Good Reads

Annalisa had posted this on her blog and I wanted to post my list here as well. It seems to have a nice mix between classics and modern, but there are still so many missing. Maybe it needs to be a top 500 :) How many have you read? Post your own list if you want to. I have really enjoyed Good Reads because I am reading more than I ever have (and keeping track of my books) as well as seeing what all my friends love to read. Thanks for all the great book suggestions everyone!!

Here’s what you do:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE .

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
8 Nineteen Hundred 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 (most)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler'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 (haven't finished)
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brides head Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
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 - 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
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
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John 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
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
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
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 - AS 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

Just Because...

The day before Tony started his new job, which he loves by the way, we just had a spontaneous day. We had no plans in the morning and found ourselves up on the East Bench in a park eating blueberry muffins and holding hands. This was followed up by a morning game of miniature golf. I highly recommend going on a Monday morning (there was NO ONE there-so nice) Anyway, TWO hole in ones later by the red head in the twosome who hasn't played in ten years, though might be the next Tiger Woods, and we were ready for Zupas. Yes, that little piece of heaven capped off with the chocolate dipped strawberry no less. We headed over and picked up Conner from school early (a real treat) and headed up to the Alpine Slide. IT was picturesque and there was joy on my little boy's face for it had been a total surprise and he has never been. We raced down and followed it up with a bungee bounce for him (should've taken pics on the other side to see his face) and a bit of window shopping at the outlets and we pretty much had the perfect day.

Tag Your It

Thanks Bonnie- it's been a while since I've been tagged. Before I respond, I wanted to tell you more about my previous post. I found this website and it finds your celebrity twin. I kid you not, my #1 look alike according to their "scientific process" was Paris Hilton...(crickets are chirping now and your jaw has fallen down to the basement) Yah, cuz I always thought she was my long lost twin!! :O That's why I went with their #2 choice of Emma Thompson- I still don't see it, but it was still fun.

Ok back to the tag: 6 quirks I have-

1) I will only eat the middle of meat (especially if I have seen it raw) If you give me a piece of chicken I trim off all the edges. I don't enjoy meat very much and the fat on meat (never gonna happen) I was at a stranger's house one Thanksgiving and I got some gristle in my mouth...I'm still not over it.

2) I'm superstitious. I knock on wood and make a wish every time I look at a clock and it says 1:11
(Conner's birthday) I used to do something every time I drove over a railroad track, but I can't remember what that was and luckily I gave that one up. :)

3) I am obsessed with flossing my teeth. I look forward to it. It is my favorite part of getting ready for bed every night. In fact, probably because I overdue it (if that's possible), my gums are now receding. Too much of a good thing I guess.

4) I have no idea what direction I'm facing at any given time. I'm not very good at giving or getting directions. I use map quest a whole bunch more than I'd like to admit. Maybe it's the California girl in me, but I still think 3 houses down from the lamp post is easier than 10076972 South and 10 billion West.

5) I named my daughter's middle name Grace because I don't have any. If there is a wall six feet away I will hit it with my elbow. If there is one pebble on the street I will stumble on it and if we are walking towards each other from opposite directions, we might as well 'dance.' I always choose the wrong direction if I have to make a choice about how to avoid hitting the oncoming individual. It's strange...does it have to do with my lack of direction??? Hmmm.

6) If I see a cop I turn into Bambi. Let me explain what that means. If a cope is near me in the car my eyes widen (not in fear), but in earnestness. They take on a gentle expression like a child on the front row listening attentively to the teacher. I smile ever so gently, not too widely with just a hint of serenity and my hands immediately adopt the 10 and 2 o'clock position. I must feel guilty or something...

So there you have it and I'm sure there's 200 more but those are some highlights!! If you guys want to play, then I tag Cami, Lara and Donna.

Celebrity Morph by MyHeritage

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Family search - Family history

Road Rage

I really need to know if others are feeling the same way I am. With all the construction around our home, and everywhere else it seems as if people in general out there are getting angrier on the road. I have had NUMEROUS people cut me off, blatantly turn in front of me so that I have to come to a complete stop, etc. etc. etc. and every detour I take is the same way. Yes I know this is normal, but do you think it's gotten worse lately? When I took a walk and saw the construction trucks lined up along a little road in our neighborhood too I wanted to cry. For some unknown reason they have blocked off the right turn lane onto the main highway as well. Who remembers when the state of Utah had a party because construction was over (with our tax dollars I'm sure) Why do they have to do it all at once? I understand that our roads are atrocious, but I'm ready to move out to the middle of nowhere. It really makes me realize how congested and crowded this town has really become and you know what? I'm not sure I'm enjoying it. This is what I do know: I will not leave my driveway without a word of prayer not only that my kids and I will stay safe out there, but that I will stay sane. Maybe I will invest in a horse and buggy and move to Amish country. Can you tell it's been a day??

Flashback Friday

About 5 months after Tony and I were married, he got an internship at a senator's office in Washington D.C. We packed our Honda CRX with all our earthly possessions (two suitcases full) and hightailed it out of Logan. Our adventures en route to the east coast and the four months we spent there I will leave for another post. On our way back to Utah the car broke down in Wheeling, West Virginia on a Friday about 5:30 pm. Unfortunately for us, the mechanic would not be in his shop until 9 am the following Monday. Wheeling is an old coal mining town and a shell of it's former
self which I'm sure back in the day was a flourishing, beautiful city. There are probably many nice parts of the town, which unfortunately we didn't see being trapped in one central location. The whole place seemed to be covered in coal dust and we were the ONLY guests at the rundown hotel. We asked the woman at the desk, who seemed amused to see a very young couple staying for the weekend, what there was to do nearby since we had no car. "Well, you've got a couple of choices," she said. "There's a Denny's restaurant and a dirty bookstore down the street." "Great!" I cried. "We love to read." She smiled widely and we headed in the direction she told us. Now as I mentioned a thick layer of dust was in the air and made everything look gray. We wondered how old and dingy the bookstore would be. I didn't mind as long as the books weren't too expensive and that they cleaned the inside of the store. We saw it up ahead. Tony stopped me in my tracks. "There's the 'dirty' bookstore." I averted my gaze from the line of X's all along the windows. Oh yah, she wasn't kidding-that was one DIRTY bookstore all right. We turned on our heels and trudged straight into the adventure of eating from a Denny's for the next 9 meals of our apparently immature and naive lives. So the moral of the story- no matter how gray and dusty the town is you're stuck in, only read the postcards...the bookstore needs to be cleaned.
ps...only one channel on the old tv set- I learned A LOT about livestock and tractors- really, it's come in handy...really...

IT Happened

Tony got a job today...

Duh...

Tonight at dinner:

CC- Night night! (She knows it's time for bed after we eat- we've trained her well:)

Tony-yes CC is going night night.

me- She can say banana now Tony. CC say banana.

CC-banana

me-that sounds an awful lot like night night- think she knows the difference?

Tony-is CC going banana?

CC-(as clear as a bell and with an incredulous look on her face) No, night night.

I Am So Impressed

Oh yes, I will be voting for her.

On Gratitude

My heart is full an awful lot. I am grateful every day. I live my little life in the cloistered world I dwell in and I am constantly overcome with profound manifestations of joy. I have learned after many years that it is all about love. It is during those times that I forget this that I struggle to find my place and I dwell too much on myself. I am always unhappy when I am selfish or hold back and I have to adjust my bearings and get back on course quickly to find my peace again. I am deeply moved as I ponder the Atonement of my Savior Jesus Christ. In Him I rejoice. In Him I rely. Only through Him do I remember who I am and who I can become. He provides me with breath, with sight, with stamina, with the ability to comprehend beauty and inspiration. He has given me my weakness so that I will partake of His strength. He has blessed me with pain so that every day I will call upon His name and remember from whom all my blessings flow. I love Him with all that I am.