It’s ridiculously easy to find free patterns, on such wondrous sites as Ravelry, Lion Brand Yarn, Caron, Coats & Clark, Bernat, and Lily Sugar ‘n Cream. I have quite the collection. Plus I subscribe to Crochet! Magazine and Crochet Today, and regularly pick up copies of Interweave Crochet as well — all of which are neatly saved in magazine holders. It’s an embarrassment of riches, which my children will one day have to sort through (unless I’m lucky enough to eventually have a crocheting grandchild, in which case he or she will inherit whatever Lyse’s willing to part with).

We won’t even get into the size and variety of my yarn stash. I’d say it’s fair to call me a yarnaholic, and leave it at that.

So… the problem I’m having now is that I’m a bit overwhelmed with questions like: What project do I want to start next? What pattern should I use? What color yarn? What kind of yarn?

It’s almost enough to make me finish all the WIPs that sit in my project baskets, taunting me.

Almost.

The Tualatin flood of 1996 was the closest I ever came to being flooded. Just a couple of years before that flood, I moved into Tualatin. I had to choose between an apartment literally next to the river, or an apartment further from the city center but about 100 feet higher elevation. I chose the latter apartment — and thank heavens, because the riverside place ended up flooding to a depth of over 8 feet! The only personal impact that the ‘96 flood had on me was, since the post office was awash in several feet of floodwaters, I didn’t get mail for a few days. Here’s a link to some more excellent pics of the flood.

Oh, and I couldn’t take my girls for their usual weekly Happy Meal because the McDonald’s parking lot was underwater. Then-7-year-old Angst wouldn’t believe me when I told her, so we actually walked down (with little sister in a stroller) to the flooded area and took pictures. Of course, Angst wanted to wade in the water, and I had to frighten her with tales of horrible diseases that she would catch if she got a single molecule of floodwater on herself. That was possibly the most fun I had that whole week!

Of course the first phone call tonight was from Jane Q. Stupid, whose child has been running a fever of 104* for over 24 hours, asking if she should bring her child into the emergency department. As I like having a job, my reply had to be the official statement of, “I can’t answer that since I’m not medically trained.” Given my druthers, I would have replied, “What you should have done is called the clinic when they were open today instead of waiting until midnight on Friday, but since you clearly had better things to do than adequately parent your child, let me page the doctor on call, and she will tell you to get off your ass and drive your kid to the ER already.”

It was also quite exciting to read the THREE emails in my work inbox advising of problem callers who require “special handling” (i.e. connect them straight to the Security office — and yes, you can be banned from calling a hospital if you create a prior pattern of harrassment). One of them is living proof that the Universe occasionally does have a sense of humor, as the guy’s name actually has the initials “B.S.”

To put the sprinkles on the sundae, one of the most-frequently paged departments had nobody listed as being on call, and that got a certain neurosurgeon a bit peeved with me, despite it being the fault of that department’s scheduler and not anyone in my department. To his credit, though, when I did track down the correct person and corrected the on call schedule, that neurosurgeon actually thanked me. In case you’ve never had to deal with a neurosurgeon before, let me assure you that being thanked by one is shockingly rare. Most surgeons really are the temperamental, arrogant bastards that TV dramas portray them as being, and neurosurgeons are usually the worst.

At least I only have to work 6.5 or 7 hours (depending on how many of the early day shift people show up in the morning). My plans at that point will be to drive the younger demonspawn to her first day at her first “real” (requiring a W-4 Form) job at the Bipartisan Cafe (I promised I’d drive her in before I found out I’d be working tonight), and then go home to hopefully achieve something in the vicinity of 8 hours’ sleep. However, for that to be a realistic goal, I’ll probably have to lock the cats out of my room!

I may spend all the overtime money on yarn, since good yarn is not cheap — and since Jo-Ann was evil and sent me a 2-day-only coupon good for 80% off one item. The coupon is valid on the weekend I get my next paycheck. Those bitches.

But yarn is a pretty decent reward for nights like tonight.

So this morning when I got home from work, I decided to do some crocheting and put on a movie from Netflix. I actually did get some crocheting done, but only because it was a familiar pattern that I didn’t need to devote but a small fraction of my attention to — because Right At Your Door quite thoroughly sucked me in! This movie, however, held me transfixed through emotion and gritty realism, and a more intimate story (just a very few characters, instead of the whole city). Let me put it this way: I had a smoke break during yesterday’s movie, but there was no way in Hades that I was pausing today’s movie! It was just that compelling. Right At Your Door is another TEOTWAWKI movie, with a similar premise to Dirty War, but otherwise they are vastly different. I highly recommend both.

Now to go hunt down a few more TEOTWAWKI flicks that I haven’t seen yet…

WHAT WAS YOUR:
1. last beverage = water
2. last phone call = checked my voicemail
3. last text message = from my husband
4. last song you listened to = can’t recall, but I turned it up to 11
5. last time you cried = I regularly get a little teary over missing Geoffrey

HAVE YOU EVER:
6. dated someone twice = duh …hell, I’ve been married three times
7. been cheated on = yes
8. kissed someone & regretted it = luckily only once or twice
9. lost someone special = yes
10. been depressed = not clinically speaking
11. been drunk and threw up = alcohol poisoning at 15

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS:
12. purple
13. green
14. silver

THIS YEAR HAVE YOU: (2010)
15. Made a new friend = yes
16. Fallen out of love = no
17. Laughed until you cried = yes
18. Met someone who changed you = changed me how? :/
19. Found out who your true friends were = yes
20. Found out someone was talking about you = don’t know
21. Kissed anyone on your Facebook friend’s list = yes

GENERAL:
22. How many people on your Facebook friends list do you know in real life = at least half
24. Do you have any pets = a bunny, a lizard, 4 snakes, 5 cats
26. What did you do for your last birthday = worked overtime
27. What time did you wake up today = 8:30pm (graveyard FTW)
28. What were you doing at midnight last night = working
29. Name something you CANNOT wait for = seeing Geoffrey again Sept 2nd!!!
30. Last time you saw your mother = a couple months ago
31. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life = where I live
32. What are you listening to right now = air conditioner
33. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom= yes
34. What’s getting on your nerves right now = the heat
35. Most visited webpage = my Google reader
37. Nicknames = Lil
38. Relationship Status = married
39. Zodiac Sign = Gemini
40. He or She? = whichever strikes my fancy
41. Elementary? = my dear Watson
42. High School? = hell on earth
43. College? = I work for one
44. Hair color = can’t remember what the Miss Clairol box said
45. Long or short = long…damnit
46. Height = 5 foot 9 inches
47. Do you have a crush on someone? = every cast member of NCIS, and Jeff Probst
48: What do you like about yourself? = more than I used to!
49. Piercings = 7 …5 of them are in my earlobes
50. Tattoos = 5 …hopefully will be 6 or 7 by the end of the year
51. Righty or lefty = right-handed

FIRSTS :
52. First surgery = tubal ligation in 1995
53. First piercing = my mom’s best friend pierced my ears when I was 5
54. First best friend = Pamela Reed-Smith in Honolulu (wish I knew where she was now)
55. First sport you joined = gymnastics, ages 7-13 (Nadia was my idol)
56. First vacation = in a quonset hut on Adak, Alaska
58. First pair of trainers = nope, went straight to a real bra

RIGHT NOW:
59. Eating = nothing
60. Drinking = nothing
61. I’m about to = leave work in about an hour
62. On the TV = Top Shot on History Channel
63. Waiting for = Sept 2nd!!!

YOUR FUTURE :
64. Kids? = just the 2 I already have
65. Romance? = yes, please!
66. Career? = farming

WHICH IS BETTER :
67. Lips or eyes? = apples or oranges
68. Hugs or kisses = BOTH!
69. Shorter or taller = shorter, usually
70. Older or younger = younger, always!
71. Romantic or spontaneous = spontaneously romantic
72. Nice stomach or nice arms = nice butt
73. Sensitive or loud = sensitive, except in bed
74. Hook-up or relationship = relationship
75. Troublemaker or hesitant = a hesitant troublemaker

HAVE YOU EVER :
76. Kissed a stranger = I was in the SCA for years, so YES
77. Drank hard liquor = hells yes
78. Lost glasses/contacts = surprisingly, no
79. Sex on first date = yes
80. Broken someone’s heart = only a few times
81. Had your own heart broken = more than I care to recall
82. Been arrested = no!
83. Turned someone down = not as many as I should have!
84. Cried when someone died = yes

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:
86. Yourself = hells yes
87. Miracles = every day
88. Love at first sight = not really …lust at first sight, oh yeah!
89. Heaven = in the arms of my love
90. Santa Claus = I don’t think I ever believed in Santa Claus
91. Kiss on the first date = yes!
92. Angels = I even know a few

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY:
93. Had more than one bf/gf? = for a while, I had 3 – they all knew, and were cool with it
94. Is there one person you want to be with right now? = actually, there are a couple
95. Did you sing today? = yes, in the car, glad nobody heard me
96. Ever cheated on somebody? = yes
97. If you could go back in time, how far would you go, and why? = either Europe in the Middle Ages, or being a pioneer on the Oregon Trail
98. If you could pick a day from last year and relive it, what would it be? = any day spent with my love
99. Are you afraid of falling in love? = I’ve never been afraid of it, even when I should have been
100. When will you die? = I’ll live forever or die trying

Damn, I always get penalized for being Pagan, polyamorous, tattooed, and crafty (sewing & crocheting is apparently “hippie”). Time to buy more guns!

I’ll just sum up the last 12 months by saying it’s been fraking exhausting, with no end in sight. (Not a complaint, mind you — I absolutely LOVE most parts of my life, and I fully expect it to just keep on getting better! But it is tiring.)

Okay, alright, to hit just the highlights –

bought an awesome 2005 Dodge pickup truck (too bad the damned thing is red, but they were all out of purple), moved a rather large household’s (3 humans & 9 pets) worth of stuff into a rather small condo that already had (1 human & 2 feline) inhabitants, got sucked into Facebook despite years of resistance (because of some stupid farming game, on which I’m currently level 75), cut nearly all of Geoffrey’s waist-length hair off (at his request, so he could get used to having short hair for the first time in 20 years, before he went to Boot Camp), performed my elder spawn’s wedding ceremony on her 21st birthday (oy and vey), had a Yule season frought with tension, helped elder spawn move house when she decided her marriage was A Big Mistake, had to deal with the most gawd-awful high school in the state until I finally told younger spawn that she didn’t have to go back (she’s now enrolled in an awesome “alternative” school & will probably graduate ahead of her year-mates), got to go shooting with my beloved Geoffrey and our friend The Bastidge a few more (awesome) times, managed not to bawl like a stoopid girl when Geoffrey left for US Navy Basic Training (miss him miserably, constantly, fiercely), was only able to visit hubby for 3 days in the last almost-four months and won’t get to see him again for another month yet, have done about 8 times more work on a garden this year than the cumulative total of my prior gardening, got a kick-ass purple netbook for natal anniversary number forty-one and named it Tinhead (shout out to F.M. Busby), have done about 4 times more crocheting this past year than the cumulative total of the previous 21 years since I learned how (and invented the term “yarn porn” to describe my fast-growing crocheting magazine & book collection), discovered my eldest cat has hyperthyroidism and has to be given pills twice daily to keep her alive (gee, that’s fun), and am still adapting to living with FIVE cats (not *quite* as much fun as I’d once thought it might be) and very little sex.

Yeah, I’m at the theoretical best years of a woman’s sexual lifetime, and my husband — light of my life, joy of my heart, fire in my loins — is over 2,100 miles away. (That’s something in the neighborhood of 3,400 km, for the rest of the world.) My new motto? “Navy Wife: Sexually Deprived For Your Freedom”

Hey, but I’m crocheting a lot. (A. LOT.)

I’m vaguely amused at the fact that I’m writing this on what would have been my 23rd wedding anniversary to my first husband, if he hadn’t been such a completely abusive dick who — among many other horrible things — stole & destroyed my most treasured childhood things, tried to take a breastfed newborn permanently away from her mother, lied in court documents & forced me all the way to divorce court, all just to hurt/punish me. (Guess what, Mick? My life is AWESOME now, and yours probably sucks. Karma is a stone bitch, babe.)

Here’s the scariest — nay, the most terrifying — part: if anyone had told me 10 years ago that I would be 1) married, 2) married without being traumatized by it, 3) married to a US Navy Sailor, 4) happy about owning a pickup truck, 5) excited about gardening instead of disliking it, 6) rabidly excited about crochet instead of just liking it, 7) a rather enthusiastic gun owner, and/or 8 ) a registered Republican, I would have said to them with complete and absolute seriousness, “Just how high are you, dude?”

And they say people don’t change. Well, one little thing hasn’t changed one little bit…

I am still a snarky bitch.

Newsweek’s Top 100 Books of All Time (Orly?)

Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you tried to read & couldn’t finish, and underline those you’d recommend (plus comment freely in parentheses).

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, 1869
(You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding.)

2. 1984 by George Orwell, 1949
(The drudgery of finishing this book stuck with me for a long, long, loooong time.)

3. Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922

4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
(I read it because it’s supposed to be naughty. It’s not naughty, it’s ridiculously stupid.)

5. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, 1929
(Is this about a ship? Did I maybe see the movie? Or was that Master and Commander?)

6. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, 1952
(This wasn’t science fiction, was it? If it was, I may hunt it down and read it.)

7. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, 1927
(Didn’t she kill herself? I know nothing else about this.)

8. The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer, 8th century B.C.E.
(Oh, the boredom. I couldn’t even finish the Cliff Notes, it was so boring.)

9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813
(19th-century chick lit, right? I don’t even like modern chick lit, why would I read this?!)

10. Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, 1321
(I hear it’s snarky. Maybe someday I’ll try reading it.)

11. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, 15th century
(Wasn’t this a bunch of medieval soap opera stuff? I don’t like modern soap opera stuff, for crying out loud.)

12. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, 1726
(Hated the movie. At least I think it was a movie based on this book. There was teensy people tying the guy down with ropes, right? Boring.)

13. Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1874
(Wasn’t George Eliot a chick? That’s all I know about this.)

14. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, 1958
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

15. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, 1951
(Aren’t crazed shooting-spree murderers supposed to like this book?)

16. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, 1936
(I read it because Lyse loves it. It actually wasn’t bad. Pretty sure it wouldn’t make my personal Top 100, though!)

17. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

18. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
(Wasn’t this about a reporter? I can’t imagine any book about a reporter being interesting.)

19. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, 1961
(Not a clue.)

20. Beloved by Toni Morrison, 1987
(Figures, the only book in the top 20 written after my birth, and I’ve never heard of it. Or the author.)

21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 1939
(I read the synopsis of the movie and decided it sounded too depressing to bother.)

22. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, 1981
(The author that someone put a hit out on because he pissed off some Muslims, right?)

23. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932
(I tried, honestly. It’s a “sci fi classic” and I really love science fiction…but I couldn’t do it. Boooring.)

24. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, 1925
(Never heard of this book.)

25. Native Son by Richard Wright, 1940
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

26. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
(I might read this some day just because it sounds like it would make a good documentary. But a French guy writing about the USA, when the USA was less than 60 years old and the rest of the world thought democracy was pure nonsense? I have my doubts about it…)

27. On the Origins of Species by Charles Darwin, 1859
(I bet that 99.9% of the people who are against the theory of evolution have not read this. I bet that 99.5% of people who are for the theory of evolution have not read this. I know I haven’t.)

28. The Histories by Herodotus, 440 B.C.E.
(I’ve heard of this guy in documentaries, and he sounded cool, so I might read this someday.)

29. The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

30. Das Kapital by Karl Marx, 1867
(I bet that 99.9% of the people who are against Marxism have not read this. I bet that 99.5% of people who are for Marxism have not read this. I know I haven’t.)

31. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532
(One of the few books I tried to read & couldn’t finish that I might actually try to read again someday.)

32. Confessions by St. Augustine, 4th century
(Sounds naughty. But I bet it isn’t. I bet it’s boring.)

33. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, 1651
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

34. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, 431 B.C.E.
(Sounds like a documentary on the History Channel. This means I might actually try reading it someday.)

35. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1954
(Oh, the boredom! The shrieking boredom! I didn’t see the movies, either.)

36. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, 1926
(The first 6 or 7 years of my life revolved around Pooh, but eventually I GREW UP. Utterly ridiculous that this book — or any other book that only requires a third-grade reading level — is on the list.)

37. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, 1950
(Read it in childhood, and I remember almost nothing about it. Didn’t see the movie either.)

38. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster, 1924
(Wasn’t this made into a movie with Meryl Streep? Or was that Out of Africa? Anyway, never read either one.)

39. On the Road by Jack Kerouac, 1957
(Wasn’t this guy the original poseur? That whole beatnik thing was all about being poseurs, right?)

40. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1960
(I read this because my kid was forced to read it for school, and I couldn’t believe it was as bad as she made it out to be. But it WAS. Absolutely THE most boring piece of crap I’ve forced myself through. I watched the movie, hoping it would somehow redeem this tedious waste of time. Nope. It was simply atrocious.)

41. The Holy Bible by ?
(I’ve actually read most of it. And despite being very much not a Christian — in fact, I’m a witch/pagan/heathen type — I highly recommend it. Some of it’s just morbid fascination about the oddities of beliefs of certain cultures in history, and some of it’s flat-out prurient entertainment. However, some of it really IS incredibly good stuff. I’m personally shocked and dismayed that it didn’t make the Top 10 on this list. <--not sarcasm!)

42. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 1962
(I tried, and really wanted to finish it. Couldn’t do it…it just made no sense. Watched the movie and was mildly creeped out. Not by the story so much as by the horrible acting of Malcolm McDowell.)

43. Light in August by William Faulkner, 1932
(Never heard of the book. Vaguely heard of the author. Did he write Thorn Birds?)

44. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903
(Sounds like a winner. I’m only being a smidgen sarcastic in saying that. It really does sound like it could be fascinating. It also sounds like the kind of book a bunch of white people would claim was amazing because it’s politically correct of them to do so.)

45. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, 1966
(Never heard of book or author. Sounds like a bad romance.)

46. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, 1857
(Really sounds like a bad romance.)

47. Paradise Lost by John Milton, 1667
(Poetry? Really?)

48. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 1877
(From the guy who brought you War & Peace? Please.)

49. Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1603
(Forced to read it in school. Hated it. Really tried to like it when I dated a guy who was a theatre major and wild about Shakespeare. Still hated it. Tried watching the movie, figured anything with Mel Gibson couldn’t suck too bad, right? Wrong. Still hated it. My 16-year-old really likes Shakespeare, though — she bought the “complete works of” at a used bookstore completely on her own initiative. Go figure.)

50. King Lear by William Shakespeare, 1608

51. Othello by William Shakespeare, 1622

52. Sonnets by William Shakespeare, 1609

53. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, 1855
(Poetry sucks. Unless it’s by Shel Silverstein or Rudyard Kipling, thanks.)

54. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, 1885
(Another “forced to read in school” book. Another author that I can’t, for the life of me, understand how he gets such rave reviews.)

55. Kim by Rudyard Kipling, 1901
(Based on the multiple recommendations of science fiction authors that I respect and admire, I am determined to read everything by Rudyard Kipling sooner or later. What I’ve read so far is pretty impressive.)

56. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1818
(Possibly the first “science fiction” novel ever. I kinda have to read it, yes? Someday I will.)

57. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, 1977
(Never heard of the book or author. I must admit being prejudiced against it simply by learning it was featured by Oprah’s book club.)

58. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, 1962
(Honestly can’t remember if I read it, or just was really, really impressed by the movie.)

59. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, 1940
(Meh. Doesn’t sound interesting.)

60. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, 1969
(Wasn’t the author some whiny peacenik with a chip on his shoulder who couldn’t write decent science fiction so he wrote this?)

61. Animal Farm by George Orwell, 1945
(I think they tried to make me read this in school, but by then I was so disgusted with the required reading list that I cheerfully took an F.)

62. Lord of the Flies by William Golding, 1954
(I may actually read this someday because I hear it’s gory and creepy. Sweet.)

63. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 1965
(Didn’t they make a movie about this guy writing this book? How good could it be if they made a movie about him writing the book, rather than a movie about the subject matter of the book?)

64. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, 1962
(Never heard of the book or author.)

65. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, 1913
(Never heard of the book.)

66. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, 1939
(Okay, wait a minute. A detective novel? Are you fuq’ing joking?!)

67. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, 1930
(Never heard of the book.)

68. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, 1926
(So this is chick lit for tough guys? Stupid.)

69. I, Claudius by Robert Graves, 1934
(Sounds like Gladiator meets My Left Foot. Interesting apart, not so much together.)

70. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, 1940
(Never heard of the book or author.)

71. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, 1913
(Sounds kinky. However, there’s no way kinky would make this list. Therefore it must be dull as dishwater.)

72. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, 1946
(Politics? Yawn.)

73. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin, 1953
(Never heard of the book or author.)

74. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, 1952
(Okay, this is a great book. However, it’s not THAT great. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was tremendously better.)

75. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 1902
(Never heard of the book or author.)

76. Night by Elie Wiesel, 1958
(Isn’t this the Diary of Anne Frank revisited?)

77. Rabbit, Run by John Updike, 1960
(Never heard of the book. Not real clear on why Updike is considered a great writer.)

78. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, 1920
(Never heard of the book or author.)

79. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, 1969
(Never heard of the book or author.)

80. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, 1925
(Never heard of the book or author.)

81. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, 1939
(A cheesy horror flick. Oh, wait, that movie probably wasn’t about this book. Okay, I’ve never heard of this book or author.)

82. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, 1934
(I hear this is a naughty book. I doubt it’s all that. Didn’t this guy get famous for being in a three-way?)

83. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, 1930
(Another private dick novel? Clearly someone who likes fedoras stacked the deck on this list.)

84. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, 1995
(Fantasy, and quite yawn-inducing fantasy at that. I lost interest two chapters into The Golden Compass.)

85. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, 1927
(Never heard of the book or author.)

86. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, 1900
(The dude was seriously twisted in some ways and a total whack-job in others. I can’t imagine wanting to read this, other than for the sheer amazement of how much he got wrong.)

87. The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams, 1918
(Never heard of the book or author.)

88. Quotations from Chairman Mao by Mao Zedong, 1964
(Brainwashing, anyone? Hey, wasn’t this the guy who made our nation’s “nanny government” look like a utopia of civil freedoms? Ew.)

89. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James, 1902
(This may possibly be the only book on this list that I’m extremely eager to read. Apparently it’s about “spirituality” in the sense of “nature religion/paganism without the deities”. Sounds intruiging.)

90. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, 1945
(Isn’t this a PBS soap opera for old fogeys? Yawn.)

91. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, 1962
(So ridiculously overblown and overrated, it’s not funny. Twisted into a manifesto by the eco-terrorist wing nuts. She died in 1964, and probably would be appalled at how people have used her work.)

92. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes, 1936
(The only thing more boring than politics? Economics! Not to mention there’s far more fortune-telling in economics than anything resembling science or sensibility.)

93. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, 1900
(Never heard of the book or author.)

94. Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, 1929
(You know what they call people who find reading autobiographies fun & interesting? Fanboys/girls, that’s what!)

95. The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958
(Never heard of the book or author.)

96. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, 1908
(I may have read a page or two of this. I can’t recall and it looks drearily dull anyway.)

97. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X, 1965
(See my note above about autobiographies. Besides, militantly angry stuff is just stupidly annoying.)

98. Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey, 1918
(Never heard of the book or author.)

99. The Color Purple by Alice Walker, 1982
(Looked angry and depressing. So not my cuppa.)

100. The Second World War by Winston Churchill, 1948
(Politicians writing about history that they just got done making strikes me as absurdly short-sighted, not to mention way too biased to be anything other than fan service.)

I rather enjoyed reading the comments on the Newsweek article. Here are excerpts from my favorite comments:

“An absolutely ridiculous list…you might as well have just given us Oprah’s word. Way too American in fiction, way too leftist and pseudo-scientific in other fiction.”

The Golden Compass? Are you smoking crack?

Yeah, that about sums it up.

I really, truly did — reading this.

I’m never going to forget this phrase: “there’s a little F-16 in my pants.”

Wendi Aarons is my new hero. I would read her blog at work for the stress relief, but I’m pretty sure my manager would call in Animal Control to deal with the hyena in my cubicle.

(I know it’s been 4 days since my wedding and I haven’t blogged it. I will, I promise. Just waiting for My Number One Internet Fanboy and Official Wedding Photographer to get me some piccies. Also my stress levels need to be brought down by at least a few nights on the luscious 500-thread count sheets that Geoffrey’s awesome aunt got us, which are finally going on the bed tonight.)