Monday, November 17, 2008

The Reading List

Well over a year ago, I compiled a reading list. Then, it fell by the wayside as I not only became busy, but also abandoned the old blog in which it was posted.

Now, it's back - in all it's glory. It's rather outdated, but I plan on adding to it and revamping it.

And a side-note: I'm 42/50 for my 50 Books in 2008 Reading Challenge! I think I can do it, but it really depends on the days after final exams. We'll see how chaotic December is...

If it is italicized, I've read it.
If it has been crossed out, I've decided not to bother.
This will be continuously updated. ((A bold-faced lie! - Me, in 2012))
If it seems a bit disjointed, it's probably because I have a lot of weird books.
Now that I think about it, I should really make this on LibraryThing. Oh, well.

Achebe, Chinua
Things Fall Apart (read 2008)

Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Adams, Richard
Watership Down

Addams, Jane
Twenty Years at Hull House

Aide, George
The Girl Proposition: A Bunch of He and She Fables

Albert, Susan Wittig
The Tale of Holly How (Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter Mysteries)

Alcott, Louisa May
Little Women (again)
Little Men

Alexander, Robert
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

Ambrose, Stephen E.
Band of Brothers

Armour, Richard Willard
Twisted Tales from Shakespeare

Ashley, Jennifer
The Queen's Handmaiden

Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Oryx and Crake

Austen, Jane
Emma
Mansfield Park
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility

Babbitt, Natalie
Jack Plank Tells Tales

Baldwin, James
Go Tell it on the Mountain

Barrie, J.M.
Better Dead
My Lady Nicotine: A Study in Smoke
A Window in Thrums + Auld Light Idylls
Tommy and Grizel

Bawdin, Nina
Carrie's War

Beagle, Peter S.
The Last Unicorn

Bennett, Alan
The Complete Talking Heads
The History Boys
The Uncommon Reader

Berendt, John
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Berry, Steve
The Templar Legacy

Bilston, Sarah
Bed Rest

Blume, Judy
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret

Botton, Alain De
How Proust Can Change Your Life

Bradbury, Ray
Farenheit 451

Braddon, M. E.
Lady Audley's Secret
Trail of the Serpent

Bradley, James
Flags of Our Fathers

Braffet, Kelly
Last Seen Leaving

Bridge, Andrew
Hope's Boy: A Memoir

Brokaw, Tom
The Greatest Generation
Boom!

Bronte, Charlotte
Jane Erye

Bronte, Emily
Wuthering Heights (read 2008)

Brooks, Geraldine
Year of Wonders (read in 2008)
March

Browne, Hester
The Little Lady Agency

Bryson, Bill
A Short History of Nearly Everything
At Home: A Short History of Private Life (read 2011)
I'm a Stranger Here, Myself

Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange

Burton, Tim
The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy: and Other Stories (read 2008)

Caldwell, Laura
The Year of Living Famously

Calloway, Colin
Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America

Cameron, Julia
The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size

Capote, Truman
In Cold Blood

Charyn, Jerome
Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution

Chaucer, Geoffrey
The Canterbury Tales

Chevalier, Tracy
Burning Bright
Girl with a Pearl Earring

Chopin, Kate
The Awakening (again)

Clancy, Tom
The Hunt for Red October

Clinch, Jon
Finn (read in 2008)

Coelho, Paulo
The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

Colt, George Howe
The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home

Collins, Wilkie
The Moonstone
Mr. or Mrs?
Woman in White
Basil (read in 2008)

Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness (again)

Cusk, Rachel
Arlington Park

Daniels, Jim
Blessing the House (read in 2008)
M-80  (read 2011)
Places/Everyone
Detroit Tales
Show and Tell
Blue Jesus
Punching Out
Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies
Niagara Falls
Digger's Blues
In Line for the Exterminator

Davies, Peter Ho
The Welsh Girl

Dawesar, Abha
Babyji

De Botton, Alain
The Architecture of Happiness
Status Anxiety

Dessen, Sarah
Dreamland

Dew, Robb Forman
The Evidence Against Her

Diamond, Jared
Guns, Germs, and Steel (read in 2008)

Dickens, Charles
A Christmas Story
A Tale of Two Cities
Bleak House (read in 2008)
Great Expectations (again)
The Old Curiosity Shop
Oliver Twist (read in 2008)

Didion, Joan
Year of Magical Thinking

Digges, Deborah
Fugitive Spring

Dillard, Annie
An American Childhood
The Maytrees
The Writing Life
Teaching a Stone to Talk (read 2008)

Doctorow, E. L.
Billy Bathgate
Homer and Langley (read 2010)
The March
Ragtime (read 2009)
The Waterworks
World's Fair (read 2011)

Drabble, Margaret
The Peppered Moth

Du Maurier, Daphne
Frenchman's Creek
Jamaica Inn
My Cousin Rachel
Rebecca (read 2011)
The Scapegoat

Egan, Timothy
The Worst Hard Time

Eliot, George
The Lifted Veil + Brother Jacob
Middlemarch
The Mill on the Floss
Silas Marner (read in 2008)

Ellis, Joseph
American Creation

Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man (read 2008)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Self-Reliance (again)

Ephron, Amy
A Cup of Tea

Erickson, Carolly
Alexandra: The Last Tsarina

Eugenides, Jeffrey
Middlesex: A Novel

Faludi, Susan
Backlash

Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying
The Sound and the Fury

Filipovic, Zlata
Zlata's Dairy

Fischer, David Hackett
Paul Revere's Ride (last read in 2009)
Washington's Crossing

Fitch, Janet
White Oleander (again)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott
The Great Gatsby (again)

Fitzgerald, Penelope
The Bookshop
The Blue Flower

Foer, Jonathan Safran
Everything is Illuminated

Follett, Ken
The Pillars of the Earth

Forester, E. M.
A Room With a View
Howards End
A Passage to India

Fowler, Karen Joy
The Jane Austen Book Club (read 2010)

Sarah Canary (read 2010)


Fresan, Rodrigo
Kensington Gardens

Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere (read in 2008)
Stardust (read 2010)

Gaskell, Elizabeth
Cranford (read in 2008)

Gibbons, Kaye
Ellen Foster

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
The Yellow Wallpaper (read in 2008)

Goldberg, Natalie
Writing Down the Bones (read in 2008)

Golden, Arthur
Memoirs of a Geisha

Goldman, William
The Princess Bride

Golding, William
Lord of the Flies (again)

Goodman, Susan
Children of War

Gopnik, Adam
Paris to the Moon

Green, Jane
Second Chance
Spellbound
To Have and to Hold

Green, John
An Abundance of Katherines (read in 2008)
Paper Towns (read in 2008)
Looking for Alaska (read in 2008)
Will Grayson, Will Grayson  (read 2011)

The Fault in Our Stars

Gregory, Philippa
The Constant Princess (read 2010)

The Other Boleyn Girl (read in 2008)
The Queen's Fool (read 2010)


Gruen, Susan
Water for Elephants (read 2009)


Haddon, Mark
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Hagen, George
Tom Bedlam

Halberstam David
The Coldest Winter

Hamilton, Jane
When Madeline Was Young

Hansberry, Lorraine
A Raisin in the Sun

Hardy, Thomas
Jude the Obscure
Tess of D'Ubervilles

Harris, Joanne
Blackberry Wine
Chocolat (read 2011)

Gentlemen and Players
The Girl with No Shadow

Hart, Lenore
Becky

Harte, Bret
The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings (again)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel
The House of Seven Gables
The Scarlet Letter

Heller, Joseph
Catch-22

Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Nick Adams Stories
The Sun Also Rises

Herbert, Frank
Dune

Hitchens, Robert
Green Carnation

Holden, Wendy
Farm Fatale
Gossip Hound

Hopkins, Bonnie
Seasons

Hosseini, Khaled
A Thousand Splendid Suns
The Kite Runner

Howells, William Dean
The Rise of Silas Lapham (read in 2008)

Hughes, Thomas
Tom Brown's School Days

Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World

Hyde, Catherine Ryan
Becoming Chloe

Irving, John
The Cider House Rules
A Prayer for Owen Meany
The World According to Garp

Isenberg, Nancy
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr

Jacobs, Kate
The Friday Night Knitting Club

Jaffe, John
Thief of Words

James, Henry
The Aspern Papers (read 2008)
The Bostonians
The Portrait of a Lady (read half of it, 2009)
Washington Square

James, William
Pragmatism and Other Writings (again)

Jewett, Sarah Orne
The Country of the Pointed Firs

Joyce, James
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Dubliners
Ulysses

Kagan, Robert
Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order

Kauffman, Donna (collection of short stories)
Merry Christmas, Baby

Kelby, N.M.
Whale Season

Kendrick, Beth
The Pre-Nup

Keniston, Kenneth
Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth

Kerouac, Jack
On the Road

Kesey, Ken
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (read 2010)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Kheridan, David
The Road from Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl

Kidd, Sue Monk
The Mermaid Chair
The Secret Life of Bees

Kingsley, Charles
The Water-Babies

Kingsolver, Barbara
The Bean Trees
Homeland, and Other Stories
High Tide in Tucson (read in 2008)
The Poisonwood Bible
Prodigal Summer

Kinsella, Sophie
Remember Me? (read 2008)

Kipling, Rudyard
The Jungle Book
Kim

Knowles, John
A Separate Peace (again)

Kostova, Elizabeth
The Historian

Kramer, Mark ed.
Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writer's Guide

L'Engle, Madeleine
A Wrinkle in Time

Lalwani, Nikita
Gifted

Lamb, Wally
She's Come Undone

Lamott, Anne
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (read in 2008, 2011)
Blue Shoe
Crooked Little Heart (read 2011)
Rosie
Traveling Mercies (read 2011)

Larsen, Nella
Passing

Larson, Erik
Thunderstruck

Laski, Harold
The Strategy of Freedom, an Open Letter to American Youth

Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird (again)

Levine, Gail Carson
Ella Enchanted (read in 2008, 2011)

Levy, Ariel
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

Lewis, Matthew
The Monk: A Romance (read in 2008)

London, Jack
The Call of the Wild

Loos, Antia
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady

MacAlister, Katie
Improper English

MacLachlan, Patricia
The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt (read in 2008)

MacLaren, Ian
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush

Macomber, Debbie
Lonesome Cowboy

Maguire, Gregory
Lost
Mirror Mirror
Son of a Witch
What-the-Dickens
Wicked (read 2008)

Malhotra, Deepak and Max H. Bazerman
Negotiation Genius

Man, John
Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words

Mansfield, Katherine
The Collected Stories

Marr, Maggie
Secrets of the Hollywood Girls Club (read in 2008)

McCafferty, Megan
Sloppy Firsts (read 2009)
Second Helpings (read 2009)
Charmed Thirds (read 2009)

McCann, James
Maize and Grace (read in 2008)

McCarthy, Cormac
The Road

McCourt, Frank
Angela's Ashes
Teacher Man: A Memoir

McCullough, Colleen
The Ladies of Missalonghi

McCullough, David
1776
John Adams
Truman

McEwan, Ian
Attonement
The Cement Garden
On Chesil Beach

McFadden, Maryann
The Richest Season

McGinn, Daniel
House Lust

McInerney, Monica
The Alphabet Sisters
Family Baggage

Mcmahon, Katharine
The Alchemist's Daughter

Meyer, Stephanie
Twilight (read in 2008)
Breaking Dawn (read in 2008)
New Moon (read in 2008)
Eclipse (read in 2008)

Middlebrook, Diane
Anne Sexton: A Biography (read in 2008)

Milford, Nancy
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Millay, Edna St. Vincent
Conversation at Midnight

Miller, Arthur
Death of a Salesman (again)

Milton, John
Paradise Lost

Mintz, Steven
Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood

Mitchell, Margaret
Gone With the Wind

Montefiore, Simon Sebag
Young Stalin

Montgomery, L. M.
Anne of Green Gables series (again)
Kilmeny of the Orchard

Morgan, Judith
Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel: A Biography (read in 2008)

Morrison, Toni
Beloved

Mortenson, Greg and David Oliver Relin
Three Cups of Tea

Murakami, Haruki
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Murray, Annie
Chocolate Girls

Nabokov, Vladimir
Lolita

Nelson, O.T.
The Girl Who Owned a City

Nemirovsky, Irene
Suite Francaise

Niffenegger, Audrey
Her Fearful Symmetry (read 2011)
The Time Traveler's Wife

Norris, Frank
McTeague (again)

Notaro, Laurie
Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood
We Thought You Would Be Prettier: True Tales of the Dorkiest Girl Alive

O'Brien, Tim
The Things They Carried (read 2006)

Olson, Lynne
Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England

O'Reilly, Judith
Wife in the North (read in 2008)

Orwell, George
1984 (read 2011)
Animal Farm

Packer, Ann
The Dive From Clausen's Pier (read in 2008)

Parks, Tim
Italian Neighbors; or, A Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona

Pearl, Matthew
The Dante Club (read 2009)

Perrotta, Tom
The Abstinence Teacher
Election
Joe College
Little Children

Phillips, Susan Elizabeth
Catch Me If You Can

Plath, Sylvia
The Bell Jar (read in 2008)

Prince, Peter
Adam Runaway

Rakoff, David
Don't Get Too Comfortable

Rand, Ayn
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead

Reid, Van
Cordelia Underwood
Mollie Peer

Rice, Luanne
Silver Bells

Rivenbark, Celia
Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: And Other Words of Delicate Southern Wisdom
We're Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle

Robinson, Elizabeth
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters

Robison, John Elder
Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's (read in 2008)

Rosenthal, Amy Krouse
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (read in 2008)

Rotundo, E. Anthony
American Manhood

Rubio, Gwyn Hyman
Icy Sparks

Russell, Mary Doria
The Sparrow

Russo, Richard
Bridge of Sighs
Nobody's Fool
Empire Falls

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de
The Little Prince

Salinger, J. D.
Catcher in the Rye (again)
Franny and Zooey (read in 2008)

Sartre, Jean-Paul
The Devil and the Good Lord

Schocket, Eric
Vanishing Moments: Class and American Literature

Scott, Sir Walter
Ivanhoe
Waverly

Sebold, Alice
The Lovely Bones

Sedaris, David
Me Talk Pretty One Day (read 2009)
Naked (read 2009)
When Your Are Engulfed in Flames (read 2010)
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (read 2009)

Seton, Anya
Avalon (read as a girl)
Dragonwyck (read 2010)
Green Darkness
Katherine
The Winthrop Woman (read 2010)

Setterfield, Diane
The Thirteenth Tale

Sexton, Anne
The Complete Poems

Shaw, Bernard
Pygmalion

Shelton, Sandi Kahn
What Comes After Crazy

Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle

Smith, Sarah
Chasing Shakespeares

Steinbeck, John
East of Eden
The Grapes of Wrath (again)

Tarr, C. Anita
J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan In and Out of Time: A Children's Classic at 100

Terkel, Studs
American Dreams: Lost and Found
Coming of Age: Growing Up in the 20th Century
"The Good War": An Oral History of WWII
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
Touch and Go: A Memoir

Tillyard, Stella
A Royal Affair: George III and his Scandalous Siblings

Tobin, James
Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II

Tolkien, J. R. R.
Lord of the Rings

Tolstoy, Leo
Anna Karenina

Twain, Mark
Pudd'nhead Wilson

Updike, John
Rabbit, Run

Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa
Dirty Girls on Top

Vivante, Arturo
Truelove Knot: A Novel of World War II

Wachtel, Eleanor
Writers & Company

Walker, Alice
The Color Purple

Walls, Jeannette
The Glass Castle

Warren, Robert Penn
All the King's Men

Wasserstein, Wendy
Bachelor Girls (read 2009)


Waters, Sarah
Fingersmith

Waugh, Evelyn
A Handful of Dust
Brideshead Revisited

Weiner, Jennifer
The Guy Not Taken (read 2009)
In Her Shoes (read 2009)

Welsh, Irvine
Trainspotting

Wharton, Edith
The Age of Innocence
The Custom of the Country
The House of Mirth

Whiteley, Opal
Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart

Whitman, Walt
Leaves of Grass (again)

Wick, Lori
The Princess

Wickham, Madeleine
The Gatecrasher (read in 2008)

Wiesel, Elie
Night (again)

Wilde, Oscar
Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wilder, Thorton
Our Town (again)

Willig, Lauren
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (read in 2008)
Seduction of the Crimson Rose (read in 2008)
Masque of the Black Tulip (read in 2008)
Deception of the Emerald Ring (read in 2008)
Temptation of the Night Jasmine

Winsor, Kathleen
Forever Amber

Wolf, Naomi
The End of America
The Beauty Myth

Wood, Gordon S.
The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

Woolf, Virginia
A Room of One's Own
Mrs. Dalloway
To the Lighthouse

((This list was last meddled with on February 23, 2012.I have amassed quite a different sort of library, as my interest have changed and matured. This list does not include the hundreds of books I have read and/or acquired since landing my dream job, at a book shop. So... yeah.))

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Now, this is Reality TV. I have a feeling that this epic presidential campaign is far from over. Both candidates have their legal teams in place, ready to contest and protest anything which has even the slightest reason to bicker over.

Student Congress is hosting an election night party tonight, from 8pm until 11pm. Sundaes and a big-screen TV, and more banter and debating than the average person can stomach. Great. Just what adamant political hot-shots need - a sugar high.

Still, I think I'll go. I work until 9, and it's hard to turn down free ice cream. Plus, it gives me an excuse to avoid my homework.

Speaking of work - my boss was rather mean. I went out of town for the weekend, and came down with food poisoning Sunday night (lousy pledges... or lousy shrimp - not sure). Come Monday, I'm bed ridden. My shift at the library began at 2pm. Ordinarily, it would go until 7pm. But I had already bribed someone to cover from 4pm until 7pm. I knew no one would take 2 to 4, but I tried, anyway. Needless to say, I couldn't find a sub. And furthermore, my supervisor didn't believe that I was sick and stranded out of town. Bah.

I can't wait to leave this job behind. I've been here since the fall of 2004, and it's driving me nuts. December is the end of my time here at the front desk, but I'm not going far. The Archives department is just downstairs, but it far exceeds life as a student employee deskie. I. Can't. Wait. No more cleaning up after less responsible employees. No more running back and forth, dancing for the various supervisors. No more crummy schedules. Freedom!

Now, to figure out the latest conundrum - to settle down, or to go to graduate school .

Monday, November 3, 2008

I've been slacking.

I'm behind on homework. I have one paper to write for tomorrow, and then a few others after that.

I'm behind on Swap-Bot, which has become a small but painful thorn in my side.

I'm behind on NaNoWriMo. And by behind, I mean that I have yet to begin.

Fail.