Book Meme

From Rev. Dr. Mom:

Rev. Dr. Mom said: "Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here."
Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
(my addition - by the ones I detested)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X+++
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily BronteX+
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X+
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkienx
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X +
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
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 x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
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
34 Emma - Jane 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 Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving x (I've real all of 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 x
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons x+
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens +
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
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 - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plathn X
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 X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo 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 X (in French!)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo 

(When I was a sick teen, a nazi nun sent a book list home of what I considered books 'too young for me' I was in about 11th grade. I read them, but I didn't like it and can't remember most of them. There may be a few on this list. She really was hateful. I was bored and sick and really liked to read, and these were pre-YA books. Bla!)

I came up with 35. (although it was really hard to count the little x's)  Who came up with this list? And they misspelled Sylvia Plath! Some of these books were required reading when I was in High School. And I can think of a lot of books that should be here.

In Case you haven't heard, The Racist New York Post Cartoon

Friday Five Taking a Break

Songbird posted this FF:
Where we live, it's February School Vacation Week!

Yes, that's an odd thing, a vacation extending President's Day. But it's part of our lives here. Some people go South or go skiing, but we always stay home and find more humble amusements.

In that spirit, I offer this Taking a Break Friday Five. Tell us how you would spend:

1. a 15 minute break

Under our union contract we get 2 15 minute breaks per day, however I've never in memory taken them. When I have a minute I play a game of solitare on the computer...then someone appears at the door and I quickly have to minimize it!
2. an afternoon off

This is rare, but maybe a meeting will end early and I'll be done an hour or two early. If I'm in the city and near the Manhattan office  I may stop at Macys or Jacks (the Bloomingdales of 99c  stores!) Or I may go home and take a nap.
3. an unexpected free day

Hooray! This never happens, btw. Although I have every other Monday off, I have to work longer hours to get this, it's planned. I will probably go to the Strand, the best huge used bookstore and browse, and buy. Then I'll take myself to lunch at a favorite place like Doma-where you pick up your delicious Florentine Tomato Soup at the counter, then share a table with all the slackers with computers. I usually have the Times or a magazine or one of those books I just bought. Then maybe swimming?
4. a week's vacation

Now that you asked, we're about to leave for a week with the ladies of Olivia Travel. This is a lesbian travel company that specializes in cruises and we're going to the Caribbean. We've been once before, but this time we're going for a week. It will be on one of the Holland American ships and onboard will be Kate Clinton, Arianna Huffington,  Vickie Shaw and others that I haven't heard of.
5. a sabbatical-Wow, someone tell the NYSED that counselors need these, too! I'd live in Europe for a while. Maybe Italy or somewhere nice. I'd blog and tell you all about it!

Not So Cozy Soup and Burger

On my day off yesterday, one of my tasks was to get a hair cut at my favorite, Dominic at Astor Haircutters. I was running late so that when I missed my bus connection, I took a cab down Broadway. At about 9th street, Broadway was completely  blocked off with yellow police tape. It was about a two block walk so I got out and walked. The police let me through the empty streets. I thought,"Oh my God, Astor Place has burned down and I'll never find another Dominic!" But, no, Dom was there and there was business as usual. When I got in the chair I asked what had happened. It seems that the Cozy Soup and Burger-really excellent burgers-had a shooting at 5:00 am. No one dead, just critical, so far. It was an argument. I didn't go there for lunch as planned...

A Valentine from the Empire State Pride Agenda-Lovely

I think I'll buy this from the I Tunes, but the visual is so much a part of it!

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day to all of my friends at RevGalBlogPals and all of my other readers and those who happen by. And especially to my Beloved!

Friday Five Pets

Sophia posted this Friday Five: "My son's tiny beloved lizard, Elf, is looking and acting strange this week. His skin/scales are quite dark, and he is lethargic. We are adding vitamin drops to his lettuce and spinach and hoping and praying that he is just getting ready to shed his skin--but it's too soon to tell. Others in the ring have also been worried about beloved pets this week. And, in the saddest news of all, Songbird has had to bid farewell to her precious Molly, the amazing dog who is well known to readers of her blog as a constant sacrament of God's unconditional love.

So in memory of Molly, and in honor of all the beloved animal companions who bless our lives: tell us about the five most memorable pets you have known."

1. I grew up on an orchard/truck farm like atmosphere so my earliest memories were of gathering eggs from the 'chicken coop.' I know they weren't pets, but they were to me at 3, 4 and 5.

2 At the same age we always seemed to have a dog and doghouse in the backyard. The dog was never loose, and never was really socialized. My cousin across the backyard had one too. I think they were like watchdogs, though they had names. Ours was a collie type, hers was more of a shepherd. As a matter of fact, I never knew that I was allergic to cats as all the cats I grew up around in Ohio in the 50's and 60's lived outside, so I was never in close proximity! I'm really allergic, too!

3.Ducks. On the way walking from school, my friend Trudy and I would stop at the Feed and Grain store (how's that for dating myself and showing myself as the hick I truly am.) And sometimes they would have flats of ducklings. We begged for some. We got two each.They were cute until they got big. Really made a mess of the backyard. I think Trudy's family ate theirs, sigh.

4. Tiny turtles. I had many of these, from the 5 and dime. They lived in little plastic bowls with palm trees. Eventually they got out. My mother stepped on one. She was traumatized. Both were, one fatally. Lately I've heard they carry Salmonella.

5. Way too late, I got a dachshund. My mother, who was newly retired proceeded to spoil him silly. Did I mention that she was a meat cutter/butcher and would cook him special food. Barney became her dog.

Bonus: Almost forgot, a white rat I had for awhile (left over from a cousins science experiment) and a white mouse named Radclyfe who was a gift from my best buds for my 17th birthday, What were they thinking??!

Good News and Rachel and Martha

Just heard on today's news that the elevator music people, Muzak, have gone bankrupt. No more tuneless humming to 80's favorites! Hooray! Excuse this burst of schadenfreude.

Watch Rachel and Martha cook for this mindless Thursday special.

RMonMartha
by gtsvideo

Feeling a little Anxious

Since I left work last Monday, I've been away from my office a week. I did go into another office for a meeting on Friday and yesterday was a planned day off.  You know that little frisson of anxiety that comes with anticipation of the stacks of mail, e-mail and other ephemera awaiting?

I have that... Although my cough is mostly gone ;-)

Bronchitis

Well, they called it Asthmatic Bronchitis. I felt a little wheeze on Saturday, then by Sunday it turned into a bullfrog. By Monday I dragged my sorry ass into the office with the gravelyiest voice I've even had and I'm not prone to laryngitis. Tuesday, I thought about going in to work, then called my doctor. She said "come right in." This is what it's like to have an MD that's "off the plan." Very little reimbursement, but she sees you when you're sick, gives you the shot herself and her assistant administers the nebulizer tx which I apparently needed. Plus antibiotics, prednisone by mouth :-O and an asthma inhaler. I'm not asthmatic. My godchild said, you were right when you said that when you get sick, the worst thing that can happen, does happen. Sixteen years ago a herniated disc turned into a spinal cord injury, last year a simple procedure for gall stones turned into Pancreatitis and when I was in my teens, allergy skin tests turned into anaphylactic shock! I'm feeling a little better, now. Still a little wheezy. I've never even heard of Asthmatic Bronchitis. I wonder what the implications are.