I'm READING -- don't bug me

Well, I'm signing up for the Summer Reading trek. I don't usually sign up for these things because I don't have time during the school year when I'm working to read as much as I'd like. I figure I hope to have more time now, but that could be wrong -- I guess we'll see.

So...my list for reading this summer...

The 13th Reality -- James Dashner
Far World, Water Keep -- Scott Savage (ARC -- Blog tour! -- more to come, grin)
Fool me Twice -- Stephanie Black

I don't have the list handy, so I'll be adding to it later. I'm excited...

I've Been Distracted...

I have to admit, I've been distracted. I don't know how it started -- wait, yes I do. Someone invited me to join them at Goodreads, and it's gone from there. Goodreads is where you can list all the books you've read, rate and perhaps review them for others to think about, and mention the books your reading. ugh. I've been going through and finding all the ones I've read. I now have over 300...but it's such a long process because I don't remember all the ones I've ever read. Especially the ones in high school...although I don't think we're really worried about all the silly romance novels I read either...hundreds of those (Barbara Cartland, Harlequin, you get the picture)

So -- I've been trying to find the ones I read as an adult. That's quite an undertaking to figure out what you've read over the past 25 or so years... And it's very addicting!! So, I've posted my bar thing at the lower end of the left side. Check it out...you might have some fun!

Greatest Classical Novel?

Okay, a friend was commenting that she'd heard The Great Gatsby was listed as the all around greatest novel...and she didn't like it. I don't either. She then listed a 100 classics and noted which ones she had read. Here is the list, and the asterisk indicates which ones I have read. How many have you gotten to? Although, I have to say, I don't think that just because something was written ages ago qualifies it as a classic.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne
* The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift
Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville
A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
* The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
The Odyssey by Homer
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Tales From The Arabian Nights by Richard Burton
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Candide by Voltaire
Oedipus The King by Sophocles
* The Hunchback Of Notre Dame [Notre-Dame De Paris] by Victor Hugo
The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Sea Wolf by Jack London
Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmund Rostand
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Collected Poems by Robert Browning
The Essays Of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Portrait Of A Lady by Henry James (I've tried reading Henry James, but I don't think it was this one...ugh)
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
* Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
* Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Collected Poems by John Keats
On The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Collected Poems by Robert Frost
* The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving
* Animal Farm by George Orwell
* Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
She Stoops To Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
* Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen (I've read Sense and Sensibility...)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
* Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
The Iliad by Homer
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (I feel like I've read this one, my kids have told me all about it.)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
* Aesop's Fables by Aesop
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Autobiography Of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Politics And The Poetics by Aristotle
The Aeneid by Virgil
Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
* Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Pygmalion And Candida by George Bernard Shaw
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
* Romeo And Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Cherry Orchard And The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
The Analects of Confucius by Confucius
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats
The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
Beowulf
* Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Necklace And Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Fathers And Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The History of Early Rome by Livy
* Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
* Alice's Adventure In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Rubáiyát Of Omar Khayyám by Omar Khayyám
The Red And The Black by Stendhal
A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickins
The Republic by Plato
Collected Poems by Emily Dickinson
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Billy Budd by Herman Melville
The Confessions by St. Augustine
Tales of Mystery And Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner
Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
* Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Ludwig and Wilhelm Grimm
* Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley ( I feel like I've read it, my kids have had to for school and I've heard all about it)
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I guess some would say that I'm woefully lacking in my classical reading. And, perhaps I am. My english classes in high school did not require the classics for reading, so I started after I graduated from college. However, there are books I've read that were not listed that I think should be, and so I list them now.

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (why wasn't that listed?)
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Unfortunately, these are the only ones that come to mind and as I look at them, I realize they are probably the feminine reader. Oh well...lol
How many of the great books have you read and encourage your children to read?

Well...I took this from InkSplasher's blog.

Take a look at this list and see which ones you've read. Then, if you're a blogger, post it on your blog. Here's what you do:

* Bold the ones you’ve read
* Italicize the ones you want to read
* Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in
* Highlight those you haven't heard of (green)
* Put a couple of astericks by the ones you recommend. (Rule added by Framed and Booked - I like it!)

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown) **
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) Want to though!!!!
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)*
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)*
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)*
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)**
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) * this series is wonderful...graphic though
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)**
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) (better than DaVinci Code)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)**
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) beware - very explicit, I didn't finish it
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)**
17. Fall On Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)**
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) ** loved this book as a teen
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)**
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) **
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) **
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)*
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbertz) very deep - good sci-fi -beware sexual content
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) (sex caution)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One(Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) (sex caution)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) **
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)**
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) beware on this one - good story, but a little too -
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares) No desire to read it - have heard too much about it
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) ** Loved this
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) ** My very favorite book from childhood
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving) (sex caution)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

I'm going to add some of my own:

101. Dragonsinger (Anne McCaffrey) *** Wonderful series!!
102. Magic Kingdom For Sale (Terry Brooks) *
103. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo) *
104. The Dinner Club (Curtis Taylor)
105. The Patriots Club (Christopher Reich)