A Girl...

Simon Says - "Keep on Booking..."

I want to play too...

When I was a kid, I was also a "reader." But I read a lot of crap, and I read the same books over and over. I was always jealous of Bastian from The Neverending Story, because he was smart enough to read the REAL classics, like Robinson Crusoe, while I was re-reading Alvin's Swap Shop for the millionth time.

An aside about the Swap shop book... Alvin Fernald was a rip-off of the Great Brain. Now THAT was a fantastic set of books. JD was my childhood hero. Brilliant, savvy, smooth. He had a heart full of kindness, but wasn't afraid to separate a fool from his money. Alvin was invented quite a few years later. Instead of the Great Brain, he was called the Magnificent Brain. Alvin's Swap Shop, though, was the best of all of the Alvin books. He and his friends decide to see how much stuff they can get merely by swapping. He starts out with an ant in a test tube, and by the end of the summer, he has an entire shop, wet up in a defunct gas station, full of neat stuff. In the course of the book, his younger sister befriends a young runaway from the Caribbean named Pim. Pim is being relentlessly pursued across the globe by a crook that is trying to get his "treasure" from him. Problem is, Pim doesn't even know what the crook is after! Needless to say, Alvin uses the Swap Shop to set a trap for the crook, and he saves the day! GOD, I loved that book. Anyway...

People used to say to me, "You are so lucky! You have a love of learning. That will take you far." It wasn't until I was about 23 that I realized that I don't particularly love learning. I dearly love knowing. There is a difference. It's subtle, but important.

Anyway, without further ado...

In the list of books below, bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a ten-foot pole (I don't know how to cross out, so I'll underline the ones I won't touch -- there aren't many), put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of. In the comments, let me know if you're up for it; I'd love to see if y'all have been puttin your book-learnin' to good use.

1. +The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) -- Super fun. Brainless and I loved it.
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. +Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) -- I'm reading this now
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) -- Started this one out of boredom while waiting inthe Tel Aviv airport, and it was the only book in English I could find. Now they are some of my favorites.
8. Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery) -- Seen the miniseries a million times.
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. *A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. +Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
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) -- I saw this to that I could go to the movie. Still haven't seen the movie, but I loved the book.
16. +Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) -- Everyone says it is his best
19. +Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
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) -- Not what I expected. I was disappointed.
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) -- What a great parable. Very relevant to my life.
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) -- all my friends in high school LOVED this one. I tried it, and it seemed pretty stupid. I'll try again some day.
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. +The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) I read this one in fifth grade. Two years ago I read the rest of the series. I really liked them, but I would have liked them more if I had read them in fifth grade also.
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. +Dune (Frank Herbert) -- Read twice. Waaaay better second time.
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. +Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. +1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. +I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb) -- This book is 1000 pages. I wish it had been 3000 pages. What a fantastic story. Run out and buy it today.
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. *The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) -- My sixth grade classmate (Maggie) brought this to school with all of the good parts marked. Six years later, I made out with her.
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. *Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. *The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible -- read most of it, in pieces not straight through. Plus there's my old children's bibles, those are easy.
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) -- Read this if you want to be inspired to slit your wrists.
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) -- I am surprised that I didn't figure this one out half way through.
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. +Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) -- Make sure to check out the porn version, "Hairy Pooter and the Chamber of Secretions."
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. +The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) -- started it,want to finish it sometime this year.
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 Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. +Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. +Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. +Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) -- this is the last book I read. Finished it last week.
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) -- I know it's not a dirty book, but it sure sounds like it.
76. *The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. *A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
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) -- One of my alltime favorites.
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. *The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago) - This book is fantastic!
90. *Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. *In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. +Lord of the Flies (Golding) -- I read this in fifth grade. Loved it, and I've read it 10 times since then.
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) Ick.
100. +Ulysses (James Joyce) -- Tried once. I'll get there someday.