.

J and I spent the summer apart. His experiences that summer showed him that he would never be able to be part of the army and have a clean contentious at the same time. My summer showed me that my college major was not my passion. These lessons would have been hard enough to deal with in their own right but we were dealing with them and trying to figure out what they meant for our marriage. Both of us spent far too much time trying to "suck it up" because we knew the other was depending on us. It made us both miserable. We were each at points in our lives in which we really needed to be selfish, but we had also essentially given up that right. We made it work because we truly do love each other, but it was far from easy and, to be honest, it was probably not healthy for us either.

I am thinking about this now because I am finding my emotional self at odds with my married self. I have a broken collar bone and I have been pushing my body to do things it's not ready to do because WE need the money. I'm angry because I wonder if I would have been better off graduating on time and utilizing the resources the college had available to help me find an internship. I'm frustrated because career wise an internship would be better than a job, by money wise a job would be better than an internship. Newly graduated me needs an internship and married me needs a job. I would love to find something that could work as both but that's not an easy thing to find.

I want to be clear, I do not blame J, to be honest I do not blame myself either. Neither of us could have known better. I don't regret marrying J, although I wish I had waited longer and taken some time to worry about myself and no one else. I have made a promise to myself to allow myself to make decisions based on my best interest. J does that anyway.

 He always talks to me about decisions but I think we default to what is best for him. Again, I'm not assigning blame. I think he has been conditioned to look out for his own needs and I have been conditioned to look out for the needs of the people I love so we both tend to choose what's best for J. This is an example of how a few years of singlehood (completely made up word) would have done me a lot of good. Learning how to decide what is in my own best interest is going to be hard skill to hone within a marriage.

 I am thankful because I know J loves me and I know that he will support decisions that are in my best interest even when they are not ideal for him. However, it is not good for him to be chasing my dreams instead of his. My point in this is that I am not "suffering" alone. We both are going to struggle to grow individually within our marriage. the good news is we made it through a ridiculous struggle during the first two years, and if that's any indicator we will continue to grow together.