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.

Saturday, Geoffrey and I went to the Rose City Gun and Knife show. It strongly reminded me of the open-air swap meets my mom used to take me to in Hawaii, except it was indoors and there were fewer Samoans (sad to say — *grin*). Lyse was thinking of going along, but working graveyard shift makes daytime excursions a little disruptive to one’s schedule, and also she wasn’t feeling so great. It probably would have bored the demonspawn silly, and she’d had a late night, so she stayed home too. But it all worked out okay…I got this awesome new shirt (too bad I can’t wear it to work, but it would break the dress code in at least a couple ways I can think of!), and got Anxiety this shirt (in pale blue — and she can’t wear it to school, either…which still vaguely astonishes me, considering that I had my handgun targets hung inside my locker door for all to see when I was in 10th grade!!!). Geoffrey got himself a Mosin-Nagant M/44 rifle (well-used but came with some accessories), and I was soooo drooling over a rifle very similar to this (but more purple); I almost got it.

Why didn’t I? Because I decided it would be just a smidgen excessive to buy two guns at my first gun show. And I had my heart set on this darling little shiny (got it new, but didn’t pay nearly as much as that link shows, either!). Why that one, instead of something bigger? Because I’m super-picky about how a weapon feels in my hand (which is why I don’t care for semi-autos), and that was the only revolver that sat really *nicely*, like it belonged there. Okay, there were a couple of larger-caliber ones that I liked, too, but I do not need Dirty Harry’s gun! (I’ve fired a .44 without smacking myself in the forehead, but I’d rather not mess with that much recoil often. Not unless I take up weight training.)

I was terribly amused at how many vendors at the show kept pointing me toward the smaller-caliber guns with itty-bitty grips. Sure, I’m a girl — but not a small one. I’m 5′9″ and built like a Norse warbitch. I wear a size 9 ring, people; I do not have small hands! Crocheting for twenty years means I also have fairly strong and limber hands. Besides, derringers are for experts or posers; I actually want to hit what I’m aiming at, and if it’s not a paper target, it needs to go down and stay down. (BTW, I have never actually shot anything but a paper target…although one of these days I have got to try skeet-shooting.)

I wasn’t surprised that the men in attendance out-numbered the women at least 30 to 1 (in any other setting, I’d have been extremely creeped out by being in a crowd surrounded by that many guys, but everyone was so intrinsically polite that I wasn’t bothered a bit), but I was pleasantly surprised that the ratio was closer to 5 to 1 at the actual gun purchasing points. Poor Geoffrey may have been the only long-haired guy there; he was constantly referred to as “Miss.” One thing that did surprise me about the gun show was how few books there were — but we did manage to find a couple nifty titles: In the Gravest Extreme: The Role of the Firearm in Personal Protection and The Encyclopedia of Country Living. Both really excellent books, that I would recommend. Also I must say that the Expo Center concession stand makes a damned good grilled chicken sandwich.

Sunday I went grocery shopping (wearing my Infidel shirt, a few people stared but no dirty looks — which surprised me, in hippie-dippie stupidly-PC Portland), did a metric butt-ton of laundry, actually cooked a real dinner (used the oven and the rangetop, even!) and watched a horrible documentary from Netflix. I don’t know why I don’t shut horrible docs off within the first 20 minutes, they never improve…but somehow I always think they might. Le sigh. Out of every 5 flicks I get from Netflix, they tend to run thusly: 1 terrific, 3 decent (or at least not worthless), and 1 atrocious. Oh well, at least I’m learning things…like how to conclusively spot utter dreck within the first 5 minutes of a DVD. Speaking of which, I just added Repo! The Genetic Opera to my queue; my eldest loved it, and I’m a sucker for any footage in which Anthony Stewart Head is singing. I hate musicals as a rule (White Christmas being the ultimate exception), but how bad can it be? I’m going to find out.

We got some socks for each of us (including some over-the-knee dark green socks for me — which Lyse cannot stealborrow), and some books that we’ll both most likely end up reading. This trip was non-fiction only (for us, although we did grab some fiction for Yule gifts for a few people), which prompted me to think about how over-crowded and disheveled our non-fiction bookshelves are currently. I will have to reorganize them soon. Anyway, we got a couple of books on guns and a couple of books on country/sustainable living. I try to grab 1 or 2 of those every time I’m in Powell’s — I really like the Foxfire series (I read all of them when I was a kid devouring the small-town library), and the “Best of Backwoods Home magazine” books. Also got a nifty huge tome called The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living, which looks kick-ass amazing!

Went home to relax, and soon after my eldest and her fiance showed up. The Rocky Horror Picture Show cabaret is doing “Eighties Night”; Dustin is going as the Reanimator, and Angst is going as Jessica Rabbit:

Then Geoffrey decided to hand her his (unloaded) gun, so she could channel a Bond Girl:

She’ll be 20 on Monday. OMGWTFBBQ?! I’m not old enough to have a 20-year-old daughter, am I?

(BTW, my favorite Darkover novel, The Forbidden Tower, was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1978. It has as a major sub-plot the polyamorous marriage of twin sisters and their two husbands, one of whom is from an entirely different culture than the sisters and the other husband, and the relationship aspect of the story focuses on how the foursome come to understand and love one another in the midst of serious challenges to their very survival. I first read it when I was 20 or 21, and it did rather influence my view of what kinds of relationships fit my ideal.)

Steve also had a paperback copy of The Darkover Concordance, which I still have — although the back cover is torn off (but still kept with the book) and it’s moderately beat up. (The cheapest paperback copy I’ve found online is still $34.) Written in 1979, only 5,000 paperback copies and 300 hardcover copies of the concordance were published, the first 100 of which were numbered and signed by both MZB and Walter Breen (the author of the concordance, and her husband at the time). Powell’s Books has had a hardbound copy (signed by MZB only, which is all I care about) in their rare book room for at least 5 years now, and when I first spotted it there, it was priced at $480. For a while, I actually considered paying it! But I resisted temptation, and saw the price drop to $400, then $350, then $300. I stopped looking at the listing because it was too tempting.

I looked tonight. It’s down to $150 now. Aaarrrgggghhhh!

I’m dying with the temptation — especially as I searched at Amazon and found only a handful in their used dealer section (none of which sound like they’re in as good shape as the copy at Powell’s). One of the signed & numbered copies (#49 of 100) I found was listed at $195, as well as a signed & numbered copy originally owned by a member of the author’s family (#2 of 100) listed at $750. (No way in Hades could I pay $750 for a book. I mean, damn, that’s just idiotic. Most of the cars I’ve owned didn’t cost me $750!)

Now I’m soooo NOT allowed in Powell’s, or even allowed to go to their website. Eeep!

For those of you who are similarly blessed to be out of the loop, this is a very silly PG-rated series of books about twu wuv between a klutzy (but otherwise Mary Sue perfect) girl named Bella and a (OMG!) vampire boy who sparkles. Literally.

I know, it sounds ridiculous. It’s like fanfic run amok. How could such a silly thing become so huge, and make in the neighborhood of a bazillion dollars? The answer is simple: people (especially teen girls) are heart-breakingly stupid. The upside is that this is all terribly entertaining, in a can’t-look-away-from-the-car-crash kind of way.

Anxiety’s friend Kate made her borrow the first book and read it, which naturally led to Anxiety demanding to buy the second book. On our most recent trip to Powell’s, we obtained the third book. Just so I’m not a totally-clueless mom, I read the first & second books, but after reading the hilarity that is Cleolinda’s take on Twilight (thank you Karel for the link!), I no longer feel the need to read the last 2 books. I certainly couldn’t enjoy it as much as Cleo’s synopses of them! (”The pillow-biting will never, ever stop cracking my shit up. Ever. OM NOM ROUGH SEX NOM.”)

Actually, there is ZERO sex in the first 3 books, and the only sex in the fourth is “fade to black” scenes after they get married. It’s no surprise that these are written by a devout Mormon (who thought hand-holding was mind-blowing when she was 16 years old, OMG), and adored by suburban moms everywhere because of the zero sex content. (Reading the first couple of books did give me flashbacks to my own teen angst over boys, leaving me with just a touch of outrage that I never had a boyfriend who sparkled.)

The movie comes out in November, and I will definitely have to see it, mainly so I can take Anxiety and her boyfriend of several months, who looks vaguely like the actor who plays the bad guy in the movie. Also I want to enjoy the lulz of the whole ridiculous thing. (Oh crap, I just realized this means I’ll have to be in a movie theater with 300 girls under the age of 15: ***My personal version of Hell.*** Well, perhaps some of them will mistake Anxiety’s boyfriend for James, and hilarity will ensue. Oh yeah, that would be lulz-tastic!)

Honestly, the books are so simplistic and repetitive — if accurate regarding teen angst run amok (sometimes so stupidly it makes you wonder how the hell humanity became the dominant species on the planet) — that it’s almost painful to read. The author’s writing style can be most charitably described as casual. Kudos to Stephenie Meyer for having gotten published, but geez lady, take some writing lessons already! If nothing else, the Twilight phenomenon will provoke thousands of people to realize, “Hey, I can write better than this crap!” and perhaps a whole new slew of authors will be born.

Now I have to buy every damned book that Christopher Moore has ever written.

On the bright side, I spent a day & a half reading — nay, devouring — A Dirty Job, giggling uncontrollably the whole while, and now I have several more books to look forward to. On the not-bright side, that means there are several books that I have to buy, and books aren’t cheap.

But mixed emotions about books are my favorite kind of mixed emotions.

BookCrossing

Here’s how it works:

1. Pick one of your books.
2. Go to BookCrossing.com and click on “register book” under the “member’s links” in the left hand column of each page. Follow the prompts to register the book and generate a BCID (BookCrossing ID).
3. Write the BCID in ink inside the cover. Add a label or write the BookCrossing info. You can add some additional markings, stickers, notes, etc to make the book noticeable, if you wish.
4. Release the book. Where? Almost anywhere! (restaurants, coffee houses, those newspaper boxes for free papers, a bus, hospitals, doctor’s offices, anywhere people have to wait, on top of ATM’s, the DMV, museums, park benches, gyms, etc)

It’s kind of like GeoCaching for people who love books – with a lot less hiking! *grin* I’m going to release a few books into the wild when I’m out running errands later!

Using the list below the cut, bold all the titles that you’ve read. If you’ve read other titles by the same author, add them under that author.

Delete nothing! Play along, and leave a comment to let me know you did so I can check out your list.

My list:

The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
Angels and Demons

Emma (Jane Austen)
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility

To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (J. R. R. Tolkien)
LOTR: The Two Towers
LOTR: The Return of the King
The Hobbit
The Silmarillion
The Book Of Lost Tales Vols. 1 & 2
Unfinished Tales

Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery)
Anne of Avonlea
Anne of the Island

Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
Dragonfly in Amber
Voyager
Drums of Autumn
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes
Lord John and the Private Matter

A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (J. K. Rowling)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
The World According To Garp
The Hotel New Hampshire

Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)

The Stand (Stephen King)
’Salem’s Lot
Night Shift
The Dead Zone
Firestarter
Cujo
Different Seasons
Christine
Skeleton Crew
The Green Mile
Hearts in Atlantis
Dreamcatcher
From a Buick 8
Misery
Desperation
Insomnia
Pet Sematary
The Tommyknockers
Gerald’s Game
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Langoliers
Needful Things
Thinner

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)

The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
Little Men

The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

The Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish
Mostly Harmless
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle
Out of the Silent Planet
Perelandra
That Hideous Strength
The Screwtape Letters

East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
Of Mice And Men
The Grapes of Wrath
The Red Pony
Tortilla Flat
The Pearl
Cannery Row

Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
The Five People You Meet In Heaven

Dune (Frank Herbert)
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune
The Dragon in the Sea
The Santaroga Barrier
The Dosadi Experiment
The Jesus Incident
The White Plague
The Lazarus Effect

The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)

Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
The Fountainhead
We the Living
Anthem

1984 (George Orwell)
Animal Farm

The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
Lady of Avalon
Priestess of Avalon
The Forest House
Falcons of Narabedla
The Door Through Space
The Colors Of Space
Survey Ship
Warrior Woman
The Planet Savers
The Sword of Aldones
The Bloody Sun
Star of Danger
Winds of Darkover
World Wreckers
Darkover Landfall
The Spell Sword
The Heritage of Hastur
The Shattered Chain
The Forbidden Tower
Stormqueen!
Two To Conquer
Sharra’s Exile
Hawkmistress!
Thendara House
City of Sorcery
The Heirs of Hammerfell
Rediscovery
Exile’s Song
The Shadow Matrix
Traitor’s Sun
The Fall of Neskaya
Glenraven

The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
Eye of the Needle
The Key to Rebecca
On Wings of Eagles
Lie Down with Lions
Night Over Water

The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)

I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
She’s Come Undone

The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
The Valley of Horses
The Mammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage
The Shelters of Stone

The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

The Bible (OK, big chunks of it, anyway…)

Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
War and Peace

The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years After
The Vicomte of Bragelonne aka The Man In The Iron Mask

Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)

The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
Great Expectations
Oliver Twist
Nicholas Nickleby
A Christmas Carol
David Copperfield

Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
Speaker for the Dead
Xenocide
Children of the Mind
Ender’s Shadow
Shadow of the Hegemon
First Meetings
Empire
Red Prophet
Alvin Journeyman
A Planet Called Treason
Lost Boys

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)

The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
Tim

The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)

The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
The Vampire Lestat
The Queen of the Damned
The Tale of the Body Thief
Memnoch the Devil
The Vampire Armand
The Witching Hour
Lasher
The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned
Servant of the Bones

Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)

Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Márquez)

One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood
Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)

The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

Bridget Jones’s Diary (Helen Fielding)

Shogun (James Clavell)
King Rat
Tai-Pan
Noble House
Whirlwind
Gai-Jin

The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
In The Skin Of A Lion

The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
A Little Princess
Sara Crewe

The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)

Charlotte’s Web (E. B. White)
Stuart Little
The Elements of Style

Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)

Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

Watership Down (Richard Adams)

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)

Blindness (Jose Saramago)

Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)

The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
The Matarese Countdown
The Road to Omaha
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Bourne Supremacy
The Aquitaine Progression
The Parsifal Mosaic
The Matarese Circle
The Holcroft Covenant
The Chancellor Manuscript
The Gemini Contenders
The Road to Gandolfo
The Rhinemann Exchange
The Matlock Paper
The Osterman Weekend
The Scarlatti Inheritance

The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)
That Was Then, This Is Now
Rumble Fish
Tex

White Oleander (Janet Fitch)

A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)

The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

Ulysses (James Joyce)

The Past Through Tomorrow (Robert A. Heinlein)
Expanded Universe
Requiem
Grumbles from the Grave
For Us, the Living
Sixth Column
Beyond This Horizon
The Puppet Masters
The Rolling Stones
The Star Beast
Citizen of the Galaxy
Starship Troopers
Stranger in a Strange Land
Podkayne of Mars
Glory Road
Farnham’s Freehold
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Time Enough for Love
Friday
Job: A Comedy of Justice
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
To Sail Beyond the Sunset

A few days ago, I got a great pic of the tabby cats almost sleeping together:

Zadya isn’t as interested in sharing catnaps as Hasani is. Here’s a pic of how I typically find the two younger cats:

In other news, I’ve been ridiculously productive in recent days. I got onto the Oregon Prescription Drug Program, which is for any Oregonians who don’t have prescription drug coverage (with or without health insurance). It’s so simple to apply, one page to print out, sign & date, and that’s it! I also got an application sent off to hopefully get Anxiety on the Oregon Health Plan…I should have done that a year ago, really. At least it’s taken care of now.

And I finished filing my taxes! My federal refund was less than half of the refunds I’ve gotten for the last couple of years, since my eldest basically supported herself last year and I couldn’t claim her as a dependent. But my refund this year will still be enough to pay all of Anxiety’s Catalina Island trip (over $800), pay for my next tattoo (scheduled for Feb. 15th), and leave me a smidgen left over for a (small) book-shopping spree! I’m going to hit Moonshadow first, and maybe Powell’s if I still have any money left.

So, that said, I need recommendations for Pagan/Wiccan books! I’ve got quite a few, but always looking for more that are intelligent & well-written. My income tax will probably show up around Feb. 10th (gotta love direct deposit!).

Bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth’s Children series), Jean Auel
Ariel, Stephen R. Boyett
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Darkover Landfall (Darkover series), Marion Zimmer Bradley
Star Rebel (Rissa & Tregare series), F.M. Busby
Ender’s Game (Ender series), Orson Scott Card
The Andromeda Strain, Micheal Crichton
1632 (Assiti Shards series), Eric Flint
Native Tongue (Native Tongue trilogy), Suzette Hadin Elgin
Chicks In Chainmail, edited by Esther Friesner
The Gandalara Cycle series, by Randall Garrett & Vicki Ann Heydron
Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake series), Laurell K. Hamilton
Dead Until Dark (Southern Vampire series), Charlaine Harris
Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
The Man Who Sold The Moon, Robert A. Heinlein
The Rains of Eridan, H.M. Hoover
Blood Trail (Blood series), Tanya Huff
Sing the Four Quarters (Quarters series), Tanya Huff
The Green Mile, Stephen King
The Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King
Arrows of the Queen (Valdemar series), Mercedes Lackey
Savage Empire (Savage Empire series), Jean Lorrah
Channel’s Destiny (Sime/Gen series), Jacqueline Lichtenberg & Jean Lorrah
1916 (Irish Century series), Morgan Llywelyn
Dragonflight (Dragonriders of Pern series), Anne McCaffrey
Crystal Singer (Crystal trilogy), Anne McCaffrey
The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley
The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley
Little Fuzzy, H.Beam Piper
A Hymn Before Battle (Human-Posleen War series), John Ringo
Sword Dancer (Tiger & Del series), Jennifer Roberson
Shapechangers (Chronicles of the Cheysuli series), Jennifer Roberson
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon (Callahan’s series), Spider Robinson
Deathkiller (originally published as 2 titles: Mindkiller and Time Pressure), Spider Robinson
Stardance (Stardancers trilogy), Spider & Jeanne Robinson
Drakon, S.M. Stirling
On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington series), David Weber
Path of the Fury, David Weber