Top 100 Books

I stole this from another blog but I thought it was interesting. I've read about 20 of these books. I guess I need to read a bit more. I was surprised that Uncle Tom's Cabin was not on the list but that Harry Potter was. Strange! I'm bit embarrassed that I've not heard many of these titles. I've got to get out more.

How well read are you?

The National Endowment for the arts estimates that the average adult has read only 6 of the top 100 books..

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Star 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 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 Hitch Hiker’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 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-ick ick ick!
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
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
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

Mack Truck Part II

I thought I'd give you and update on my neighbor from the previous Mack Truck post.

All is very good. He had his kidney removed. Spent a few days in the hospital but was walking around by the second day. When my husband and I checked in on him at the hospital we had such a great time with him and his wife- the nurses had to come shut the door to his room because we were laughing and disturbing other patients.

He has a terrific scar along his right side. It almost looks like they nearly sawed him in half, like the magic trick where the magician cuts a woman in two. I told him he didn't really fit the profile of a magician's assistant. He's much too hairy.

All the post operative scans have shown no indication that cancer spread to any other part of his body. There were a couple of spots on his ribs that lit up in one scan but the doctor said they could be old football injuries. They'll keep and eye on them, do more scans in a few months to check. But, all looks great.

About a week after the surgery he got pneumonia 'cause apparently he wasn't breathing deep enough. But that's clearing up with antibiotics and one of those plastic breathing toys they give you in the hospital after surgery. You know the one's they buy for 80 cents but charge you $80. Yep, those.

I must say that I've seen the two of them several times and have witnessed more tenderness and intimate glances at each other than I'd ever seen before. One of the regrets that my dear neighbor shared with me in our first conversation about her husband's cancer was the regret that their marriage was not close and that they were still married more out of habit than love or the desire to be together. I can only guess, but I suspect that the jolt of something so potentially life changing could have brought them a greater appreciation of the life they have. I think for my friend the opportunity to care for her husband and for him to be vulnerable with her brought clarity.

God's Plan for his children is amazing!

Bill Day

Paid bills today...ugh!

Want to gorge on cookies- glad I don't have any chocolate chips.

One good thing - my gas tank is full. Yippi!

sigh....

Mountain Biking

For his birthday, SUPERSTAR asked if he could invite a bunch of friends to our cabin to go mountain biking. At first I thought, "Sure it's his 16th birthday, that'll be fun." and began reserving the cabin, planning the menu and calling about lift passes, etc. However, the more I planned and thought the more I was freaking out. "Holy Moly! A bunch of teen aged, crazy, dare devil boys on bikes on a steep mountain that scares me when it's covered with soft, fluffy, powerdy snow." I didn't really expect any of them to be timid or even careful. I "tested the waters" to see how SUPERSTAR would respond if I changed my mind and backed out. No good. I had all the parents sign a waiver/liability release form and held my breath.

It turned out to be a lot of fun. I must say that spending time with my son's friends was a great privilege. We had seven boys come (including SUPERSTAR). They all have very different personalities but all are accommodating to each other, have fun with each other, are respectful, gracious and kept us cracking up the whole time.

Here are some pictures of the boys in the "jump park" just down the road from our cabin. I did not go up on the lift-so you don't get any pictures of the BIG hill-you'll just have to imagine that part.

There were several bumps, bruises, limping and blood. The first day several boys returned to the cabin with skinned knees and elbows. I should have bought stock in Band-Aid with the number of boys needing minor first aid.

That night DARLING HUSBAND and I were chatting in the living room, the boys playing X-Box downstairs. While were sitting there the boys all come up wearing bathrobes telling us they wanted to go swimming at the lodge. I whipped out the camera. They were so funny posing and acting so "manly". They said they were starting the "hairy chest man club" I didn't see a single hair on any chest but you can see how they hammed it up. They swam for a while and then could not be persuaded to avoid the weight room. Obviously!

The second day they rode the lift up the mountain. On the first trip down one boy falls and bangs is forearm. The other boys tell me the blood was pulsing from his arm and the bone was visible (later found out it wasn't bone but some kind of layer around the muscles). They tore his shirt and wrapped it until they could get down to the first aid station at the resort. DARLING HUSBAND was there as he was being bandaged up. The medic cleaned and covered it but said he would need to go the the hospital in town to have it stitched up. SUPER'S FRIEND was not happy about this. He said, "Can't you just wrap it up good enough so I can keep riding. I'll get stitches when I get home." Ah, NO. DARLING HUSBAND took him and another friend (limper) to the emergency center. Eleven stitches later they were on their way back home.

Being there with the rest of the boys I was ready to get going. I figured the longer we stayed the greater the chance of another injury happening and I was running out of Band Aids. Yikes!

We left about 2 hours earlier than planned. I know, I'm "such a girl."

I gather that my last post was a bit too much. Sorry. Here's a bit of "randomness" and pictures. I know how much everyone loves pictures. So, a little to read and something to look at.

Me and Darling Husband. He's got such a great smile! Yes, I actually do have a face.

My Darling, Cute, Crazy Kids with Grandma and Grandpa.

SUPERSTAR and DARLING HUSBAND with the "Air in the Tires" driving lesson.

My sister asked me to get out my camera and snap pictrues of my kids for her. This collage is the result of my attempt to snap random pictures. SUGAR was not very cooperative.

Look what was in my backyard. Well, I snapped the pictures from my backyard, anyway.