Holy Toledo! Is it ever cold here. If you’re not in the middle part of the US, you’re probably tired of hearing about our COLD weather. My car said it was -15 degrees F tonight when I was on my way home from my book group. I even took a quilt in to work today so that I could bring it out to my car at the end of the day to buffer me from the cold car seats. (My butt-warmer thingy is broken — poor me.) I’m sure Karen is thinking what a wimp I am — her temps have been WAY lower than ours.
Speaking of Karen….looky what arrived in the mail today.
I ordered that cute little snowman and book from Farmhouse Woolens. I couldn’t help it, my hand slipped. It’s too cold to do anything outside, so a little internet shopping accidentally happened. I had another accident too.
Aren’t they pretty? I ordered these Darla fabrics from Fresh Squeezed Fabrics. They’re so soft and yummy, I can’t wait to do something with them. And before you ask…no, I do not know what I’m doing with them. I told you it was an accident and I couldn’t help myself. Randi kept showing such pretty pictures of projects she’s made with these fabrics and she just wore me down. I told her she’s like my kids. They just keep showing me something they want until I finally give in just to get them to shut up! Not that I want Randi to shut up — Keep showing your beautiful Darla creations Randi — I love the inspiration.
Anyway, both ladies have impeccable (and FAST) service and it was very exciting to find these packages in the mail tonight. It made things all warm and happy in the house. Thanks for your great service ladies!
Ok, if you’re not a book person, you can be excused! For the rest of you, I’m sure you’ve seen this 100 books meme. I’ve been wanting to do it, so I thought I’d give it a try. And just for the record, I think this is a really goofy list. I have no idea where it came from, but it’s missing many excellent books (for example, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (two in my top 10), not to mention many classics. Plus, there are a LOT of questionable books IMHO, like The DaVinci Code and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Ok books… but in the top 100???
So, here’s the deal:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (I’m using an asterisk, ’cause wordpress doesn’t have an auto-underline tool and it’s too late to be manually entering the .html code.
And I’m throwing in **, for books that I want to read:
1. Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen (can you believe it? For Shame!) **
2. The Lord of the Rings — JRR Tolkein
3. Jane Eyre — Charlotte Bronte **
4. Harry Potter Series — JK Rowling **
5. To Kill a Mocking Bird — Harper Lee
6. The Bible (This seems odd to be on this list — you don’t read the Bible like a novel, you read and study it.)
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 Traveler’s Wife — Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch — George Eliot **
21. Gone With the Wind — Margaret Mitchel
22. The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald *
23. Bleak House — Charles Dickens **
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 — Jan 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 (aka One Hundred Years of Hell)
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany — 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 — Wiliam Golding **
50. Atonement — Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi — Yan Martel
52. Dune — Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm — Stella Biggons
54. Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen (clearly, I have an Austen hole — it must be fixed!) **
55. A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind — Carlow 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 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
65. Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas
66. On the Road — Jack Kerouac **
67. Jude the Obscure — Tomas 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 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 — Kazui 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
I know I’ve seen other versions of this meme around. If I were to re-do this one, here are a few from the Modern Libraries Top 100 Lists that I would add (if I haven’t read them, I want to):
1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce
2. Atlas Shrugged — Ayn Rand *
3. To The Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
4. An American Tragedy — Theodore Dreiser
5. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers
6. Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut
7. Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
8. Tender is the Night — F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner
10. The Sun Also Rises — Ernest Hemingway
11. The Age of Innocence — Edith Warton
12. Death Comes for the Archbishop –Willa Cather
13. A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway
14. Angle of Repose — Wallace Stegner *
15. Sophie’s Choice –William Styron
16. My Antonia — Willa Cather
17. Farenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
18. Beloved — Toni Morrison *
Personally, I think they should have made the list from our book group list (which will be updated soon) — it’s lots more fun haha. As you can see, I have a LOT more reading to do (and that includes a TON of blogs that I’m behind on). Have a good weekend everybody!
XOXO,
Anna
Oh! and p.s. — I’m SO excited that so many of you have signed up for the signature block swap — go look at Connie’s sidebar to see who signed up!
