Book Meme: What I’ve Read

(via Publishing Careers)

The National Endowment for the Arts has an initiative you may have heard of called the Big Read. According to the website, its purpose is to “restore reading to the center of American culture.” They estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

Here’s what you do:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – loved this in high school, but don’t care for it now.
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 Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’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’s Adventures 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 – 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 Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden- (started this)
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
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 – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
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
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – 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 – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville (started it)
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 – A. S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
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
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

My score: 63/100

Continue ReadingBook Meme: What I’ve Read

Indiana teacher suspended for giving students a book

Showing up on CNN yesterday, this Indiana story:

Perry Township teacher Connie Heermann a 27 year teaching veteran, was suspended from her job at Perry Meridian High School for a year and a half without pay, for giving her high school English class the book Freedom Writer’s Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them.

Apparently, the book was objectionable to the Perry Township school board because it contains swear words.

Yes, swear words. Oh, my stars and garters. Heavens to Murgatroid.

In addition to said swear words, it also contains inspirational stories of how inner city kids from very poor circumstances were inspired by their teacher’s introducing them to first-person journals from Anne Frank and others to write journals of the poverty and suffering around them, achieve in school, and go on to college. A very worthy book, it seems to me.

I guess not to the Perry Township school board.

Heermann attempted to get permission to teach the book as a textbook in her class, and the school board dithered at length on whether or not to allow it, because it contained the aforementioned swear words. While she waited on an answer, she sent home permission slips to the students parents, and 149 of 150 parents approved the book. So she passed it out in class, and stuff hit the fan.

The Perry Township School Board has taken refuge in the idea that they suspended her for “her disregard for policy and procedures and not working within the confines of the system she’s agreed to work in and support” claiming that they’re not “banning a book” but disciplining a teacher for not following the rules.

I am not fooled. This is a book banning.

It’s a bit of a mystery to me why this showed up on CNN just now, when the school board vote to suspend Connie Heermann occurred in March, but I’m glad it did, since I missed the story the first time around.

I’d also like you to take note that I used absolutely no swear words in writing this post, owing mostly to the fact that the CNN reporter said “blank” as he read the offending passages aloud, and the only word I could figure out was mother-fucker. Oops. Damn.

Continue ReadingIndiana teacher suspended for giving students a book

Woodie Guthrie on songwriting

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing.

Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built.

I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”

Woodie Guthrie on songwriting

Continue ReadingWoodie Guthrie on songwriting

What I’ve Read Recently

The problem I had with being unfocused and skipping from book to book seems to have passed, post-wedding. At one point, I believe I had 9 books partially read. I haven’t gone back to finish any of them, but started fresh with some lighter summer reading in order to carry paperbacks on the plane with me.

The Areas of My Expertise
by John Hodgman
John Hodgman is a writer and comedian who has appeared on the Daily Show and is the “PC” in the Mac/PC commercials from Apple. It’s a very funny book, but I think I’d prefer to hear him read this out loud though – his deadpan delivery is what really sells his offbeat humor.

Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy (Jane Austen Mysteries, book 8)
by Stephanie Barron
While I still can’t quite reconcile this mystery series’ rendition of Jane Austen with the woman I see in my mind’s eye after reading her biographies, the series is pretty entertaining.

Justice Hall (Mary Russell Novels)
by Laurie R. King
and
The Game (Mary Russell Novels)
by Laurie R. King
Looping back to pick up the two mysteries in the series that I skipped over accidentally. Justice Hall is the 6th in the Mary Russell series, and for those that may not have read my previous reviews, Mary is married to detective Sherlock Holmes. They’re pretty well written, and I enjoy Mary’s character, although Holmes seems at times to take a back seat and plot is sometimes a bit ambiguous.

The Somnambulist
by Jonathan Barnes
Wow. For a debut novel, this is a killer job. I really loved this book. Edward Moon is a British magician in Victorian London, with an unusual, hulking silent partner called “The Sonambulist” who participates in his acts and helps him solve the odd mystery on the side. Moon’s career is on the wane after years of popularity, mainly because his act has been the same for years and people have tired of seeing the same old thing. He’s drawn into the investigation of an actor’s murder, and manages to stumble into a full-blown conspiracy to destroy the city of London, which he must quickly get to the heart of before doom strikes the city. The book is funny, quirky and full of Dickensian-like oddballs. Can’t wait for the sequel. I hope there is one.

The Secret of Lost Things
by Sheridan Hay
Rosemary Savage comes to America at age 18 to settle in New York City after the death of her mother in her home country of Tasmania. She finds a job in the Arcade Bookshop (similar to the real bookshop the Strand) and stumbles into a mystery of a lost Herman Melville manuscript, and those who want to profit from it.

Continue ReadingWhat I’ve Read Recently

Um, no, dear. Not really.

“It is because of me — I definitely think [my show] has helped the movement. Before it came out, everyone was still a little apprehensive about [same sex relationships]. Then they realized, ‘Wow, everyone is really into this stuff, and it is fine.’ The next thing you know, [gay marriage] is legal.”

— Tila Tequila to Us magazine on how she contributed to the legalization of gay marriage in California

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Continue ReadingUm, no, dear. Not really.

Reading: Ruth 1:16-17

Entreat me not to leave thee,
or to return from following after thee:
for whither thou goest, I will go;
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die,
and there will I be buried:
the LORD do so to me, and more also,
if ought but death part thee and me.

Continue ReadingReading: Ruth 1:16-17

1st Corinthians 13:4-13

Love is patient,
love is kind and is not jealous;
love does not brag and is not arrogant.
Love does not act unbecomingly;
it does not seek its own, is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
But now faith, hope, love,
abide these three;
but the greatest of these is love.

Continue Reading1st Corinthians 13:4-13

Selections from Leaves of Grass, Song of the Open Road

by Walt Whitman

from verse 9

However sweet these laid-up stores–however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here;
However shelter’d this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here;
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

from verse 11

Listen! I will be honest with you;
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes;
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,

from verse 17
Come, I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Continue ReadingSelections from Leaves of Grass, Song of the Open Road

“Reading Is Fundamental” Literacy Program in Danger

If you’re about my age (39, that is) the commercials and reading programs for the nonprofit program RIF – Reading is Fundamental – are probably as vivid a childhood memory for you as they are for me. Not only were they played during Sesame Street and the Electric Company, but they were part of the reading films we saw in class in our Elementary School.

Reading is Fundamental is the oldest and largest children’s and family nonprofit literacy organization in the United States; they actively foster a love of reading, involvement in children’s literacy by families and community, and donations of books to children that need and love them.

RIF regularly visited our school and gave us free books; for us that was an awesome bonus since we had tons from our parents and grandparents, but for some kids, RIF is a reading lifeline that makes a huge impact on how they succeed as adults.

Now for the first time since 1975, the Bush Administration has decided to cut funding for RIF completely. When I read that I was stunned – I can’t imagine a program that had such a large footprint in my childhood consciousness disappearing.
Please follow the link to send a message to our elected officials asking them not to allow a program that has had such a large impact on the lives of several generations of Americans to evaporate.

UPDATE – Due to the large outcry against cutting funding, RIF’s program was added back into the federal budget. If you were one of the kind folks who wrote to your elected officials, please thank them for stepping up on behalf of RIF.

Continue Reading“Reading Is Fundamental” Literacy Program in Danger